I know it's a bit late for one of these posts, but better late than never, right? I read more books in 2015 than I think I have in any year my...
The Books I Read in 2015
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Reading
Interview With Ana Salote
Ana Salote is an author of children's fiction whose debut novel, Oy Yew, published by Mother's Milk Books, is out now. Ana regularly blogs on her...
Interview With Cathy Bryant
Cathy Bryant worked as a life model, civil servant and childminder before becoming a professional writer. She has won fourteen literary awards, and...
Books That Changed My Life
Like so many writers, as a child, I loved books, especially old ‘important-looking’ books by ‘important-sounding’ people like Shakespeare and Dickens and someone called ‘Encyclopedia.’ I loved the look of them, the feel of them, the smell of them. I just couldn’t read them. They were mysterious, alien hieroglyphics to me, because—unlike my clever elder siblings—I couldn’t read until relatively late, and was seen as the ‘backward’ one (my father’s term, not mine). I was a slow learner (still am, in many ways) and couldn’t read or write till I was seven or eight. This made reading and writing seem all the more strange, desirable, fascinating, like a secret code.
Why Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight Are So Popular
Let’s face it: these days, nobody really cares about the prose. It’s a hard fact, but they don’t. They want something easy and light to read before...
How to Read More Books
Just five years ago, I barely read a book a year. This is terrible when you're a student, but even worse when you're a Creative Writing student....
The Writer’s Christmas Gift Guide
So you’ve got a writer to buy for and don’t know how to show that you’re supportive? There’s only so many times you can ask ‘How’s that novel/poem/short story/screenplay coming along?’ (Please note that these kinds of questions are also incredibly annoying. If you’re going to ask, mention the name of a specific project—it shows you’re actually interested.)
This writers’ Christmas gift guide has suggestions for a variety of budgets and writers. Happy shopping!
How the Media Uses Language to Manipulate You
I grew up in a town where English was a subject that was looked down on. How could you possibly need to study English any more when you already know how to read and write? What’s the point in studying plays and poetry and language acquisition? The point is because the more you know about language, the more immune you become to its effects.
Language is an incredible tool and like any great power, can be used for good and evil. What’s important is how you use it. How you say something is often more important than what you actually mean.
Take the following clip from Russell Howard’s Good News. It shows the difference between Ebola coverage in the US and the UK.
Why All Great Writers Read, and You Need to, Too
The importance of the relationship between reading and writing can never be overstated. In my first year of a Creative Writing degree at the...
Every Poetic Form You’ll Ever Need
There are so many different forms of poetry that it’s hard to keep up. This is by no means a complete list — there are always going to be some that get missed — but I have tried to include as many as I could, and will update it as necessary.
This isn’t an in-depth list. You can click on the links under each for more detailed explanations and examples. I find the best way to learn about a new form is to read as much about it as possible, then attempt to write one as close to the rules as possible. What works for you may be different.
Lowercase letters represent repeated lines.