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Frequently when we’re asked to assess someone’s manuscript, or help a writer brainstorm a story idea, we have to begin by stating a fundamental principle of fiction. It is, we say, a really bad [...]

I continue to mine George Saunders’s A Swim in the Pond in the Rain for practical writing wisdom, and found myself rereading a section on revision, which I think is well worth retailing. I think [...]

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 spoke a week or two ago about getting stuck in a piece of writing, and having to work out what the problem is before you can push on. That “getting stuck” is a little too generic to be of much [...]

We’d come off the tidal Thames – a writhing, contained beast of a river whose coils you can feel flexing beneath the surface of the water – onto the Grand Union Canal at Brentford, in London’s [...]