I spent years mistaking a fear of failure for writer’s block. I’d get twenty-thousand words or so into a draft, and have no idea what came next. It got...
Give your characters real problems, and let them make big mistakes. Not a Hollywoodish simulacrum of a problem, which are fixed by being brave, honest and nice enough. Pose...
A screenwriter friend of mine once gave me an invaluable writing tip that I find myself using for every story I write, be it short-form or long. If you...
Beginnings are hard. The blizzard-white emptiness of the page in front of you, the empty document with the patiently waiting cursor: they can conspire to give you such awful vertigo...
Best book you’ve read… don’t overthink it A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel. What’s a book you pretend to have read but have never finished? The Iliad (and the...
NaNoWriMo. An acronym to either strike fear or send a surge of excitement through the heart of any creative writer. NaNoWriMo, or to give its full title ‘National Novel Writing...
Anna is our very first full time bookseller at Rare Birds Book Shop, you may have met her if you have been in. She has 15 years of bookselling experience...
