Hello Reader, We know what you're thinking about right now. You're looking at 2026 with that familiar mix of hope and determination. This is the year you'll finally finish that novel. This is the year you'll master the craft. This is the year your memoir takes shape. We've been teaching writers for close-on 20 years, and we've learned something important: January isn't just another month. It's when writers who are serious about their work make the commitment that changes everything. It’s...
7 days ago • 2 min read
In a previous piece, I argued that writers need to be ambitious – that we serve neither ourselves nor our readers by approaching our work with diffidence, by setting modest targets we're confident of hitting. We need to stretch our creative muscles, to risk productive failure in pursuit of something larger than we've managed before. This week on the water Now I want to argue for something related but distinct: that writers need to be brave. Salman Rushdie said recently during an episode of...
12 days ago • 6 min read
Hello Reader, Thank you so much for joining us for the webinar on "The Shortcuts Nobody Told Us." It was wonderful to have such an engaged group of writers from around the world – from Cape Town to Chicago to the Cotswolds – all committed to developing their craft. Your questions and comments made for a rich discussion. What we explored We each shared three crucial insights they wish they'd known earlier in their writing careers: Jo-Anne's three points: Embrace the rewrite - First drafts are...
16 days ago • 1 min read
The mystery I've been working on concerns the murder of a former member of Military Intelligence. It's up to my sleuth, James Clatterbridge, whose day job is writing horror stories, to uncover the truth, nail the murderer and lift the heavy veil of suspicion that has fallen on an innocent man. This week on the water Cosy murder mysteries feature amateur sleuths solving murders. They do not have access to fingerprints or DNA or police records. They do not have the resources available to the...
18 days ago • 5 min read
John Green, YA author of the worldwide best-seller The Fault in Our Stars, made a striking claim in a recent interview I listened to on the New York Times. He said that writing non-fiction about tuberculosis requires no personal connection to the disease, but writing fiction that works demands bringing your own grief, loss, tenderness, and capacity to love with you to the work. At first glance, he seems to have got this backwards. Surely writing personal essays and memoirs require more...
26 days ago • 7 min read
Hello Reader, I’m sure you’ve noticed that, over the past few months, I have become addicted to the underwater world, and to photographing the creatures, large and small, that I encounter there. It’s not the worst addiction in the world. There are far more harmful obsessions. Like writing, it’s good for you. Creativity strengthens our well-being; it makes us healthy in mind and our emotional selves. I began with a very entry-level camera, which made no concessions to my struggle to keep it...
27 days ago • 5 min read
I've been watching a Netflix series called The Beast in Me. It stars Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs, a celebrated author paralysed by grief and writer's block following the death of her young son in a car accident. She lives a secluded life, consumed by anger – until a new neighbour arrives: a wealthy man widely suspected of murdering his first wife. What follows is a cat-and-mouse thriller as Aggie investigates her neighbour, convinced she's found both a worthy target for her rage and the...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Let me begin by making a confession: I am a bit of a fusspot. In my writing, I like to shape my sentences in terms both of sense and rhythm as I write them. I don’t expect perfection – but I don’t like my first draft to be that radically different from my final. This week on the water I often say that this habit was developed over the years I wrote drama scripts, where inevitably writers have less time to write them than they’d like. Frequently there isn’t in fact time to write a second draft...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, This time last month, I was listening to the bells of Venice in the peculiar silence that comes with an absence of cars. Yes, we were running our ninth annual writing retreat, in the 16th century palazzo in which we gather every year. We’ve been running this retreat since 2015 and, as usual, we made an effort to provide the space and opportunity for our participants to feel their own creative surge. Somehow, the city always works its magic, as does the alchemy of a gathering of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read