After years of research, I finally have a definitive list: 1) A word processor. Apple is preferred, but Windows and Linux based options make you look like you’ve suffered for your art, rather than been gifted a fifteen hundred quid PC. Whether you buy it, get given it or nick it, no writer can liveContinue reading “Six Indispensible Things You’ll Need to be a ‘Pro’ Writer”
Tag Archives: Writing
Striking While the Iron Is Hot – A Regime
Striking while the iron is hot? What’s all that about? It’s about me getting hold of the book edit I’m engaged with and making it happen, forging ahead (and other inspirational clichés). Quite an apt metaphor, I’d say, given the name of FT Publishing. Just stand in front of the damn mirror and repeatContinue reading “Striking While the Iron Is Hot – A Regime”
A Return to the Blog (and a return to the novel)
So here’s the thing: I haven’t posted much in a long while, but I have a good excuse: I’ve been working on the first draft of a new book. Well, not so much a first draft as a zeroth draft: 90,000 words of unconnected vignettes that don’t hang together. No change there, you might thinkContinue reading “A Return to the Blog (and a return to the novel)”
The Suspension of Disbelief
Given all the stuff I’ve written in previous blogs about how language and narrative works, here is an interesting question: how does the author use the text to convince us to suspend our disbelief? After all, one of the most important things about any story is that we should believe that it is true, atContinue reading “The Suspension of Disbelief”
More About My Struggle With Poetry
So, on Thursday night, I was listening to someone read a poem about a rocket disaster (don’t ask me the reason, it’s too complex). The poem began with some beautiful imagery about the preparations for launch, then switched, two-thirds of the way through, to some very factual sentences reporting the disintegrating situation that led to allContinue reading “More About My Struggle With Poetry”
