I’ve been taking a short and very bland story and rewriting it in different styles. This time I’ve chosen cockney (defined as someone born within the sound of Bow bells, in other words a true working class Londoner) rhyming slang.
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I’m not known for writing poetry, much less in the style of the 16th century. But I’ve had a go, and I like to think that my poetry is a bit better than my art.
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As you may know, I’ve been exchanging letters online with Rebecca Holden. We agree that we’d write three letters each. We’ve enjoyed the experiment so much that we’ve decided to continue with it after the Christmas break.
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Here in England it’s cold, though not quite as cold as it has been, and walking and cycling are treacherous.
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I’ve written a piece called My Life in Cafés. I wanted it to be bittersweet, a mixture of pathos and humour.
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Have you read any works written in the form of letters? Or have you written anything like that yourself? I've been interested in that genre for a long time, so I was delighted when, a few weeks ago, a course came up at the City Lit institute looking at epistolary fiction.
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I write about literature, life in general, odd things that have happened, the odd bit of fiction, experimental writing.
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It’s a very rare occasion that finds me attending a large-scale meeting. In my experience, quite often nothing gets done as a result of it.
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Every so often I read a blog post or a ‘commentary’ on Twitter by some self-appointed guru or other saying that blogging is passé.
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What’s the point of doing exercise or yoga? The answer is, usually, to keep yourself generally fit and toned up. Unless you’re preparing for an athletic event, there is no specific or direct point to any of it.
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It’s the 23rd June 2022, and this year’s National Writing Day. Here are links to reviews of useful books about writing, resources for use in schools (some are good for adults too!) and top tips (ditto).
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Here’s a creative nonfiction piece I wrote recently.
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This course is running tomorrow (18 June 2022), and I’ve added a few more exercises for people to try out.
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If, like me, you enjoy writing for the sake of it, and maybe even enjoy a secret life as a short story or novel writer, this might interest you.
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It’s true though! Having had a wonderful morning listening to people reading out, and dissecting, one of their favourite poems, I thought I’d have a go myself.
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Far from being late all the time, I am ridiculously early. We all know that there’s nothing worse than a convert (just try smoking within a mile of where I’m sitting if you’re not convinced of the veracity of this statement).
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It seems to me that for satire to work it has to walk a fine line between being so close to reality that it’s not funny, and so far-fetched that it’s not credible.
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An especially useful idea is the ladder of abstraction, which is equivalent, in cinematic terminology, to the level of detail in a scene, from close-up to long shot.
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I would love to be able to write blog posts or conduct my social media affairs in such a way that I became an overnight sensation, as verified by an astronomical rise in my bank balance. But…
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