Tag: writing

  • Editors talk about editing: Constance Hale

    We start 2025 with a series of posts from ‘Editors Talk about Editing’, on the 10th anniversary of publication. The book brought together, for the first time, interviews with top editing practitioners. The first extract is from freelance book editor Constance Hale.

  • Publishing and the university

    Every year, at the London Book Fair, there are dozens of fascinating talks. But in 2013 there didn’t seem to be any talks about the university’s place in publishing. So I proposed one.

  • The muscular strength that it gave to my jaw

    My father was a sharp-witted, well read man who dropped out of a teaching job at Rutgers to support a growing family. Even in unpromising conditions, however, his learning instinct remained.

  • Synchronised fires

    In a Leipzig teaching exchange, I asked the class to respond to the writing prompt, ‘Things my father or mother never told me’. But this standard exercise has another dimension in a country where half the population was once spying on the other half.

  • Slow publishing

    A round-up of examples where people make the case for the luxury of time and reflection in a speedy world, and the importance of providing value in publishing: to offer something worth buying and keeping.

  • Knowing what you don’t know

    Creativity is about acting as a shaping consciousness. There is beauty and pleasure if the story leaves spaces for the imagination, and asks questions about what the writer does and does not know.

  • Write a book and get a degree

    For people working on a book, an MA in Creative Writing is something to consider. It provides a structure, deadlines, support and feedback; the kind of sustained professional help that is hard to find.

  • Facts and feelings

    When President Obama sacked General Stanley McChrystal in June because of the military man’s indiscretions, no one was thinking very much about the literary implications.