Blog
Lessons Learned
Englang Books is 30 years old this month. Gulp. Hard to believe I’ve been a writer/publisher for three decades. To mark the occasion, and to help others avoid the mistakes I have made over the years, I have compiled two lists: Seven Lessons Learned as a Writer, and...
Love The Contradiction (2)
Love The Contradiction (2): Can Killers Be Softies? The aloe vera tale in Part One is a classic case of a contradiction that we can all learn from. Two extreme, contradictory claims are made. On closer examination, we find that both claims, in watered-down form,...
Love The Contradiction (1)
Love the contradiction: (1) Aloe Vera [The blog has lain dormant for several months; it’s too complicated to explain why. Now we’re back.] This article is in two parts, the first of which appears to have no connection with writing. Bear with me; when you get to Part...
What Every Writer Should Know About The Passive
I feel a rant coming on. It starts in the solar plexus, migrates to the gullet, and zooms north to splurge over the keyboard. What has spawned today’s rant is the stream of ill-considered advice to writers about avoiding the passive voice. But let’s begin at the...
Learning from Short Stories
Poetic Republic does a Phoenix. In November 2017, in a blog entry entitled, “Writing and Judging Short Stories”, I extolled the virtues of a short story competition run by Poetic Republic in Manchester. For those who haven’t read it, here’s a brief resumé: The...
Think Niche
The purpose of this article is to encourage you, my fellow writers, to consider writing for a second audience – one that is distinct from your present audience. Why would I dare to suggest such a thing? Firstly, because you might enjoy it as much as you enjoy your...
Writing and Judging Short Stories
The fruits of your loins and your brains Short stories are like children: You sweat buckets trying to produce one, and when it’s there, you’re not sure what to do with it. Mercifully, the options for short stories are limited. Maybe you write to entertain friends and...
When is a “cliché” not a cliché?
Hands up all those who have been told to avoid clichés. Everyone? Very good. Now, hands up all those who were given a definition of “cliché” at the time. No one? Oh dear. So how can we avoid something if we’re not sure what it is? We all think we know what a cliché...
Figures of Speech
Figures of speech are literary devices which writers use to spice up their work. They add colour, heighten an effect, paint a picture more vividly, and – we hope – sometimes bring a smile to readers’ lips. Nearly all writers use similes and metaphors, but how many of...
Why Does Grammar Matter?
Before answering the question, I should explain the background. At the end of 2016, I was asked to run a short course at Swanwick on grammar. Since this is such a vast area, I decided to concentrate during the Swanwick course on error analysis. That meant examining...
Alpha Readers, Beta readers, Albie Readers and more
This article is about checkers. Everybody needs them, from the first-time storyteller to the seasoned novelist. There is a bewildering array of labels for those who check others’ writing. I offer simplified definitions below. Imagine boiling carrot soup in a non-stick...
Books, chapters, paragraphs, words: guidelines on length
Books There are no hard-and-fast rules, but it pays to listen to those who have spent years in the industry. To arrive at the definitions below, I conflated opinions from two sources: Standout Books and an article by Chuck Sambuchino. Links are at the end....
NaNoWriMo – Is it for you?
It’s the last week in October, and many writers’ thoughts are inevitably turning to the annual novel-writing event, NaNoWriMo. What started as a modest venture in San Francisco Bay in 1999 with 21 participants has grown into a global phenomenon with millions...
Six Tips for Aspiring Writers
Six Tips for Aspiring Writers First, let’s be clear what this list is based on. My three years of writing fiction have produced one novel and a dozen short stories – highly enjoyable and illuminating, but hardly enough to qualify me to hand out advice. However,...
Do Not Go Gently Into That Adverb Denial
Do Not Go Gently Into That Adverb Denial Adverbs are about as popular as flatulence on your honeymoon. As aspiring writers, we are told to “avoid adverbs” or “avoid –ly words”. Oh dear. At least 30 –ly words are adjectives, not adverbs: likely, ghastly,...
Tag Verbs in Dialogues
Diz, the English teacher, handed me back my homework. He’d underlined “she said” ten times in red. He peered at me over his glasses. “Look, Parkes, we know she said it. If she had two lips, a tongue, and half-decent vocal cords, of course she said it. We want to know...
How my writing career began by accident
Welcome to my blog and thanks for stopping by. I won’t just be blogging about writing but about English Language, travel (especially Cuba and New Zealand), art, justice and injustice, and much more. This first blog tells how my writing career began by accident. ...