Over the last few weeks I have been taking on various projects which have eaten into my time and energy more than I had anticipated. As a result, I am not happy with the quality of some recent posts: I try to be informative and funny, but I am not convinced I am meeting either…
Write Like You Mean It 1
An erratic guide to consistent writing. Good writing is easy to describe but almost impossible to define. A significant part of this dichotomy is to be found in what some writers call 'the window': is the point of writing to show a beautiful world beyond the window ('clear glass') or is it to display the…
Writing a Hitchhiker’s Guide
Spoilers for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio and book series). That said, if you are worried about spoilers, it came out in the '70s! Get your act together! A very short time ago, a very short way from here - in astronomical terms - an author from an unfashionable clump of islands at…
Tinkering Time
Technology and I do not interface well. In fact, it is fair to say that material existence and I need to be supervised so that I do not accidentally come to harm. Much as I grouse about contemporary life, I would not have survived in the wild, or even a century ago, so no-one is…
Writing Strangely Familiar Things
Spoilers for Stranger Things (television series) seasons 1 - 2. On 15th July 2016, Netflix released the Duffer Brothers' Stranger Things (ST), a nostalgic love-letter to the '80s filled with concentrated fun and then ground down into an addictive substance and unleashed on the world, ensnaring an entire generation of unsuspecting viewers. Many fans resorted…
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe
We live at a time in which not only is language changing around us, but we can look back over the centuries of linguistic change that have informed the present. Despite all our recent achievements, to find the paragons of the written word we must look to the past. Unfortunately, what we find there can…
A Brief Hiatus
Due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be no blog this week. I hope that normal service will resume next Saturday.
Passive Activism
Thanks to Thematically Meandering for featuring my article about the passive voice. Follow this link for the original article and TM's own journey of discovery in the wacky world of words, as well as his reflections on the hard life of doctoral study. If, like me, you learnt to type in the 1990s or early…
Writing 40,000 Hammers
Spoilers for Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and derived media. The biggest fantasy here is that a sword will be of any use against... wait a minute...(Artist: Dan Scott - info for the artist's page greatly appreciated) In the last of the current series of fictional worlds we shall be examining the fantastic oddball that…
Writing Fantasy-hammer
Spoilers (maybe?) for the Warhammer Fantasy Battle franchise. The biggest fantasy here is that a sword will be of any use against a three-foot tall creature from the back of a fifteen-foot tall mount. Nottingham is famous for three things: Robin Hood, knife crime, and the headquarters of a cynical corporation preying upon the pliable…
Writing Worlds 