Category: Writing
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National Poetry Day | New Poem: Phases
Phases Hard to say how many moons more will rise and fall and grow and die before he wanes for good. Through diminishing slits now his light is reflected: shadows seep quietly, inexorably, across a greying surface where life once teemed. Body-blows and craters; the sun struggles, gravity weakens; there is no more breath, then…
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Advice for Writers: Don’t Read Too Much Advice for Writers
There always seems to be a steady stream of posts from literary magazine sites giving lists of advice for writers. Zadie Smith has a series of 10 points in The Atlantic at the moment, highlights including Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All…
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A Pirate Book That Insists on Copyright?
Interesting story (thanks @KevinThow for the link) about Julia Schramm – a leading member of the German Pirate Party, who signed a very lucrative book deal for her book ‘Click Me‘ – more than $130k – and then proceeded to go after the very pirates who she lauds in her work. One of the key…
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Colliding Nothing into Nothing: Where Good Ideas Won’t Come From
I’m a big fan of Steven Johnson, and have a lot to thank him for. His book Emergence was massive for me in terms of my thinking in so many areas, and The Ghost Map is still one of my favourite books – particularly because I know the streets that it talks about so well.…
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Year 11 Lessons | A Teacher’s Tale
Crimes and misdemeanors. There were lots of things that went wrong that day, some serious, some not so. But two needed dealing with. Two were serious enough to warrant a call back after school and a detention. You have to sort things quickly. No point punishing the crime ages after the event. Children like that…