If you’re stuck for ideas when you sit down to write, creative writing exercises can be a good way to kickstart your imagination.

We’ve all experienced it as writers; that hollow feeling you get when you stare at a blank page or an empty Word document.

If you have an idea for a novel and are trying to get organised, here are six things you should do before you begin.

This question crops up a lot, and it often leaves new writers feeling confused. If you’ve finished a manuscript and want to have it professionally edited, what are the different editing options, and do you need all three?

Hybrid publishing sits somewhere between traditional publishing and self-publishing, combining elements of both. While a traditional publisher generates revenue through book sales, a hybrid press makes money from both book sales and the fees they charge their authors.

Once snobbishly dismissed as the publication choice of ‘amateurs’, self-publishing has become wildly popular in recent years and the preferred publication path for many. While it does have a number of big advantages over traditional publishing and hybrid publishing, there are also a number of pretty big downsides.

Traditional publishing is no longer the only route to publication, but it’s one option that many writers aspire to over self-publishing or hybrid publishing. It is, however, a tough nut to crack and there are downsides as well as positives to taking the traditional route.

Go back fifteen or twenty years and the only real way to get your book out into the world was to find an agent and have it pitched to a traditional publishing house. Today, with the rise of Amazon and other self-publishing platforms, there are more ways than ever to get your book into print.

Writing a novel is a big undertaking, and many would-be writers either don’t know where to begin or simply feel overwhelmed by the idea of getting their work published. If you’re about to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, here is a step-by-step guide to the traditional publishing process.

Hiring an editor can seem like a pretty frightening prospect for many writers, not least because you’re handing over your precious manuscript to someone who might be about to tear it apart. There’s a lot of scaremongering around editors and the editorial process, and a lot of myths have grown up which simply have no basis in fact.

Writing a book is hard work, which is why completing a manuscript is such a huge achievement. Finishing a first draft, however, is only half the battle. Writing success is all about rewriting, and that can feel like an overwhelming task when you look back on your manuscript and maybe begin to see the flaws and weaknesses. To make things easier, this is the point at which you should consider hiring a developmental editor.