This course will look at examples of constraints created by some of the Oulipo’s main proponents, including the Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets, the Metro Poem, and others.
Read MoreWriting the Oulipo: A Taster

This course will look at examples of constraints created by some of the Oulipo’s main proponents, including the Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets, the Metro Poem, and others.
Read More<Updated> You will need a novel and penguin and, if possible, a printed difficulty.
Read MoreDistrust, by Terry Freedman
A new report from the Reuters Institute is disturbing. As usual, journalists are being imprisoned or even killed for simply doing their jobs.
Read MoreYou hear a lot of criticism of Microsoft, but one of the best things it did was standardise the way programs look in terms of menus and, to almost the same extent, icons. That's good to know because it means that there are rules governing where commands and features are located.
Read MoreParadoxically, a spell-checker is only useful if you can spell! It's a common misunderstanding that if you can't spell, a spell-checker will sort things out for you. It won't.
Read MoreTemplates can save you hours, and the only limit there is to the number you have is the size of your hard disk (or your cloud storage). Although Word actually comes with many templates, you'll almost certainly want to create your own.
Read MoreThe recent report by Smart Energy GB into how environmentally friendly British TV shows are is quite interesting, though not in a good way.
Read MoreNOT the camera I used! Photo by Terry Freedman
A few years ago I thought I would test the capabilities of a pocket camcorder I’d been asked to review
Read MoreRules, by Terry Freedman. I thought this sign is a reasonable analogy to the likely rules in a post-lockdown world.
Do you read people’s writings about covid? I don’t, if I can help it.
Read MoreDo not adjust your set, by Terry Freedman
I’m hoping to get things back to normal soon, that is, publishing articles several times a week.
Read MoreDr Tel and School Band, by Terry Freedman
Dr Tel and School Band.
Read MoreOn this day, by Terry Freedman
Imagine being so successful as a writer that the main problems you have are managing the workload and managing the finances.
Read MoreTerry, thinking
Since when has “discreet” meant “small”?
Read MoreReading a set of instructions that have emerged from the printer, and having spotted a missing space and an ‘s’ instead of an ‘a’….
Read MoreExperiments in style, by Terry Freedman
I think it’s quite interesting to see how a change in style can dramatically alter the feel of a piece.
Read MoreConversing, by Terry Freedman
A girl I taught was highly intelligent, very helpful and had a great sense of humour. Unfortunately, though, whenever she disagreed with somebody she immediately flew into a temper, insulted them and told them to go forth and multiply — though rather more crudely than that. I imagine she has a huge following on Twitter these days, as that seems to be the main way of “communicating” for a lot of people.
Read MoreI also started to ponder: why the obsession throughout the book with belladonna?
Read MorePrivate, keep out, by Terry Freedman
I think if I were a fiction writer I could write a decent short story using this picture as a prompt.
Read MoreThis is a very different book from Short-Form Creative Writing: A Writer's Guide And Anthology, both in content and style, but covers similar ground.
Read MoreMy Writing Filing Cabinets, by Terry Freedman
There are some interesting blogs listed here, including several I hadn’t heard of.
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