This the second of my Top Nine Writer’s Rules, a series of blogs with which writers, would-be writers and readers will eventually be able to build their own rulebook for writing, based on the words of authors past and the present. Today’s theme answers a question familiar to any writer who has answered questions from… Continue reading Top Nine Writer’s Rules: #2: Inspiration
Read moreFor many years, I have collected the thoughts and observations of writers about the process and the profession of writing. The authors can be dead or alive, famous or obscure, literary titans or contemporary crowd-pleasers. If they have something interesting, funny or perceptive to say about the strange business of creating in words, then I… Continue reading The Top Nine Writer’s Rules (the tenth is yours) #1. STARTING
Read moreThe general consensus around here was that an image re-think was in order. The brand needed to be refreshed. And because a website can sometimes seem like a visible, external version of your professional life, the best place to start was here, online. I have a new website and with it (the master-plan) a new… Continue reading Clean, lean, terrifically digital – welcome to the new me
Read moreThe bullfinch, a charming bird, has an apologetic song. While others in the hedgerow chatter, chortle and remonstrate, the bullfinch is usually heard in the form of an occasional one-note tweet. It prefers not to draw attention to itself with showy communication. In the human world of social networking, where the chattering, chortling and remonstrating… Continue reading A confession: I give bad tweet
Read moreDo you know the feeling when you are so absorbed in what you are writing that you lose all sense of time? Food, sex, sleep cease to be anything more than irritants which briefly divert you from the onward rush of your prose… [In my latest ‘Endpaper’ column for The Author, I provide some useful… Continue reading The art of creative non-writing
Read moreThere was a time when I took a swaggering, what-the-hell atittude towards a writer’s responsibility to those close to him. Few authors speak up for decorousness or kindness, in fact, preferring to trot out the hoary old cliché, said by Czeslaw Milosz and quoted by Philip Roth, “When a writer is born into a family, the… Continue reading Prim? Moi? A radio debate about the writer as good (or bad) citizen
Read moreToday marks the end of a peculiar, but increasingly popular, annual event: national novel-writing month is almost over. Heads down, fingers pounding away at their keyboards, would-be writers here and in America will be racing for the finishing line, having almost completed a novel of some kind or other in 30 days. The words of… Continue reading Why writers are mugging each other
Read moreLast week, it was time to go back to school. For the first time since I was a teenager, I returned to Wellington College. I had been invited back by Anthony Seldon, the present headmaster – or Master, as we call him – to give what he called “a fireside chat” at the Master’s Lodge.… Continue reading 40 Years On: an unsettling trip back to school
Read moreThis week I spent a day in prison, thanks to the good offices of the writers’ organization, English PEN. I was part of an ongoing programme aimed to get prisoners talking about their own writing and reading with professional authors. In a sense, the conversations I had with the men of HMP Downview and, in… Continue reading A day in prison
Read moreHere is an idea for one of the country’s many courses in creative writing or broadcasting. To illustrate the terrible, corrupting effect of cliquishness and publicity on talent, students would be asked to analyse the careers and cuttings of a group of media types in their sixties who used to lunch together at Bertorelli’s three… Continue reading Will Martin’s gang ever grow up?
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