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A little announcement to let you know that I will be with the Wilmslow Writers on Tuesday 27 April, between 10 am and 12 pm at St John's Lindow on Knutsford Road. Come and meet us if you're around! It's only a stone's throw from Manchester city centre! Read more →
On Sunday evening I had a look at the calendar and realised that The Creative Identity is three months old this week. Three months, twenty-four posts, twelve writing exercises, fifty-six comments, one forthcoming workshop, one short story competition underway, three eCourses in development, daily page views between eighty and one hundred and fifty-five, forty-two RSS subscribers and two hundred and twenty-two Twitter followers who, in a rather bizarre turn of events, include Was Anderson and Maria Shriver. What can I say? I like a good rack of numbers. As a thank you for sticking around, or as a welcome if it's the first time you visit, it so just happens that I have one signed copy of the marvellous Hound Dog by Richard Blandford to give away. I chanced upon it last week, when I read this via Twitter. I fired off an email and, soon after, got my copy which landed with a soft thud on the back of my startled dog. I promised myself I wouldn't peek into this book because I knew I wanted to use it for the giveaway and because I am a spine-cracker. Yes, it's confession time dear reader: I crack spines. You can always tell which books I've read and which I've never opened just by checking how disastrously grooved or perfectly flat their spines are. This one in particular enjoys one heck of a tight binding and so I did what I always do, flicked to the back and read the last... Read more →
Super-editor Margaret knows that a really good proposal always scores. Last week a friend of mine asked me about the business of getting a book into print. My first reaction when I get such questions is to try and reduce the whole process to the very bare minimum, so that I don't bore people stiff, I don't make them feel stupid for asking and I don't write an email above six thousand words. By the time I sent my reply, I gave in to the powers of Mother Nature, for it was evident that a little article about proposals and synopses was long overdue. I've heard in the past that props and synos, as I shall call them from now on, are one and the same and that writers shouldn't really worry about them because it's the manuscript that counts. I am drinking Pimm's as I write this dear reader and I can feel my stomach back-flipping through exhilarating gas bubbles on account of having typed that most moronic statement. First of all, a prop and a syno are two different documents and second of all, if you think that a manuscript alone (and often one that isn't complete yet) is going to get you the deal, well, good luck to you. I'll crawl on broken glass with a rose through my teeth humming a tune if you can get a non-fiction deal without a prop. The Proposal: a document which includes extensive ancillary information about where in the market... Read more →
Even an idiot can be a hero... on his birthday! -François Cavanna- Sometimes my friends lament the state of their houses. They don't talk about the state of things they can easily affect (it's not about a change of wallpaper), but they say that the house is dark, or always cold, or the kitchen is too small or the bathroom is on the wrong floor or the attic is pretty much inaccessible, those kind of things. I do it too, and in spades as well, as my house is small and dark and always cold. The odd thing though is that we never look at our own reality with fresh eyes. We see the same things every day, every week, every year and all we look at is their immutability against our profound desire for the new. This makes for one great writing prompt and one that may well leave you uplifted and quite happy about your surroundings. Write about your house from the point of view of a stranger who has never seen it before and who really likes what he sees. Read more →
During one particularly depressing wintry afternoon at the beginning of last year, leafing through Vogue brought about one of the most significant epiphanies of my life. It was an article about gardening for virgins (or rather, virgin gardeners), something that resonated deep within me. Up until then my gardening experience was reduced to shuffling behind my dad in garden centres while frantically looking for anything that could rescue me from terminal boredom (usually scented candles). Yet, The Virgin Gardener leapt out of Vogue's pages into my subconscious where it planted itself soon after, germinated at documentary-like speed and yielded tiny tomatoes late in the summer, pots of lavender, rosemary, mint and a windowsill full of cyclamens that just do not stop blossoming. Laetitia captured my heart from the very first line of The Virgin Gardener: 'In my twenties the Outside was what I ventured through on my way somewhere, usually to a party after dark'. See why a gripping beginning is always important? She had me at hello. In this book you will find detailed instructions on how to grow, buy and look after plants; a lust list filled with all details you could care to know about all of those green things that make you swoon, and even recipes to showcase your garden work at the table. Why am I talking about a gardening book? Because I am on a mission to investigate the Creative Identity of authors I love. I am beginning from gardening because authors of non-fiction... Read more →
