Damien must wonder why on earth I asked him to install a blog on the new website. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve used it. I do feel for him, having searched around and spent ages getting the blog to work only for it to lie around being unused and neglected.

That is about to change.

The reason I’ve not been blogging is that, well, to put it simply I’d lost my writing mojo.

Sure I was working on a minimal level, doing what I had to do but couldn’t find the inspiration or energy to go beyond that.

I don’t know if this is an after-effect of the family trouble I had earlier on in the year and the depression that followed it, but I do know that recently writing has seemed harder than it should be.

So I decided that the easiest way to get back in the swing of things would be to go back to basics.

Now originally I started writing with the Writers Bureau course, but I was not going to restart that. I stopped on Assignment 4 and I STILL can’t think of any fillers to write! So I went back to a book I bought just after I started the course and which helped me to publication success much faster than the course alone would have done. I sat down and re-read “Starting Your Career As a Freelance Writer” by Moira Allen.

If you haven’t read this book then I strongly suggest you do. It is a no-nonsense guide to becoming a freelance writer. She just tells it as it is and reassures you that yes, you can be a writer. I set up NewbieWriters in a way to emulate her no-nonsense but supportive advice to writers. Moira Allen has a lot to answer for.

You see, even though I didn’t know her then, I hadn’t even written for her in those early days, she inspired me to become the best writer I ever could. And she still inspires me now. Actually, I think it would be fairer to say she gives me well-directed kicks up the butt to raise my game and stretch my writing. She sends me contest links and says “you can do this.” Or emails me to say “You should write a book on this.” In other words, she continuously urges me to improve. And we all need someone like that on our side. This was, after all, one of the reasons I set up the forum, so we can all have someone to urge us along.

Anyway, refresher course completed, mojo back in place, you can now expect regular blog posts from me. Two today and one every weekday from now on.

And it’s all thanks to Moira.

Speaking of Moira, if you want to listen to her advice on writing for the international market you can listen to a podcast of a recent interview she did here.

http://authorsaccess.com/archives/date/2009/09