Giving Permission

In my recent post here about character development, I touched on the idea of “giving permission.” Tania Hershman wrote about this a short while ago here and her post really made me think. She was teaching an Arvon course, and said that an important idea...

Teaching Character Development

courtesy of adhocactorsAs part of my activities as Writer-in-Residence at  SOAS, I am sometimes asked to help figure out ways to get students thinking outside of the box. One problem we have been discussing is how 1st year language students can be taught to use the...

What's the Point of Blogging?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been involved in a few new blogging schemes. I participated in The Next Big Thing, which if you missed it,  gave me and other writers I admire a platform to discuss our works in progress. Like all of these schemes, it has spread its...

A Question of Genre: Do You Have to Choose?

I love music and I’ve played the violin since I was seven years old. I’m now pretty good at it and I’ve often wondered whether I could have been a professional musician IF I had concentrated on music only, forsaking all other pursuits, and IF I had...

Creative Writing in Cambodia

In the previous post here, I wrote about journalistic writing and how I have recently been asked by a few magazines to write articles for them about my work teaching street kids in Cambodia and setting up my writing workshop in the educational shelter, Anjali House....

Where Rockets Burn Through

It’s been a bit of a difficult week on the home front, so I was doubly pleased when my copy of Where Rockets Burn Through came in the post. This is a collection of contemporary science fiction poems from the UK edited by the poet, Russell Jones, and published by...
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