Recently I read the novel Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I didn’t like much any of its main characters – an angry, depressive rocker; a housewife who spends her life not doing what she wants; her saintly husband who nevertheless sells …
Events
A Guest Post by Rochelle Siemienowicz: On writing about people I know and love
‘Remember that novel I wrote, inspired by our open marriage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well it’s finally being published. As a memoir.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve turned you into a beautiful character.’
‘Just what I always wanted. To be a character.’
…
Why do I write (and not, let’s say, professionally cook)?
‘Why do I write?’ is a question I have asked myself not once, particularly when I receive publishers’ rejections, or hear about some friend’s obscene corporate salary, or when I am paralyzed by fear before starting a new project, or …
Procrastination: Declaration of War
Last month I promised that the next post would contain strategies to defeat the writers’ greatest enemy – Procrastination. So let’s get armed to win this battle.
Firstly, please don’t beat yourself up if, like me, you are a fidgety …
A guest post by Diana Jenkins: A Corner of One’s Own
It’s been over four years since I last had a dedicated writing space. Recently I’ve been wondering about the effect of this absence on both my creativity and productivity. I have a good track record with desks: I love them …
How to tame a book (and its author).
The writer Annie Dillard likens the process of writing to taming. She writes in her now-seminal book, ’On Writing’:
A work in progress quickly becomes feral… it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and
A Guest Post from Natasha Lester: How I Quit my Job to Become a Writer
I was too scared to become a writer twenty years ago when I went to uni. I thought being a writer wasn’t really a job. There were no writing degrees then like there are now. The closest thing was journalism …
Excursions into the (writing) wilderness
Two years into struggling to write some coherent chapters for my memoir The Dangerous Bride, and feeling overwhelmed by all the thinking and research, I took several months break to reconsider whether I could actually do this. Then, with …
A Guest Post from Peter Bishop, the former creative director of Varuna: On finding structure
Coming to the end of a writing project, I always feel –surprisingly– fretful and anxious rather than celebratory. When I actually feel I’ve finished I can feel quite panicky, and quite often I’ll start something else –sometimes within the hour.…
Writers’ Social Etiquette
Even a writer is not an island. Most of us mix with other writers, either out of want or necessity. However, unsupervised encounters between writers may result in unintended injuries – external and internal. So here are some suggested rules