From the category archives:

Writing

My audience

June 18, 2009

In the publishing world, the focus is often on the size of your audience. The more people buy your work, the more money you make. But there’s an alternative approach.

Beginning again

February 19, 2009

Philip Pullman tells a nice story about how he invented dæmons for use in His Dark Materials. I like Pullman’s implication that he isn’t really the author of this story – that the details were something for him to realise rather than invent.

The real story

February 12, 2009

My wife and I share a conflict of opinion about Doctor Who. She doesn’t like it, because in every episode the monsters nearly kill the humans but they get away in the end. I like it, because in spite of that it tells me a believable story about a lonely man. Which of us is right?

Hello Goodbye

January 5, 2008

You say “goodbye,” and I say “hello”. We oppose each other, and therefore – just like a famous equation – we are equal. We stare into each other’s eyes, we reflect each other, each containing the other’s difference. You say “goodbye,” and I say “hello”: we complete each other’s sentences, figuratively and literally. We are [...]

Diary of a storyteller

July 1, 2007

That the Internet offers potentially every individual with a computer the opportunity to self-publish is at once something wonderful and terrible.  As a grammar pedant, it pains me to see people develop online authority as writers despite not knowing the difference between “it’s” and “its”.  In traditional publishing, points of style, grammar, spelling and the [...]