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Today, 9 August, marks Women’s Day in South Africa, where half of our team is based and where (in normal times) many of our courses and workshops take place. It’s a day to celebrate women, [...]

What can we do to brighten your August? All About Writing was born of passion, rather than a business proposal – which is why we remain committed to giving you as much free help and advice as we [...]

I was asked the other day what I would consider to be the “most important thing” a novice writer can do to improve her creative writing skills. Besides read, I asked? Her jaw became set and her [...]

Here’s a very short reflection on an absolutely essential attitude to writing. It can be encapsulated in a single, short dictum: The only question to worry about in your writing is, does it work? [...]

Most writers start off as readers, and lovers, of good books. In his recent Monday Motivation blog posts, Richard has been sharing the lessons he has drawn from a reread of Tolstoy’s Anna [...]

Writers are born, not made. True or false? It’s an interesting question because it puts on the table the issue of whether bad writers can become good writers. On a recent webinar we suggested [...]

Beginnings are exciting because you’re establishing the characters you’ve been developing, and, launching your great ideas. Middles are hard work because you need to keep people interested [...]

So you’ve worked out a story, and you think you’re ready to start. Only, there’s one decision you haven’t made: from whose perspective should you tell the story? There’s often not an easy answer [...]

Billy Wilder was one of Hollywood’s great writer-directors. He was responsible for such evergreens as Some Like it Hot, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard and many, many others. Towards the end [...]

The value of community: A word each from Jo-Anne and Richard Jo-Anne We’ve never been quite as aware of the value of our All About Writing community as we have during the strange and fearful [...]

Films have a great deal to teach those of us who write for the page. Of course, the lessons of the screen have been slowly absorbed, by a process of osmosis, by all writers for well over a [...]

Are you offended by the ripe language that so many modern novels seem to relish? By their apparently gratuitous use of the f-word and the c-word, to mention just the two most egregious examples [...]