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Jack’s Blog

  • The Art of Writing No 11

    What I have found useful in developing plot lines is as follows. Given that in these blogs I crudely dichotomise writers into two camps, lego and clay, let me  look at how narratives are developed in each. Plot lines of the clay type writer are a little more mysterious than those of the lego. For… Know More

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  • The Art of Writing No 10

    Having a writer’s block is like having a terrible on-going organic ailment to the writer, particularly to the artist whose self-value is almost totally and inextricably tied up with the need to express himself or herself in words. How we live and how we die is a conundrum we try to solve (or evade) throughout… Know More

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  • The Art of Writing No 9

    How do you leave your writing each day? Have you a tendency to writer’s block? In Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance by Pirsig there is a great vignette in which a student is unable to write, set the task of describing a building. The teacher tells the student to focus on a… Know More

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  • The Art of Writing No 8

    What’s in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose. We are superstitious about names. Our personal histories are such that we attach significance to names for good or ill. We may scour books for the meaning of names before we register our children. We believe these names go back to antiquity and… Know More

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  • The Art of Writing No. 7

    Possibly one of the most irritating idiosyncrasies a reader has to put up with is the spattering overuse of he said, she said or replied, retorted, interjected and so on. I am not saying that they should not be used, far from it, but in dialogue they should be used initially to determine who is… Know More

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  • The Art of Writing No.6

    To give a narrative authenticity the reader should be able to locate himself or herself  in the environment in which the characters play out their dramas. Whether this is a vast landscape of forests, plains or deserts or whether it is it is the interior of a single room, it is as well to think… Know More

    Read more: The Art of Writing No.6

  • The Art of Writing No. 5

    In general when learning your craft, it is better to simplify your expression. Long sentences exacerbate difficulties in a reader’s cognition (particularly the young, brought up in byte-sized management of information). Paring down your words to the minimum a la Samuel Beckett, removing adjectives and erasing all repetitions of nouns, will inform you as to… Know More

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  • The Art of Writing No. 4

    So, you have written a gripping first sentence or two for the browsing buyer in the bookshop but books get published by publishers and that means sending the first three chapters and a synopsis of the plot of the book to an agent. Hardly any publishers are interested in looking at new work, even from… Know More

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  • The Act of Writing No. 3

    How do you start a novel? You know yourself that when you go into a bookshop you will pick up books, maybe look at the dust covers and, more likely than not, read the first paragraph of the first chapter. Then you will dump it unless something arrests you, something which is like the shard… Know More

    Read more: The Act of Writing No. 3

  • The Art of Writing No. 2

    Novelists of the clay kind may begin with a great first sentence, a single idea, something overheard, a personal itch or trauma – whatever – and it becomes like grit in the oyster forcing the imagination to create a pearl. Novelists of the lego kind like to gather a mass of data in which to… Know More

    Read more: The Art of Writing No. 2