Goodbye 2020
Goodbye 2020: it is certainly one year I’m not sorry to see the end of. Although it is probably going to be a year with a long reach into the new year and beyond. What will be interesting is to see the books – novels and memoirs – that …
Imagine (Picture by Jacqueline Mitchell)
Imagine. Remember John Lennon’s brilliant song? He said people called him a dreamer because he could imagine a world without hunger or greed. And he said making this imaginative leap was easy if you tried. Fair enough. But as any novelist will tell you, sometimes the …
Telling our stories [Photograph by Jacqueline Mitchell]
A past student emailed this week to say he really needed to get down to writing and stop wasting time. He did a creative writing short course with me some years ago and wants to enrol on the Writers’ Masterclass because he reckons the …
Shaping your story
If shaping your story is proving a battle it might be because you’re not sure of your genre. I’ve found that if you can nail down your genre early on you can make your writing life a whole lot easier. When I changed from writing general literary fiction …
There is nothing like a makeover. It not only brings with it a new look, but creates an exciting buzz. And that’s what has happened with WriteOnline.
Last week it relaunched with a whole bright new look, extra features, and a team putting a huge amount of energy and thought into …
A’Eysha Kassiem – Telling our stories
How books get written is one of those issues which really intrigues me. Sometimes they are written in a rush – at least I’ve heard some authors admit to this – but mostly they take weeks, months, years to write. Years and years is how …
Luc Zwaenepoel – Score a publishing deal
One of the great spin-offs of the Writers’ Masterclass is when a writer gets to score a publishing deal. There have been a host of books published by WriteOnline’s Masterclass writers since it began in 2012, and there are more coming up next …
Writing the last line: not as easy as it looks
It’s always a bit scary getting to the end of your first draft and writing the last line. I was there again the other day and I have to admit the final sentence came as a surprise. For one thing, the …
Writing as therapy is not self-absorbed self-analysis
All my life I have never thought of writing as therapy. I’ve always thought of writing as a job.
Something you sat down to during the day and worked at for as many hours as you could afford. It was a seven days a …
