I’ve been reading Phillipa K. Chong’s “Inside the Critics’ Circle”, in which she attempts to discover the process by which books get reviewed. It’s a very interesting read. I haven’t finished it yet, so am not in a position to review it as such, but I was struck by the extract cited here.
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Why you should do some public speaking.
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I have temporaily removed the automatic paywall on my Eclecticism site, thereby freeing up 557 pieces for you to read should you so desire.
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From the archives: How will Virtual Reality reportage affect our experience of the news? What are the ethical issues involved?
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Unless you’re so poor at spelling or English in general that a spell-checker wouldn’t do you much good anyway, there isn’t really any excuse for this sort of thing.
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What is writing with constraints? In a nutshell, it means writing according to specific and tight rules. The “official” name for this is Oulipo, which is a French acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle.
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“One of the unexpected benefits of the Covid-19 pandemic has been clear blue skies.”
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Some people say "of course creative writing can be taught", while others say the opposite. I take a slightly more nuanced view.
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To the extent that people distrust journalists, is it really surprising?
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Some research looked at writers’ rituals. Hearing about that made me reflect on my own.
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Last week I announced a competition to win a copy of A Town Without Time, the new collection of work by Gay Talese. Here is the link again, this time with an unrestricted link!
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I was very pleased to be able to give a load of women the benefit of my wisdom and experience on a Jane Austen course a few months ago.
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Playing the feminist card strikes me as intellectually lazy.
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Next week I’ll be teaching a course called The 60 Minute Writer. The title always makes me smile because it sounds like I teach people how to be a writer in an hour. It reminds me of a joke by, I think, Frank Carson…
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My creative writing course
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There is still a great interest in writing blogs. One of the reasons I know this is that my course on blogging currently has twelve sign-ups. That may not sound a lot, but many courses at the City Lit have far fewer.
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So are elevator speeches completely useless? On the contrary, I think you need to develop several of them.
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You’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
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