Hello everyone. I am proud to announce that today I have started on the re-draft of my novel Tales of the Countess. I was very nervous about writing a new opening scene and could easily have spent this week not doing it. So I decided on my fail-safe back to basics routine – morning writing.

I’m trained as a writer by the Julia Cameron’s Artist Way philosophy which is, first thing in the morning, to write morning pages and then go straight into a page of your writing project. I have been a regular on morning pages for the last eight years. I don’t do them everyday and I don’t always do a full three pages but I have consistently done them at least two or three times a week and find them to be the lynchpin of my creative activity. Today, at 7.20am I did a page and then thought “what the hell – let’s get straight into the Countess” and then wrote about 300 words of my new draft. Unfortunately I was interrupted by having to look out the back door at the hurricane like wind and rain that was blowing across London at that time, as well as the sudden realisation that I had left my car parked illegally and I had until 8am to move it! So then I had to pull on my rainwear and brave the squally shower that was raging outside. Thankfully the car did not have a ticket and the writing did at least get started. Now that I have started I no longer feel nervous about continuing with the opening scene.

Finally – I have a bonus benefit from getting started today and writing this blog. I did a Google search on ‘morning pages’ so I could include a reference for you to look up what morning pages are and I found the most useful website for chick lit authors. Certainly worth me checking it out, and in the meantime – here is the explanation of morning pages that I found. http://www.chicklit.co.uk/articles/the_magic_of_morning_pages.asp