Monday Motivation

Are there secrets to good writing? You know all the platitudes as well as I do, the ones that insist that it’s mostly a matter of sweat, and very little of inspiration. The idea that persistence [...]

I am not qualified in any sense to make the following statement: Mathematical models in the field of physics and cosmology bear a truly remarkable resemblance to the reality they purport to [...]

Germaine Greer once interviewed Luciano Pavarotti at his Italian villa. She was ushered through into the presence of the great man on the terrace where he was having breakfast. He looked up at [...]

Authenticity matters a great deal to some writers. Take Gregg Hurwitz, for instance, author of the Orphan X sequence of thrillers. He’s really good on lethal hardware. Here’s a paragraph on the [...]

I was recently given a Garmin watch which records, as well as your heartbeat and the number of steps you take every day, the patterns of your sleep. It gives you a full analysis within minutes of [...]

The New York Times has been running an interesting series of articles which compile the answers that older readers give to the question: what life advice would you give to the paper’s younger [...]

If I were to give you a writing exercise challenging you to describe yourself, how would you go about it? What sort of information would you give? Well, of course I have no idea whatsoever what [...]

Some wear it as a badge of honour because it seems to affirm their identity as writers. For others it is a curse that keeps them from fulfilling the mandate they feel is part of their DNA. And [...]

One of the little-regarded spin-off advantages that writers enjoy, is that, through their writing, and through the stories they fabulate, they exercise a skill essential to us all, writers and [...]

In 1953, a writer submitted a dog-eared manuscript to Faber and Faber. It was the seventh publisher he’d approached and he was not optimistic that it would be taken up. The writer was by all [...]

Maddingley Hall is a large manor house on the outskirts of Cambridge.  It was built by Sir John Hynde, a prominent judge in the reign of Henry VIII, and his son Francis in the mid-sixteenth [...]

It’s an old story oft told but one worth telling and retelling: simple is best, clear is most beautiful. It’s true that writing requires artifice and contrivance. Threaded through even the [...]