Mo Fanning – My writing life

I've had an unreliable washing machine, an unreliable car, and worst of all roller-coaster results from a not entirely trustworthy recipe for spaghetti carbonara. And yet I persist. It's the same with an unreliable narrator. Make the people who live on your pages too predictably perfect, and nobody will care.

Two perfectly innocent words when combined have become toxic: Cancel culture.

I've spent eight years in Brighton - and it's the setting for my upcoming book 'Rebuilding Alexandra Small'. Brighton, though, is more than just a seaside town.

A 16-point character creation checklist. Not knowing enough about the characters in your story is the biggest cause of writer's block.

In the (hopefully) near future, I’ll look back on this time and tell myself lockdown wasn’t so bad. I just want to be sure I remember it was

Do you plan your writing or 'fly by the seat of your pants'? Which is right and why does a mix of these two approaches lead to success?

It’s tough not drinking in a society where alcohol rules. Especially during lockdown. Every Friday Zoom meeting ends with someone saying how much they can’t wait to pour a gin and switch off.

I’ve lived through panic buying loo roll, tinned tomatoes and dried pasta, cut my own hair badly and refused to rattle saucepans as the NHS re-appropriated my rainbow.

Mo Fanning looks back at 2020 - a year of reading, writing and anything but the bloody pandemic. Take a moment to join him.

Remember 2019? The worst year ever. Putting politics to one side, it was one of those years that took away too many beloved famous faces. On 31 December 2019, many breathed a sigh of relief and looked forward to something better.