Monday Motivation

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 [...]

Start every morning with a little strenuous exercise. Well, of course it would be good for you to walk around the park, or swim twenty lengths, but I’m actually not talking about that kind [...]

Let us consider all the things that dialogue can do: It enables us to elicit and transmit information: “What’s the time?” “It’s a quarter to four.” That but information can consist of any one of [...]

Mishaps happen all the time in writing. Most of them are little niggles, easily erased during a light edit. In one chapter the stable boy has a shock of blond hair; in the next he’s a girl with a [...]

I recently read a book called Moneyland, in which Oliver Bullough explores the many and ingenious ways in which the world’s superrich hide their wealth and avoid paying taxes. It’s as if the [...]

How do you write a best-seller? Shouldn’t be difficult. Bestsellers, after all, aren’t vaunted works of literary magnificence. For the most part, they’re just fast-paced stories, chockablock with [...]

Common threads run through many of humanity’s endeavours. Analysis in one field turns out to be startlingly appropriate in another. Artists seize on some of the more bizarre findings of quantum [...]

Behind every great story is a great idea. Trouble is, great ideas are not low-hanging fruit. They’re not the sort of things that occur to you every day while you’re brushing your pearlies. But if [...]