Posted inWriting Prompts
Writing and Wild Camping
Peter Bond / Wild camping by the River Torridon. Wikicommons Some of my strongest writing ideas come when I am out in the wild. They arrive while I walk through open hills,…
Posted inWriting Life
Can you write creatively in any situation?
John takes us through a less than successful attempt to make a YouTube video about writing creatively in any situation
Posted inWriting Life
The Artful Writer
My earliest blogs on the PENS site revolved around my hopes, dreams and aspirations for writing and selling books. As a way of fruitfully and enjoyably using time in my…
Posted inWriting Life
Chronology.
Gill discusses the pros and cons of writing a novel in or out of chronological sequence, with particular reference to Patrick Gales's A Perfectly Good Man.
Posted inWriting Life
Is writing a performance art?
For some, writing is a private affair; they write for their own pleasure. Others feel a need to be published. I do, and I did believe this was simply because…
Posted inWriting Life
What Counts as Writing?
Over the past forty plus years, I have been a lay preacher. In that time, I must have penned several hundred sermons. I am not claiming they were particularly good…
Posted inWriting Prompts
Ask your resident robot what to write?
While sitting here looking at the blank page, I was wondering what to write for my writing prompt article. My mind wasn't helping me come up with anything profound, or…
Posted inWriting Life
Was Dickens Right?
What makes us write? Is it for profit? Is it for peer recognition? Is it some deep-seated need to express ourselves in a medium more durable than conversation? Is it…
Posted inWriting Life
The Creative Writer’s ‘Zone of Proximal Development’
Think of a line. At one end of the line is the point at which you can only perform this skill, creative writing, if you're given maximum support - guidance,…
Posted inWriting Prompts
Stories that Almost Write Themselves
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently researching my genealogical roots, which mainly consist of English people emigrating to colonial America. I started this venture in 2017 and have…