GILLY SMITH

So there we were, trying out the tent for our first ever family camping holiday on the same strip of Welsh sand as I used to sift between my toes as a child, when a job comes in from an inflight magazine. Damn. I had vowed that I would fly no more,leaving carbon footprinting for the much more childish who just won’t take responsibility for their role in climate chaos.…

I’ve let you down. I promised you the highs and lows of being a writer and I’ve hidden away all summer, nursing my creative bruises, shielding myself from that passive aggression known perhaps only to the freelance writer. The non-response email, the reply to my pitches so heavily not in my inbox with its heartless menace, its threat to my entire way of life – and its mean disrespect for…

Write about what you know. That’s what the experts tell fiction writers, but journos often have to write about what we don’t know, taking our readers with us on a journey of discovery. It helps if we have an interest in the subject – preferably a passion. Mine is food. But writing about green issues over the last year has put my interest in food onto a new plate, jostling…

A lot of my mates spend this “down time” sitting on the beach, in the park, even going on holiday, and put it down to research. But they tend to be the fiction writers for whom simply going out of the front door can inspire a new idea for a story. So, although humble non-fiction write I may be, I’m training myself to get out more, to leave Google alone…

This is the time I hate most. The waiting game. One book in with the editor, having its i’s dotted and its quotes cross checked ready for delivery to the book shelves and the media scrutiny in September, and the other currently in the post from agent to publishers. It should be the best time; the hard stuff is over, the sun is shining. I could even go and ride…