We visited the William Morris Gallery at the weekend, and Chaucer’s Complete Works was one of the books Wm Morris published.
Read MoreGeoffrey Chaucer's Complete Works: which edition do YOU prefer?
in Bookshelf, Reflections
Knighton Wood, by Terry Freedman
Success -- at last! A short, hopefully interesting and chortlesome, memoir piece
It is understandable that an ambitious young man, in his late twenties and early thirties, wanting success in all its various guises, and with a belief in the power of the mind, would be attracted to certain kinds of books, tapes and courses. The young man I’m talking about was, of course, me.
Read More
Books added to the TBR heap
in Quick looks
This article is an excerpt from a longer one that appeared on my Eclecticism newsletter.
Read MoreNano reviews
You’ve heard of six-word stories. How about nano non-fiction?
Read More
The scream by Terry Freedman.jpg
A rather annoying side effect of scanning a typed document and converting it to text
in Technology
It was my intention to provide you with a guide to style guides. But...
Read MoreThe art of writing originated from a very prosaic need, not a creative impulse
The art of making paper was kept secret for hundreds of years.
Read MoreBooks I'm reading or about to read
in Quick looks, Reviews, Bookshelf
I’ve been sent the following books by publishers, and will review them in due course. Here is some information about them.
Read MoreIf you learnt how to write well at school, maybe you're lucky
The typical school writing assignment involves working in a way that no real writer does.
Read MoreLet's hear it for the introverts!
This review was originally published in Teach Secondary magazine, and so is aimed at teachers rather than writers, but as writers are often called upon to speak in public I thought this might be useful for them too!
Read More
Click the image to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Review: 99 Variations on a Proof
It was, surely, only a matter of time before someone would take Raymond Queneau’s idea of exercises in style and apply it to mathematics.
Read MoreYe olde book signing
I’ve recently finished a course on Macbeth and Othello, and I’ve been doing some research.
Read More
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…
Read MoreAn intriguing interlude on the Underground
Travelling back from my saxophone lesson on Saturday, a very attractive young woman kept looking at me. Did I finally have sax appeal I asked myself.
Read More
Photo by Terry Freedman
An embarassing interlude on the Overground
Last week, Elaine, a friend of hers (D) and I went to an art gallery. On our return we caught the Overground train at Highbury and Islington, heading towards Stratford….
Read MoreWhat makes a great and successful writer?
in Creative Writing, EiS
This is a transcript of a conversation between Fred Terryman and myself. It’s been lightly edited, with the pauses taken out for ease of reading.
Read More
Click the image to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Review: Adventures in Maps
This beautifully illustrated volume has relevance to several different curriculum areas, containing as it does accounts of intrepid historical journeys that range from 16th century seafaring voyages to Arctic crossings and even the surveys undertaken to facilitate the moon landings.
Read More
Click the image to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Review: Write, Cut, Rewrite
Perhaps the second hardest thing for a writer to do (after commencing work in the first place) is to delete parts of what they’ve written.
Read More
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.
Read MoreExperiments in style: Art critic
in EiS, Creative Writing
One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. In today’s experiment I’d like to tell the story in the style of a review of an art exhibition.
Read More
More about the creative writing course I'll be teaching: books
In London on June 8th I’ll be teaching a course called Creative Writing Using Constraints, an introduction to the world of the Oulipo. This is a round-up of some of the books I’ll be referring to and talking about.
Read More