… and how to put them right! Advice and opportunities for new, aspiring and upcoming journalists and writers of non-fiction
The Easter pause gave me cause for reflection, and I slipped into daydreaming about my career path – where I’d been, where I was, where I was going. But mostly it was about where I’d started. I’d started with a story for a free London magazine for office workers in the mid-nineties. At the time, …
Obviously, as a tutor, part of my job is to correct spelling – and that’s okay. At first, I may point out that a student needs to work on his or her spelling, and if things don’t improve, I may issue a little reminder. There’s really not that much to say about it, I don’t …
Writing Magazine is a bloody good read these days, and with the 2-in-1 merge with Writers’ News, editor Jonathan Telfer has done a terrific job in freshening up the formula. There are lots of new writers with new ideas and I really like it. I advise all my students to read it, as well as …
Meet Rustic farmer Ben, presently ubiquitous on London’s transport system, and probably far beyond. He’s not rustic farmer Ben, which would be fine, or Rustic Farmer Ben, which would also be fine, if a little self-aggrandising, but Rustic farmer Ben, which is plain wrong and already predisposes me to want to slap him across the …
They’re boring, aren’t they, the terms and conditions to writing competitions. Life’s too short to read them, really. It’s time wasted that could be directed towards writing. They’re written in legalese, and that’s impenetrable, isn’t it. Bi-ig yawn. And they can’t be that bad, anyway. You’re not going to be asked to sign away a …
It is the anniversary of this blog. On 28th February 2010 I made this deposit on the blogosphere — and I refused to clean it up. Gratitude eternal to first-writer-to-comment Lorraine Mace for posting what she posted and not, say, ‘Sigh. Not another writing blog.’ So, ‘anniversary’. ‘The date on which something occurred in a …
I’m a reasonable man. Pay taxes. Smile at checkout lady. Drop coins in charity boxes. Hold door open for elderly people. Buy my rounds. Check, check, check, check, and check. So why, when I’m presented with the following, do I get the fleeting urge to jab out my eyeballs and stir fry them over a …
If you enter into a business transaction with a buyer for words you have written you should see that transaction through to the end. The end is receipt of payment from the buyer. If you choose to donate a piece of work – for the exposure, because you believe in the cause the publisher represents, …
I’m guilty of this. I’ll know it’s time for another mistake-writers-make, but I’ll dither about which one to cover. There are dozens in my ideas file, so you’d think it would be easy. But no, that one’s not quite right yet, that one’s a bit advanced, I’m saving that one for the 100th… there’s always …
What follows may come across as uncharitable towards other writers. My defence is that you’ve got to protect your own interests in this game, and while I wholeheartedly endorse scratching other writers’ backs and sharing your knowledge, as I like to think I do here, a little part of you should remain unashamedly selfish. There …
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