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?
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 MoreI 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 strikes me as intellectually lazy.
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A writer, by Terry Freedman
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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Blogger, by Terry Freedman
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 MoreSo are elevator speeches completely useless? On the contrary, I think you need to develop several of them.
Read MoreYou’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
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A blogger, by Terry Freedman
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
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
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 MoreA 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.
Read MoreI will be running another online course in blogging in the evenings of the 17th and 24th November 2023.
Read MoreI recently reviewed How Words Get Good for Teach Secondary magazine. It’s a great read, and delves into all the processes that go into producing a book.
Read MoreWhy do some writers write badly? Plus links to examples of bad writing.
Read MoreI wrote this article in 2020. Having read it again, I still agree with the views I expressed then. In fact, I’d go further. When anyone who has achieved the benefits potentially offered by X tells you that you don’t need X, I think a huge dollop of cynicism is in order.
Read MoreOulipo techniques are great for dispelling writer’s block, and generating new works.
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London Book Fair, by Terry Freedman
These are the sessions that especially appeal to me
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