02/05/2026
Writer Wisdom: a series of posts spotlighting writers in our community, sharing their insights and the reason they return to the page, even on the hard days.
This month, Fran Hill shares some insights from her journey as a writer. Fran Hill is a retired teacher and author from Warwickshire. She has published a memoir called ‘Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?’ and two novels: ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ and ‘Home Bird’ (Legend Press) inspired by her experience of foster care as a child. ‘Cuckoo’ was runner-up for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize.
"Sometimes I get my bum on the seat and my coffee brewed and my computer turned on and still all I can come up with is ‘They walked into the room’ or ‘The sun beat down like a beating hot sun’ or ‘They had an argument and he said I’m divorcing you and she said do what you like, I love Peter now, anyway.’ This is tosh, I say to myself. Who’s going to read this except for people who hate themselves?
Well, the truth is, no one except me needs to read it at draft stage. Even better, the most famous writers come up with similar tosh in their first drafts. The acclaimed writer Hilary Mantel said that, some days, all she could manage was Subject, Verb, Object, Subject, Verb, Object.
No description. No context, No research. No Booker-prize-winning prose. No nothing, except simple sentences, one after the other, which she could come back to later and zhuzh up. But, without the draft, no zhuzhing can take place. Thank you, Hilary Mantel. If you can write tosh and be okay with it, so can I."
