This is just a very quick heads-up. I’m just about to send off four reviews to Teach Secondary magazine. I will post the reviews here once they’ve been published there (that’s the deal), but here are one-liners to whet your appetite.

If, like me, you enjoy reading around a subject, and probing a little deeper than strictly necessary, and you are an avid reader or a determined writer, Bookish Words should appeal to you.

In this article, I republish a review of mine that was first published in Teach Secondary magazine. Next, there follows the article I actually sent in. The differences are only minor, but I thought you might find it interesting to examine the differences, and consider what difference they make, if any, to your experience and understanding of the review.

In this article, I republish a review of mine that was first published in Teach Secondary magazine. Next, there follows the article I actually sent in. The differences are only minor, but I thought you might find it interesting to examine the differences, and consider what difference they make, if any, to your experience and understanding of the review.

Taking the reader from the Middle Ages to more or less the present day, Gray shows how the kind of places we do our shopping in, and what we buy, have changed over the centuries.

On the 21st June I’ll be teaching a course called Creative Writing with Constraints. (Note the word “constraints”, not “restraints”.) This article outlines how I prepared for it.

In this article, I republish a review of mine that was first published in Teach Secondary magazine. Next, there follows the article I actually sent in. The differences are only minor, but I thought you might find it interesting to examine the differences, and consider what difference they make, if any, to your experience and understanding of the review.

The standard advice for writers who are feeling uninspired or blocked is to allow your mind to wander where it will or to just start writing aimlessly to see what happens. Therefore to suggest the opposite approach, that of imposing some constraints on your thinking, seems completely counterintuitive.

Yesterday I was going to write an article, using chunks of a couple of articles I’d published before (plus some original material).

What is writing with constraints? In a nutshell, it means writing according to specific and tight rules. The “official” name for this is Oulipo, which is a French acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle.

“One of the unexpected benefits of the Covid-19 pandemic has been clear blue skies.”