Wordsworth Writers' Guides

“Diary of a Scaredy Cat: a year in the life of a frightened writer”. Diane Wordsworth was struggling to get back into the swing of being a full-time freelance writer. She'd done it very well in the past, thank you very much. But years of editing books for various publishers had taken her out of the discipline of the freelance writing world and she needed to get back in. When she met her future husband in 2013, he very quickly encouraged her to gradually do more of her own work while he supported her as best, he could. This is Diane's account of that first year as she tried to get back onto the writing ladder. But this anthology includes 165 practical writing exercises not previously published.

In my many years as a freelance writer, I must have read hundreds of books on the subject of how to write. In that time, I've picked things up, tried them or not tried them, and either cast them to one side or adopted them. As new books have come along, I've had a look, and if I've liked what I've seen, I've tried something new. Sometimes these things work, sometimes they don't. However, in all of that time, I still failed to find a book that tells me what to do when and in what order, and I've tried to work it out for myself. With the help of a project management coach, I now believe that I have finally found a system that works for me. If you want a step-by-step guide telling you what to do when, then perhaps this system may work for you too. This is not a book on how to write, it's a book on how to decide what to write when.