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Spring seems at last to have broken out in the United Kingdom. The last few days have seen hours of uninterrupted sunlight for what seems like the first time in months. As the weather improved, [...]

You’re writing a story. It’s the one you’ve been dreaming of for years, the one you’ve been planning for months. You’ve written chapter one. The story stretches out before you to the sunlit [...]

We’re sitting in a Pret a Manger somewhere in Farringdon having coffee and keeping a wary eye on the weather. We have an appointment in thirty five minutes across the road, but the forecast has [...]

One of the most interesting of all writerly processes is how a story slowly – or sometimes quickly – takes shape. Here’s an evolution of a story. Trish and I booked into an Airbnb over Christmas [...]

The Guardian last Saturday carried a series of short interviews with people who’ve been diagnosed with terminal diseases of one sort or another. I took a deep breath and read some of them. Each [...]

And a very happy, if belated New Year to you, too! I love new years and the opportunity they afford us to start afresh with new projects, new determination and a tankful of refurbished energy. [...]

What moved me most during the course of 2023 was not the publication of the book Step Back and Leap, which I co-authored with Patrick Mork; nor indeed the success of our annual writing retreat in [...]

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, [...]