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So there was this Creative Writing MA. Actually there was that MA, and then there was this MA. What I did. Two in a row, for complicated reasons. And I loved...

Jeanette Winterson and the Zombies of...

On Monday 11 November 2013 Jeanette Winterson was interviewed by Andrew Marr on Radio 4’s Start the Week programme. She spoke about a kind of zombie-dom whic...

Your leased future

I mentioned a while back that I’ll be folding my Bookshape blog into this one over the coming weeks. This is my first new Bookshape post. Two articles about...

Analysing Boojum

I’m primarily working on a novel at the moment, but I’m also increasingly interested in the form and structure of the short story . I’ve taken to reading and...

Day jobs and writing

Well, it’s been a month since my ten days of blogging. Am I rested? Well not really, because I’ve spent the time catching up with all sorts of writing and da...

Day 10 (Day 10)

It’s day 10 of my solo Back to Blogging Challenge. Whew. As soon as you commit to something it’s guaranteed that everything else in your life will go crazy....

Friday check in (Day 9)

Today I hit a writing wall. It’s not so much a block as a realisation that I could go on indefinitely in my current direction because I like to describe the ...

Ancient sports days (Day 8)

Somehow the sports gene passed me by. It’s not that I don’t like exercise — I have to run at least every other day, or I feel even more crabby and irritable ...

From the craft books: Premise (Day 7)

“So, what’s it about?” This can be a strangely perplexing question when you’re sunk deep in the writing process. Sometimes the only answer available to me i...

Just generally checking in (Day 5)

No article or story for today’s Back to Blogging challenge post. More of a check in, really. It’s hot here in the UK, and various freelance issues overtook ...

Flash fiction: Companion Animal (Day 4)

Neil Gaiman guest edited the the Guardian Book Site a couple of weeks ago and set a challenge: write a super short story that begins with: It wasn’t just th...

You are about to read this post (day 3)

You are about to read a blog post about second person narrative address. The very phrase makes your eyes heavy and you wander to your bed and have a little l...

Tragedy and Celebrity (Day 2)

The Guardian reported yesterday on a speech by Frank Cottrell Boyce (winner of the 2012 Guardian children’s fiction prize and Professor of Reading at Liverpo...

Caution and the Back to Blogging Chal...

On Monday 5 November 2012 I wrote this in a file named ‘InflableInk-blog’: “I get into a spiral around blogging. The less I do, the less I do.. It’s a bi...

UEA flash anthology 23 Small Good Thi...

I have a story in the flash fiction anthology 23 Small Good Things. The book was the project of UEA Creative Writing MA student Lauren Rose. The stories were...

Outlining on the mind

I love the way the internet ripples. I’m not sure if a post on a topic in one blog prompts another, or a mysterious primal force drives people to discuss the...

This is water – David Foster Wallace

I came across this fantastic short film at Go Into The Story (embedded below). It is called This Is Water and it provides visuals for an extract of David Fos...

New blog: Book Shape

Given how often I’ve been posting here recently, I’m sure you can understand my need to start a new blog. In fact the reasons for the new blog and for my com...

Novel thoughts about Cloud Atlas

The stories of Cloud Atlas are accessibly written. They are, to use a pejorative term, readable. Each is a complete, albeit interrupted, tale and can be read...

A story about the last time a pope ab...

In 1294 Pope Celestine V abdicated after just five months on the job. The real story, which doesn’t end happily, is worth reading on Wikipedia. It is also re...

SF and prediction

Last week I happened on an interesting Guardian blog piece by Jenny Rohn that discussed speculative fiction that ‘gets it wrong’. So I reflex-posted to Faceb...

Presently tense

I was going to call this post Present Tension.. but then I noticed an article by John August that has already taken the name. Drats. But with good reason, it...

Philip Roth is not Manny Stain

So it seems Philip Roth isn’t on Twitter (via The Millions). His ‘official’ Twitter account is a fake.

A poem for a theatre’s accounts depar...

Yesterday was Poetry Day. My partner is Finance Director of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, and she wanted a poem for the organisation’s internal newsl...

Am I back?

Ahem. Should have been writing today. Did a bit of surfing. So anyway. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading today (a lot of them courtesy of Poets ...

1 thing I learned this week: somethin...

I have a deadline this week, and my future-space-sex-bot-love-story won’t write itself. So I’ve not learned much this week, apart maybe from those near invis...

7 things I learned this week: Thatche...

Here we go again. Oh damn, and it’s gone wrong already. I was all set to reaffirm my 90s preference for Blur (posh boys with talent) over Oasis (working cla...

7 things I learned this week. Languag...

I spend a lot of time studying and researching. And, let’s face it, a lot of the rest of my time idly clicking from link to link to link. I come across many ...

NaNoWriMo: When all else fails.. go m...

At the time of writing, my NaNoWriMo effort stands at 38500 words. So I’m in with a chance even though my plan fell apart like a wet pizza sometime into the ...

Flash fiction: Action Required

Over at Terribleminds Chuck Wendig laid down a flash fiction challenge inspired by Occupy Writers: a 1000 word story on corporate abuse – any genre. Mine was...

Larry Brooks’ story structure diagram

In preparation for NaNoWriMo, I have been reading Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. It’s a useful book, especially when it comes to pinning down story struc...

Mind the gap: Catherine Brady and the...

There is no shortage of books about literary criticism and critical theory. There are also plenty of popular how-to guides for writers. Poking about Blackw...

Those Guardian Masterclass article li...

Last weekend (Saturday 15 October) The Guardian gave away a free booklet: How to write fiction: A Guardian masterclass with the print edition of the newspape...

A little twitter catch up

I’ve been a tad slack on the Twitter front recently, but I like to keep a record of good writing links around. I still mine my old link round up articles w...

What I learned this week: tell fewer ...

This week my workshop piece received its treatment at the hands of tutor and my fellow students. The story survived the ordeal pretty well, considering the s...

9 steps to prep a story for workshop

It says something for how busy I’ve been that I found this ten day old piece in my queue, unedited and unposted. And that I have no recollection of having wr...

