Tips for Writers

There are times when you just have to let go of a project. Last week, I spoke about having faith; putting in the hours even though your manuscript is a horribly defective creature which looks [...]

In a Creative Writing class I was teaching recently, I suggested that, if you’re not sure of an aspect of your writing – like which point of view would be most effective or how to structure your [...]

We don’t allow ourselves enough time to be bored. The modern world encourages us to fill every moment – and our phones encourage this. If you’re standing in a queue, it’s important that you don’t [...]

So the year has begun. And now your creative intention is staring you in the face, and it has a ferocious expression. It seemed easy enough a couple of weeks ago. If you took any notice of my [...]

You might have noticed that I’ve avoided all mention of that R word this new year. Deliberately so. I don’t want to remind you of last year’s determination to run five k’s a day. And I certainly [...]

This new year, make the decision to see the world differently – through a story-teller’s eyes. If you can do this, then every day, every trip to the supermarket, can feed your writing. [...]

One of the reasons Dickens was such a great writer is that every character we encounter on his pages is vivid. He gives us just enough about each, no matter how incidental they may be to the [...]

Readers are clever. They pick up the subtlest clues and don’t need the point hammered home for them. Last week I spoke about the subtle way Barbara Kingsolver leaves a trail of clues for us to [...]

A woman in her late 40s has lived for some time entirely alone in a forest hut as a conservation ranger. A man travels through her area of the forest, one she is ambivalent about, but is [...]

We were recently approached for help with a writing project in which the writer wished her sole protagonist to be a true psychopath, who enjoyed killing. I’m not saying this hasn’t been done, but [...]

Writing can teach you as much about yourself as it can about the craft. Over the past weeks, I’ve been sharing with you the advice of a few of our mentoring participants – those who are writing a [...]

The middle can be the most daunting part of the book to push through. The beginning rushes out after you’ve been thinking about your story for months. But the middle is where writers get stuck, [...]