Posts tagged writing advice

Learning from Derek Walcott: Bim Literary Festival, day one

Literary events 23 Comments

How often do you get to meet a Nobel Prize winner? That was my main rationale for going along to a Master Class with Derek Walcott yesterday – that and the prospect of seeing Earl Lovelace and Austin Clarke afterwards. The occasion was the inaugural Bim Literary Festival, a celebration of writers both from here in Barbados and elsewhere in the Caribbean. The event with Derek Walcott wasn’t quite what I’d expected. It turned out to be a workshop for poets, who had registered in advance and submitted manuscripts to be… Read More

“On Writing” by Stephen King

Reading 3 Comments

This is a book of two halves: part memoir, part writing advice. When I first read it, about ten years ago, I think I was so desperate for someone to tell me how to be a writer that I skipped all the memoir stuff and just went straight for the advice. The only part that I remembered was the advice to “write with the door shut”, i.e. not to show the work to anyone or even talk much about it while you’re working on the first draft. Later on, other… Read More