Blog Tour:The Echoes of Love. Guest post by author Hannah Fielding about writing.

 I am very pleased to welcome author Hannah Fielding on the blog for a guest post as part of the blog tour for her new novel The Echoes of Love. A stunning romance set in mysterious Venice. My review of The Echoes of Love will follow soon. For more about Hannah and The Echoes of Love, visit her website www.hannafielding.net.

What’s your best advice for someone who wants to be a writer?

 

• First and foremost, write from the heart. Be true to yourself and don’t compromise to please the market. Markets change, fads come and go; your work will remain.

 

• Research your facts thoroughly. A writer today has no excuse for not getting his/her facts right. Use all the tools available to you. Travel, internet, books, films, documentaries: they’re all there to enrich your experience and make your writing journey easier.

 

• Plan your novel down to the smallest detail. This will make your writing so much easier and therefore so much more enjoyable. A plan is your map. Would you set out on a long journey by car without a map?

 

• Read, reread and reread. Edit, edit, edit. Go through your manuscript again and again and edit it. I know that it will break your heart to delete a phrase or even one word you have spent time agonising over, but sometimes less is better than more. Not easy advice to follow, but in the long run it does work. If you can leave the manuscript alone for a few weeks and revisit it at a later date, reading it as if it were someone else’s, then that’s even better.

 

• Do not get discouraged. Continue to write whether you think your work is good or bad. There is no bad writing. There are good days and bad days. The more you write, the better at it you get.