narrative | Fail better: Improving creative writing skills

How to get started on a first novel. Five things I wish I’d known earlier.

There’s bags of advice out there, of course. Hopefully whatever you’ve found so far has been fabulously helpful and you’re ready to get going. As someone who’s started more novels than they’ve finished and finished more novels than they’ve published… Continue Reading →

Sport and narrative: living through 2013/14 as a Liverpool fan

An old wise-woman, questioned at the gate to the ancient olive grove on the route to Olympia, is thought to have said that a life well-lived needs three things: self-worth, the knowledge that we are loved, and the potential to… Continue Reading →

3 May, 2014 0

Why do a Creative Writing MA? – Kureishi has a point but so does Winterson

“‘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 →

5 March, 2014 0

How to write a novel (#1) planning to keep it up.

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 →

29 January, 2014 1

under construction

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 →

5 December, 2013 0

Notes on trying to become a better writer

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