Category Archives: Writing Practice

Will the book be replaced…by the block?

An interesting article over at Rhizome speculates on the future of Blockchain as a disruptive technology within publishing. What does the verb “to publish” mean in a society where every thought, movement, and moment is recorded and stored? Let’s say that publishing is the act of making something public and drawing attention to it. AndContinue reading “Will the book be replaced…by the block?”

Writing Practice: why it’s time to stop thinking of writing as a profession

If you go to a good art school (and yes you STEM readers out there, such places do exist) they teach you to think of your art as a practice. And to think of yourself as a practitioner. There’s a purpose to this tradition. Admittedly, it takes most art students – myself included – untilContinue reading “Writing Practice: why it’s time to stop thinking of writing as a profession”

Is the death of the bookshop a sign of progress?

High street bookshops maye soon be a distant memory. Should we take this as a sign of progress, or the regression of society to a pre-literate state? Today the last big bookshop in Leicester, the city where I reside, closed its doors. The out of town Borders went three years ago. Waterstones on Market StreetContinue reading “Is the death of the bookshop a sign of progress?”

Writing and the attention economy

As a writer you are asking for the most valuable commodity your readers have. Time. Each of us gets a finite portion. No sum of money can buy us any more. And the demands on it are ever greater. The novel evolved at a period in history when the constituency of its readers had muchContinue reading “Writing and the attention economy”

Live-writing challenges the writerly ego…which is a very good thing

The rules were simple. Keep to the scheduled study hours, always wash your mug, and under no circumstances touch the coltan. So far Aidan had kept a clean sheet on all counts. Now he was planning to commit the only serious possible infraction. And that did not mean coffee rings on work surfaces. Aidan’s RockContinue reading “Live-writing challenges the writerly ego…which is a very good thing”

Look after your brain. They don’t issue new ones.

Bobby Fischer was arguably the greatest chess player of all time. American chess champion at 14, grandmaster at 15, world champion at 28. A brilliant but brief career cut short by schizophrenia. By the time of his death in 2008 Fischer was a ranting, anti-semetic caricature of insanity. There are a number of possible reasonsContinue reading “Look after your brain. They don’t issue new ones.”

How to bend the masses to your will with words alone

The internet, being composed of 50% text and 50% raw naked ambition, is full of how-tos and guidelines on ways to manipulate the written word to achieve your raw naked ambitions. They are called things like How to Write Compelling Content for the Web or 73 Ways to Manipulate the Weak Willed With the PowerContinue reading “How to bend the masses to your will with words alone”

The Unspecified Reader

[pullquote]I felt that the indispensable relationship I should build in my life was not with a specific person, but with an unspecified number of readers. Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I talk About Running [/pullquote] So a captain is married to her ship, and a novelist is married to her readers. Earlier thisContinue reading “The Unspecified Reader”

The value of reading, and the cost of ignorance

Yesterday I watched the great Bali Rai read a story aloud to twenty-thousand people at the Walker’s stadium at half-time of the Leice ster vs. Scunthorpe match. I’m not sure what the people of Scunthorpe made of it, but the football fans of Leicester loved it, and took away thousands of copies of the storyContinue reading “The value of reading, and the cost of ignorance”