creative writing

Welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Friends – this is an urgent appeal. Hit up your writing websites, post on your blogs, FB message your writing buddies, tweet out to the masses. I need more first pages to critique. Without them, the surly … Read more

Welcome to the first of the new Monday editions of Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. In case you didn’t hear the announcement, this month, we’re going to try a little experiment. Death Of 1000 Cuts is going to go twice-weekly. Thursdays will be kept exclusively … Read more

Hello and welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week, it’s Una’s turn in the Barber’s Chair. Every Thursday I take an aspiring author’s killer first page – their shop window, polished up to the highest sparkle they can manage – and dismantle … Read more

The internet is in love with twee lists of writing advice from authors – Geoff Quillpusher’s 8 Rules Of Writing, Dipstick McFamouspants’ 10 Laws Of Great Novels, etc. They’re never very enlightening, often strip-mined from larger works and taken out of context, but being short and coming from great novelists they take on a gnomic … Read more

Welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. We’re here every Thursday, trying to solve prose definitively, so humankind can move onto more productive things, like space travel and Pang. I really want your first pages! If you’re working on a novel and you have … Read more

Welcome to another edition of Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week, it’s Frederick’s turn In The Barber’s Chair. As always, read the extract, then my cuts beneath. You might find you disagree with what I had to say! If so, please do add your … Read more

Last Sunday, CNN published an opinion piece about Chuck Ross, ‘the man who turned rejection into a career’. Back in the 70s, a young Ross, frustrated that his mystery novel had failed to find a publisher, retyped National Book Award-winning novel Steps by Jerzy Kosinski, then submitted it to 14 publishers and 13 agents, taking … Read more

Now then writing fans. Welcome to another edition of Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Some thoughts on the art of dialogue attribution this week. If you’re working on a novel and would like me to cast my beady eye over your first page, in public … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. You know the drill. Read the extract, then my comments below. Thanks very much to Steph for supplying the first page this week. Let’s snip. The Key To The Abbey (by Steph) My eyelids were so god damn … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Hey – if you’re working on a novel or short story and you think it’s ready to send out into the big bad world, why not send me your first page, with the title, via the ‘Contact Me’ … Read more

Salut mes amis, et welcome to another edition of Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Before we go any further, have you read my award-winning book about aspiring writers, the publishing industry, and artistic failure, We Can’t All Be Astronauts? If not, order it now. Make … Read more

Welcome to Death of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Does that sound like a tagline yet? This week we put another nascent author’s first page in the Barber’s Chair and go at it with the straight razor. As always, read the extract below, work out what you … Read more

Welcome back to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week, it’s time for another In The Barber’s Chair, where we take an author’s first page and scissor it unto death. I could sure use some more first pages to look at! Please send me the … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Last week we talked about plot units, which is to say, I ranted like a toothless cough mixture-swigging old man swearing at pigeons in a train station. Basically I went out to bat for plot, and its imagined … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week, the forbidden art of plotting. We usually think of plot as the ‘what happens’ of the book. And most of us concede that there are some intuitive rules – we understand, for example, that it wouldn’t … Read more

About an hour ago, I finished. As those of you who follow me on Twitter are probably only-too-aware, I’ve spent the last two years working on a novel. Given that I’d promised myself that I would never attempt a novel again, this came as a bit of a shock to me. My previous attempts had … Read more

You sat by the door spooked like I was Wes Craven You need to do more deleting and less saving – ‘Hungry’, Common It’s time for another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week we’re putting another author’s first page In The Barber’s Chair: Afterwards, … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week we’ve got another In The Barber’s Chair, where we take the first page of someone’s novel or short story and pep it up a tad. If you fancy a turn in the barber’s chair, send me … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Today it’s time for another installment of In The Barber’s Chair, where we look at someone’s first page then go at it with the scissors. A while back I asked you to send me the first page of … Read more

Thursday is fiction day – my posts are for those of us working on the noble art of lying to strangers for money. Death Of 1000 Cuts is my chance to expound honestly about ways to make us all awesome writers – one cut at a time. I’m a published author, I teach creative writing … Read more

Stop Handling Causality Badly, Causing Me To Hurl Your Novel At The Wall He sat in a large stone room, baked by enormous firepits that cast a garish light upon the revelers, causing beads of sweat to form on their skin as they danced, and drank, and yelled, and sang, and clapped. – The Way … Read more

On Tuesday night, coming home from my gig in Hackney, I had an idea. Well, ‘idea’ is too grandiose – more accurately, I felt irritated about something. On Wednesday morning, I splurged the idea in a poem. By the afternoon, I was getting feedback online. I tried the poem out in my set in Cambridge … Read more

This week, I’m starting a semi-regular feature called ‘In The Barber’s Chair’, where we look at someone’s first page then go at it with the scissors. Last time, I asked you to send me the first page of your novel or short story. Reader ‘Peter’ kindly obliged. The idea is to show good compositional principles … Read more

I’ve been working as a manuscript assessor for nearly a decade. Jesus. It involves reading aspiring authors’ novels and explaining why I think they haven’t been published yet. I teach creative writing for the Open University. I did the MA in Prose Fiction at UEA. I presented the C4 series How To Get A Book … Read more