Helpline
MILES JORDAN, Cheltenham
Your writing problems solved with advice from Diana Cambridge
Email your queries to Diana (please include home-town details) at: diana@dianacambridge.co.uk or send them to: Helpline, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD. She will answer as many letters as she can on the page, but regrets that she cannot enter into individual correspondence. Publication of answers may take several months. Helpline cannot personally answer queries such as where to offer work, or comment on manuscripts, which you are asked not to send.
Q: This will probably sound hopeless, but I have been working on a novel for fourteen years. I do in fact have an excellent mentor and pay her a fee for critiques. She has given me marvellous advice and encouragement over the years. But the time lapse between her writing to me and my sending off the next batch is getting longer and longer – I seem to have lost confidence in myself and my ability to finish. In fact I have drafted an ending, but it’s the middle which I find almost impossible to deal with. I can’t believe I have been working on this so long – and I do believe in it. I have a demanding day job in a hospice, and used to love my writing as something I could be absorbed in when I wasn’t working. But now it’s become almost a burden.