Eleventh Month authors Q&A: Merle Grace
On a weekend in November 2016, a number of writers gathered at Temenos, in the village of McGregor in the Western Cape. In addition to the writers at Temenos, others were tethered to the [...]
Five tips for how to make a person
Twenty Essential Aspects of Writing: 7 Upcoming courses 30-Day Writing Workout, Online – 1 to 30 August Venice Writing Retreat, Venice, Italy – 6 to 13 September Stow-on-the-Wold Writing Weekend [...]
Monday Motivation: Names to conjure with
I want to talk about names. Names we give our characters, names we give our houses and – our narrowboats. And what they can communicate about the meaning stitched through our stories. We’ve just [...]
Four tips for creating literary characters
Twenty Essential Aspects of Writing: 6
Monday Motivation: The vexed question of the exclamation mark
A question from Henry Spencer, a reader: “I am constantly being told by my daughter that I should never use exclamation marks. She virtually derides their use, considering it unprofessional. (She [...]
Six tips for developing non-fiction ideas
Twenty Essential Aspects of Writing: 5 This is the fifth in a series of blogs requested by our community. The series offers fundamental, easy to follow and very practical advice in twenty [...]
Monday Motivation: The story of Abigail the mallard
We returned to our narrowboat Patience this week and found on the foredeck, neatly deposited within the bounds of the lifebuoy we keep in case of aquatic misadventure, ten ivory coloured eggs. [...]
June writing challenge
You’ve got to the end of a journey – literal or metaphorical – and what you discover there is very different from what you anticipated. Write a scene of no more than 250 words telling us of your [...]
Challenges and opportunities, grist to to a writer’s mill
Current and forthcoming courses and retreats Our Creative Writing Online Course kicked off on Tuesday – but it’s by no means too late to sign up for a rollicking ride through the hills and dales [...]
May writing challenge winners
A clutch of four of our own alumni’s books, recently published, is the prize for this month’s writing challenge. The books are Ekow Duker’s The God who Made Mistakes; Christa Kuljian’s Darwin’s [...]
Four tips for developing ideas
Twenty Essential Aspects of Writing: 4 This is the fourth in a series of blogs requested by our community. The series offers fundamental, easy to follow and very practical advice in twenty [...]
Monday Motivation: Ambushed by a striking apophthegm
I’d intended writing a deeply meaningful essay on… oh, I don’t know, any number of deeply meaningful thoughts I’ve had on writing, when I read an article by Barney Ronay on South Africa’s [...]
