Writers' know-how

Perhaps a useful aim of writers is to lead the reader to put the book or article down, and disappear in a flight of imagination. After all, surely one measure of success is that what you’ve written led someone to think of something, or to make connections, that had not occurred to them before?

Evidence of what must be one the most ill-conceived taxes of all time (apart from the poll taxes in 1381 and 1989 (Scotland) and 1990 (England and Wales).

You may be very good at condensing a complex argument and proposals down to no more than six bullet points (as one of my line managers always demanded). This book makes it clear that there are more creative opportunities too.

Overheard snippets of conversation should be stored away for when required.

I wonder if this image could be used for something other than the obvious.

Here are 10 websites where you can find high quality pictures that are free to use on your own website or blog.

You never know who you’re going to meet in London. Yesterday, I saw a zombie walking around the Microsoft Decoded conference.

This is a very useful reference book for anyone who is serious about online journalism.

Unfortunately, Google cannot (yet!) do your writing for you, but it can help you by identifying times when you could write, and inserting “Writing” (or “Research” or whatever you choose) into your calendar.

Another photoprompt. This notice, seen in a shop window, could provide the starting point of a story or article.

With children as the target audience, this book is a fair-paced romp through the history of paintings from cave paintings to the present day. All that in less than 100 pages!

Here are links to recent book reviews I’ve published on this website. Look out for more soon.

Believe it or not, this photo was taken in the summer!

Perhaps I shouldn’t take things so literally…

What does this picture inspire you to write?

Words are being used in ways which are completely wrong – in fact, in some cases the meaning is the exact opposite of the way the word is being used, like when the word "choose" means you have no choice at all.

It’s very interesting writing for an American audience. Every so often I get taken to task for using ‘learnt’ instead of ‘learned’ or ‘different from’ rather than ‘different than’. That crack by Oscar Wilde about the British and the Americans having everything in common except, of course, language is almost true!

One of the daftest pieces of advice I was given, by a so-called marketing expert, was to not bother with maintain my own blog: too much hassle. Write on other people’s blogs instead.

How about forgetting all that “She said…”, “He said…” stuff? There is real power in a piece of prose or poetry where you can “hear” only one side of the conversation.

I’m going to be transferring the domain name of the Writers’ Know-how website to another hosting company, so there may be a short loss of service.