All Blog posts
Always more to learn: Thoughts on 'Wonderbook'
I've finished reading Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff Vandermeer. It's a great read, full of useful information and exercises. Mostly, it is a nuts and bolts guide to stories and their various elements, characters, plotting, but the way it presented and the advice it gives about the imagination make it truly unique.
A short play not at all inspired by recent events
I wrote this for More in Common from the Royal Court, which is well worth checking out. It was written fairly quickly so it's not perfect.
Brexit and the story we have been told
Given the clusterfuck that is happening in the UK at the moment, I'm probably going to be doing a few more political posts in the future. Just a heads up as I try work out what the hell is going on through words. I understand it is much, much more complex than I can do justice to, but this is just one take on it
Love, not hate
On Saturday, some wanker walked into a nightclub in Orlando and killed 50 people with a rifle, injuring many others. It was an act of hate against the LGBTQ community and a disgusting act of violence and terror. People were understandably shocked and deeply affected by the news.
A Knock on the door
I wrote this in response to a prompt over at Terribleminds.com. It's a bit rough, but I hope you enjoy
Feeding my writing through a digital shredder
About a year ago, I got frustrated with my writing and decided to mess around with my first drafts and discarded attempts at stories. They had been languishing on my hard drive for years. I wasn't publishing them and they weren't being seen by anyone. To be honest, most of the stories just weren't very good.
May Link Round-up
Another month gone already. It feels like no time at all since I wrote my last link roundup, but here we are again. This month I've mostly been reading The Bone Clocks & Wonderbook, but in between there's been a number of good articles.
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
I've been a fan of David Mitchell since reading Cloud Atlas in my early twenties. Since then, I have enjoyed almost everything he has written, so I was excited to finally get round to The Bone Clocks. I've somehow never tackled it, possibly because at 500 pages it's quite a time investment.
'Show Your Work!' Six weeks in
I mentioned in a previous post how I was inspired to share more of my writing byShow Your Work! by Austin Kleon. This little book has been surprisingly helpful in sharing work, but also producing it. Six weeks into following some of the principles, I thought I would expand on how it has helped me.
Radiohead and the importance of letting ideas gestate
I've been hugely excited to listen to the new Radiohead album A Moon Shaped Pool. It's really good, thankfully. There's lush, layered sounds and a strange type of orchestration, with genuine emotion in a number of the songs.