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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.

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May 27, 2020
5 min

Celebrating Amazing People #4

This post is inspired by the German astronomer Caroline Herschel. A breathing gap in half term so this one is a little more timely than the others! Something about her story created a pompous voice in my head that narrated her experience, which felt more suitable than reimagining her thoughts. If you have any suggestions for people I could use to inspire my fiction please let me know in the comments! Minding The Heavens Just imagine, they said; someone of that stature looking

Nov 15, 2017
2 min

How to have a Magical Time – Reading or Writing

We al love the idea of leaving the dreary hum of normality behind. Magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, call it what you like, almost everyone can think of an example that has transported them to a new world and made them come back to earth with something lingering in the back of their mind. Yet if you get them to explain the story, you’d think that it was the background world, the places and events that things happen in, that make them special. In fact, it’s very often

Jul 10, 2017
3 min

Why I’m Only Reading Books by Women

I’m trying to remember the last time I read a book by a man. Or, for that matter, the last time I watched something that didn’t have a female character in a dominant role. It seems that, perhaps unconsciously at first, I’m moving away from things created by men, or at least things that have a dominant male perspective. That might seem pretty reductive, to some. Surely only viewing the world through one lens is restrictive, no matter which one you choose? That would be true, i

Jun 16, 2017
4 min

The Glorious Heresies – Book Review

The Bailey’s Prize this year was recently won by the brilliant Naomi Alderman, with her book The Power (you can read my thoughts on that wonderful novel here). So I thought it was about time I caught up on last year’s winner, The Glorious Heresies, by Lisa McInerney. Everything about this book demands attention. The gaudy orange cover, the graffiti-style placing of the title and review quotes, everything is geared up to present you with a book that grabs you by the throat and

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

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

100 Voices Vol. 2

You can read my short story ‘Shout Out Loud’ in this anthology published by Centum: http://bit.ly/100VoicesV2 Exclusive discount code for blog readers: 100V2V84 #writing #description #prose #literature #shortstory

May 15, 2017
1 min

Fragment #2 Broken

The tang of it hit her as she walked out of the station. Vinegar sweet. Shards of glass next to the bench. Couldn’t quite make out the label – Pinot? Sauvignon Blanc? A scene of something here. A furious row and a hurled bottle. Gouges in someone’s skin. No blood though. Perhaps the quiet catastrophe of a slippery hand. The precious contents crashing to the ground. Fermented grapes and all that delicious oblivion seeping into the concrete, trickles of it meandering around fla

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 30, 2017
4 min

Power – Gender and Naomi Alderman’s Novel

In terms of power and control, it’s a scary time. Unity and strength seem to be giving way to individual gripes and complaints, people turned against each other to shout blame for the lives they’re not happy with. Unstable times lead to unlikely heroes. People currently in power are those that we wouldn’t have dreamed of electing or giving a voice to. Suddenly, a victory for a abusive right-wing president seems the ‘popular’ choice. Keeping the current UK government, the cham

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

Nov 5, 2016
3 min

When Revenge Goes Bad…

Frank Herbert offers us an insight into the darker side of human nature in The White Plague, an apocalyptic tale of revenge. The cover of the book is very apt – murky fog, a solitary figure, a town shrouded in obscurity. Even if the weather is fine, or we are indoors, this novel revels in the unknown. The words not said, agendas not revealed, or the problems or changes that might be lurking just around the corner. The message is clear: no-one is to be trusted. In Ireland, a m

Oct 22, 2016
4 min

Hag-Seed – Book Review

A new book by Margaret Atwood! Very exciting. I went along to her talk at the Southbank Centre (proper fan moment) and heard her discuss the book, her life, and her work. She is one interesting lady. She also has good shoes (silver!). There’s something incredibly refreshing about listening to someone like her talk. Intelligent, yes, talented, yes, but there is something fundamentally captivating about a person who is just so interested and passionate about the world. With so

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

Oct 10, 2016
3 min

The Perils of Being a Reader-Commuter

We’re all busy people. But, if you’re like me, then any space of time can be used as an excuse to read a few pages. From reading on the loo to spilling my lunchtime soup on a few pages (travesty), there’s always a way to get you ticking through your latest book. As a Londoner, I spend an inordinate amount of time on public transport. It’s bizarre. If someone had asked me, outside London, if I fancied meeting them somewhere that took me over an hour and involved three differen

Sep 30, 2016
4 min

We Are All Disordered

This month I started teaching AS Media Studies. What a treat. I’d forgotten the delights of delving into the signs and representations that we are bombarded with in daily life, and unpicking the institutions behind them, the messages they send us, and why. Of course, it can lead to a few rude awakenings. Poring over Lynx’s ‘ironic’ adverts depicting a scantily clad woman pulling a turkey out of the oven, it was clear that some of my students were already hyper-aware of the sk

Sep 26, 2016
3 min

Be Bold

Summarising a DeLillo novel is always a tricky task. Well, it’s about football, but also about nuclear war, but then it’s about power and masculinity, about language and the way we use it and are used by it. That’s summary of End Zone. Technically, it’s a novel about a kid called Gary Harkness who goes to play football on a college scholarship in Texas. Along the way, he meets a girl he likes, spends some time with football players (not sure they could be called friends) and

Sep 23, 2016
3 min

On Finishing a First Draft

It is done. I have typed the last word, finished the last scene, put my (relatively) new characters to bed. In celebration of this, I wanted to share some piece that I figured someone would have written about how great it was to have accomplished this. Alas, I was wrong. All of the posts I found revolved around what comes next. Where to go next, how to edit, all of that stuff that I was really hoping not to think about for a few weeks. I can understand the need to focus on im

Sarah Scribbles