Next week I’ll be teaching a course called The 60 Minute Writer. The title always makes me smile because it sounds like I teach people how to be a writer in an hour. It reminds me of a joke by, I think, Frank Carson…
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Poetry writing is not my thing. At least, I don't think it is. The reason for my uncertainty is that although I attended a one-day poetry class some years ago, the feedback provided by the tutor was not very detailed, to say the least.
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This is a piece I wrote during a flash fiction course several years ago. It’s exactly 90 words long.
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This article contains a hidden message stating the title of my desired course. The message is hidden in plain sight using a well-established technique in the text, which has then been further processed using a standard Oulipo approach.
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Every so often I read some pundit, or usually a journalist pretending to be a pundit, suggesting that blogs are dead. What can I say? They’re not.
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“Good afternoon”, said the doctor. “What seems to be the trouble?”
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As indicated by the title, the first thing to know about this anthology is that it comprises both poetry and prose, rather than one or the other. Many of the pieces are quite unusual...
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Transport in London these days is, for the most part, sleek, efficient. The epitome of this newish Utopia is the Elizabeth Line, with its silent, gliding carriages, air-conditioning and wi-fi. The announcements are soothing...
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In this essay I have used three different AI apps to analyse a piece of my writing, and to make suggestions for improvement.
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One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. This one was written in the style of Borges.
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When writing short-form I think it helps to think in terms of the minimum viable wordage, or MVW...
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It is understandable that an ambitious young man, in his late twenties and early thirties, wanting success in all its various guises, and with a belief in the power of the mind, would be attracted to certain kinds of books, tapes and courses. The young man I’m talking about was, of course, me.
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You’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
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Travelling back from my saxophone lesson on Saturday, a very attractive young woman kept looking at me. Did I finally have sax appeal I asked myself.
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Last week, Elaine, a friend of hers (D) and I went to an art gallery. On our return we caught the Overground train at Highbury and Islington, heading towards Stratford….
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This is a transcript of a conversation between Fred Terryman and myself. It’s been lightly edited, with the pauses taken out for ease of reading.
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I think evaluations are very odd devices to be honest. Someone once “marked me down” on her evaluation of a one day course I was running on the grounds that the traffic was terrible.
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One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. In today’s experiment I’d like to tell the story in the style of a review of an art exhibition.
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In London on June 8th I’ll be teaching a course called Creative Writing Using Constraints, an introduction to the world of the Oulipo. This is a round-up of some of the books I’ll be referring to and talking about.
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Holmes and I were in our lodgings in Baker Street. He was drawing out a melancholy tune on his violin, whilst I was reading the latest edition of The Lancet. The silence was unexpectedly broken by the ringing of the bell.
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