Find your motivation and boost your energy levels with these ancient tools and techniques. Every writer and artist has days where their drive dips or motivation flags a little, when instead of being filled with creative splendour, they find themselves creatively stuck, unable to express much less motivate that expression. If struggling to find that discipline or drive, attending […]
10 Quick Tips for Writing Fiction By Andrew Motion
Poetry | How Tired I Am, My Love By Nikka Ursula
9 Ways to Make Peace with the Inner Critic
No matter if your creative confidence sings from rooftops or hides in the darkest garret, rise above the rantings of your critical voice and make peace with your inner critic with these techniques. Speak Kindly to Yourself “Every time you judge yourself, you hurt yourself,” as Brazilian lyricist and novelist, Paulo Coelho once said, a statement that is true on many levels, and […]
Roddy Doyle’s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction
If you’ve never read any Roddy Doyle, you’re in for a treat. From the exquisite Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha to the more famous Commitments from The Barrytown Trilogy. Roddy has the ability to inhabit his characters so seamlessly that when I read The Woman Who Walked into Doors I was convinced the author was female. Then […]
Poetry | Sonnet XVII By Pablo Neruda
15 Ways to Fall in Love with Writing [All Over Again]
If your love for writing, much like our ebbing summer’s sky, has lost its glow, its colour, & warmth—try these tips to ensure you fall in love with writing again, no matter the weather outside. Just as we feel displaced as writers if we’re not writing, if we’re not regularly engaging with the act itself, if a specific story or […]
15 Writing Tips & Touchstones to Return to Each Time Your Momentum Slows or Stops
No matter how much you love a writing project — whether a novel, anthology of short fiction or poetry, memoir, screenplay, non-fiction book, series or course — sometimes after the initial buzz of inspiration and flurry of work, things shift. Maybe you hesitate because of doubt or that nagging feeling that what you’re doing is no good and that unease filters into your work.
Anne Enright’s Finest 10 Tips for Writing Fiction
In this humble offering before the next longer post, author Anne Enright, who was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for her novel, The Forgotten Waltz, and won the Man Booker Prize for her novel, The Gathering, shares ten writing tips gleaned from her fiction writing […]
9 Potent Ways to Use Music to Enhance Your Writing
Amp up your creativity and your sounds with these nine ways to enhance your writing using music. Plato said that ‘music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything,’ while Nietzsche believed that a “life without music is a mistake.” Much like writing, it can transport us to a […]