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...
10 days 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...
13 days 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...
13 days 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...
17 days 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...
24 days ago • 6 min read
We live on a houseboat, as you might have gleaned by now. It is raised a couple of feet above the water, resting on a carefully designed series of caissons, blocks of high-density polystyrene covered in concrete. It’s a remarkable technology that will in all likelihood provide a great floating foundation for our houseboat for fifty to eighty years. The caissons are joined together in a rigid steel grid – a rebar skeleton – that creates a floating platform on which the house rests. The...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, ‘This might be the most important thing you learn about writing,’ I heard myself say. And then I laughed. This week under the water We were wrapping up our latest Creative Writing Course, which runs for an evening a week over ten weeks. We were talking about restraint, and how important it is not to ‘explain’. Your readers are clever, I told them. They’re used to picking up clues and spotting the significance in nuance. You don’t have to hit them over the head, either with your...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Join me and guest writers Rick Melvill and Tim Chevallier for a free webinar on the deeply human business of getting your story onto the page. Whether you're writing memoir, a novel, or a short story, the hardest part is often not the writing itself – it's starting, and then not stopping. Rick and Tim have both navigated that journey to a completed manuscript, and they're here to tell you how they did it, what kept them going, and what they wish they'd known at the beginning....
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Robert Stone introduces a minor character in his short story Helping with a single sentence: Blankenship had red hair, a brutal face, and a sneaking manner. Three details. That's all. And yet Blankenship is immediately, completely present – you know him, you distrust him, you brace for whatever he's about to do. But then Stone gives us a second line of description: He was a sponger and petty thief whom Elliot had seen a number of times before. But this sentence is almost redundant. The face...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read