It is the time of the year when, in homes across the country, moods will be on the turn. The cards, decorations and little lights which, a matter of hours ago, conveyed seasonal jolliness now represent yet another dreary housekeeping...
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Beyond the daily grind of the thousand words, there is a rhythm to life as a writer. The commission of the moment (if there is one), the pressure of the work in progress, the seductive possibilities of those what-if, why-not?,...
Read moreThe thousands of brave, rash souls around the world who have been participating in National Novel Writing Month will have typed their last word by midnight on Monday. According to the rules of the competition, they should have completed a...
Read moreThe smile was almost the same. Those heavy-lidded dark brown eyes may have become a rather warier over the twenty years since we had last met. The handsome black face was a little more lined, but still conveyed interest, affection,...
Read moreThe page before you is blank. When you try to write a sentence, it is like dragging your feet through a quagmire. With every slurpy step, the idea that you are a writer seems more absurd. Story? Hah! Who is...
Read moreThere was once a man called Jimmy Savile. He was powerful and did bad things. Although some people suspected as much, he was allowed to continue being powerful and doing bad things for two main reasons: he was a bully,...
Read moreOn a home-alone New Year's Eve, I find myself sternly noting resolutions to myself for the creative year ahead (the personal resolutions can wait). Of course, they may not work for everyone... Enjoy yourself at work. Even when it...
Read moreIt will catch any serious writer in the end: that familiar dread of the blank or page or screen as it stares back at you, daring you to give it some words which, the blank page just knows, will be...
Read moreSome time in the early 1990s, the writer Willie Donaldson devoted his weekly column in the Independent to an account of how the editor who had commissioned him to write his memoirs was so desperate to get the book delivered...
Read moreIt is an undeniable (and frankly rather unattractive) aspect of a writer's character that it needs to be finely balanced between arrogance and insecurity. Confidence is needed to write in the first place; a degree of self-doubt is necessary for...
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