Tom and the unfeasibly large sandwich

My friend and fellow writer Tom described a meeting he attended yesterday for his day job. In fact, it was a call-in affair. While he was wandering a wind-sw...

Welcome to the new Inflatable Ink

Well it’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally got round to moving Inflatable Ink from its temporary home on Blogger to its own Wordpress theme. I have nothi...

Ten writing lessons from a book I did...

Last week I mined a book I hated for some positive lessons I might apply to my own writing. Incidentally, later the same week Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff undertoo...

Twitter round up – since 11 September...

Last week I took time out to compose some flash fiction, and pickings were light in any case, mainly because I’m still travelling. So here’s a round up of so...

Ten writing lessons from a book I did...

A few weeks ago I read a book I didn’t like. I didn’t like it so much I threw it away. From a distance. Quite hard. The next day, I fished it ...

Platform Campaign Flash Fiction Chall...

This is my entry for the Platform Campaign Flash Fiction challenge.. somewhat hurried to make deadline! Waiting. The door swung open. The receptionist had ...

Tweet round up – 27 August 2011 onward

I got diverted this week by the.. twitteriness.. of Twitter. It is, after all a social network. So as well as posting writing links, I found myself eng...

Time for some platform building

I’ve always had a difficult time with networking and marketing. I’m at my happiest building websites, and applications and stories, and at my worst put...

Tweet round up – 20 August 2011 onward

Another post from another airport. This time it’s Toulouse. A quick word to the wise. Don’t look for coffee after 9pm in Toulouse Airport once you get ...

Some Flashback Thoughts

When I describe a plot I tend to talk about a succession of events. Something happens first. And then something else happens. A character works to achie...

Where’s Inflatable?

In case you’re were wondering, Inflatable Ink is not dead. It’s just pining for the fjords very very quiet right now. In fact I’m working on a new ver...

Booookalanche!

I have been preparing for something of a new start recently, and what better way to mark that than getting the study painted? When it...

Il faut cultiver son jardin

If I can be Candide with you… If you wondered what’s been happening chez inflatable over the last three weeks or so (is it really that long? apparently so)....

An exercise in voice

Here’s an exercise courtesy of the Introduction to Playwriting course that will probably be powering many of my posts in the coming weeks. This is best under...

Ask it twice (in transit)

I’m somewhere over the Atlantic as I write this, near Reykjavik in fact. Which I guess shows that I do occasionally work on planes, even though the passenger...

Conflicted about editing

I’ve been working to combine various drafts into a single good one over the last few weeks, and I’ve found myself strangely reluctant to use old work. ...

Make it matter

Over a year ago and in another country, I printed the phrase make it matter on a sheet of A4 paper and stuck it to my wall. I still have the sheet but I&#...

Notes From The Underground Anthology ...

My story Competence is part of the Notes from the Underground Anthology which is out today according to a Literary Lab post. (See? I do finish the occa...

Links and pondering hiatus

We went absent last week, sorry. Various real world events intervened in unavoidable and unforeseeable ways. As they do. Speaking of which, I’m on my o...

Fly this post to Cuba! A rant takes o...

This post started out on topic. I have a sheet of paper tacked to my wall. Over a year ago I printed a phrase on it, and then I stuck it to the wall.That wa...

Links: fluffers, hobbits, and cowboys

Another week, another round up. We have the usual helpful craft links this week, as well as some inevitable sex, some famous British writers courting contro...

Links: Fire in Cairo

This week’s been like living through the 1980s all over again, except that this time around we don’t have Reagan/Thatcher/Gorbachev, or Lech Wałęsa, or CND, ...

Links: libraries, underpants, and ali...

The links went AWOL last week for various good reasons, but the urge to surf can’t be repressed for long, so we’re back. Sorry if you missed us. Some politi...

Story sprawling? Try making it a cart...

The Story From Hell (TSFH) still bothers me. Though I’m on the road now, and I get very little done in hotel rooms for some reason. It’s not as if I do...

Links: About characters, mostly

As you’ll be aware, it’s been a bad week for Australia, Brazil and Sri Lanka, with heavy floods displacing millions and causing the deaths of many. Two of th...

How butchering your short story might...

My life has been captured by the story from hell. So wearying has this literary labor become, I had to pause to write another story late last year rat...

Skeletal links, late and tweety

Steph was hit by flu-like symptoms this weekend, so we had to skip our usual roundup. Sorry and all that, and get well soon Steph! The round up should be ba...

Why I won’t self-publish any time soon.

One of the reasons I disappeared under the radar recently was a deadline. Earlier this year, along with a bunch of other writers, I won a place in the Notes ...

Links: Another year, another planet

First it was Christmas, and I got lots of Christmas and birthday presents. Then not much happened. Then it was New Year. (My diary for this week, 1972) I’ll...

REPOST: Machines in your head: softwa...

This week I’m reposting some favourite Inflatable Ink pieces from the last year or so. Here’s the last.Oh yes, and Happy New Year! I hop...

REPOST: Embrace Your Inner Zombie

This week I’m reposting some favourite Inflatable Ink pieces from the last year or so. At a workshop recently the discussion turned, as it does, to our p...

REPOST: The ten minute writer

This week I’m reposting some favourite Inflatable Ink pieces from the last year or so. For some reason, the prospect of writing often fills me with mi...

Seasonal Links

These are seasonal links insofar as we’re in the festive season, and they’re links. We’re talking links in the season, not links of the season. Not that I’m...

Remember me? Here are some links

Hello Internet. It’s me, Matt. I’ve been off for a while battling deadlines and other nasties. Steph is in Spain and wearing a t-shirt. A t-shirt! Outside! ...

Links–and a Google e-bookstore review

The biggest online news this week has to be Google’s e-bookstore launch. Admittedly, this is bigger news in the US than it is anywhere else, but there are hu...

Links: No More NaNo!

So. Finally it’s over. Yay. Heartfelt congratulations to all the winners, heartfelt commiserations to all the rest, and praise be to God that there are nearl...

Links: Better late than never

Hundreds of people posted Thanksgiving cards et cetera online this week, which means that large chunks of America are more or less missing from the blogosphe...

