News & views
What is writing with constraints? In a nutshell, it means writing according to specific and tight rules. The “official” name for this is Oulipo, which is a French acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle.
Read More“One of the unexpected benefits of the Covid-19 pandemic has been clear blue skies.”
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Blogger, by Terry Freedman
Some people say "of course creative writing can be taught", while others say the opposite. I take a slightly more nuanced view.
Read MoreTo the extent that people distrust journalists, is it really surprising?
Read MoreSome research looked at writers’ rituals. Hearing about that made me reflect on my own.
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I love Substack, but…
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I love second-hand bookshops. Whenever I go on holiday, one of the first things I do is go to the nearest Tourism Information outlet and get a list of the local used bookshops.
So, what do I like about them, and what does this have to do with ebooks?
Last week I announced a competition to win a copy of A Town Without Time, the new collection of work by Gay Talese. Here is the link again, this time with an unrestricted link!
Read MoreI was very pleased to be able to give a load of women the benefit of my wisdom and experience on a Jane Austen course a few months ago.
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Me feeling somewhat exercised
Playing the feminist card strikes me as intellectually lazy.
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A writer, by Terry Freedman
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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My creative writing course
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Blogger, by Terry Freedman
There is still a great interest in writing blogs. One of the reasons I know this is that my course on blogging currently has twelve sign-ups. That may not sound a lot, but many courses at the City Lit have far fewer.
Read MoreSo are elevator speeches completely useless? On the contrary, I think you need to develop several of them.
Read MoreYou’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
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A blogger, by Terry Freedman
In my recent blogging course, I abandoned my carefully-prepared lesson, or part pf it, threw caution to the winds, and suggested to the class that we experiment with using AI for writing blog posts. Here’s a partial blog post it came up with, which you will agree is utter rubbish…
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My writing-related filing cabinets, by Terry Freedman
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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Photo by Terry Freedman
This is an updated version of an article I published on this website in 2015. In my experience, it absolutely applies to artists, teachers and other creatives as well as writers or consultants.
Read MoreA long-held belief of mine is that no writing is wasted. I hear of people who have spent time writing something, decided it's rubbish, and then deleted it. But the process of evaluation that someone goes through to arrive at the conclusion that the thing they've just slaved over is rubbish is valuable in itself.
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