Occasional things of writerly interest:
Winner of the Bath Novel Award 2023
I've a flash fiction story in here - I Never Said You Could - that was on the shortlist for the Scratch A4 Competition 2023.
I've a flash fiction story in here - All the Times He Tried and Failed - that was runner-up in the Edinburgh International Flash Fiction Award.
A talk on My Neighbour Totoro, storyboarding and coming up with a film idea for 4+ year olds for Young Norfolk Arts.
In these days of the pandemic, a free online Writing Science Fiction
course at the National Centre for Writing Hemingway and Parataxis article in TSS Publishing by Peter Jordan
Kim Morgan on
Inherent Vice How to write
horror stories Evaristo and Atwood: Double Booker winners 2019
Top ten novel debuts of the decade from Literary Hub
NYT interview with Phillip Pullman
A great archive of author interviews: BBC Author Archive Collection
The Booker Shortlist 2019
'I feel nothing but rage.' The arts on Brexit Guardian article.
Another side of Samuel Beckett -an Observer article by Robert McCrumb
What I wish I had known when I started out as a writer. Some excellent advice from Luke Jennings (Killing Eve): Examine the best seller lists, and as an exercise, read The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey. You don’t have to like books like these, and you certainly don’t have to write them, but you do need to understand the fantasies that they’re addressing, and why millions of people have bought and read them. The job of the novelist is to lead readers out of themselves, and into an imaginative dimension that’s at once emotionally truthful and satisfyingly other.
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My interview with the Bath Novel Award The Petrified World and Other Tales
A collection of short stories edited by Martin Pond (includes excerpt from my novel, Out of Nowhere). Rejections and editorial suggestions: Faber's secrets revealed - and encouragement for all submitting novelists:
William Golding to Faber & Faber, 14 September 1953 I send you the typescript of my novel Strangers from Within which might be defined as an allegorical interpretation of a stock situation. I hope you will feel able to publish it. The Faber reader had already taken a look. Her comments were handwritten across the top left-hand corner of the covering letter: “Absurd & uninteresting fantasy about the explosion of an atom bomb on the colonies. A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless. Reject.” With nothing else to read on the train, Monteith carried on beyond that “rubbish and dull” first chapter, to find something much more interesting. Belinda Bauer article on how she got started as a novelist, writing in a genre and breaking the rules, and the 2018 Booker longlist
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Making a Scene - a twelve-week online course
Have you always wanted to work on a movie script? Are you curious about how film scenes draw you in and make you want to keep on watching? Join award-winning author and creative writing tutor Ian Nettleton for a twelve-week online course, Making a Scene: How to Write a Successful Film Scene.You’ll discover the essential techniques and devices for writing a successful screenplay. All you’ll need is a love of film and the enthusiasm to learn how to write one great scene. Course starts Monday 15 April for 12 weeks Online Early bird price offer available now. Find out more and how to book https://reelconnections.co.uk/making-a-scene/ Part of The Reel Connections Learning Hub programme. Flash Fiction links:
Tin House Flash Fiction to read: Flash Fridays 21 Flash Fiction Stories to Read (includes one by George Saunders): BookRiot Splonk: Flash Fiction e-zine. This is an Irish publication, but they are happy to take international submissions. |
The eeriness of the English countryside - how M. R. James continues to haunt us: Guardian article: 'James’s influence, or his example, has rarely been more strongly with us than now. For there is presently apparent, across what might broadly be called landscape culture, a fascination with these Jamesian ideas of unsettlement and displacement. In music, literature, art, film and photography, as well as in new and hybrid forms and media, the English eerie is on the rise.'
National Centre for Writing on BBC Look East - online writing courses, including my science fiction course: link here (16 mins and 28 seconds into programme)
Slow reading and its rewards - Guardian article: 'Slow reading is a gradual encounter with the obdurate otherness of another person’s mind. Like any such encounter, it should take as long as it takes and be its own end.'
Phoebe Morgan on how to boost your book: What authors can do for themselves
Val McDermid audio on crime fiction:‘I don’t think crime writing is about murder at all’
Article in tandem to my science fiction online course: seven links to Science Fiction in Norfolk and Suffolk - EDP article
The 2018 Booker shortlist
So you want to be a writer? Advice for aspiring writers
Our Man in Greeneland - BBC radio fifteen minute programmes from locations in Graham Greene novels
Roald Dahl interview in 1982 from the BBC Archive
Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell - an essay in pictures on why we need libraries - Guardian Article:
'Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.'
'Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.'
Philip Pullman: Why we believe in magic Guardian Article:
'Reason is the wrong tool. Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet'.
'Reason is the wrong tool. Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet'.
What Makes a True Thriller? Crime Reads
Tales from the frontier, from Australia to outer space: ten novels that use a border for dramatic purposes
Directors Series Open Culture: Studies on Kubrik, the Coens etc.
Book sales up but author pay down. Guardian article
The Guardian best 100 novels written in English
Kit de Waal on cultural appropriation: '...when we become the other we need always to act with respect and recognise the value of what we discover, show by our attitudes and our acknowledgements that we aren’t just appropriating but are seeking to understand.' Irish Times article
Interview with Margaret Atwood - from the new National Centre for Writing, Norwich
'A tortured road to self-knowledge' - James Ellroy on what drives his fiction. And while it's fascinating, I would disagree with this man. Worth watching.
Queer Friendship and the Psychological Thriller article
'I think the most important thing is to write what you want to write, because you see or feel something you want the reader to see or feel, too. That will come across to the reader...I don’t think it’s something that can be manufactured.' Writer Helen Rye - winner of Bath Flash Fiction and Reflex Fiction Prize - SmokeLong interview
'Art is made by those who consider themselves to have failed at whatever isn't art.' Howard Jacobson Seven writers on failure: falling short
Curtis Brown Creative writing challenges
Great interview with Abi Morgan on Desert Island Discs
Creative Writing Competitions c/o Almond Press
Entanglement by Katy Mahood is out in March 2018. Here are her five things she learned about writing a book
February 2018 poetry competitions thanks to Angela T Carr
Iain Banks being interviewed by Derek Neale
How did I go so long? Cormac McCarthy on punctuation
Jon McGregor on writing in the Guardian Review
Interesting article on the history of science fiction
The house where Frankenstein was born. Mary Shelley's own words on how the novel came to her. BBC arts
Ten tips for writing a psychological thriller - Angela Clarke
Ten women who changed science fiction - BBCiplayer
Susan Hill on writing The Woman in Black - Guardian Book Club
Write every day and treat it like work - M G Leonard's
(author of Beetle Boy) advice on how to write a novel
(author of Beetle Boy) advice on how to write a novel
Writing competitions - curated by Almond Press
Phoebe Morgan - author and editor - on the submission process
James Salter interview on his final novel, All That Is
George Saunders interviews Jon McGregor in The Paris Review
A brilliant emag of flash fiction: Smokelong Quarterly
“I cannot think of a screenplay as a literary form,
it is basically a blueprint. You are simply laying
down the possibilities for other people.”
Ian McEwan on writing for the page and screen
it is basically a blueprint. You are simply laying
down the possibilities for other people.”
Ian McEwan on writing for the page and screen
'The author, for four weeks, gave himself the freedom to be terrible--
and now he has a Nobel Prize to show for it'.
Kazuo Ishiguro on writing a novel in a month.
and now he has a Nobel Prize to show for it'.
Kazuo Ishiguro on writing a novel in a month.
A new novel by Julia Sutton, A Sea of Straw, described
in Sunday Book Review:
'Julia Sutton’s debut novel is a gem. The author, also an artist,
paints a word portrait with gorgeous yet earthy language,
evoking a time and place long past, but still within reach'.
in Sunday Book Review:
'Julia Sutton’s debut novel is a gem. The author, also an artist,
paints a word portrait with gorgeous yet earthy language,
evoking a time and place long past, but still within reach'.
Author details:
PhD thesis: You can access this for free. The title is The Last Train Out of Here and
The Landscape of the Great Wrong Place:
the English Metaphysical Thriller in the 30s and 40s
(EThOS ID: 268489). Register to log in here
The Landscape of the Great Wrong Place:
the English Metaphysical Thriller in the 30s and 40s
(EThOS ID: 268489). Register to log in here
Teaching details:
I teach on the following courses:
National Centre for Writing
New courses in autumn 2018:
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AMAZING TALES
An Introduction to Writing Science Fiction |
Open University
Videos:
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A short video about avoiding
sentiment when writing emotive material.Includes a drawing of a rabbit. |
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A reading from an early draft
of The Last Migration at Norwich Arts Centre. |
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Scrivener tutorial - it only takes ten
minutes to learn the basics. A brilliant tool for organising a novel. |