Links: Sex and criticism (so just lik...

OK, so I put “sex” in a post title again. Ease off, though. At least let’s get the NaNoWriMo posts out of the way first. The bits of the www I’m monitoring ...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 5 – My garden’s...

The NaNo pep talks from OLL central and my local Municipal Liaison keep on arriving in my inbox. I have to say I prefer the local version; my ML was only a t...

The Backlash

And so everyone gets together and has big rolling party. A party in which the weirdest ideas become indistinguishable from truth. A party where the shifting ...

Links: Just a quickie

As we’re approaching the midpoint of NaNoWriMo 2010, naturally the blogosphere is crowded with it. And for much the same reason, I’m pushed for time! Notewor...

Note Share: Writing For Radio. A Prac...

by Annie Caulfield, Crowood 2009 Here in the UK, radio drama is alive and well, and living on the BBC. Thanks to the license fee, the BBC is able to subsidi...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 4 – The present...

They did warn us, all those nice writers who fill out the web, that signing up for NaNoWriMo could make for a stressful November. I really didn’t expect to ...

Magical thinking

The other day, I read Hilary Mantel’s diary of the time she spent in hospital fighting a life-threatening illness. That she was ill and in hospital is factua...

No links friday

Steph has had a difficult week of it, what with NaNo kicking off and various other trials — I’m sure she’ll bring you up to date on Tuesday next week, when s...

Vaguely Italian

I’m writing this from Rome, though when it will see the light of day is another matter. No doubt I’ll be somewhere else then. Maybe America. (UPDATE: yes, Am...

Fiction pattern: I’m so happy, SPLAT

Name I’m so happy, SPLAT Purpose With a nemesis on the way, raise the stakes by contrasting the encroaching danger with scenes of contentment and stability....

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 3 – Off to a sl...

It began, then. It began on my mother’s birthday. My mother, who was born itchy-footed, wanted to celebrate her day with a trip to the seaside–we both get ...

15 influences

This weekend, friend-of-inflatable Cheryl Ossola tagged me on Facebook. That makes me sound very social-networky, I realize, but there you are, that’s what h...

Links: Laughter, the Best Nanomedicine

Guess what? There were lots and lots and lots of posts about NaNoWriMo again. No, really. (Whimper. Please God make them all go away in November. Please? I p...

With ideas like these, you bet I’m pr...

The thing is, much as I’d like to attend your class, I must insist you first sign this NDA. Sorry? Really? Well that stands for Non Disclosure Agreement. I t...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 2 – What to wri...

What to write about, indeed? How does anyone decide what to write 50,000 words about? I suppose if I wanted to write something for publication I’d have plot...

Fiction Pattern: the payoff switcheroo

Name The payoff switcheroo Purpose With two characters each approaching crisis in a story, you can increase impact by unexpectedly substituting a second cha...

Keeping on

I have been climbing back out from a very bad week. Someone killed my cat, just ran him over and never stopped. We were out looking for him ...

Links By the Light of the Silvery Moon

Give or take the economic crisis and the newest data about the chemical composition of the Moon, NaNoWriMo seems to have been the hottest topic in the blogos...

No really, I’m going to finish this s...

I’m going to finish this story. Really I am. I’m on draft four and I suspect the next rewrite will do it. It will start to come together and really shine. An...

Obligatory NaNo advice post

I know everyone is peddling advice right now, but with my Inflatable Ink co-writer poised to throw herself into NaNoWriMo for the very first time I reckon I’...

NanoWriMo Diary: Week 1 – The best-la...

Signing your life (or at least, a chunk of it) away is all too easy these days. I signed up for NaNoWriMo for the first time on October 3rd–long ago enough t...

New Inflatable Ink schedule

I’ve been hinting at a few changes around here for a while now, and this is the week for it! We’re introducing three (count ’em.. three!) new weekly features...

Links: Roll on December

What a lot of NaNo advice there is to be had this week! Would anyone–anyone other than the advice-givers that is–mind so very much if I ignore most of it and...

Links: Prep and pep-talks

Is modern technology a boon to all, or is it the spawn of the Devil himself? The publishing industry really can’t seem to make up its collective mind either ...

Links: Banned in Republic – Shot in D...

It seems that anybody who is anybody–not to mention a few people who aren’t anybody at all–honoured the ALA Banned Books Week, one way or another. Even UK li...

Oh-so-late links

My secret is out. A slip of the little finger posted my title-free rough notes to this blog in the wee sma’ hours, meaning that–despite my super-fast middle ...

Links

I’m back from my travels, and it’s my turn to trawl the net for writing links. I’ve thrown in a couple of silly videos as well, in case your attention wander...

Links: Booker shortlist week

Matt’s on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic as I write, which is a bit unfortunate as everything in front of me appears to be UK-centric… well, maybe not e...

Links: Hotch-potch

As an unknown (to me) stand-up comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe said, “Life is more complicated than Dan Brown would have us believe.” Real life, transferred...

Links across the Pond

Matt’s on his way over to the States yet again, but mailed me a full round-up to post tonight. Naturally I’d already collected a few links I’d like to share ...

Face it. You will not work on the pla...

Tomorrow, I’m on the road again, and once again, I’m making lists. I’m working on my plan for the perfect packed bag. Last time I impressed myself by going a...

Links: Writerly Stuff. (Mostly.)

In the news this week: James Patterson named highest earning author; Jonathan Franzen on the cover of Time magazine; old-school critic Frank Kermode has died...

Hatching a fiction pattern: The Plot ...

About a hundred years ago I posted here about patterns in fiction. A quick recap: A pattern, then, is first a problem defined, and then a potential solut...

Linking a book together

Steph is in recovery after two punishing weeks of link trawling. So it’s my turn. Actually, I notice we’ve done nothing but links in recent weeks. I won’t bo...

Links: Sex, Lies and Photography

Another week flies by, and once again I’m wading through a torrential downpour of blog posts and articles in search of a recognisable trend. It̵...

