MANUSCRIPT ASSESSMENT AND EDITORIAL ADVICE SINCE 1996
Blog
In 2016, TLC’s 20th anniversary year, we launched a blog as a space for thoughtful, non-promotional pieces on all things writing, editing and publishing. If you’d like to pitch a piece, please email Aki Schilz on .
We’d love to hear from you, and please feel free to comment on the blogs here.
Where Words Come From
March 01, 2021 | Blog
This month’s TLC Blog is from writer, Free Read receipient, and soon-to-be published author Jon Ransom. An early draft of his forthcoming novel ‘The Whale Tattoo’ (Muswell Press, Spring 2022) first appeared in the TLC/AM Heath Free Reads Anthology in 2019. This is his first piece of non-fiction,
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What Winning TLC Pen Factor Meant to Me
February 01, 2021 | Blog
So, this is all mine? I thought, scanning my list of prizes. I had just won TLC’s Pen Factor Competition 2019. In addition to winning a full manuscript assessment and two 1:1s with experts in the publishing industry, I’d won a one-year membership to a number of valuable organisations,
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My Mentoring Journey with TLC
January 04, 2021 | Blog
A wonderful blog to kick off 2021, from TLC Mentee, and NHS worker Rose McGinty. Rose wrote this blog at the end of last year, after her experience working with TLC Mentor and Associate Editor, Anna South.
When I signed up to the TLC mentoring programme in November 2019 I’d spent two years struggling with that notorious tricky second novel and was at the point of ditching it,
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Necessary complications and genre
December 01, 2020 | Blog
As a writer with an attention span smaller than a fruit fly’s (despite the recent invidious comparisons with Donald Trump) I need strong stuff to keep me going – cups of fair-trade Rwandan coffee, plus a big bowl of fun-size confectionary to boost the sugar levels. However, the strongest incentive to keep writing is what Stephen King calls the “gotta”: the propulsive readable quality of genre fiction which is driven by a similarly propulsive urge to write and carry a project through.
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Writing 'Wanderers'
Writing my non-fiction book did not come easily. What started it all was reading Robert Macfarlane’s book The Old Ways. I read it in mid-2014, and wrote about it shortly after in my notebook, observing that most of his ‘examples are male’ – and asked the rhetorical question ‘what relationship,
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Putting It Out There
October 01, 2020 | Blog | 2 comments
This month’s TLC Blog comes from poet David Herring, who used TLC as part of an experiment in Patreon poetry earlier this year.
“We recommend a first read-through, then putting the report aside for at least a few days, before coming back to it… [giving] you time to work through the feedback on a subconscious level.”
[Extract from TLC’s ‘Next Steps’ document,
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Being an Indie Author does not mean you should go it alone
September 01, 2020 | Blog
In 2018 I achieved my lifelong dream. After several (i.e. many) casual efforts I had sat down, taken it seriously, and written a novel. My science-fantasy epic Vile had not one but three offers from publishing houses. So why did it feel wrong? Why did I make the decision to turn down all three and go Indie?
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Home Is An Act of Creativity
August 01, 2020 | Blog
Wherever I have felt truly at home, I have felt the presence of the house of my childhood – my grandparents’ home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, shimmering through the reality of the present. The desire to capture it and to give it life, so that I might linger there once more is perhaps the single most important thing that drives me.
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My Mentor and Me
July 01, 2020 | Blog, Other News
Here, TLC Mentee and Creative Future Writing Award winner Pauline Walker conducts an interview with her TLC Mentor, Tom Bromley. And, to mix things up, we thought it would be fun to let Tom ask Pauline some questions too!
Pauline Walker: You’re a published author, editor,
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Breakfast at Bronzefield: A Book from Inside Britain's Largest Women's Prison
This month, former TLC Free Read recipient Sophie Campbell shares the story of her journey to self-publication for her powerful memoir, ‘Breakfast at Bronzefield’, which depicts her experiences inside HMP Bronzefield, the UK’s largest women’s prison.
When I made the decision to write about my experiences inside the UK’s largest women’s prison – HMP Bronzefield – the road ahead seemed pretty clear.
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