New research has proven what writers have known for years: devising ideas to entertain and delight your audience is what stimulates one’s creativity. Don’t just focus on what’s interesting to you personally, as that might just fail to engage the interest of people who might want to buy and read what you’ve written.
Apparently, bearing in mind how someone will benefit from your idea can help you Continue reading
The 'Supermoon' (seen from my garden)
I discovered today that the time of a full moon is a great opportunity to release old behaviours, thought patterns, or clutter. You name it: anything that doesn’t serve you any more, you can release with a full moon.
Which is why it is hugely exciting to know that the round, proud Supermoon in the sky tonight (19 March 2011) is the biggest full moon in 20 years. What am I letting go in honour of this big full moon? Well, I’m not keen on staging a ritual or ceremony, but I’d like to let go of something meaningful and momentous.
So, I’ve decided to release the two things holding me back: Continue reading
It’s taken me years to find a Book Club: through lack of time or opportunity, I’d always listened wistfully to friends who were reading a book specifically to discuss with their avid-reader friends. For me, it’s a total pleasure to read a book for fun, and discuss it with gusto, rather than have to analyse its narrative arc, the effectiveness of the dialogue, or the nuances of tone, structure or symbolic architecture.
While I do enjoy the detailed and technical analysis of a novel (I’m studying for a creative writing MA, after all), there’s a freedom, purity and bliss in just discussing what I liked and didn’t like about a book. Looking too closely at a book can show the seams, whereas tonight I’ll be enjoying the entire garment.
Is it just me, or has the world suddenly gone crazy for St Paddy’s? It’s only in recent memory that 17 March becomes the cue for card shops to transform into a sea of emerald green, for shamrocks and cartoon leprechauns to be emblazoned in front windows, and for men in big, funny hats to enjoy daytime pints of Guinness outside pubs on the high street.
Happy St Patrick's Day.
Is it just me, or does St Patrick’s Day prompt more Continue reading
When writing a piece of prose or editorial that’s meant to have some kind of impact on the reader – whether that’s business writing or creative writing – I find the piece is more effective when I define what I want to say first, and then work out how I want to say it second. In other words, I bash out my first draft, and then refine the expression and nuance along the way.
After years of being a business magazine editor, and writing a leader/opinion column each week, I discovered that the best way to give my leader shape is to Continue reading
Can we ever tie up loose ends?
I had my first ending last night.
I’m no good at sewing. But I like my ends sewn up. Which is why I’ve been intrigued by my inability to tie up loose ends, and my simultaneous detestation of them. Yet those ends tend to dangle in my life.
I’ve lost my dad to cancer, my mother to dementia, and my sister to fraud. Hey, I could win hands-down the Derby of Suffering, and the Grand National of Loss.
But I have never properly or consciously managed an ending. Until today. Continue reading
I felt all nostalgic today when I heard that British Tourism Week had kicked off with Party on the Pier.
Memories of Blackpool pier.
Apparently, piers in seaside towns are having a huge revival – thanks to more UK holidaymakers taking more domestic breaks; the phenomenon otherwise known as the staycation – and this week is celebrating the UK’s piers and their heritage, in conjunction with the National Piers Society.
But it’s not the heritage, or the staycation, or the celebrations that make me feel nostalgic. Its my candy-floss memories as a child, hopping, skipping and jumping along Blackpool prom to get to one of the town’s three piers.
Being Blackpool, the breeze was always bracing, and strong enough to Continue reading
I attended a creative writing class recently, facilitated as part of a community project – the idea being that people could come along and have fun writing stories and poems. In other words, this process helped give people the ability to articulate what could otherwise not be said, and the opportunity to express in an oblique way what was going on for them. What emerged was some powerful writing with strong symbolic resonance.
Since studying for an MA in creative writing, I’ve approached my prose as something that has to be ‘perfect’: I carefully craft each word as if each one might be judged and found wanting. What was so liberating about this creative writing class was that Continue reading
Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire, Great Rules of Writing
My father died 12 years ago this hour.
The rasping breath, as I left his hospital bed,
Lasted a few minutes more.
There was still hope, I said from denial,
Til I took the call, Continue reading
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