“One of the unexpected benefits of the Covid-19 pandemic has been clear blue skies.”
Read MoreOn this day: PhotoPrompt #30: Skies in the time of Covid
News & views
Blogger, by Terry Freedman
Nonfiction Notebook: Is creative writing teachable?
Some people say "of course creative writing can be taught", while others say the opposite. I take a slightly more nuanced view.
Read MoreOn this day: Covid19: who ya gonna trust?
To the extent that people distrust journalists, is it really surprising?
Read MoreNonfiction Notebook: Authors and their rituals
Some research looked at writers’ rituals. Hearing about that made me reflect on my own.
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Substack blues
in News & views
I love Substack, but…
Read MoreOn this day: Second-hand ebooks?
in News & views
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?
Competition to win a copy of Gay Talese's A Town Without Time
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!
Read MoreMansplaining Jane Austen
in News & views
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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Me feeling somewhat exercised
Playing the feminist card and blaming the 'patriarchy'
in News & views
Playing the feminist card strikes me as intellectually lazy.
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A writer, by Terry Freedman
My 60 Minute Writer course
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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The 60 Minute Writer
in Events, News & views
My creative writing course
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Blogger, by Terry Freedman
Blogging is not dead!
in Events, News & views
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.
Read More20 autobiographies: excessive? On the contrary
So are elevator speeches completely useless? On the contrary, I think you need to develop several of them.
Read MoreNano reviews
You’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
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A blogger, by Terry Freedman
AI for bloggers
In my recent blogging course, I abandoned my carefully-prepared lesson, or part pf it, threw caution to the winds, and suggested to the class that we experiment with using AI for writing blog posts. Here’s a partial blog post it came up with, which you will agree is utter rubbish…
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My writing-related filing cabinets, by Terry Freedman
Creative writing using constraints: a bit of a post-mortem
I think evaluations are very odd devices to be honest. Someone once “marked me down” on her evaluation of a one day course I was running on the grounds that the traffic was terrible.
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Photo by Terry Freedman
Remuneration
This is an updated version of an article I published on this website in 2015. In my experience, it absolutely applies to artists, teachers and other creatives as well as writers or consultants.
Read MoreJust William
An example of popular academic writing
A long-held belief of mine is that no writing is wasted. I hear of people who have spent time writing something, decided it's rubbish, and then deleted it. But the process of evaluation that someone goes through to arrive at the conclusion that the thing they've just slaved over is rubbish is valuable in itself.
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New Online Blogging Course
I will be running another online course in blogging in the evenings of the 17th and 24th November 2023.
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