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It’s your job, as a writer, to care about every level of your narrative. It’s not just about the plot, or the characters and their words, actions and reactions. Those are all important, but in [...]

It strikes me that discussions of political correctness are somewhat risky affairs, since it’s so easy in tippy-toeing around the sensitivities of others, to avoid debating a real and substantial [...]

I day-dreamed my way through my entire school career, and was consistently punished for it. I found the drone of the maths teacher’s voice created exactly the white noise necessary for me to slip [...]

My partner and I have recently become addicted to The Bodyguard, a British series on Netflix. If you’re anything like us, you’re probably quite capable of becoming obsessed by a cleverly [...]

Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya stands on the brink of an athletic breakthrough that many thought could never be achieved. In the Berlin marathon in September, he set a new world record of two hours, one [...]

Were you anticipating the new year with any relish? We usually do look forward to the new year with some degree of excited anticipation. The world conspires to encourage us to do so. It’s the [...]

When you’re struggling with a piece of writing, you long for a breakthrough. But when it comes, it’s not always comfortable. Two of our mentoring participants recently experienced significant [...]

I’ve been saying this a great deal to our mentoring participants recently: don’t weigh down your sentences. Don’t rush to get all you can into one sentence. Slow down, break things up and you’ll [...]

In the beginning, the prospect of the life stretched out before you is without blemish.  Anything seems possible. You could write a great book, compose a perfect poem, paint a memorable picture. [...]

I want to talk about names. Names we give our characters, names we give our houses and – our narrowboats. And what they can communicate about the meaning stitched through our stories. We’ve just [...]