Links we can fight about

Matt has been sending me links. We don’t always agree about… well, anything much, really, despite the fact that he’s allowed me to ...

Links from the other side

You may have noticed it has gone a little quiet around here in the last week or two. I’ve been in the States for my day job. That and various writin...

Pattern languages and fiction

In my last post I blathered about some similarities between software and fiction. Or something. If you made it through to the end you may have noticed ...

Machines in your head: software and f...

In another life, I’m a coder, and I write books about code. As I’ve become more serious about fiction in recent years, I’v...

Links from the Z-list

Welcome to the Z-list! It’s a bit of a secret round here now, but soon I’ll be launching the Z-list bloggers seminar. Z-list bloggers sometimes ramble...

Some links from the road

I’m on the road in Wales, and on a very dodgy mobile internet connection, so here are the links that grabbed me up until Thursday or so this week. The...

Get to a character’s core with this R...

There are many character questionnaires and exercises out there. I like to interview my characters when I’m stuck, and I have a list of questions I ...

A few links from a busy week

Jonathan Bate is the author of Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford — a one man play to be performed by Simon Callow. In the Guardian this week he wrote...

Runner up in BBC Writers’ Room play c...

Always the bridesmaid I may be, but once again, I’m more than delighted to have made it that far. Actually I’m kind of ecstatic. I heard about the Fiv...

Everyword: Rhetoric and language in t...

On Friday I attended the last workshop of Everyword. Jeanie O’Hare, the RSC’s Company Dramaturg, presented a session on rhetoric in drama. Rhetoric is ...

This week’s links

Another week, another round up. In the Observer Aleks Krotoski interviewed Cory Doctorow, and discussed his practice of publishing under the Creative ...

14 questions BBC readers will use to ...

The BBC Writers’ Room workshop at EVERYWORD was given by Paul Hardy. The BBC encourage unsolicited scripts. In fact 25% of their radio plays are writte...

Everyword at the Liverpool Everyman

I’ve been in Liverpool for three months now, and it’s about time I began to get involved in writers’ events. The Everyword new writing festival has bee...

A return to weekly writing links

A return to the round up this week. Though I’m going to try to editorialise a little less, and link a little more. Otherwise compilation will once agai...

How I learned to relax and enjoy a St...

I’m nine stories into StoryADay.org. A challenge to write a story a day in May. Actually, I haven’t written a single story. Unlike some of the challen...

hilobrow.com story posted and tech bo...

Further to my previous post, hilobrow.com have posted my microfiction attempt. The story was selected as one of three finalists in their recent competi...

Finalist in Hilobrow.com short fictio...

After my first attempt at microfiction back in February, I have found myself more and more interested in the form. Not because I believe that’s where I...

Nurse Jackie and the Oblique Pay Off

After a while it becomes second nature to work a scene, or at least a sequence of scenes, to a climax. I find myself thinking in those terms. Marshalli...

A Rebellious Character

My boy Ben had been through a bad few days, and he was feeling pretty low. What’s more it was all his fault. He’d not behaved well, he conceded, and he...

500 Words

I’m not blocked. I’m not sure I believe in being blocked. I’ve just been outside of writing for a while. Despite my 10 minute writer trick, something a...

A Moving Roundup

I’m still in the throes of my move, spreading my time between Cumbria and Liverpool. We’ve just moved into a temporary house with a suitcase each. I’m ...

Link Clear Out: All Merchandise As New

When I’m keeping up with roundups, I tend to hoard links, and even jot some notes as I go. Recently things got stupidly busy (moving continents, being ...

In Cumbria/The Do-Over

In Cumbria, UK having come via NYC, Philadelphia, Manchester, which is my excuse for the quiet around here. I’m missing America dreadfully already, but...

One more day for 250 word superhero s...

There’s a micro-fiction competition going on at hilobrow.com. The brief is to create a troubled or troubling superhero in 250 words or less. I should b...

Stripping down an SF story (Part 3)

I’m returning to this after a short break (sorry about that – turns out that preparing to relocate to another continent is something of a timesuck). I...

Stripping down an SF story (Part 2)

In the last post I summarized a story by Robert Reed by breaking it down into scenes. That seems a useful way to start, because at once we get a sense ...

Stripping down an SF story (Part 1)

For a while my submission policy has been completely crazy. It goes a little like this. I write a story. I make it as good as I can. Then I submit it....

An indolent roundup

Off to a slow start for 2010, unlike the rest of the writing community who seem to have leaped from the starting gate as if their tails are on fire. So...

Sympathy for the devil

I have spent the last week working on the same scene, and I have been finding it hard to lift it beyond the realm of cartoon. Admittedly my story is an...

Needed: a new time management strategy

I’ve just taken a sneaky extra couple of days off after the break. After being on the road on and off, and having children on a p...

Last round up of 2009. Happy New Year!

So after skipping one for Christmas, I thought I’d sneak one last round up in for 2009. As well as gleaning more tips and advice from the writing blogs...

Nail Your Novel review

I’ve been promising for a while to review Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris. With Christmas here I’ve actually found some time to catch up on a few of my promise...

Round up from the Grand Canyon

I have been in Las Vegas and at the Grand Canyon this week, so I’m late and sparse once again. Still, I managed to fit in some reading around my travel...

The lost post

I’m mourning a lost post. I’m in unlovely Las Vegas amidst the cigarette smoke and dead-eyed slot machine addicts. After an hour looking in vain for a ...

The round up, revised

This week I go mad for revision. First drafts are so last month! I drop in on Pratchett’s process and find him playing with orcs. I check out the 20 be...

Some things I try to consider when I ...

Last week I admitted my tendency to let the zombie writer in me take over. Embarrassing really since I’m such a fan of locking up...

A late round up

With NaNoWriMo just finished and a mountain of catch up still under way, the round up has been a little squeezed. Still, here’s a short check in on som...

Writing for the count, not the story

Yesterday I submitted a chapter to my workshop teacher. It was first draft stuff, so I didn’t worry about a micro-edit. We all ge...

Whew, Well that’s Done Then

I wrote 8000 words in two days. Two days that included driving from LA to San Francisco, and eight hours paying work. I finally made my weary way to the f...

