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Find a book club
Find a Book Club, a club that does what it says on the tin, asked me to recommend 10 books for book clubs (including two of my own).
Category Archives: Creativity
Good news to begin 2020; Splosh! (to reduce plastic) and beautiful new year lights
So often good news doesn’t make the news, so here are a few good pieces of news to start 2020 with, from Future Crunch (where you’ll find 99 other good pieces of news, divided into categories). One of the founders of Future … Continue reading
100 Novels That Shaped Our World; free travel with a book and One Green Thing
Four women and two men have just chosen 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. The choosers are: Stig Abell, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Syima Aslam, founder of the Bradford Literature Festival, authors Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal and Alexander … Continue reading
Janet Clare on getting published later on, and Vice’s Broadly.
I’ve been meaning to read this article by an older writer about starting to write later in life and how, after a very long writing journey and the discovery that every writer makes at some point, that all writing is … Continue reading
The Benefits of Reading the Old-Fashioned Way; and Splosh!
I found this article about the benefits of reading to children at a young age on Mental Floss a little while ago: April, I think. Anyway I’ve just refound it and it delights me to know that a 2018 study has … Continue reading
Anne Lamott’s Twelve True Things; and Human Libraries
Anne Lamott, whose Bird by Bird helped me immeasurably when I was writing my first novel, Speaking of Love (I was stuck, didn’t know what to write or how, but Lamott’s Bird by Bird dispelled my despair, took my hand and … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Love, Mental Health, Psychology, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Women, Writers, Writing
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A hug a day keeps the doctor away, and Brooklyn’s new Center for Fiction
I read here, the other day, in an article by a South Korean Zen Buddhist monk called Haemin Sunim, that hugs have health benefits. Here he is and here’s part of what he wrote: Anthony Grant, a professor of psychology at … Continue reading
Make Good Art, a resolution for the new year
In January 2016, I quoted Neil Gaiman’s wonderful advice which is, essentially, whatever you’re doing, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Artists, Creativity, Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing
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How Doctors use Poetry, and a blue-green stone
Recently I spent a night in hospital and the thing that struck me about the nursing staff, as I watched them admit new patients to the ward, was their infinite kindness; their ability to explain exactly the same things to … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Creativity, Jewellery, Mental Health, Poetry, Psychology, Science
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Creativity and Patience; and walks with Mental Health Mates
Being an artist means … ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms … summer [will] come. But it comes only to the patient … patience is everything! from Rainer Maria Rilke’s advice to Franz Xaver … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Mental Health, Poetry, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Walking, Writers, Writing
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Literary Villains, Literary Summer Reads and an idyllic treehouse in East Sussex (where you can stay)
Forty of the Best Villains in Literature appear in this article at The Literary Hub (where you’ll find many literary goodies). The villains include the obvious: Mr Hyde, Mrs Danvers, Uriah Heep, Mr Rochester, Dr Frankenstein, Hannibal Lecter and many more. But … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Fiction, Places, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writing
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Women writers, and children; and Retro Peepers
I’ve never had children and the reason (apart from meeting the man whose children I’d love to have had well beyond my fertile years) is that I was always afraid that looking after children would eat so far into my … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Design, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Women, Writers, Writing
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Writers on writing, and an exquisitely beautiful tea
When our writers’ group met this week one of our number described how the rise of the ‘plotting and typing’ approach to writing was driving her demented. How all the work is done before you’ve typed a word and then you … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Fiction, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writers, Writing
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RMS Titanic: on this day 106 years ago … & Samira Addo, Portrait Artist of the Year
It’s 106 years ago today that the ‘unsinkable’ passenger liner, RMS Titanic, hit an iceberg and sank in just two hours and forty minutes. For years the tragedy was a matter of private internal horror: people didn’t talk about trauma then and … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Titanic
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Social media and the writer; Modigliani and Akhmatova
It’s wise for writers to have a social media presence these days. Publishers don’t exactly insist on it, but they like writers who have significant followings. (Followers equal interest in the writer and so potential sales, obviously.) But how does … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Love, Social media, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writing
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Teaching kids to fall in love with science (a different kind of love for Valentine’s day); and things to do with rubbish
I was noodling around on the internet wondering what I was going to post about this month when I discovered Arvind Gupta. He won the Padma Shree on 26 January (India’s Republic Day) for his work in literature and in education, … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Design, News, Science, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Uncategorized
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A new writing resolution; and a new (to me) altruistic way of advertising
I’ve made a new writing resolution: I will not allow the confusing complexity, the sheer size and the constantly changing, shifting nature of a novel’s first draft to eclipse the excitement I felt when its guiding idea first electrified me. I. Will. Not. … Continue reading
Chaos & Creativity; and Beautiful Bookshops
I dislike hate chaos. Very much. Who doesn’t? But it’s an essential state if you want to write fiction. Messiness of the mind is the sine qua non for writers. But, when a piece is finished, it looks so orderly that … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Bookshops, Creativity, Fiction, Psychology, Writers, Writing
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Rejection is a rite of passage for writers, and the Raw Chocolate Company
One of the things that a writer takes a while truly to believe (it’s taken me a while) is that rejection is part of the process: it’s necessary, inevitable and makes our work better. It’s a rite of passage.But the … Continue reading
A very small trawl through a few less well-known news sites
This month – perhaps because it’s the silly season when news tends towards the frivolous because the House of Commons is in recess and us ordinary folk go on holiday – I thought I’d have a little light trawl through a few … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, News, News Outlets, Science
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