Want to know how to capture your readers? Writing’s all about emotion – about the author transferring their own emotions to the page, and perhaps creating new emotions in the reader. It can be exhausting. As Hemingway once said, you sit down at the typewriter and bleed. The funny thing is, it’s true of non-fiction … More Essential writing skills: three steps to capturing your readers
Writers never finish learning how to write. ‘We are all apprentices’, Ernest Hemingway once said, ‘in a craft where no-one ever becomes a master.’ Too true. It is an endless learning curve. Steep at first – as novice writers realise how much they have to learn, take their first unsteady steps into that world. Later … More The greatest writing challenge of all
Welcome to the third post in a weekly series outlining some of the basic writing skills we need to get ahead in the business. I have long thought that writing is a lot like composing music. Even down to rhythm. One of the biggest parts of any writing style – of the mechanics of words – … More Essential writing skills: counting the beats
Welcome to the second post in a series exploring some of the mechanics of writing. Writing is one of those fields where everybody thinks they can do it –not because it’s easy, but because they don’t know enough about it to know how hard it actually is. The challenge is making the transition from those … More Essential writing skills: giving your sentences that rhythm and twist
It’s too easy these days to duplicate online material created by somebody else – and which is their intellectual property. Corporates have responded by lobbying western governments into making copying a crime that, certainly under New Zealand law, works on a ‘guilt by accusation’ basis, breaking one of the key precepts of western justice in the process. … More The ethics of copying authors’ stuff online
Last month, one of the three remaining indie booksellers in Wellington, New Zealand, closed down. Roy Parsons has been an icon for 60 years – combining books with music and a coffee shop. A winning combination. Until now. One reason for Parsons’ demise, reportedly, was the downturn in the CD market. But it’s indicative, too, of where … More Why we must re-conceptualise writing and book publishing
It’s less than two decades since computer swept typewriters away. Gone, like an old shoe, but not forgotten. The imagery of writing – of creative fiction, especially – still revolves around the old dieselpunk-era Smith Corona Portable or the Imperial upright. It’s easy to forget the lessons of typing too. Typing made revisions hard. I remember bashing … More Five steps to quality writing while invoking the lost art of typewriter
If you’re intending to self-publish – or supplying a picture to your publisher that might be used in a print edition, the three terms you’re most likely to hear are ‘bleed’, ‘CMYK and ‘resolution’. They sound suitably mysterious but – as always – there’s no particular secret to them. And they apply both to potential cover … More Unravelling the mystery of making book covers
One of the key lessons for writers – repeated endlessly by those who teach it – is keep it tight. Writing isn’t about word count – it’s about content. The right content. Any sentence that doesn’t move the content along is padding. Keep the focus. Drop those adjectives. If it’s fiction, does it move the … More How to write briefly, succinctly – and long
Writing isn’t something you can sit down and do without training. It only looks that way. I’ve noticed, of late, various posts and comments around the blog-o-sphere along the lines of ‘my book is good, because I got positive comments on Good Reads (or Amazon, or Smashwords), so why did an agent say it was … More Writing only looks easy. But it can be learned.
Matthew Wright 
You must be logged in to post a comment.