Get NAIL YOUR NOVEL by Roz Morris for...

Well it had to happen. Despite overconfidence earlier in the month, I’m now right up against the NaNoWriMo deadline with many thousands of words still to wri...

Round Up from Behind

This week I’ve gone bad. I rail against bad blog conventions, and then refute my own point with a link to an excellent post that breaks my rules. Go m...

The Ten Minute Writer Meets NaNoWriMo

A while back I described a practice for productivity. I write in timed ten minute sessions. This may have something to do with my childhood love of TV ...

A Hostile Round Up

With half the writing community currently engaged in wordcount battles, there’s an appropriately combative note to this week’s round up. The structure ...

NaPoMoNoWriMo: Going Postmodern

Apparently there are some people out there are trying to write a novel in a month. Since they’re engaged in a project called National Novel Writing Mon...

Round Up Redux

This week NaNoWriMo just won’t stop being a thing people talk about, so I join in and pimp my own NaNoRelated offering. Finishing stuff turns out to be...

NaNoCalc: A NaNoWriMo Words-per-day C...

Here is my NaNoWriMo words-per-day calculator. If you’re reading this on my site (as opposed to RSS) and we’re still in November 2009 you should see th...

Round Up the Usual Suspects

More on editing and unediting the dead this week. How to maintain tension even when your cell phone makes everything too easy. A man gets his hair cut ...

NaNoReMo

There has been much excited gushing in the blogs recently about NanoWriMo. I did not realize until recently the extent to which NaNo has become a kind ...

Editing Big then Small

When I’m editing, I often get caught up in the nasty details of my writing. I’ll be reading through a paragraph and I’ll notice that I have fallen rep...

It’s not Revision. It’s Prevision

So after the writing mania of the last month of so, and before the forced march of NaNoWriMo it may be time to focus again on the editing process. Although I...

Deja Review

I may not have posted anything else since my last round up, but that didn’t stop me grazing the literary ruminations the internet has to offer. Which I guess...

A very long round up

I’ve been keeping an eye on bookish and writer-oriented sites for a while with a view to a weekly round up. This week, I’m kicking off with a bumper post, co...

Discipline and publish

I try to use most of the practices I have been researching and writing about here, at least until they hit the ‘it’s not for me’ pile. So it makes sense to d...

Theme and Foreshadowing

I attended a workshop last night. Every two weeks this group gets together to analyse two or three chapters submitted by members of the group. As usual...

Embrace your Inner Zombie

At a workshop recently the discussion turned, as it does, to our productivity. One participant bemoaned her own output. She needed to be in the right m...

Hello! How do you do?

This my the eleventh post. Now, according to the arbitrary rules I have set myself, I am allowed to say some things about this blog and about myself. F...

Where do you think you’re going?

Over at LifeHacker a recent post by Kevin Purdy relates perfectly to my 10 Minute Writer experience. Although anecdotal, some of the conclusions are si...

The spam machine

Vern Emery sounds to me like the kind of man who might drive a pocket Audi sports car. He’s cut and pressed in clean lines and he sits three inches fro...

Bzzzt! Ding! Write

I was discussing my ten minute technique with some friends last week. One of them asked whether it was hard to get into the right state of mind to write for...

The ten minute writer

For some reason, the prospect of writing often fills me with mild panic. It’s the way I want to spend my time, and I whine and I beg and I steal to get...

The Scene Book

When I was working on my first draft I jumped into a scene by starting to write. Then I watched with interest as a scene or a chapter took shape. Sometimes t...

Stripped down to gesture

I’m writing again. Covering about 1000 words a day. Of which I’ll probably throw away most. I allow myself to digress shamelessly, my dialogue stalls or gabb...

Please report to the transporter room

Have you ever been convinced you invented a term, only to find that it’s been in circulation for years? I received some constructive criticism today about my...

bookshape

Rolling links 2

Another catch up. I have been mostly tweeting recently, and keeping my own notes -- but I found myself looking up this archive recently for a submission, and...

Rolling link list.

I'm letting links get lost because I don't have time to write up pieces on them. That's stupid. So here is a list of pieces to which I'd like to return John...

Medieval marginalia compiled at Lapha...

Lapham's Quarterly presented, in image form, a selection of marginal notes made by Medieval scribes as they laboured to reproduce texts. My favourite is this...

Interactive and collaborative fiction...

In the Guardian, Alex Hearn reported on an interactive Twitter game named Wanderer. This is a typical choose your own adventure -- but with a mutliplayer ele...

Daniel Menaker on threatened gatekeep...

In The Slate writer and literary editor Daniel Menaker considered the traditional gatekeepers of the literary world. He discussed two conflicts: Amazon v Hac...

Book stalker

I am a book stalker. If I see you reading a book in a public place I just have to know what it is. Not knowing drives me mad. I might miss a train or a bus j...

Alison Baverstock on self-publishing ...

In the Guardian, self-publishing academic Dr. Alison Baverstock addressed some misapprehensions about DIY publishing. Partly this meant addressing general pr...

Work on the history of the book did n...

In the Guardian, Rick Gekoskiannounced that he is abandoning his attempt to write a history (or biography) of the book. I spent the last two years toiling aw...

io9 comment thread on the durability ...

io9 hosted an interesting discussion about the dogged persistence of print. Arguments included: Many people just prefer the sensual experience of print (tac...

Annotation sharing e-reader launched

Techcrunch reports on Glose a new app for Web and IOS which enhances e-book annotations. I can see myself highlighting a lot more content in Glose than in ot...

The gatekeeper problem – acknowledged...

From a piece at goodereader.com: So as a reader, how do you insure that you do not fall into the trap of unwittenly purchasing indie eBooks and only buy from...

What will the Hemingwrite be for?

There has been much buzz online recently about the prototype Hemingwrite typewriter . This is an internet-enabled device deliberately hamstrung so as to deny...

Oldish TTBOOK show on the future of r...

Wisconsin Public Radio's To the Best of Our Knowledge is almost always compelling. I used to listen to it on Sundays in San Francisco. Here in exile, I have ...

