About

I am a writer, currently working on a novel*.

I have an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, where I studied with Sir Andrew Motion, Jo Shapcott and Susanna Jones. (An extract of my work was published in Bedford Square 2.) I’ve also been on two Arvon retreats and been a member of writing groups both on- and off-line.

I wrote for a long time. Then I was not writing for a long time. Then I started writing again. I learned two things:

  1. Not writing is much worse than writing, even if writing is so difficult you do anything to avoid it, including, but not limited to, working a real job.
  2. The writing does the writing. If you’re not writing at all, then you never have any ideas.

Here’s the only advice you need:

Sit down and write. Write about not writing if you have nothing else to write about. Write about it until you have no option but to bloody well do some.

(*Or googling pre-revolutionary France, calculating how long I’d have to run to burn off a digestive, making another list (with checkboxes), fiddling with the thermostat, checking twitter, urgently online shopping for something or other. All possibilities.)

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