There’s three kinds of writers; one embarks on a journey with a map, they know where they’re going. Another type gets in a car and drives as far as they can see their headlights. A third combines the two approaches. They have a vague idea of where they’re going and if or when they get lost, then they bring out the map.Which are you? I’ve always been the ‘let’s see where this is taking me’type and that was true even when I wrote non-fiction. It usually worked. I’d begin with the problem, move onto a discussion and then wrap it all up. So far so good. It worked for shortish academic papers of about five thousand words, but what of the...
Read MoreBefore I was a novelist I worked in Child Protection and as a pyschotherapst. Writing was involved in both the study and practice of this work, though it was very different from my work as a novelist. Here’s some examples of my academic writing. With the frequent references to films and care work, you can see how my career and my artistic inclinations were always close. 2012 ‘Time, Space and Memory in ‘Last Year in Marienbad’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 2010 ‘Editorial Introduction to Papers on Matte Blanco’ Aug.BJP 2010 ‘Death’s Dream Kingdom’ the representation of the Unconscious in the film ‘Apocalypse Now’...
Read More
Marguerite Valentine is a former child protection specialist now writing psychological thrillers. Her debut novel is 'Between The Shadow And The Soul'.