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row on crowd-fund...

BBC Radio 4's Front Row tonight featured an interesting segment on crowd-funding (mp3), with Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound) and Julian Gough (Kickstarter).

Digital present and future in the TLS

The Times Literary Supplement reviewed three books of particular relevance to this blog last week. The Edge of the Precipice, edited by Paul Socken, is colle...

Is Amazon evil?

The current raft of issues: Is Amazon a monopoly? (Probably not). Is it fixing to become one using a loss leader strategy? Is it strong-arming its suppliers ...

Fiction in an age of full disclosure

In an already much-linked piece in the New York Review of Books blog Tim Parks wrote about literature in a brightly lit world. If fiction has often been a me...

Behaving badly: authors and reviewers...

In a suspenseful piece in the Guardian about her relationship with a toxic anonymous reviewer, author Kathleen Hale touched upon some of the ways that author...

Writers and sheds in the Guardian

OK.. it's waay off topic. But I'm a writer of certain age so this little pictorial collection of writers' sheds in the Guardian really pushed my button. I me...

Two self-publishing stories

Publishers Weekly profiled Eileen Goudge this week. Goudge is an established traditionally-published author who, faced with falling sales and dissolving adva...

The Economist predicts e-book sales w...

Despite the recent reported slow down in e-book sales, in a nifty interactive infographic the Economist forecasts that sales will continue to rise nonetheles...

Write-Track - a wordcount-based write...

The Airship this week featured a profile of Write-Track, a wordcount app with an associated community. The piece is perhaps a little uncritical but the envir...

E-reader producer allegedly spies on ...

According to The Digital Reader, the producer in question is Adobe. Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and i...

The decline of the physical book slows

Electric Literature reports a Nielsen survey, that suggests the rise of the e-book has slowed: The fact that print is still the dominant format with 67% comb...

Will Self on the future of reading

Hello, I'm back by the way (long story). Will Self's article in the Guardian on Saturday was a fascinating tour of some of the issues that face writers, publ...

Fingerprinting e-books

At The Guardian James Bridle reports on a plan to automatically alter the text of digital books in order to foil piracy after the fact. This involves making ...

The Millions on Kindle Worlds

At The Millions Elizabeth Minkel has posted a new article on Kindle worlds. Like Scalzi, she is highly sceptical: The whole venture hints at broader question...

Amazon licenses fan fiction e-books

The Guardian reports that Amazon are launching a platform for fan fiction e-books. The deal provides revenue for both the original and the fan authors. Of co...

You own your device. Who owns your bo...

The thing about the ebook is that it empowers the reader, right? It may one day enable mash ups and guerilla edits, it already allows readers to reach out to...

Margaret Atwood’s Three Reason to Kee...

I got this embed (below) of Margaret Atwood talking about physical books versus ebooks from Biblioklept. Summary of Margaret's points The three reasons for k...

How book-shaped should books be?

I love the word skeuomorphic. Skew-O-Morphic. It sounds like a twisted kind of superpower. In fact, it means a design that resembles a material or technology...

Interactivity interupts immersion?

At the Observer, Anna Baddeley looked at an iPad version of The Thirty-Nine Steps. She concludes: I find interactivity exasperating. Prod, prod, prod to reve...

Hello

Hello. This is Book Shape. Anachronistic or not, I have to kick off with this book technology related sketch.

Write This Now

Character, Argument and Story Structure

Craig Mazin argues that main characters shape a satisfying plot by testing a central dramatic argument, not by following a rote story structure.

The Take Away: Cathy Yardley’s Writin...

To kick off our new strand, The Take Away, let’s take a look at an excellent piece over on Writer Unboxed in which Cathy Yardley describes her writing proces...

Site News: The Take Away

The Take Away is a new blog strand that builds on the Essential Craft Books series, but widens it to take in podcasts, articles, tweets, in fact anything t...

Essential Books: Story Maps: TV Drama

If you’re planning a TV pilot episode then this book, Story Maps: TV Drama. The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Danial P. Calvisi packs a far g...

Essential Books: The Last Draft

How do you get from a sloppy first (or second or third) draft to something approaching a publishable manuscript?

After the Draft #1 – Make a Master Map

After your first draft, let your manuscript breathe for a week or so then properly assess your work. You need to know where you truly are to determine where ...

Image of the Week #2

This might make a good prompt for the journey and for the people in the boat – their relationships, their stories. In truth, on a day of chill and rainy murk...

Image of the Week #1

When this image came up in my morning free write, the sudden chill that shivered through me had nothing to do with the miserable November weather. What’s goi...

This week in writing prompts – life i...

That moment when you realise you are utterly alone. You reach to hold a hand that isn’t there, and cast about then and see only strangers. WTN #pr...

This week in writing prompts – your o...

If, like me, you’re wrapping up a major project, you may be casting around for some new ideas. Even when I’m deeply embedded in something, though, I often ...

Write This Now! – Questions to Ask Ab...

These questions are designed to help you define the essence of a scene you are writing or rewriting. They ask you to consider the function and structure of ...

nanowrimo

How to win NaNoWriMo

If you want to get through NaNoWriMo month and fall into an untroubled sleep almost every night, here are some tricks I picked up on my last couple of NaNo...

NaNoWriMo: When all else fails.. go m...

At the time of writing, my NaNoWriMo effort stands at 38500 words. So I’m in with a chance even though my plan fell apart like a wet pizza sometime into the ...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 5 – My garden’s...

The NaNo pep talks from OLL central and my local Municipal Liaison keep on arriving in my inbox. I have to say I prefer the local version; my ML was only a t...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 4 – The present...

They did warn us, all those nice writers who fill out the web, that signing up for NaNoWriMo could make for a stressful November. I really didn’t expect to ...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 3 – Off to a sl...

It began, then. It began on my mother’s birthday. My mother, who was born itchy-footed, wanted to celebrate her day with a trip to the seaside–we both get ...

NaNoWriMo Diary: Week 2 – What to wri...

What to write about, indeed? How does anyone decide what to write 50,000 words about? I suppose if I wanted to write something for publication I’d have plot...

