ALCS/Society of Authors short story prize shortlist 2021
Tom-Gallon Trust Prize shortlist
Category: Writing musings
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley
Novel coming soon!
Writing groups – good company, but do they help you write?
It depends on the group, unsurprisingly. A writing group which meets regularly merely to listen, praise and reassure might be good for your ego but won’t do much for your writing. On the other hand, a group of writers overly-focused on one particular type of writing, or purely on avenues to publication might give you …
Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk, and why form matters
This strange, wonderful and ultimately frustrating book from 2018 Man Booker International Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk has got me thinking about the importance of form. First published in 2007 in Polish, and only translated into English last year (and beautifully translated at that, by Jennifer Croft) the book is filled with memorable lines …
The oblique: why the best writing comes from the glimpsed, the half-heard and the barely understood
‘Write what you know’ is one of the most repeated and most tedious pieces of writing advice, though you’ll find plenty of good writers and teachers of writing who recommend the opposite and say ‘write what you don’t know’. I don’t think that’s quite right, either. The very best fiction, and especially the best short …
Visiting Gogol’s ghost
Moscow in October is a city cooling down, readying itself for a long winter. Black winter coats are uniform, summer flower beds are empty, covered with colourful wood shavings to fool the eye with brightness, and the sky is a low lid of grey. The tourists have gone. It’s a good time to have the …