… and how to put them right! Advice and opportunities for new, aspiring and upcoming journalists and writers of non-fiction
We all need a holiday. I am lazy, so probably need one less than you need one, but after a year when I’ve revised one of my books, ran a major award, was heavily involved in two others, kept up a monthly column, wrote regular features for a clutch of websites, dealt with my terrific Writers …
“I can’t think of any ideas!” “What am I going to write about?” “I’ve been racking my brains all day!” Ideas germinate and develop in brains, so you’re not looking in the wrong place when you’re scratching around in your attic trying to find them. But if the search is proving fruitless and you’re getting …
I’ve been experiencing a flurry of talented students emailing me with news of writing successes. “What fee have you been offered?” is my knee-jerk response to each communication, though I usually manage to check myself and squeeze in a “Congratulations!” before the filthy dosh question invariably spills over. (As an aside, I once went through …
Nick Higham’s Meet the Author is always insightful – Higham is always clearly very interested in the people he interviews – and this one with king of ghostwriting Andrew Crofts is particularly pertinent to non-fiction writers. Andrew Crofts is terrific. I couldn’t tell you whether I’ve read one of his books, and that’s one of …
It’s not always appropriate to call up an editor. Email is usually fine. But sometimes – say if you have an idea which is topical and brilliant and you need to move quickly – it is perfectly acceptable, even preferable, to do so. Occasionally a student will need cajoling into making the call. “Editors don’t …
“Is it definitely going in?” This is the question a student of mine asked me towards the end of last year, after having received an acceptance of a speculatively submitted article. She was thrilled. As she had every right to be. She was soon to become a published writer. Or was she? Quite a lot …
You don’t need me to tell you it’s 100 years on from 1914. The War started in August of that year. I imagine there are some commemorative special edition publications due out in August, or sooner. I’ll let you know if I hear of any – though I expect they will be fully commissioned. I …
Quite a lot of new writers tell me upfront that their ambition is to write and publish a book, and that’s cool. But a sizeable number make it also clear that a/ it’s the be-all-and-end-all of their ambition or b/ that they want it to be a fait accomplit by the end of the year. …
Okay. We’ve had a few silly posts about numbers before – see here and here to save you the trouble of searching for them – and another is long overdue. 77 years. That’s how long we “waited” for a British man to win Wimbledon. So said The Times, so said the BBC, and so said …
A lot of new writers break into print via the letters page in a magazine or newspaper. At least, that’s the case with my students, as the course for which I’m a correspondence tutor encourages writers to submit letters and other fillers to magazines quite early on, and it surprises some students how quickly this …
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