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Read about my journey into becoming a creative freelancer, interviews and reviews with great authors, and advice on writing and creative living.

If there's something you'd like advice on or a book you'd like me to take a look at, do get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.

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Sep 8, 2017
3 min

The Dangers of Over-Plotting

The results are in. After months of worrying over the impact the new English GCSE would have on our students, we’ve found that, thankfully, they’ve done about as well as we expected. Look a little closer, and you could see the particular issues this new system has thrown up. Unsurprisingly, in English Language, the question they struggled the most with was about structure. It works something like this: They get an unseen passage of a text, they have to respond to it. From int

Aug 30, 2017
3 min

Give Yourself Credit

I’ll be honest, it hasn’t been a great summer for the word count. Finding myself at the end of a mammoth edit for one novel and fiddling around with ideas for a new one has not exactly led to an outpouring of sentences. Always a bit of a ‘should-er,’ I find myself getting a little grumpy about this, feeling like a failure, why don’t I go back to the full-time day job, the same old doubting voice that threatens to topple me from my perch. In the spirit of the freakishly warm b

Aug 18, 2017
3 min

When Writing Seems Impossible

One of my favourite reactions to the question ‘why do you write’ came from Lisa McInerney when I saw her at the Emerald Street Literary Festival last year. She’d just won the Bailey’s Prize for fiction (you can see my thoughts on the book here), so she had reasons to be cheerful. Her answer was something along the lines of ‘I hate myself less when I’m writing than when I’m not.’ Having heard many replies from writers that made it sound like they leapt out of bed each morning,

Aug 11, 2017
4 min

Is Borrowing from Mythology Cheating?

When I was a student at University, I took a composition course. Bashing away at the keys of a piano in a quiet practice room (it was 11pm, I had homework due the following day), the impossibility of creating anything genuinely ‘new’ suddenly struck me. There they were, 8 little keys, with black ones in between. Surely there were only a certain number of combinations you could create with this limited palate? Listening to modern pop music (yes, I’m old) it would appear I was

Aug 1, 2017
2 min

Holiday Writing (does it work?)

I`m currently in an apartment on Miljet, a beautiful little island just off the coast of Croatia. This is the second week of a fantastic holiday that`s taken me from Sarajevo, through Mostar, down to Dubrovnik and finally here. So the question is — what effect does all that relaxation and enjoyment have on your writing? When packing, I`m never sure what to bring. I usually take along at least one draft of something so I can do some editing on planes, trains or buses (an ann

Jul 24, 2017
3 min

How Memory Can Help Your Writing

I distinctly remember, around the age of twenty, vowing that I wouldn’t be one of those people who stopped going clubbing. All of this nonsense about it being too loud, or too late, or too expensive, was something you would never hear from my mouth. I loved going out and drinking and dancing every week. Even an University it was important, but by the time I got into regular working hours it became imperative, a lifeline at the end of the working week. Fast forward many years,

Jul 17, 2017
2 min

Women Are Not A Minority

It’s a pretty important week for females and fantasy. The BBC have announced that the next Dr. Who is going to be a woman. For many, this is a very welcome change. For far too long, this genre has been almost completely dominated by white men. From Superman to Wolverine, Dr Who to Thor, the faces that are seen as saviours and heroes are all too often a variation on a theme, with hair colour and beard being the only factor of difference. With the last companion being black and

Jul 1, 2017
3 min

Windows – The View from my Writing Desk

Each time I’ve moved in the last five years, my writing desk has always gone next to a window. In four different houses, in four different boroughs of London, I’ve looked out over the street for inspiration, a quiet moment, or sometimes just to be nosey. I did try having it in another room in the last flat I lived in. Technically it was near a window, although it looked onto a wall. It was horrible. I felt closed in, shut off, unable to write anything. Thirty minutes was abou

Jun 26, 2017
4 min

Unplug – How to Step Back from the World

On a dog walk with my sister recently, she vented an uncomfortable but pertinent truth. Why is it, she asked me, as we trudged through a bracken-crusted wood, that people throw themselves into work, spending hours and hours doing things that make them stressed and unhappy? More than that, the proceeds of this treadmill of misery is all too often spent on going a holiday. Yes, there’s loads of adverts for them on the TV at the moment. Tranquil corners of the world where you ca

Jun 10, 2017
4 min

Uncertain Times – How Can We Embrace Uncertainty?

