Well packed

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

Oh, you want to hear about fairy-tale retellings? You want to know the secret of why I write them? Is that it? Fine. Come a little closer. These aren’t some enchanted beans I’m selling, this is the re

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

The imagined gardens within the pages of our favourite books can seem as real as the flower beds outside our door. Here, author Sandra Lawrence explores three evocative literary landscapes

This month’s story, ‘A School Story’ by M.R. James, is a ghost story within a frame narrative. It offers a number of interesting features, and, as always, you will get the most out of this masterclass

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.