If you’re reading up on how to write, you’ll have been sieged, bombarded, pelted and shelled all in the name of conflict. It comes up in every “how to do” and you’ll be told and told to the point of haemorrhage itself… Continue Reading →
Improvement. Like many would-be writers, I’ve been through a few periods where advice, information, tuition, critique were all doing their job well and I really felt that I was improving. Thrilling times. There’s no better feeling than a sense of… Continue Reading →
5th April is Swinburne day – if you think you may have read some once and liked it, today’s the day to go and look him up again. New to Swinburne or wondering what he might offer? Today you can… Continue Reading →
“‘Fuck the prose, no one’s going to read your book for the writing, all they want to do is find out what happens in the story next.’” So says Hanif Kureishi on the broad subject of creative writing courses. Is he right?… Continue Reading →
It’s not easy to improve a craft. Let’s be honest, for many of us it’s not easy even to accept improvement is necessary. As Confucius would apparently have said if he’d spoken modern English, “True wisdom is knowing what you… Continue Reading →
I keep coming back to it. I’ve irritated everyone who I’ve talked to about it. I totally understand the objections and why everyone howls with contempt whenever the subject’s raised. The fact is though that more novels come to a… Continue Reading →
Ah Pantomime, a British favourite that is as inexplicable to foreigners as the seasonal World Championship TV Darts. Here we have stories that are hard-wired into the global consciousness, spattered with the all the ribaldry that cross-dressing, double-entendre and pop… Continue Reading →
What percentage of time do you (should you) spend on your blurb, summary, synopsis, pitch? When should you do it? Some people agonise over this more than over their novel itself. I know people who’ve spent three years constantly refining… Continue Reading →
Six-thousand years ago, the Sumer-Akkadians enjoyed a rich civilisation in what is now Kuwait and Iraq. This was the land of the Gilgamesh epic, of complex laws and coherent social systems, of communication that would cross the millennia through painstakingly-created… Continue Reading →
Well, if you’ve clicked through to this page its probably because you’re the web police and want to know why a page has been called “under construction.” Or perhaps, like me, you have some nostalgia for those websites in… Continue Reading →
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