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Interstitial what?

There are a couple of books by Oliver Burkeman that I became acquainted with this month—yes, I do tend to find authors I really like and read everything they’ve written: Help!

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When intention = decision

2013. We’re here. It’s another new year and a time to reflect. Not on what we haven’t done or intended to do over the last twelve months, but on what we will do.

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Never judge a book by its cover

Ghost-writing some fiction just the other day, I tapped out those exact words. Of course, the expression is a common English idiom and the meaning a metaphor for not deciding the worth (or lack thereof) of anything, or anyone, by its outward appearance.

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Payment vs Passion

At one time, every piece of advice you would have received about writing for either the market, or your own personal passion, would come down on the side of passion. The question is: does that hold true now?

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WTF

I’ve become a little irritated in this era of modern communication where folk (even older generations) regularly, if not persistently, omit capitalisation from emails and text messages.  Why? Is it because it’s easier for our hard-pressed fingers to move more speedily, saving time so we can rush off to the next fifteen second activity?

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What are we meant to be doing?

I purchased and downloaded Scrivener the other day. It’s been a long wait, so let me tell you about it.

To me Scrivener wasn’t an indulgence—it was a necessity. As a writer, I have some fairly complex projects, some of them running at the same time, albeit at different stages of development.

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Paralysed

Walking out of the local supermarket and into the main mall area three months ago, I saw a toddler, aged around three, standing near a toy car—you know the ones, you put your child behind the steering wheel, feed the slot a dollar, and the thing lights up, growling and shaking, to the utter delight of the young.

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Writers beware – it’s a New Year

Yes, it’s that time of the year when we might make some resolutions: this year I will write without fear—fear of rejection, fear of going public, fear that my innermost thoughts and dark psyche are being exposed.

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Words that matter

Looking through an array of Christmas cards yesterday, I was struck by the complete lack of imagination of the wording inside them. Has it always been like this, I wondered. For the last few decades I’ve gone for blank cards because the generic wording never seemed to fit—for me anyway.

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Bad sex in fiction (part 2)

Just to continue the light-hearted theme of the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, and grinding to its climactic conclusion (see, it’s contagious), the winner of this year’s award goes to David Guterson, best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars.

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