Nostalgia was once treated as a medical condition rather than an emotion. In 1688, Swiss physician Johannes Hofer used the term to describe the intense homesickness experienced by soldiers living far from home. Derived from the Greek nostos (return home) and algos (pain), it referred to a form of longing intense enough to produce physical… Continue reading Nostalgia: The Art of Remembering Wrong
Category: Tips & Resources
Tips & Resources features short, practical reads for writers. Craft Tools shares clear approaches to improve your writing. Career Tools offers straightforward guidance on publishing and professional paths. Quick, useful insights to support your creative and career growth.
The Crease Effect: Intimacy in Action Lines
In the midst of the third millennium’s chaos and apocalyptic predictions, the waitress serves my cappuccino and calls me ‘honey’. The café is small, peculiarly quaint: five tables and a slightly askew picture of the New York City skyline. The doorbell jingles and in walks the waitress’s partner, daffodils in hand and the certainty of… Continue reading The Crease Effect: Intimacy in Action Lines
The Cost of Being Creative: Fighting Class Exclusion in the Arts
The arts have a favourite myth: that creativity drifts as freely as a neighbour’s cannabis smoke, provided one endures a little aestheticised discomfort. It takes place in a charmingly decaying flat somewhere near the Thames, shared by five people, filled with second-hand furniture, mismatched mugs and at least one tote bag from a gallery opening.… Continue reading The Cost of Being Creative: Fighting Class Exclusion in the Arts
CRAFT TOOLS: Deus Ex Cista
One of the things I love most about writing poetry is the freedom offered its author. It’s said that poets see the world differently, which is why poetry can sometimes strike those more familiar with fiction or drama as challenging, even weird. I’m not sure if I believe in an essential point-of-view shared by all… Continue reading CRAFT TOOLS: Deus Ex Cista
CRAFT TOOLS: (Word) Clouds In My Coffee
In the recent film, Come See Me In The Good Light, a documentary about the life, art, and death of beloved poet Andrea Gibson, there’s a scene where Gibson talks about putting together their first book and how their publisher, exasperated, told them, “Andrea, all these poems have the same words rearranged in a… Continue reading CRAFT TOOLS: (Word) Clouds In My Coffee
Writing the Mind in Motion: Tips and Resources for Stream of Consciousness
Stream of consciousness is often described as the most intimate of literary techniques. It tries to capture the mind as it actually functions: layered, looping, distracted, luminous, contradictory. For writers it can feel liberating and disorienting at once. How do you capture the quicksilver movement of thought without losing the reader? How do you preserve… Continue reading Writing the Mind in Motion: Tips and Resources for Stream of Consciousness
Writing Tips – Free Indirect Discourse
Our characters always seem so lively in our heads, don’t they? As writers, we’re privy to their every thought, every reaction, every heartbeat. The problem is, how can we bring that level of intimacy to a reader so that our characters are just as real to them as they are to us? One of the… Continue reading Writing Tips – Free Indirect Discourse
Writing Tips – Show, Don’t Tell
“Don’t say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.” – C. S. Lewis I’m sure every writer has heard the phrase ‘show, don’t tell’ at some… Continue reading Writing Tips – Show, Don’t Tell
Researching and Writing Greek Mythology
My strongest memory from my time as a Classics student is of writing an essay on the various representations of a minor goddess in Ancient Greek vase paintings. I poured over all sorts of resources, studied images, essays, and even read an entire (albeit, rather short) book on the goddess herself. All for one five-page… Continue reading Researching and Writing Greek Mythology
Writing Tips – How to get unstuck from the writing process
*sighs* If only we could just transfer all the vibes and bits of ideas in our heads into our Word doc and magically have it arrange all the planning so all we have to do is write. And in correlation to what a friend of mine had said about how it is we don’t have… Continue reading Writing Tips – How to get unstuck from the writing process