The only thing that’s sure at the moment in UK politics, despite claims to the contrary, is that it’s an incredibly uncertain time. Managing that feeling, embracing it even, is something you will have to get used to if you want to continue to write. Perhaps, something you’ll need to embrace in many aspects of life. During the fallout from the election result, you could track the progression of public reaction. Initially, exuberance. A shift in the status quo, a challenge to e

Jun 5, 2017
4 min

Lazy Writing

Here it is at last. A stretch of weather we can revel in. Sunny afternoons, barbecue smoke drifting over fences, parks littered with bodies half-dressed. And all that time in the evening. So how do you make it productive? Every year I get excited about how much free time I’ll have. You’d think, after ten years of teaching, I’d know better. After the trudge and then the scurry with exam classes, desperately cramming to make sure they are prepared, big gaps start appearing in y

May 30, 2017
1 min

Fragment #3 Close Proximity

The train arrives at that stop. The one where you used to live. With him. Evenings spent spreadeagled underneath him on the blue sofa, the rumble of the Underground passing below. Something felt rather than heard – a vibration in your skin. Social media clicks find him at stations, in fields, eating and drinking things, the new girl clamped under his armpit like a hot water bottle. Frizzy hair and sparkle-eyed. A dating profile in reverse. Green-spot tie gets on. That ruffle-

May 15, 2017
1 min

Wander #2

You can read my personal essay on ‘Identity’ in Wander Magazine issue 2. Buy your copy here: http://wandermagazine.co.uk/ #creativity #article #comment #literarymagazine #wandermagazine

May 15, 2017
1 min

Short Story – Chrysalis

You can see my latest short story in Pennyzine magazine here. Beautiful illustration by Sophie Page. #writing #women #description #prose #literature #creativity #shortstory

Apr 4, 2017
3 min

Not Writing

Recently, it’s felt like my life isn’t really my own. For various reasons, the usual things that fill up the gaps between work (and are the places where I feel my living really happens) have disappeared. Not to say that it’s all been bad. Much more time with family has made me appreciate them, and time spent looking after myself without piling on expectations can’t be a bad thing. It’s just been rather odd to face the lack of things I consider to be ‘progress.’ No drumming re

Feb 5, 2017
3 min

Making Creativity – How to Boost Your Creative Output

You can’t make creativity, but you can make cake. I have two days a week to write. Two glorious, empty, indulgent, frustrating days. Sometimes, the word count is high. My fingers are flying over the keys, I get to the end of it and bask in the glory of my beautiful sentences. Other times, I write pretty much nothing, then hastily dash out a blog, or do some Tweedecking (like DJing, but way less cool) in a desperate attempt to have something to show for an eight-hour stretch.

Jan 3, 2017
4 min

Books to Build a Person

In the middle bedroom of my mum’s house is a treasure trove. A collection of the books that me and my two sisters read when we were growing up. Oh, the adventures to be found. In one place is What-A-Mess, the Afghan hound who always ended up in a state, despite the purity of his breeding. In another is Mildred Hubble, the Worst Witch, who was perpetually disorganised, had her hair undone, was late for lessons, had her socks round her ankles and never quite got her spells righ

Dec 16, 2016
3 min

Taking Time Out – Retreat in Any Way You Can

December is upon us. While apparently the idea that time goes quicker as you get older is a myth (it’s just because you’ve seen more actual time, apparently) it still seems that the years are stacking up at a rate that I can’t quite keep up with. Every hour, day, week, month, I get to the end and sometimes it feels like all I have is a list of things I didn’t manage to do. People I didn’t see, projects I didn’t finish, marking I didn’t do, films I didn’t see, phone calls I di

Nov 11, 2016
3 min

Lessons from YA Books

Having read several dystopian novels lately (see my thoughts here) I decided to try a YA version, to see how they compared. I was pleasantly surprised. While I’m incredibly wary of genre-specific snobbery, I confess I am subject to a bit of it when it comes to the YA genre. The books that I’ve read tend to be trite, or the emotions overstated, or clichéd, or they simply dealt with an area of human experience that had lost resonance for me. In the case of The Giver, I not only

Oct 14, 2016
7 min

Short Story – The Fragrance of Blood

She lets the sun touch her through the window. Dips her head, past the dark line drawn on the table, sits her face into the sharp heat. Magnified warmth. It could be Ghana outside – thick orange dust, women piling yellow fruits. Amplify the squawk of a hedge-bird, it could be a gull – clawing its way into the sky, scissored feathers in glossy blue. She squints at the shaking strands of light shredded through the Volvic water bottle – a reflection of a swaggering pool, a shard

Sarah Scribbles

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