Variety is the spice of life

We have wandered many months through this land of Building Blocks. It is time for a break. Learning is a weary trek. And writing is not all about learning. Writing is about, well, writing. The doing o

No one can edit for everything all at once. My systematic approach to editing breaks down the revision process into manageable activities. You focus on and improve one aspect of your novel at a time.

Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

We tend to imagine our literary icons in ivory towers – poised, thoughtful, wrapped in something muted and cashmere, tapping away at sleek laptops. Perhaps it’s how you picture yourself when attemptin

There are, of course, many ways to tell stories, and I’m sure most of you will be used to writing and/or reading short stories and novels alike. But let us not forget there is a middle ground – and I’

The lyric essay is a relatively new form of creative non-fiction, and it’s often considered the most challenging to write because it is hard to describe and define. In fact, the key is blurring bounda