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Out of Winter – a booklet of haiku

33 haiku with illustrations Out of Winter is a little concertina booklet that collects 33 illustrated haiku I made as part of a daily walking and writing practice. All of the creative work was done on the spot and in the moment. My brilliant mate Michael Gough turned them into this beautiful booklet. I like …

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Posted byadminJanuary 23, 2023January 23, 2023Posted inUncategorized

Inspiration and new projects

I’m featured in the Dark Angels newsletter this week, answering questions about what I’m up to, what inspires me, what advice I have – that sort of thing…. 1. Tell us about something you’re working on right now. During lockdown I worked on a daily process of cutting up client drafts and recycling the words …

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Posted byadminJune 13, 2022Posted inUncategorized

The Writing Sutra

I wrote a thing recently about myself as the gardener of my own creativity. The first draft was rather too earnest. With tongue gently in cheek, it became a fruitful metaphor… Imagine that your writing practice is a garden, and you are the gardener. You plant seeds, see what grows, do a bit of weeding, give …

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Posted byadminApril 4, 2022Posted inUncategorized

Creating a virtual community

Howard Rheingold published The Virtual Community in 1994. The internet then was about email listservs and dial-in message boards. Facebook was a decade away. The blurb on the back says, “All over the world, people who have never met before are sharing information… and forming electronic communities, based on mutual interest rather than mere geography. …

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Posted byadminSeptember 9, 2020Posted inUncategorized

How to make anything astonishing

I’ve been away and now I’m back. Whenever I go on holiday, the first things I pack are a notebook and pen. This time I also packed a sketch pad, some charcoal pencils, two oil pastels, an ink brush, various other art-making implements, and a camera. They were all left unused in my suitcase. Actually, …

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Posted byadminJuly 29, 2020July 29, 2020Posted inUncategorized

Looking for inspiration. Found this.

I’m working on a new writing project for 26 and the Bloomsbury Festival. The brief is wonderfully – and worryingly – wide. I’ve been allocated one square mile of London’s Bloomsbury district; I need to write something inspired by it. Max 500 words in any form, plus a haiku. The idea was that I’d wander around, …

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Posted byadminJuly 15, 2020Posted inUncategorized

Writing: four noble truths

Sitting at my desk at the end of a busy day. I’ve had too much client work to get through lately, but now I feel like I’ve got a bit more space. One thing that’s fallen by the wayside is my daily experiment with Mary Oliver’s instructions for living: pay attention, be astonished, tell about …

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Posted byadminJuly 14, 2020Posted inUncategorized1 Comment on Writing: four noble truths

Learning and failure

I’ve become a bit obsessive about figure drawing over the last few days. I tried my first life class last week, on Zoom, and I’ve spent hours sketching away since then. When I’m doing it, I forget everything else. I haven’t been thinking about whether my efforts were any ‘good’ or not. That didn’t matter. …

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Posted byadminJuly 9, 2020July 9, 2020Posted inUncategorized

Familiar yet strange

Today I went to a cafe for the first time in three months. A tentative step back into the life I used to live. Or is it forwards into the new? Something as simple as ordering a flat white felt strangely exotic; paying for something I can make myself at home felt wonderfully indulgent. But …

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Posted byadminJuly 8, 2020Posted inUncategorized

Testing boundaries

A gate with nothing either side of it. I suppose there would have been a fence here once, possibly a hedge. There’s no sign of it. Whatever was here must have been taken away a long time ago. But why did they leave the gate? Oddly, the gate itself looks reasonably new, and is in …

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Posted byadminJuly 5, 2020Posted inUncategorized

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Recent Posts

  • A time of baggy spaciousness
  • Out of Winter – a booklet of haiku
  • Inspiration and new projects
  • The Writing Sutra
  • Creating a virtual community
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