Welcome to the Editorial Page of the West Cork Writers website!

We are just emerging into the world, mewling and bawling, just a few hours old and ready to kick arse – at least in theory.

In reality, we will probably make every sort of mistake so please read our superb intentions through our clumsy delivery.

My name is Tim Daly, and I have to tell you that almost all of those mistakes will be mine – as the role of Editor has fallen on me if only because I was unique amongst the Group as being not clever enough to duck.

For this first Editorial, I will reprint some advice I gave recently to a friend who was struggling with his own writing and had hit that fatal-seeming BLOCK to which we are all prone.

ADVICE TO WRITERS & WOULD-BE-WRITERS

Nine chances out of ten that the reason you struggle with writing at the moment is that you're doing it with the front of your brain.  Know you are intelligent and creative - but also know that you must get your head in the right space if you want to let the ideas flow.  Try these 5 steps.

Step One

  Get reading the sort of stuff that turns you on - and try to step back from each piece and figure out what makes it so damn good - so effective.  Rinse and repeat.

Step Two

  Get rid of any lingering doubts that you are anything but a born-again genius - rough around the edges maybe but a genius nonetheless.

Step Three

  Realise it's all about the ideas anyway and we don't "create" them - at best we let them flow through us exactly in the way they do when we read someone else's work.

Step Four

   Take a title that tickles you - type it onto the screen - and then just start writing and try not to get in the way of the ideas themselves.  Do it recklessly and with love and remember untidy is good.

Step Five

   Be prepared to share the rough products, those with which you are at least halfway happy, with others whose taste and opinion you respect and allow your view of their responses to guide you during the editing and honing process.