Andrew Blackman
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"Being a writer"
Writing fiction is not really about making stuff up. It’s more about making sense of what you already have stored somewhere in your memory or subconscious, dusting it off, ordering it and making it intelligible to the rest of the world. The hope is that the things you write about will also resonate with other [...]
There are different types of writers. Some like to write and rewrite and rewrite endlessly, refining gradually, each draft a little more perfect than the last. I am not that type of writer. I am the type of writer who likes to get it right first time and then move on to the next thing. [...]
Came across a good little article in the LA Times on author self-promotion. It seems that a letter from Jack Kerouac has just turned up at a literary auction, and it bears an interesting quote:
I can just see the shabby literary man carrying a “bulging briefcase” rushing from one campus to another, one [...]
Hmm, this site seems to have been on autopilot for a while now. What’s going on? Well a few things.
First, summer. It’s a fleeting thing in England, and you have to grab every sunny day you can get. I’ve been outside a lot, enjoying London. Now that I’m starting to hunker down for the [...]
In most areas of technology, things have changed quite significantly since the year 2000. Look at the latest iPod next to an early MP3 player, for example. Or websites whizzing with Flash and Java and Ajax and all that, next to a basic HTML site designed for a 56k AOL dial-up connection. In my [...]
Just had a little blast from the future. With books being digitised and searchable on Google, will authors start writing books with their Google search ranking in mind? You know how these days there’s Search Engine Optimisation, where people try to design their blogs or websites so that they appear at the top of a [...]
I got a voucher recently for £75 of free advertising on Google Adwords. I wasn’t really planning to use it, because I think Adwords is quite expensive for someone like me. I don’t exactly do a “hard sell” on this website, so even if I get extra traffic, probably only a small percentage would actually [...]
All is well, despite the silence. I’ve been putting all my energy into winning a short story contest. With a £25,000 prize and a star-studded judging panel, I’m expecting the competition to be fierce. To win, I think I’ll have to write something better than anything I’ve written before.
The deadline is next [...]
Saw this interesting take on the body’s energy levels. At the moment I am working nights to supplement my writing income, so energy is something I always struggle with.
I generally don’t drink caffeine, but sometimes when I’m desperate to make quick progress I do. When I wrote the first draft of [...]
In my meanderings across the internet I just came across a great post on the nature of success and the influence of practice and external circumstances in achieving it. I’d recommend it – and also wanted to link to it for my own benefit so I can find it again! (am I the [...]
Recent Comments
- Kommunal ekosocialism | Svensson on “Social Ecology and Communalism” by Murray Bookchin
- Andrew Blackman on “Tail of the Blue Bird” by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
- Kwadwo on “Tail of the Blue Bird” by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
- Kwadwo on On the Holloway Road – free sample
- Andrew Blackman on “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
