Hello Reader, This week on the water Trying to work out how writers actually compose the sentences that arise in their brains, then flow out through their fingers onto their screens is a mug’s game. And when those sentences coruscate with brilliance, the mystery deepens even further. How do they do it? It’s rather like asking what’s going on in the “mind” of an AI when you pose a complicated question to it and it comes back at you with a deeply thoughtful and provocative response. The truth...
8 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, 'Liberating!' 'Watching you break down and polish those wordy sentences, I admired how you ultimately included all the intended elements.' 'Recently getting back into writing and I needed this.' These were just some of the enthusiastic responses from participants in our Strong Sentences, Stronger Stories webinar. Attendees appreciated the practical demonstrations of breaking down and polishing wordy sentences, with one writer noting it was 'exactly' what they needed to improve...
12 days ago • 6 min read
Hello Reader, This week on the water Trish and I escaped February in England by fleeing to the balmy south. As I write this, I am perched in a house high above False Bay. A hundred metres from the shore beneath me the rising tide surges against a rock that looks like nothing so much as a whale, its head bowed beneath the surface, preparing for a deep dive. We are only a kilometre or two away from the kelp forest in which Craig Foster made his acquaintance with the octopus, and which was...
15 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, As you know, I’ve been conducting an experiment which I have found fascinating. Last week I asked you to help me choose a title for a collection of the essays that I’ve been publishing online every Monday over the past several years. I offered you five possibilities, each of which I thought captured something essential about the collection. Your verdict was clear and decisive: "Waterlines: Writing Lessons from a Life Afloat" emerged as the strong favourite, attracting 38.5% of...
22 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, This week under the water Had you met me in my first year of school, you would never have pegged me as a future writer. Besides my awkwardness and social difficulties, I could not learn to read. My brain could not form the letters on the board into meaningful patterns. They stubbornly remained squiggles. My early learning difficulties have had several effects on my life, one of them, I guess, quite unexpected. Predictably, they left me with a lifelong insecurity, the corollary...
28 days ago • 6 min read
Hello Reader, I promised you a deep dive into the process of choosing a title. Last week I considered the titles I initially came up with for the first memoirish-writing craft collection of my essays: A Writer’s Journey: Unleash the Power of Your Creative Voice. And I reported that my good friend and mentor, Claude the AI, gave it a most decided thumb’s down. The main title was too derivative, and the subtitle “suggests a more conventional self-help/how-to approach and doesn't capture the...
29 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, Choosing the title of a book is no easy task. Choosing the titles of six books in a series, together with the individual titles and the subtitles is, mmm, perplexing, to say the least. Let me generalise as I go along, in the hopes that my musings might throw some light on the challenge of finding the right title of whatever book you’ve written. Of course, if you’re a poet, then your task is less circumscribed by thoughts of your market, and you’re freer to extemporise. Not that...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Hello Reader, Here is a fresh out-of-the-box story. It’s your story. You are the protagonist. Imagine yourself sitting comfortably somewhere in your house. A parcel has just been delivered by courier. You’re surprised. You hadn’t expected anything. But there it lies, on the hallway table where you’d put it while you signed a receipt for its delivery. It’s a stoutly bound cardboard package. The tape binding it together is too tough to open without a blade, so with the package in hand, you...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hello Reader, This week on the water Given that it’s the start of the year, it seems appropriate to talk about the start of a new writing project – and because I am increasingly of the opinion that writing and life are parallel activities, it might well be that what I have to say about beginnings, applies also to life. Let’s see if that’s the case. As you contemplate the story to come, you begin, perhaps, by assembling your characters, in all their tawdry glory. As they step onto the stage of...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read