Writing... what is it?!

So here I am, sitting at my laptop, the dog curled up on the carpet at my feet, and I am writing.

By a miracle, my brain is telling my fingers which keys to press, and by another miracle, the letters are appearing on the screen.

And by yet another miracle, your brain is seeing these words (and trying to work out what the hell's going on).

Some people write books about writing, and run courses. But there's no mystery: just put down what's in your head, and don't worry about how good it is until you're done.

But what if you want to write a book. Is that any different from writing a blog post like this; and if so, how?

Good question! Glad you asked me.

The answer is, not really.

The process is exactly the same.

It all starts with you.

The first book I wrote was a crime fiction story called Every Reason, and I started writing it because my brain put an idea into my head (that's my head, on the left, by the way).

The idea was to come up with the discovery of a body on a field of rubble where terraced houses had been demolished.

That was it. Then I had to work out who, when and why, but that all came much later.

I had the idea and I wrote it down, just as I have done with this, my first blog post.

The rest is a combination of perseverance and - well, just perseverance, really.

More from me soon. In the meantime, thanks for looking at the view From Here!