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I have two notebooks. One is for ideas, overheard bits of dialogue, my morning pages, fragments written during a train ride, diagrams about the architecture of the story I’m working on, maxims and book proposals condensed into eight words which I...

To express or to explore? The art of nonfiction Some months ago — in that strange, hushed lull after finishing the manuscript of one book, and starting to think about another — I sat down to write. I fired up my laptop. I flipped through my...

Throughout my career, I’ve been told that my writing is ‘accessible’. Being an academic of typically fragile ego, I’ve worried about this, wondering if it’s a euphemism for ‘not clever enough’. I’ve endeavoured to write more academically, but it...

Of all the things that Ernest Hemingway never said one of the most widely shared must be this: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ This misattributed quote is popular among writers. You can find it all...

When I first wanted to write, I was terrified that if I sat at my desk and started typing, I’d have to see my own juvenile sentences in front of me on the screen. I mustered courage from the fact that I had done a philosophy degree. I told myself...

As we entered 2022, it seemed that everyone was either writing a memoir or writing a book about how to write a memoir. So, are they of any use?  The short answer is yes, they can be inspiring and motivational, as well as offering practical advice...