Friday, 30 May 2025

The Great American Novel: 15 books that define a nation

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Last time I wrote about what the Great American Novel is, where it came from and whether it was still needed or even possible. Everyone, inc...
Wednesday, 28 May 2025

What is the Great American Novel – and does it still matter?

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One of the questions I’m endlessly fascinated by when it comes to literature is The Great American Novel. It is so evocative, and carries su...
Wednesday, 21 May 2025

The fake summer reading list: AI, outrage, and the decline of trust

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This story is so wild. It started, as these things often do, with a list. A sunny-season tradition: the trusted newspaper summer reading lis...
Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Why Hemingway still matters

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This year will be sixty-three years since Ernest Hemingway took his own life. He was 61 and a towering presence in literature. His life was ...
Thursday, 15 May 2025

Whatever happened to Douglas Coupland?

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Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X didn’t just name a demographic—it captured a mindset. His fiction defined the detached, drifting, hype...
Thursday, 8 May 2025

The ADHD plot twist: making sense of ADHD as a writer

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This is something of a confession. Something I’ve never shared publicly. I’ve hesitated to say it even privately. Slightly embarrassed, I su...
Thursday, 1 May 2025

Why you should read Joan Didion and the best books to start with

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Joan Didion didn’t just write essays and novels, she rewired what prose could do. Her work is surgically precise and emotionally raw, offeri...
Friday, 25 April 2025

If you liked The Secret History, you’ll love these five dark, literary campus novels

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If you’re anything like me, finishing The Secret History leaves a strange kind of void. Donna Tartt’s literary debut is one of those once-i...
Sunday, 20 April 2025

How to write your novel in three drafts: the method that keeps you moving forward

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Writing a novel can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re trying to perfect every page as you go. But what if you didn’t have to get it ...
Wednesday, 16 April 2025

The writing struggle is real: how to beat procrastination and get the words down

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Revising this latest book has been tough – and that’s with an outline. The story is there, the chapters mapped out, but the act of sitting d...
Monday, 7 April 2025

When to break the rules of writing: how and why to Experiment

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There’s a point in every writer’s journey when you realise the rules, the ones you've been diligently following, are not commandments bu...
Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Joan Didion and the art of emotional precision: What writers can learn from her style

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Joan Didion never wasted a word. Her prose was as spare as it was surgical. It was a style that she forged as a journalist and later honed i...

The incredible shrinking novel: why short fiction is having a big moment

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In a world of content overload, time-poor readers are gravitating toward something they can actually finish: short novels. Once the preserve...
Saturday, 22 March 2025

The 'by zombies' test: how to spot (and fix) passive voice in your writing

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Ever feel like some of your sentences were written by zombies? If your writing sounds a bit lifeless or unclear, you might be falling into t...
Tuesday, 18 March 2025

The second draft survival guide: 10 tips on editing your novel

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Completing the first draft of your novel is a major achievement to celebrate. You’re already in the top 3% (97% of people who start writing ...
Thursday, 13 March 2025

AI’s growing ability to write creatively like us

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AI is no longer just generating dry, robotic text. It’s now writing compelling fiction. OpenAI’s latest model has demonstrated an ability to...
Wednesday, 12 March 2025

The art of the campus novel – what makes them work, and which are the best?

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Writing about Donna Tartt last week  and The Secret History got me thinking about the campus novel.   I’ve always been fascinated by this su...
Sunday, 9 March 2025

Crafting the perfect opening lines of a novel

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Do you need a killer opening line for your novel? Or is there an alternative way to draw readers in right from the start?  I'm slightly ...
Thursday, 6 March 2025

A guide to reading Joan Didion

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I’m a big fan of Joan Didion. I’ve read most of her published works, with her novel Play It As It Lays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and The...
Tuesday, 4 March 2025

Whatever happened to Donna Tartt?

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I found a box of books in the attic yesterday, and a signed copy of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch was buried there. I added it to the bookshel...
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