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- First drafts: allowing the worm to navigate the soils of your mind
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Category Archives: Essay
Isn’t it a little coarse to go and bang on the drums just because the doorbell is ringing?
I acted in a student film once and afterwards, at the wrap party in a fusty house at the top of town, I rode an office chair down the hill, flying across the junction at the bottom, ramming the pavement … Continue reading
Posted in Essay
Tagged advice, Alice Munro, Creative writing, editing, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, short story, Writing, writing advice, Writing process
7 Comments
Writing isn’t just about having an idea – you have to know what to do with it
I’m sitting at the bar of a coffeeshop in Amsterdam, scribbling away. A man, standing next to me, gestures at my notebook and says: what do you write? I’m actually writing about my notebook, I tell him. Some people who … Continue reading
Posted in Essay, Fiction, Memoir, Travel
Tagged Creative writing, editing, Fiction, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, Memoir, short story, travelling, Writer's block, Writing, writing advice, Writing process
18 Comments
Sometimes, you just have to get over yourself
There’s nothing like a high-five from a published poet, especially if it’s the gifted Clare Shaw, to help you get over yourself. So, I’ve written this poem, I tell Clare and Jim Friel and the other writers gathered in the … Continue reading
Posted in Essay, Poetry
Tagged A Posthumous Affair, Arvon, Clare Shaw, Creative writing, Gabriela, Gabriela Blandy, Head On, how to write, Jim Friel, Jonathan Lee, Poetry, The Hurst, Writing, writing advice, Writing process
19 Comments
What’s the one word that describes how you feel?
Nobody says anything at first. I look at the faces around the room – fifteen, sixteen year olds who are expecting to stand in front of an audience in a few days and read some of their writing. I wait. … Continue reading
Something to think about other than how crap you are
Jonathan Lee told me he can’t write in that beginning to end way we used to have to do in exams. He likes to cut and paste. I take a lot of guidance from those school essay writing days: sheets of … Continue reading
Posted in Essay
Tagged Creative writing, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, Jonathan Lee, Writer's block, Writing, writing advice, Writing Practice, Writing process
17 Comments
Perhaps we touch, my muse and I
My first sexual fantasies, age thirteen, were set in a boys’ school. I was the housemaster’s daughter, visiting on a stormy weekend, where an overnight dump of snow had left us without telephone or roads. I had started a fever. … Continue reading
Posted in Essay
Tagged Creative writing, creativity, fear, Freud, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, Joyce Carol Oates, Love, muse, Relationships, Rousseau, Writer's block, Writing, writing advice, Writing process
15 Comments
The Dance of Avoidance
Go outside, find something – bring it back indoors, put it on your desk, write about it. I’ve done writing classes like this. Responses to this task rupture out of each other – each one, bringing two more, which in … Continue reading
Posted in Essay
Tagged Adam Phillips, editing, fear, Gabriela Blandy, George Saunders, how to write, obstacles, Writing, writing advice, Writing process
33 Comments
That tightrope moment in writing when stories either plummet or remain
Any story that’s going to be any good is usually going to change. I’ve been reading Alice Munro again. There was a point when I suddenly became afraid of the day I’d read all her stories and no more were … Continue reading
Posted in Essay, Memoir
Tagged Alice Munro, Creative writing, editing, Fiction, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, Memoir, Review, short story, Writing, writing advice
25 Comments
Write of things you love
Three years ago, I spent a week in Shropshire and finally began to write of things I loved. These were memories of the farm I grew up on. For years, they’d been fidgeting as I sat down to work on … Continue reading
Posted in Essay, Memoir
Tagged Arvon, Creative writing, editing, Fiction, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, Memoir, The Hurst, Writing, writing advice, Writing process
48 Comments
The art of becoming an original writer in three days!
We talk about that first ‘bite’ we get as a writer, the first punch of an idea. Something catches our eye – a painting, or a conversation between two people across the room. We watch. Suddenly we start to imagine … Continue reading
Gabriela Blandy - The sense of a journey 