If you like writing but feel a bit stuck (as I often do) a good solution is to do what author Julia Cameron calls the morning pages. 

It is meant to get you out of writing rut and is good for well being too.

In effect it means sitting down with your first cup of tea or coffee or the day and writing in longhand in a journal or notebook.

If you can do this as soon as you get up then even better. It involves no hesitating or editing as you write just let the hand and brain take over and write whatever comes into your head. It’s like a writing work out and can really unblock things.

No need to judge yourself and it often helps to get any negative thoughts out ahead of a new day.

I find it has produced gold nuggets amongst a lot of words on the page. I might never use for any other purpose. If you want to know more then Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way is a good place to start.

The endless wet weather, with hail, wind and downpours mean I have been reading more than ever.

I buy a lot of books but I also use the local library here and they have had some great new additions to the shelves recently including The Cloisters by Katy Hays.

It’s a gothic novel set in contemporary New York City and is about the occult, tarot cards and professional ambition which leads to murder.

I have also recently bought three debut novels, all very different, that I can recommend.

Knife Skills For Beginners by Orlando Murrin, is an entertaining crime novel set in an upmarket cookery school in Mayfair.

It has a cast of wonderful characters and a sequel is promised.

Its author is an acclaimed cookery writer and broadcaster who these days lives in Exeter and has given readings of his book in East Devon.

The List of Suspicious Things is set in the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Jennie Godfrey, its author, used her early diaries as part of the writing of her novel.

Two young girls play detective and draw up a list of prime suspects in the town where they live as the police find it hard to hunt down the killer.

if you want to read a book about loss and identity set in a small rural community in the South West then The House of Broken Bricks is a wonderful first novel by Fiona Williams.

Finally Prof Andy Brown, of the Creative Writing Department, at University of Exeter is coming to Brook Kitchen in Budleigh Salterton on May 15 to read from his new historical novel The Midnight Mechanic.

Set in Victorian London it explores brotherly love and fortitude with glimpses of the criminal underworld and the challenges two of the  characters Arthur and Silas face.