in the barber’s chair

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I have a cold. My throat feels like cactus and battery acid, so let’s just get on with it, shall we? Read the extract below, decide what you think works and what doesn’t (and how you’d … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a weekly blog about editing fiction. Hello! Most weeks we look at the first page of a novice author’s novel or short story and see if we can think of ways to make it … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for fiction writers, mostly about making your stories better, sometimes about the hard process of making them at all. A new one appears every Thursday. Often, I’ll look at a novice author’s … Read more

Afternoon! Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I feel a bit funny this week. Nervous about my writing, nervous about other things. I think, in these situations, it’s best to acknowledge your feelings without giving them too much credit. Just be like, yup, I … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Hope you’re well, dear friends. If this is your first time, this is a blog about writing and editing fiction. Most weeks we look at an author’s first page and find ways of making it better. If you’d … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Every Thursday we look at the first page of a novice author’s novel or short story and think of ways to make it better. If you’d like to submit your work for consideration, please read the … Read more

Good afternoon and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts, making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I hope you’re all well. Sorry for the late posting of this and last week’s installment, and the missing episode the week before. We’ve had some sadness in the family and it’s been a difficult time. … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I’m sorry I missed last week’s post, and that this week’s is late. It’s been a difficult time for a number of reasons, and we’ve had some sadness. Life is often like that, I guess. So … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a weekly blog about writing and editing your work to make it better. Most weeks we take a novice author’s first page and look at ways of making it better. I’d love your first … Read more

Hello dear friends and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Each week we take a novice author’s first page and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to contribute the first page of your novel or short story, please read our … Read more

Ungh and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. If you’d like to submit your work, please read our submission guidelines. Please buy my novel, The Honours. It’s not shit (here’s the Guardian review) and you will be contributing to the possibility that I will … Read more

Bonjour and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. You know what? I’ve been finding writing really stressful and difficult over the last few weeks. I think, weirdly, it comes from having people say nice things about The Honours. When I wrote it, I really … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Each week we look at a novice writer’s first page and try to think up ways to make it better. If you’d like to submit your first page of your novel or story, please read my submission guidelines. … Read more

Oof – good day, and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. If you’d like to submit your own work to this blog, please read the Submission Guidelines. If you’d like to buy my debut novel, The Honours, to show your support, you can do … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts, making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog about writing, reading and editing, where we look at ways of making stories better. Most weeks I take a novice author’s first page and look at what works and what could be improved. … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for writers, readers and editors, about ways we can take fiction and make it better. The blog appears every Thursday, and most weeks we look at the first page from a novice … Read more

Bonjour and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for writers, readers and editors, where we look at writers’ first pages and discuss ways of making them better. If you have a novel or short story you’ve taken as far as … Read more

Merry Thursdaymas and welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Most Thursdays we take an author’s first page and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to submit yours for similar scrutiny, please read our Submission Guidelines. The release of my … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for writers, readers, editors, and people interested in the craft of storytelling. The more analytically-minded amongst you will have perceived by many tokens that Death Of 1000 Cuts did not appear in … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a weekly blog about writing, editing and stories. Most weeks we take a first page submitted by a novice author, and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to read previous … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week we’re taking a look at a novice author’s first page, to see if we can think of ways of making it better. If you’d like to submit your first page for consideration, please read our Submission … Read more

Happy New Year, and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Do you write? Do you want to write? Do you read? Do you want to read and write better? And by ‘better’ I mean ‘with the angry intensity of a jilted bride hurling wedding … Read more

Hello, joyful siblings and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I hope you are brimming with festive cheer and delirious with the weird frothing upswell of seasonal feeling and repressed childhood complexes endemic to this bizarre carnival of colliding cultural nonsenses. This is a … Read more