All the posts I mentioned at York Festival of Writing

I'm home from the York Festival of Writing and the dust is settling. As ever, it was a wonderful weekend put together by Jericho Writers, full of writers of fiction and non-fiction at every stage, from beginners to multi-best-sellers and...

Ducks, dreams and cross-channel ferries: the York Festival of Writing

I'm feeling like Piglet after he escaped from Kanga's house: not yet my own, nice, comfortable colour again, and not at all sure what's just happened. Since rolling all the way home in the dust wasn't an option on a train from York which...

Bewitched, boggled and... now what?

As a teacher, there are few rewards greater than getting back after a workshop and finding an email from a student, saying that they started writing/re-writing/planning on the train home. And certainly the varied reactions to the York Fe...

Books for Writers: a partial view and a partial list

Most books on creative writing have a nugget or two, at least, which will be just what you need to hear. With a few, their value may be that you find yourself disagreeing, and in asking yourself why, you come to some of your own conclusi...

Dreaming the first Queen Elizabeth

When I first started dreaming Elizabeth Woodville, fifteen years ago, it seemed to me that the centre of her story was her marriage to Edward IV. But what was that marriage made of? And since writing a novel is "like remembering ...

Not a fortress, just a zoo

To some aspiring writers the book trade looks like a well-defended fortress, garrisoned by what appears (according to your temperament) to be a bunch of celebrity-hunting, money-grubbing clones, or thick-skinned, parasitical philistines....