Ten Minute Post
For the last two and a half months I’ve been working for/with a company that runs conferences. I only do three days a week so I still have four days to work on my writing and other aspects of my … Continue reading Ten Minute Post
For the last two and a half months I’ve been working for/with a company that runs conferences. I only do three days a week so I still have four days to work on my writing and other aspects of my … Continue reading Ten Minute Post
Last Tuesday was the last in my Café Stories series of workshops* so we looked back on everything we’d covered, pulled it all together with a look at the narrative arc, did a bit of editing, and wrote one last … Continue reading Story-A-Week #10: Narrative Arc
I’m a day late with this post for a stew of reasons, the culmination of which being I couldn’t get any purchase on this week’s story until I woke on Monday morning and realised what it was about. Then had … Continue reading Story-A-Week #7: On a Dig
In last Tuesday’s Café Stories workshop instead of starting with character I got participants to start with an object. I asked them to choose an object in the cafe and describe it. But first, I told them, or reminded them … Continue reading Story-A-Week #6: Twenty-Eight Years Gone
Wandering the interweb looking for a new guru I came across an article by Benjamin Hardy on Medium: 30 Behaviours That Will Make You Unstoppable in 2019. I’m not sure what it is to be unstoppable, or if it’s at … Continue reading On Becoming Unstoppable
I’ve heard tell from multiple people – some who knew him, some who teach him – that Frank O’Hara took his typewriter everywhere, and would prop it up on any available surface, in whichever situation, to write a perfect poem. … Continue reading On Not Being Frank
A couple of weeks ago I overheard a woman telling another woman everything she didn’t like about the menu they were looking at in the window of a café. Some days later I read a few stories in Lydia Davis’s … Continue reading Story-A-Week #3 What She Doesn’t Like
Still on Jeff Goins’s Writers’ Road Map, the next step, the seventh, in his twelve step plan is to get 100 subscribers. Why? He sold, he says, fifteen thousand copies of a recent book ‘thanks to email.’ And goes on: … Continue reading Off The Map: A Writer’s Stumble
Just as last year was beginning to close its eyes for the last time, in exploratory artistic project mode, I decided to (attempt) to follow: Thus, I have clarified my world view, and picked my platform personality, (steps one and … Continue reading Curious-Authentic: a Manifesto
Back in the 90s the writers of Dumfries and Galloway had regular gatherings in the form of the Writers’ Free For All. This was a place writers could discuss their current projects, share their work, and generally give and receive … Continue reading Literature Ambassador: Writers’ Free For All