NanoWriMo Diary: Week 1 – The best-la...

Signing your life (or at least, a chunk of it) away is all too easy these days. I signed up for NaNoWriMo for the first time on October 3rd–long ago enough t...

Craft

Character, Argument and Story Structure

Craig Mazin argues that main characters shape a satisfying plot by testing a central dramatic argument, not by following a rote story structure.

The Take Away: Cathy Yardley’s Writin...

To kick off our new strand, The Take Away, let’s take a look at an excellent piece over on Writer Unboxed in which Cathy Yardley describes her writing proces...

Essential Books: Story Maps: TV Drama

If you’re planning a TV pilot episode then this book, Story Maps: TV Drama. The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Danial P. Calvisi packs a far g...

Essential Books: The Last Draft

How do you get from a sloppy first (or second or third) draft to something approaching a publishable manuscript?

After the Draft #1 – Make a Master Map

After your first draft, let your manuscript breathe for a week or so then properly assess your work. You need to know where you truly are to determine where ...

Image of the Week #2

This might make a good prompt for the journey and for the people in the boat – their relationships, their stories. In truth, on a day of chill and rainy murk...

Image of the Week #1

When this image came up in my morning free write, the sudden chill that shivered through me had nothing to do with the miserable November weather. What’s goi...

fiction

Flash fiction: Companion Animal (Day 4)

Neil Gaiman guest edited the the Guardian Book Site a couple of weeks ago and set a challenge: write a super short story that begins with: It wasn’t just th...

A story about the last time a pope ab...

In 1294 Pope Celestine V abdicated after just five months on the job. The real story, which doesn’t end happily, is worth reading on Wikipedia. It is also re...

Flash fiction: Action Required

Over at Terribleminds Chuck Wendig laid down a flash fiction challenge inspired by Occupy Writers: a 1000 word story on corporate abuse – any genre. Mine was...

what I learned

1 thing I learned this week: somethin...

I have a deadline this week, and my future-space-sex-bot-love-story won’t write itself. So I’ve not learned much this week, apart maybe from those near invis...

7 things I learned this week: Thatche...

Here we go again. Oh damn, and it’s gone wrong already. I was all set to reaffirm my 90s preference for Blur (posh boys with talent) over Oasis (working cla...

7 things I learned this week. Languag...

I spend a lot of time studying and researching. And, let’s face it, a lot of the rest of my time idly clicking from link to link to link. I come across many ...

housekeeping

Day 10 (Day 10)

It’s day 10 of my solo Back to Blogging Challenge. Whew. As soon as you commit to something it’s guaranteed that everything else in your life will go crazy....

Caution and the Back to Blogging Chal...

On Monday 5 November 2012 I wrote this in a file named ‘InflableInk-blog’: “I get into a spiral around blogging. The less I do, the less I do.. It’s a bi...

New blog: Book Shape

Given how often I’ve been posting here recently, I’m sure you can understand my need to start a new blog. In fact the reasons for the new blog and for my com...

writing prompts

This week in writing prompts – bad pa...

A weekly collection of prompts to get you writing. This week: the dinner party from hell, new crimes from old actions, guilt confronted, words from sounds.

This week in writing prompts – invita...

A weekly collection of prompts to get you writing. This week: a lost place, a life in a boxes, three viewpoints, waiting, false accusations, invitations.

This week in writing prompts – maps a...

A weekly collection of prompts to get you writing. This week: maps and objects, gods in reduced circumstances, guilt, a new take on an old story.

Story structure

Character, Argument and Story Structure

Craig Mazin argues that main characters shape a satisfying plot by testing a central dramatic argument, not by following a rote story structure.

The Take Away: Cathy Yardley’s Writin...

To kick off our new strand, The Take Away, let’s take a look at an excellent piece over on Writer Unboxed in which Cathy Yardley describes her writing proces...

Essential Books: Story Maps: TV Drama

If you’re planning a TV pilot episode then this book, Story Maps: TV Drama. The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Danial P. Calvisi packs a far g...

The Take Away

Character, Argument and Story Structure

Craig Mazin argues that main characters shape a satisfying plot by testing a central dramatic argument, not by following a rote story structure.

The Take Away: Cathy Yardley’s Writin...

To kick off our new strand, The Take Away, let’s take a look at an excellent piece over on Writer Unboxed in which Cathy Yardley describes her writing proces...

Site News: The Take Away

The Take Away is a new blog strand that builds on the Essential Craft Books series, but widens it to take in podcasts, articles, tweets, in fact anything t...

Going Meta

Underblog update – week two

Some more ruminations on the progress of Inflatablepress development.

Welcome to the Under Blog

Happy Friday from Inflatable Press. Although we are in a seemingly endless set up mode I have decided to start adding content as a kind of rolling dress r...

twitter

Lunchtimes at the library

The recent #rememberingmylibrary hashtag has stuck with me, much in the same way that library memories themselves do. Libraries have a church-like aspect - w...

Joanne Harris incites Twitter face-off

Joanne Harris, who tweets the state of her writing shed daily and entertainingly rebuffs trolls nearly as often, attempted a new meme this week. #PostYourAut...

plotting

Write This Now! – Questions to Ask Ab...

These questions are designed to help you define the essence of a scene you are writing or rewriting. They ask you to consider the function and structure of ...

Auditioning my next novel

I have been working on my novel ROSALIND for more years than I care to admit. There have been shaky times – several complete rewrites come to mind. And som...

editing

Essential Books: The Last Draft

How do you get from a sloppy first (or second or third) draft to something approaching a publishable manuscript?

Last edits on your novel? Record an a...

An audio-draft is essentially a scratch audiobook. An audio-draft does not require professional recording kit or access to acting talent. You can (and abso...

round up

Writing, publishing and culture links...

Inflatable’s weekly round up - Naomi Alderman, Nnedi Okorafor, Sara Paretski, Denis Johnson. Short story tips. Querying, waiting. Sad news from LitReactor

A round up test

Round up: The Hobbit at 80. Penelope Lively at 84. Philip Pullman’s new trilogy. Free short stories. Writing prompts.Marilynne Robinson. And more!

images

Image of the Week #2

This might make a good prompt for the journey and for the people in the boat – their relationships, their stories. In truth, on a day of chill and rainy murk...

