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“See what you’ve already written as raw material.” This is the kind of advice writers dread… “What do you mean? Thousands of words of deathless prose – raw material?” Yet, I believe it can [...]

Here’s a thing: in our bookshop in Wigtown, south Galloway, we have, at a rough estimate, some five thousand books. They’re all second-hand, of course – and they fall into a wide variety of [...]

Tackling a book-length project can be a terrifying journey – unless you have someone to hold your hand and keep step with you. Our Mentoring Programme is tailored to each writer’s needs and [...]

Random events occur in our lives all the time. We make choices, we react to them, they are followed by unconnected occurrences, with no links to what came before or after. It’s only in retrospect [...]

Salley Vickers is a one-time lecturer in Shakespeare and the nineteenth century novel, among other things, a remedial teacher and a psycho-analyst specializing in helping people who are [...]

Someone I know recently had a fall-out with a relative – over words that seemed to her trivial. For a time, she couldn’t understand it at all. After all, what she’d said wasn’t so terrible, was [...]

Don’t lose your writing fitness Daily writing is to writers what exercise is to athletes. Stop, and you’re in danger of becoming stiff and stilted. You lose your flexibility and strength. [...]

Novels are, first and foremost, stories. Their first job is to intrigue us, involve us, surprise us, jolt us, shock us – and entertain us. The best novels of their eras – from Bleak House and [...]

“I need to discover whether I’m a writer or not,” one of our participants said, at the start of our new Creative Writing Course. She said it in hushed and reverential tones, as though it were [...]

Oscar Wilde was at dinner with a group of friends when one of them delivered a little off-the-cuff bon mot of wit and elegance. Oscar exclaimed, “Oh, I wish I’d said that!” A rather more cynical [...]

Fifty thousand words in just thirty days. It’s a huge and exciting challenge. Getting stuck? It’s a problem that most of us encounter from time to time. Here are a few suggested strategies for [...]

It’s a hard, lonely process growing your writing discipline… Oh shut up, you old killjoy. We don’t believe that. We’d much rather you had creative fun among like-minded companions, guided by your [...]