Category Archives: Writing Practice

If you want a well paid stable career today you do one of two things. You learn to work with computers. Or you learn to tell stories. On the day I graduated university in 2001, with an allegedly useless degree in Media and Arts, I had precisely zero pounds in the bank. Luckier than today’sContinue reading “Story is the operating system of human consciousness”

The Buddha offers some useful life advice to anyone trying to get anything done. People will complain if you do something wrong. More people will complain if you do something right. Some people will complain if you don’t do anything at all. People just like to complain! Seven people signed up for my email newsletterContinue reading “Ignore the complainers, go ahead and tell your story”

Because you aren’t reading. The bar for entry for writers is so low that it might be better described as a line in the dirt. Got something you can type on and an internet connection? Then you can be a blogger. Or a Kindle indie publisher. Or @JohnDoeFantasyAuthor. But the washout rate for writers isContinue reading “What’s the number ONE reason you aren’t writing?”

I’m not personally tempted to play No Man’s Sky, even while I find the phenomenon of its release interesting. Video games died a death for me at around the same time I found meditation. I had played games quite intensely since I was around 7, but then at age 30 or so, while playing aContinue reading “Do not take the audience for novels for granted”

Can we have an honest moment? Between us readers of sci-fi, fantasy, and possibly other genres of fiction, who are by and large most of the readers of this blog? That’s good, I’m glad you’re open to the idea. Now, I’m just going to come right out and say it. Most genre fiction is notContinue reading “A brief thought on Television Prose”

Ideas are an odd form of property. We protect them under law with copyright, trademarks and patents, but when it comes to the inventions of fiction, it’s very hard to assert meaningful ownership in a court of law. Instead, writers and readers enforce an ad-hoc moral code against authors who are seen to have steppedContinue reading “It’s actually fine to steal from writers you love.”

Is it a secret? Some times a thing is so obvious we can look at it a billion times and never know it. SOMETHING HAS GOT TO CHANGE. You can tell where a writer is in their development by the answer they give to a simple question. What’s your story about. “It’s an epic fantasyContinue reading “Yes. There is a secret to great storytelling.”

Imagine if your local bookshop was modelled on a Cash & Carry. Towering 3 storey riveted steel shelving units, housed in a cavernous warehouse unit on the edge of a nameless industrial park, echoing tinnily with the greatest hits of boy band One Direction. It has all the books, but they’re stacked inside cardboard boxes,Continue reading “Why is the Kindle store so cheap and seedy?”