Category Archives: Writing & Publishing

“There’s really no shortcuts to this. As smart and talented as you are, you’re still going to have to spend thousands of hours alone in a room mercilessly criticising all your own perceptions.” Nic Pizzolatto, author of Galveston, writer and showrunner for True Detective Mercilessly. Criticising. ALL. Your. Own. Perceptions. The unwillingness to do justContinue reading “Why most writers suck and always will”

FAILURE First you jump off the cliff then you scream ARRRGGGGHHHHHH FUUUUUUUCK I AM GOING TO DIE. Then you desperately improvise something like wings and take flight. That’s how it’s going to feel, every time. Learn to love it. MESS When I was really small a teacher at school made us dip our feet inContinue reading “Five fears that cripple creativity”

Never, ever define yourself as a “content creator”. Be an artist. Be a writer. Be a musician. Be whatever. Heck, be a bum if you have to be. But never under any circumstances devalue what you create as “content”. Here’s why. Spartz calls himself an aggregator, but he is more like a day trader, investingContinue reading “YOU ARE NOT A CONTENT CREATOR. YOU DO NOT CREATE CONTENT.”

Man. This was a pretty active blogging year for me. In fact it’s been an incredibly productive writing year in every way, but many of the fruits of that won’t be seen until 2015. In preparation for that I decided to take my home blog more seriously this year, partly out of curiosity to seeContinue reading “What Damo wrote in 2014”

Earlier in 2014 I declared that “transrealism” was the first major literary movement of the 21st century in my regular column for The Guardian. The piece got quite a response, from defensive sci-fi fans bellowing IT’S ALL SCIENCE FICTION, to interested literary readers recognising transrealism as something they had enjoyed for a long time without puttingContinue reading “Let The Strangeness In : Monica Byrne and Rudy Rucker on the transreal revolution”

If you haven’t encountered it already #VATMOSS refers to a bloody awful new law passed by the European Union on the taxation via VAT of digital goods – which includes things like ebooks and online courses. The aim of the law is to stop Amazon and other big digital retailers from running all their VATContinue reading “The shitty #vatmoss laws mirror our shitty piracy laws”

DAMO: So tell me about Sync-Up!* B&N: Well, if a B&N customer buys a paperback book from us, they can now buy the ebook as well for $4.99! DAMO: But…isn’t that about what ebooks cost anyway? B&N: Actually the average ebook price is £3.99. DAMO: Er…so why not just buy the ebook the usual way? B&N:Continue reading “I interview B&N about their new Sync-Up initiative”

Nicola Griffith has an excellent and in depth post up about the balancing act between developing depth of craft as a writer, and branding the art that comes of craft. Branded. It’s a brutal word for a brutal practice: a label burnt into the hide without permission. On a cow a brand marks an animalContinue reading “Branding for writers – just don’t”

I just read a good humoured but frustrating interview with Russell Brand by Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times. Every time Kellaway quotes anything Brand says, she follows up by calling it nonsense and saying she is baffled. This is a fairly common strategy in response to Brand, whose ideas draw a lot on spiritualContinue reading “Are these words by Russell Brand baffling nonsense?”