Posted by on Nov 15, 2007 in good writing, Steve Vai, writing | 4 Comments

What has Steve Vai’s guitar playing got to do with a man trying to have sex with a bicycle? Well, to begin with, they were both drawn to my attention in the same week. The former, by my teenage son, the latter by blogger Steve Kane (http://.www.steve-kane.co.uk/blog/blog.htm) to whom I am indebted. As I began […]

Posted by on Oct 16, 2007 in inspiration, writing, writing as therapy | 4 Comments

The Taxi Driver Scenario People sometimes ask me how different life is, now I’ve become a writer – it’s a question I’ve never really known how to answer, perhaps because what (to most people) were the highlights of my former career: international travel, meeting politicans and business leaders, wearing Armani – didn’t thrill me that […]

Posted by on Nov 17, 2006 in editing, writing | One Comment

Why writers need editors It’s a funny thing, being an editor for a place that you also get published as a writer. Logically, it should help you produce such perfect prose that it doesn’t need the eye of another editor. After all, if you can spot all the problems and holes in the stories passed […]

Posted by on Nov 15, 2006 in editing, grammar, writing | 3 Comments

Erasure and eraser, entrance and enter There’s a weird thing that happens to writers who rely on computer based spelling assistance. They forget how to spell things. This week, editing for three different publications, I’ve come across the weirdest word confusions. ‘She scrubbed furiously with the erasure’ for example. Microsoft Word sees nothing wrong with […]