The least sensible thing one can do in circumstance like this is to read stuff which has absolutely no bearing on any it.
Read MoreEnjoying the hard stuff: review of a course in hardboiled fiction
in Reviews
Reviews
Review: 99 Ways to tell a story
in Bookshelf, Oulipo, Oulipo book, Reviews
The book works in so many ways that it’s hard to know where to start.
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Review: The Rise and Fall of Oscar Wilde
in Reviews
I enjoyed the course, but would have preferred it to have been longer.
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Review: A Little History of Literature
As for non-students whose memories of Eng Lit conjure up trying to make sense of Shakespeare, you may discover that “A Little History of Literature” will help you to erase such memories!
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Review: Creative writing for social media
Good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practice may decree that the ideal blog post length is between 1760 and 2400 words, but I prefer to write for people rather than an algorithm.
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Review: Exercises in Style
in Bookshelf, Oulipo, Oulipo book, Reviews
Anyone interested in the craft of writing should read this book. It’s not a primer, or dictionary, or anything of that nature. But it does exactly what it says on the tin.
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A selection of my reference books — Terry Freedman
Review of the Writing Inspiration Jam course
This one-off session from the City Lit looked like an exciting course to try. It ticked several boxes: no long-term commitment, and brimming with ideas.
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Cameraman, by Terry Freedman
Who's the author?
in Reviews
If you write a play or a film script, presumably you have a mental picture of how it will look on screen or stage.
Read MoreReview: Book Parts
When you start to read a new book, what’s your routine? My routines differ according to whether the book is fiction or non-fiction, and whether I’ve been sent it to review or not.
Read MoreReview: Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark
Roy Peter Clark describes and analyses fifty five strategies for writers.
Read MoreReview: Storycraft, by Jack Hart
Like Chekhov's gun (if a gun appears in Act 1, it has to be fired at some point), actions like someone clearing their throat are pointless if they add nothing to how we see them as a character.
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NOT the camera I used! Photo by Terry Freedman
Testing a camcorder for interviews
A few years ago I thought I would test the capabilities of a pocket camcorder I’d been asked to review
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Review: The Go-Between
I also started to ponder: why the obsession throughout the book with belladonna?
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Review: How to write short
This is a very different book from Short-Form Creative Writing: A Writer's Guide And Anthology, both in content and style, but covers similar ground.
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Quick look: You talkin' to me? The Unruly History of New York English (The Dialects of North America)
in Bookshelf, Quick looks, Reviews
One of my ambitions, once this pandemic is over, is to visit New York if I can. In the meantime, this look at the various cultures and dialects in New York is a reasonable substitute for actually being there.
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Listening, by Terry Freedman
Books of 2020 -- now with audio
Yesterday I published a blog post entitled Books of 2020, a list of the books I’ve (mostly) read in 2020. Well, it’s a bit of a long read at around 4,000 words, so I’ve created an audio version of it as well.
Read MoreBooks of 2020
These are the books I’ve encountered in 2020. I’ve read most of them, and reviewed many of them.
Read MoreA shorter review of the Penguin Book of The Prose Poem
Arranged in reverse chronological order, this book will help you find great examples of innovative approaches to writing poems, dating back to the 1840s. But what exactly is a prose poem?
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On This Day, by Terry Freedman
On this day #7: Review of Help! for Writers
in Bookshelf, On this day, Hardware, Reviews
On 22 December 2015 I published a review of Help! For Writers, by Roy Peter Clark. I liked the book back then. Do I still like it now?
Read MoreReview: The European City in Contemporary Literature
in Reviews
The focus was not so much on viewing the city through a tourist’s lens as on looking at how spaces in the city interacted with the experiences of the authors or, rather, the narrators in their stories.
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