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Don’t feel guilty for focusing on your creative needs – your life may depend upon it My mother was raised a Calvinist, so I was taught that time taken for myself was indulgent, a selfish waste of [...]

It’s been a demanding year. There’s not a person I’ve spoken to who hasn’t faced a cost-of-living crunch, trouble at work or home, or an illness. I want to share why you should never let go of [...]

Resolutions just make us all feel bad. Let’s rather fix our writing intentions for the year. Intentions are slightly different. They’re not as strict.   Resolutions are the bullies on the [...]

It’s the month of holidays, so this newsletter will celebrate holidays and gift-giving – and look forward to a new year packed with writing holidays (because we know how badly you’re longing [...]

Holidays should present you with time to do exactly what you please and concentrate on yourself, but they seldom do.   Writing holidays are different. These provide a time out of time for you [...]

It’s been another difficult year and, if I have any advice, it’s not to dwell on what you haven’t done. Celebrate what you’ve managed and look ahead.  Your frustrations and difficulties haven’t [...]

Explore the mysteries and the craft of creating story in that most charming of Cotswold market towns, Stow-on-the-Wold. Join a group of like-minded souls for the weekend of 7 to 9 June. Far from [...]

Our Stow-on-the-Wold weekend writing workshop was, as Sue Lesser’s poem conveys, a rare weekend indeed. A Rare Weekend A wondrous weekend, Bordering dreamlike… After tiring drive, [...]

There’s a paradox to writing: it is at once an intensely solitary activity, and at the same time is dependent on the good opinion of a vast community of readers. And while, necessarily, [...]

Trish and I have just spent six weeks slowly working our way down the Thames River in our narrowboat Patience. We’re on the Grand Union Canal now, moored up in Paddington Basin in the heart of [...]