Journal

This piece was originally written for a crowdfunding campaign to support the publication of "Castles in Spain", an English-language translation of "Castillos en el aire", an anthology of ten stories from Spain's Golden Age of fantastic literature pu...

Having done very little with my writing for a number of years, in 2024 I decided to make more of an effort to submit my work to competitions. Fortunately, pretty much everyone now accepts online submissions, so there was no postage to pay, but looki...

Most of the benefits of entering writing competitions are only to be found if you are a winner or, at least, a runner up. So it’s important to make sure you maximise your chances of success. I also talk about this on The Patchword Podcast ...

For poets, as for other writers, there’s a balancing act to writing something that is credible and writing something that will appeal to a wide audience. I also talk about this on The Patchword Podcast on Spotify and on YouTube.   Most of us base ou...

Blair Enns' comment that “writing is the process of sorting through what you think you know” – got me thinking about how important the actual process of writing is and why ChatGPT may not be going to replace you as a writer.While the excitement aroun...

It’s not enough for a writer to know what he intends telling his reader: he needs to be aware of background details and information about characters and location that may never be made public. I also talk about this on The Patchword Podcast&nb...

“Tone of voice” has begun to be a popular phrase in marketing circles, closely linked with brand and business storytelling. But before you go on to look at developing a specific tone of voice for a brand, you need to make sure that writing basics are...

Audiobooks: time-saving, accessible, engaging? awkward, inconvenient, forgettable? Some people love them; some people hate them. However you feel about audiobooks, their use raises questions that can be considered from both a scientific and a philoso...

Most writers realise that they could benefit from an outsider’s opinion of their work, which leads many indie authors to pay someone else to edit their manuscript. But unless both parties clearly understand what's expected, things may not go accordi...

Balancing the written and spoken forms of a poem.Media coverage of this week's US presidential inauguration has reminded me how some recent presidents have chosen to include poetry in their celebrations. It's also reminded me that I first became awar...

Even when you ask other people for help with your work-in-progress, the final decisions remain your own. I also talk about this on The Patchword Podcast on Spotify and on YouTube. An email from a member of a critique group I organise ...

There’s more to writing poetry than following rules and fitting words into a pretty pattern I also talk about this on The Patchword Podcast on Spotify and on YouTube. If you get a group of writers together, it’s pretty much impossible...

Years ago, after talking to the Catalán poet Joan Margarit, I wrote down in my notebook:Form, metre, rhyme etc. are superficial elements of a poem. What gets translated is something more essential.Since then, I’ve given a lot of thought to poetry tra...

The easiest way to correct a text you've written is to leave it long enough to have forgotten it so you can come to it with fresh eyes. But deadlines are always looming, so this is not usually a practical solution. I also talk about this on Th...

In order to be a good speaker, you need to be aware not just of the words you use, but of how to use silence, and the way pauses can affect your audience. Writers, too, need to be conscious of how they construct texts to guide understanding and creat...