News & views
Photo by Terry Freedman
This is an updated version of an updated version of an article I originally published on this very website in 2015. In my experience, it absolutely applies to artists, teachers and other creatives as well as writers or consultants.
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history lesson
In England we used to have a weekly soap set in a school called Waterloo Road. This had everything you would hope not to find in a school: inappropriate behaviour, theft, even attempted murder – and that was just the staff.
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Blogger, by Terry Freedman
Straightforward advice with no persiflage.
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abstract art by Terry Freedman
This is an updated version of a post on my Substack newsletter from a few years ago, with bits of another of my articles thrown in for good measure.
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human being and blogger
Perhaps the easiest way to bring your writing to a wider audience these days is to do it yourself. The longest-running approach has been to start a blog. There are no gatekeepers, and within legal and commonsense limits you can write what you like.
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10 pound note, by Terry Freedman
Freebies work!
Read MoreIf, like me, you enjoy writing and you would like to earn money from it, should you go down the freelance writing route or write books, or both?From my experience, here are the pros and cons of freelancing.
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Books, by Terry Freedman
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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Seminar, by Terry Freedman
Why you should do some public speaking.
Read MoreI 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?
Read MoreUnless 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.
Read MoreWhat 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.
Read More“One of the unexpected benefits of the Covid-19 pandemic has been clear blue skies.”
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Blogger, by Terry Freedman
Some people say "of course creative writing can be taught", while others say the opposite. I take a slightly more nuanced view.
Read MoreTo the extent that people distrust journalists, is it really surprising?
Read MoreSome research looked at writers’ rituals. Hearing about that made me reflect on my own.
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I love Substack, but…
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I love second-hand bookshops. Whenever I go on holiday, one of the first things I do is go to the nearest Tourism Information outlet and get a list of the local used bookshops.
So, what do I like about them, and what does this have to do with ebooks?
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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