I have never been a good political animal. At university, where ideology dominated most debate, I found myself perpetually wrong-footed – not because I lacked opinions, but because I kept noticing things that complicated them. This week on the water Let me give you just one example of what I mean. We – that is, everyone on the left – knew that apartheid was an evil system, imposed by racists who believed that their social engineering would meet all the challenges of a diverse and multi-racial...
13 days ago • 6 min read
There is a particular satisfaction in revision that the euphoria generated by your first draft rarely matches. There’s something about returning to a manuscript, with a scalpel rather than a pen in hand, that yields a kind of pleasure that is almost surgical – not despite its precision, but because of it. A surgeon approaches a patient with just one thing in mind: to make the minimum necessary intervention and produce the maximum effect. And that’s precisely what’s on a writer’s mind when he...
20 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, My parents were golf fanatics, and my mom was fond of saying: ‘There’s nothing that humbles you like golf.’ I had a taste of that recently with my swimming. If you read an earlier newsletter of mine, you’ll know that I was part of an adventure swim from Seaforth to Fisherman’s Beach and back, which was turned back before the end because of rising swells and seal activity. At that stage, I was psyched and cocky, disappointed not to be doing the stretch from Windmill to...
24 days ago • 7 min read
The coot wars have begun, as they do every year at about this time. A coot, for those of you unfamiliar with the breed, is a small black water bird with a distinctive white face – and disproportionately large yellow-green legs and feet. Their claws are long, curved and murderously sharp. A coot is, in other words, a pocket-sized killing machine. This week on the water Every animal on earth, even the meekest herbivore, is moved to violence when it comes to the mating season. It’s obviously...
27 days ago • 5 min read
It’s not summer yet, here on the Great River Ouse – not quite, and doubtless there will be gloomy days ahead before it finally asserts itself. Yesterday, though, was a perfect forerunner of the real thing – and Trish and I celebrated by going kayaking to Cardington Lock, a mile or so downstream. We interspersed sessions of high-velocity paddling with more contemplative moments, stopping for coffee under the canopy of our favourite horse chestnut, its foliage dotted with its characteristic...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, There's a writing weekend coming up that's a little different from most – and it's happening in one of England's most beautiful corners. The Stow-on-the-Wold Writing Weekend takes place from 5 to 7 June at Benfield, a honey-stoned cottage on Sheep Street in the heart of the Cotswolds. But here's what sets it apart: before you arrive, I want to hear from you. Tell me what you're working on. Tell me what's giving you trouble – the scene you can't crack, the structure that keeps...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, The Creative Writing Skills That Make the Most Difference With Jo-Anne Richards & Richard Beynon | Free Webinar | 4 May If you've ever wondered which writing skills are truly worth your time — the ones that, once you grasp them, genuinely shift the quality of your work — this is the webinar for you. On 4 May, All About Writing co-founders Jo-Anne Richards and Richard Beynon are coming together for a free live webinar to share the creative writing skills they believe make the...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
When I first started thinking about the Clatterbridge series, I called the opening novel Murder on the Allotment. It did the job. It told you there was a murder, and it told you roughly where. But every time I typed it, something nagged – a faint dissatisfaction I couldn't quite name. Yes, it followed the pattern established by scores of cosy murder mysteries available on the market and yet precisely because of that, it landed with the leaden thud of cliché. This week on the water So I did...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
I had polio as a child. I walk on crutches. This is not, ordinarily, something I discuss in these essays – it sits in the background of my life the way any long-established fact does, unremarkable to me even if it isn't always to others. But lately I've been thinking about what it actually means, philosophically and psychologically, to move through the world in a body that other people notice. And I've begun to suspect that it has something to do with why I write the way I do – and, more...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read