Next week I’ll be teaching a course called The 60 Minute Writer. The title always makes me smile because it sounds like I teach people how to be a writer in an hour. It reminds me of a joke by, I think, Frank Carson…
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My creative writing course
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There is still a great interest in writing blogs. One of the reasons I know this is that my course on blogging currently has twelve sign-ups. That may not sound a lot, but many courses at the City Lit have far fewer.
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So are elevator speeches completely useless? On the contrary, I think you need to develop several of them.
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You’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
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In my recent blogging course, I abandoned my carefully-prepared lesson, or part pf it, threw caution to the winds, and suggested to the class that we experiment with using AI for writing blog posts. Here’s a partial blog post it came up with, which you will agree is utter rubbish…
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I think evaluations are very odd devices to be honest. Someone once “marked me down” on her evaluation of a one day course I was running on the grounds that the traffic was terrible.
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This is an updated version of an article I published on this website in 2015. In my experience, it absolutely applies to artists, teachers and other creatives as well as writers or consultants.
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A few months ago I wrote about Barnabees Books, in Westleton, Suffolk. It’s a lovely warm place, not only heat-wise but atmospherically, not least because of its delightful owner, Ty.
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A long-held belief of mine is that no writing is wasted. I hear of people who have spent time writing something, decided it's rubbish, and then deleted it. But the process of evaluation that someone goes through to arrive at the conclusion that the thing they've just slaved over is rubbish is valuable in itself.
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I will be running another online course in blogging in the evenings of the 17th and 24th November 2023.
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I recently reviewed How Words Get Good for Teach Secondary magazine. It’s a great read, and delves into all the processes that go into producing a book.
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Why do some writers write badly? Plus links to examples of bad writing.
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I wrote this article in 2020. Having read it again, I still agree with the views I expressed then. In fact, I’d go further. When anyone who has achieved the benefits potentially offered by X tells you that you don’t need X, I think a huge dollop of cynicism is in order.
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Oulipo techniques are great for dispelling writer’s block, and generating new works.
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These are the sessions that especially appeal to me
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The London Book Fair is back again this year, in Olympia. As usual there are loads of seminars and even more stands. And if you’re an author, there is even more reason to attend.
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Should we rewrite the classics? My view is: Yes, kind of, but not in the way you might think.
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My corrections policy wasn’t easy to find so I’ve created a dedicated page for it.
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If, like me, you write a lot, or you have a blog or a newsletter that features guest writers, you might like this free spreadsheet.
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