About

Hello and thank you for visiting my blog! Pull up a chair and relax 🙂 My name’s Amanda Fairchild and I live in the West Midlands of England with one cat and a huge, aggressive Inner Critic.

Partly thanks to my Inner Critic, I’m good at avoiding things. Editing my novel, mainly, but I’m also excellent at avoiding exercise, gardening and household chores.

Despite this, I started this blog to share my bits and bobs of writing and pass on my thoughts on the writing process itself… Nurturing imagination, outlining, motivation, character development, plot… And resistance, or the dreaded writer’s block. Perhaps my sage advice and sparkling bons mots will inspire thousands – or not. But at least one day I can look back and see how far I’ve come. 🙂

I’ll always follow back blogs on the following subjects:

• anything about creative writing / novel writing / writing advice / your writing journey
• any blog about depression, anxiety or loneliness
• narcissism, narcissistic abuse, narcissistic mothers, covert narcissism
• childfree living, ageing without children.

My Bees

Everyone has bees in their bonnet, and here are a few of mine.

I’m the daughter of a narcissistic mother, so that crops up a lot in my writing. My upbringing has led to other narcissists slithering into my life, so I write about other types of narcissist as well – overt and covert, male and female, mothers and husbands.

Life is tough for the victims of narcissists, because of the crushing effect a narcissistic parent has on the ego of a growing child. These wounds last well into adulthood. So I think it’s important for victims to be free to speak about their childhood abuse even if it wasn’t physical, and even if it was at the hands (or voice) of their mother. Expression is catharsis.

Not surprisingly, I’ve suffered with depression and anxiety all my adult life, so that comes up in my writing as well, though only obliquely so far. I’ve seen a few therapists, many of whom have been crap, and had a lot of advice from lay ‘experts’, most of which has also been crap. Things along the lines of ‘just think positive thoughts’, and ‘I had depression once – I ate a mango and was fine!’

I will write about these people too.

Another small but active bee is ageism. I’ve had empathy with the elderly since a young age, and still have, and will have even more as I become elderly myself (‘yeah, that happened a while ago’ – Inner Critic). Society loves and values the young and, it seems to me, only the young. The old are forgotten and treated terribly, which is bad for everyone.

Now that’s over, don’t forget to check out my recommended authors!

Then put your feet up, have a look at my oddments (so to speak), and I’ll pour us a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

“Share and enjoy” 🙂