Do you ever have messy periods, where you pootle around for a few weeks, letting your unconscious sift and sort your ideas for a writing compass reset?

Well, it’s messy May here and I’ve been nipping off in all directions, doing different courses and webinars, and here are some finds I’m keen to share with you.

The image here is for an instagram reels video that I did on a course with Anne Gould, a creative and generous teacher with a background in journalism. Emphasising how popular Reels videos are on Instagram at the moment, she also described how much greater longevity they have than other types of post there. It’s easiest to make a reels video within the Instagram app – I learnt you need to be well-organized in your camera roll, to have images and video ready…

Via Jane Friedman, I went on a story app course, which was fascinating. There are several of these in the app store, but Hooked was the one I liked best. These apps pay writers – in Hooked’s case around a dollar a word. These chat story apps are strong in romance and horror genres at moment, but broadening their scope. that they were getting a lot of investments interest. Kilby Blades, presenter also works in marketing for Silicon Valley clients, and she described how much investment these sort of apps are currently getting.

Now the jury is out on how much A.I. is a threat to writers, but it can help generate ideas – the non-fiction examples of it have been – to my eye, at least – better than the fiction examples. You might want to have a try with shortlyai

Finally if you’d like a live and free writing session with gentle Taylor Edmunds on Instagram, she’s running one of her Writing For Joy sessions this Sunday coming up.

Happy investigating!