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Paul Auster is the author of seventeen novels, the latest of which, 4-3-2-1, was published last year and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. I bought it back then, but […]

Specific details are magical. That was the gist of my blogs over the past couple of weeks: give us just one or two specific details, and we’ll be transported to […]

We’re back on Patience in this new warm English weather that seems to have become a fixture here. All around us lie a fleet of narrowboats: Patricia and Star, Bess […]

Reading fiction is good for us – and that’s not one writer’s opinion, but the conclusion of neuroscientific research. Studies have shown that the language of fiction: imaginative metaphors, [...]

Stories drive us. They’re what help us make meaning – and so, sense of our world. They help us make decisions about our own existence. Stories of one sort or […]

I want to talk today about the remarkable properties of glue when it comes to assembling story. You remember what E.M. Foster said about the difference between story and life? […]

“Wow, that was like watching a movie.” This was the response of a participant in my Creative Writing Course to the writing of a fellow – and it came as […]

Anyone can learn to write It was five weeks into my current face to face Creative Writing Class on Monday. The participants had been reading their assignments out for comment […]

This is not a puff-piece. It’s rather a salute to the sort of commitment to the craft of writing that we could all learn from. It’s inspired by one of […]

Use specifics to draw us in. That’s the key to writing well. Give us the particular, we’ll expand it, if necessary, to visualise the whole. I find this type of […]

One of the most succinct definitions of art that I’ve ever come across is this: Art is repetition with variation. After all, there’s no real conceptual difference between Michaelangelo’s David, [...]