You are creative, passionate, ambitious. You want to know all there is to know about writing and engage with a dynamic community of writers of all categories. You want to do all that while remaining sane, but what you want above everything else is to live a writer’s life.
I’m the same, and that’s why I’ve created this blog.
Here, you’ll find writing tips derived from my 8 years of experience as a language professional as well as my B.A. in translation, my studies in creative writing and my various researches. I’ll also share the occasional tip on how I deal with anxiety and depression, illnesses all too common among creative people. As a bonus, I also share short stories and book reviews.
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You can also check out my most popular posts:
Posts on writing:
Declutter your text: Narrow your scope, Use modifiers in moderation, Beware of repetitions, Don’t dump details
Rewriting a novel: The scene cards technique, Self-critique
Personal development and mental health:
A persona of myself (finding one’s self)
Love Yourself! (self-esteem)
What’s the worst that could happen? (anxiety)
My journey
I’ve started writing stories as soon as I learned how to write. My very first “manuscript” was written in those big, awkwardly shaped letters characteristic of first graders’ handwriting. I started writing my first novel when I was 14.
However, finishing my novels didn’t come easy. I’d run into a plot hole crater, so big I couldn’t see the end of it, then I would get other awesome story ideas and give up the flawed one. I repeated the process until I came to believe finishing a novel was next to impossible for me.
In my late 20s, I stopped making excuses and committed to writing 500 words per day. That’s how I came to have a completed first draft, finally! But it didn’t end there. A first draft isn’t publishable. So I reread it, reorganized it to make it tighter, more engaging, more powerful. It is to be published in 2020, stay tuned!
Who Am I?
I live in a village—which calls itself a “town”, but nobody’s fooled—in the great area of Quebec City with the love of my life and our four-year-old little queen. When I’m not shutting myself up in my office with a cup of tea to write, I read, draw, knit, build stuff with LEGO bricks, study psychology or tend to my garden.
Some of my favourite books are Villette and Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and Don Quixote, in no particular order and all for different reasons. Other fiction works that stuck with me would be Das Experiment (German movie), Liar Game (Japanese drama and manga series), Frozen and Mulan. My true love is Story, I don’t care which form it takes. I love Charlotte Brontë’s and Margaret Atwood’s poetic prose, Jane Austen’s and Amélie Nothomb’s wit, James Patterson’s tight sentences and scenes that never fail to capture one’s attention.
My first novel played a non-negligible role in getting me out of a severe post-partum depression. It made me realize just how important writing was for my happiness. Now, I’d like to become a full-time writer and blogger by 2023… so that I could have even more time to write! For me, there’s no reward like living a writer’s life.
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Current project
Gibson Addict—coming in 2020:
Adulting.
Relationships.
Being a woman.
Alex doesn’t know much about any of it—she’s dedicated her whole life to music.
Everything changes when superstar businessman William Gibson undertakes to make her his, despite her apparent lack of interest for eye contact and other peculiarities. Is she the fabled “one” or will she end up like his previous girlfriends, running away from his… intensity?
—A psychological romantic comedy like you’ve never read before. Obviously, since I made up that genre.
Ida Auclond 