Louise Allan: Music, Always

Louise Allan: Music, Always

This is #65 in the series for Writers in the Attic and the final post for 2017. This series has been the most successful I've ever started on this blog, in terms of duration and readership. Each post has had well over 300 views and some over 2,000! It’s been an...

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The Story Behind the Story: My Great-Grandmother

The Story Behind the Story: My Great-Grandmother

In the lead-up to publication of my novel, I want to write a few posts about the inspiration for my story. Last year, I wrote about my grandfather in 'The Story Behind the Story'. In that post, I talked about how as soon I started writing my novel, my grandparents'...

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The Story Behind My Story: My Grandfather

The Story Behind My Story: My Grandfather

In the lead up to publication of my novel, I'd like to write more about the 'The Story Behind the Story': the genesis of my novel, and the people and places that inspired it. My Grandfather My paternal grandfather was one of eighteen...

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What I Want to Write About …

What I Want to Write About …

Lately, each time I've sat at my computer the words haven't come and I've ended up faffing. Yet my mind is overflowing with ideas and things I want to write about. So, in the end, I pulled out my notebook and pen and made a list of all...

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On Not Giving Up

On Not Giving Up

This post could also be called On Failure, or On Working Hard, or On Learning Life's Lessons the Hard Way. When I was young, I spent most of each summer in our above-ground pool, swimming and jumping and tumbling and doing laps of its 20-foot length. I...

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The Story Behind the Story

The Story Behind the Story

ON WRITING 'THE SISTERS' SONG'   My novel, ‘The Sisters' Song’, has evolved and that’s the only way to describe how it came into being. It’s nothing at all like what I set out to write, and this draft, Final Draft 3.0, is very different to Final Drafts 1.0 and...

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What Not to Say to Young Women

What Not to Say to Young Women

Last week, our seventeen-year-old daughter sang at an Eisteddfod. She's in Year Twelve and hopes to pursue classical singing after school. She always takes care with how she presents herself for a performance, and for this item,...

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Why I Chose to be Motherless – Part 1

Why I Chose to be Motherless – Part 1

I recently read an essay, Motherless By Choice by Katie Naum, and felt awed by its honesty, its sincerity and its wisdom. It struck a chord with me and spurred me to tell my own story. As always happens when I write stories from my childhood,...

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Bottling the Kids

Bottling the Kids

There’s been a lot going on this year—mostly good, but not all of it. Normally, I cope. Normally, I feel good about the good things, but I've had trouble feeling good at all this year, about anything. I think I've worked out why: I don't like this new phase of...

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My Journey to Writing

My Journey to Writing

If someone had asked me a decade ago what I would be doing in ten years' time, writing a novel would not have been on the list, nor on the horizon. It wasn't even on the planet. I'd always thought of myself as Maths/Science orientated as I found those...

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Letter To My Daughter On Her Leaving Home

Letter To My Daughter On Her Leaving Home

I sat on the plane feeling empty and bereft. It took off, up and westward, following the sun. The buildings below quickly became matchboxes, and the clouds drifted in and thickened into a matted carpet so I could no longer see the city below, the city where I'd left...

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Tribute to a Sister

Tribute to a Sister

This piece was first published as a series on my blog in September, 2013, which I've edited and pulled together to make this essay.  After my sister died in 1987, I wanted to write about her and her death, but it has taken me over 25 years. There were many...

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12 Good Things About Homeschooling

12 Good Things About Homeschooling

I didn’t think I’d be able to homeschool. It seemed too huge a responsibility. What if I taught the wrong facts? What if I omitted a vital part of the curriculum? Plus, I hadn’t quit work to start teaching—I had a novel to write. But when one of our sons became really...

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