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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): 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) 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...