Image of the Week #1

When this image came up in my morning free write, the sudden chill that shivered through me had nothing to do with the miserable November weather. What’s goi...

Image of the week

Image of the Week #2

This might make a good prompt for the journey and for the people in the boat – their relationships, their stories. In truth, on a day of chill and rainy murk...

Image of the Week #1

When this image came up in my morning free write, the sudden chill that shivered through me had nothing to do with the miserable November weather. What’s goi...

Essential Craft Books

Essential Books: Story Maps: TV Drama

If you’re planning a TV pilot episode then this book, Story Maps: TV Drama. The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Danial P. Calvisi packs a far g...

Essential Books: The Last Draft

How do you get from a sloppy first (or second or third) draft to something approaching a publishable manuscript?

studying

What I learned this week: tell fewer ...

This week my workshop piece received its treatment at the hands of tutor and my fellow students. The story survived the ordeal pretty well, considering the s...

Alison Baverstock

Alison Baverstock on self-publishing ...

In the Guardian, self-publishing academic Dr. Alison Baverstock addressed some misapprehensions about DIY publishing. Partly this meant addressing general pr...

Guardian

Alison Baverstock on self-publishing ...

In the Guardian, self-publishing academic Dr. Alison Baverstock addressed some misapprehensions about DIY publishing. Partly this meant addressing general pr...

self-publishing

Alison Baverstock on self-publishing ...

In the Guardian, self-publishing academic Dr. Alison Baverstock addressed some misapprehensions about DIY publishing. Partly this meant addressing general pr...

words to ration

Words we should ration #1: Skitter

Sometimes a word is just too good not to use. It sounds out with a lovely onomatopoeic resonance and conjures the perfect image in the reader’s imagination. ...

snippets gone wild

A little failure. A little doubt. Not...

Two articles this week got me thinking about the balancing act we need to perform between confidence and self-criticism.

value

A little failure. A little doubt. Not...

Two articles this week got me thinking about the balancing act we need to perform between confidence and self-criticism.

story geek

Signs you might be a story geek

I noticed that Go Into The Story reposted an index of the excellent series of posts on Aristotle’s Poetics from 2013, and it occurred to me that I should d...

code

Turn your example code into a pantomi...

Have you ever been called out on a code example because it just wouldn’t work in the real world? It’s happened to me a few times and gradually I’ve learned...

community

Starting a writers’ group

I’m the founder of a writers’ group in Salt Lake City that has 534 members called Just Write: Salt Lake City. Using Meet Up it was pretty easy to create th...

kristin

Starting a writers’ group

I’m the founder of a writers’ group in Salt Lake City that has 534 members called Just Write: Salt Lake City. Using Meet Up it was pretty easy to create th...

politics

Three Good Things: despair and consol...

I’m starting an occasional series this week I’m calling Three Good Things. This is by no means an idea I’ve borrowed from a cookery writer. Absolutely not....

three good things

Three Good Things: despair and consol...

I’m starting an occasional series this week I’m calling Three Good Things. This is by no means an idea I’ve borrowed from a cookery writer. Absolutely not....

short stories

Three kinds of short story (repost)

Despite having written a few and studied many more, I don’t think I’ve ever really come to grips with the grammar of the short story. It may be partly due ...

libraries

Lunchtimes at the library

The recent #rememberingmylibrary hashtag has stuck with me, much in the same way that library memories themselves do. Libraries have a church-like aspect - w...

blogging

How to revive blog content and keep i...

Seven techniques you can use to revive great content in your archive. And an early announcement about Pressmonkey - our new Wordpress plugin for integrating ...

content marketing

How to revive blog content and keep i...

Seven techniques you can use to revive great content in your archive. And an early announcement about Pressmonkey - our new Wordpress plugin for integrating ...

pressmonkey plugin

How to revive blog content and keep i...

Seven techniques you can use to revive great content in your archive. And an early announcement about Pressmonkey - our new Wordpress plugin for integrating ...

wordpress

How to revive blog content and keep i...

Seven techniques you can use to revive great content in your archive. And an early announcement about Pressmonkey - our new Wordpress plugin for integrating ...

exercises

Write This Now! – Questions to Ask Ab...

These questions are designed to help you define the essence of a scene you are writing or rewriting. They ask you to consider the function and structure of ...

rosalind

Last edits on your novel? Record an a...

An audio-draft is essentially a scratch audiobook. An audio-draft does not require professional recording kit or access to acting talent. You can (and abso...

write this now

This week in writing prompts – maps a...

A weekly collection of prompts to get you writing. This week: maps and objects, gods in reduced circumstances, guilt, a new take on an old story.

articles

After the Draft #1 – Make a Master Map

After your first draft, let your manuscript breathe for a week or so then properly assess your work. You need to know where you truly are to determine where ...

revision

After the Draft #1 – Make a Master Map

After your first draft, let your manuscript breathe for a week or so then properly assess your work. You need to know where you truly are to determine where ...

Revising your novel

After the Draft #1 – Make a Master Map

After your first draft, let your manuscript breathe for a week or so then properly assess your work. You need to know where you truly are to determine where ...

books

Essential Books: The Last Draft

How do you get from a sloppy first (or second or third) draft to something approaching a publishable manuscript?

TV writing

Essential Books: Story Maps: TV Drama

If you’re planning a TV pilot episode then this book, Story Maps: TV Drama. The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot by Danial P. Calvisi packs a far g...

Site News

Site News: The Take Away

The Take Away is a new blog strand that builds on the Essential Craft Books series, but widens it to take in podcasts, articles, tweets, in fact anything t...

outlining

The Take Away: Cathy Yardley’s Writin...

To kick off our new strand, The Take Away, let’s take a look at an excellent piece over on Writer Unboxed in which Cathy Yardley describes her writing proces...

Spreadsheets

The Take Away: Cathy Yardley’s Writin...