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Whenever I read something that moves me, inspires me, or reminds me of the fact that all lives are messes and that therefore mine is no exception, I feel proud to be a writer contributing in some [...]

What’s your Monday Writing Motivation? And how does it fit in with paleontologists? Palaeontologists have discovered, in the scrolls of rock that constitute a unique repository of ancient [...]

Monday writing motivation. Here’s a thought: what are characters up to when they’re not active in your story? Remember, they’re not human beings. A human being is busy with all sorts of things [...]

Who is your best and wisest reader? Who is able to offer you the most cogent and practical advice in your quest to make your story as good as it possibly can be? Writers I’ve worked with have [...]

I’ve often celebrated the many gifts writing bestows on the writer: the sharpened eye, the joy that springs from creating something from nothing, the pleasures of devising the felicitous phrase, [...]

Introducing an episode of a series of short radio programmes recently, the presenter* said: “I’d like you to imagine strapping on a big eye mask. It completely covers your eyes. Inside is a [...]

Yes, of course literary conflict provides the driving impetus of all narrative. But from time to time every writer earns the right to indulge their desire simply to celebrate beauty or [...]

War talk is much in the air these days. We talk of “the war” in the way that our parents and grandparents must have referred, in their day, to “the war”. We’ve learned or relearned the vocabulary [...]

St Neots, a small town straddling the River Great Ouse a few locks down from Bedford, holds a market every Thursday in the town square. It was the site, in July 1648, of a pitched battle between [...]

I was paging idly through an old notebook this morning and came across a passage in my handwriting that will serve as the hinge of today’s piece. Yes, I frequently write in longhand – especially [...]

I found myself embroiled in a conversation the other day about that most intractable of writers’ problems: getting published. It’s a fraught subject. Behind the question of publication, though, [...]

We’ve all become aware – or at least, we should have – that we move around the world shedding our DNA wherever we go, like plane leaves in autumn. Most of the DNA-trail we leave behind us, as a [...]