The writer laid bare

Fiddling with fiction can be so very, very tricky, structural editing in particular. Henry James referred to editing as ‘the butchers’ trade’: we dissect, we cut, we rearrange the parts. Ten years as an editor and I still worry that …

I’ve noticed a curious anxiety among some writers who teach writing about coming across as supposedly elitist when they discuss reading with their students. While these writers themselves are often ambitious readers and may complain to their peers about how …

In a 1999 interview with the New York Times, Annie Proulx was quoted as saying:

’The internet is good for bulletin boards on esoteric subjects, reference works, lists and news – timely utilitarian information, efficiently pulled through the wires… Nobody …

We live in the time of Writing Resource Cornucopia. There are myriad aides for writers out there – books, magazines, courses and websites offering writing advice and exercises;  sometimes even recipes for creating the next bestseller.

I have my reservations …

For the past few years I’ve been writing a work of creative nonfiction that brings together memoir and research. It tells the story of a period of time in which I was blindsided by overwhelming postnatal anxiety and felt uncertain …