Hello dear friends and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Each week we take a novice author’s first page and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to contribute the first page of your novel or short story, please read our … Read more
creative writing
Ungh and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. If you’d like to submit your work, please read our submission guidelines. Please buy my novel, The Honours. It’s not shit (here’s the Guardian review) and you will be contributing to the possibility that I will … Read more
Bonjour and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. You know what? I’ve been finding writing really stressful and difficult over the last few weeks. I think, weirdly, it comes from having people say nice things about The Honours. When I wrote it, I really … Read more
Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Each week we look at a novice writer’s first page and try to think up ways to make it better. If you’d like to submit your first page of your novel or story, please read my submission guidelines. … Read more
Oof – good day, and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. If you’d like to submit your own work to this blog, please read the Submission Guidelines. If you’d like to buy my debut novel, The Honours, to show your support, you can do … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts, making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog about writing, reading and editing, where we look at ways of making stories better. Most weeks I take a novice author’s first page and look at what works and what could be improved. … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for writers, readers and editors, about ways we can take fiction and make it better. The blog appears every Thursday, and most weeks we look at the first page from a novice … Read more
I’ve written previously about the tensions of writing a novel – specifically that process of mourning an old bit that wasn’t working, and the new growth that springs up in the aftermath, once the dead part has had a chance to mulch down. And I do think this is one of the most important attitudinal … Read more
Bonsoir et welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Every Thursday this blog appears, giving you advice on writing and rewriting. In a couple of weeks, we will have been going two years! Christ. My debut novel, The Honours, came out on Thursday. It’s in … Read more
It’s my book birthday today. The Honours is finally released into the wild. It’s in shops. Yesssss. It occurred to me that, rather than farting on about myself and how I feel (spoiler: I feel good), it might be worth acknowledging that books don’t get written by one person. That’s a romantic myth. I had … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. It is one week until my debut novel comes out. I thought I was okay, but – and this will come as a great revelation to precisely no one – it turns out that teetering on … Read more
Bonjour and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for writers, readers and editors, where we look at writers’ first pages and discuss ways of making them better. If you have a novel or short story you’ve taken as far as … Read more
Merry Thursdaymas and welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Most Thursdays we take an author’s first page and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to submit yours for similar scrutiny, please read our Submission Guidelines. The release of my … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for writers, readers, editors, and people interested in the craft of storytelling. The more analytically-minded amongst you will have perceived by many tokens that Death Of 1000 Cuts did not appear in … Read more
THE 5 STAGES OF WRITING GRIEF You know that familiar beat where someone’s getting a tarot reading, and they draw the Death card, and the tarot reader’s like: ‘Don’t worry. This card is commonly misinterpreted. It actually symbolises change.’ You know that, right? Perhaps you don’t. I’ve been a devoted reader of Chat: It’s Fate … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Apologies for the ever-so-slightly tardy nature of today’s post – I’ve been down at the Arvon Foundation in Totleigh Barton, as the guest writer at one of their superb week-long creative writing courses. My first ever … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a weekly blog on the art of creative writing, for writers, readers and anyone interested in how stories work. There are fewer than 50 days until The Honours appears in the shops. Crikey. You … Read more
Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a weekly blog about writing, editing and stories. Most weeks we take a first page submitted by a novice author, and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to read previous … Read more
Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week we’re taking a look at a novice author’s first page, to see if we can think of ways of making it better. If you’d like to submit your first page for consideration, please read our Submission … Read more
As Death Of 1000 Cuts approaches the end of its second year, I thought it’d be fun to see what the five most popular posts have been. We’ve been going at it so long that, to newcomers, the whole thing probably resembles some crumbling cargo cult enacting empty rituals in the hope of appeasing long-departed … Read more
Good day and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Gosh, these past couple of weeks seem to have rattled by in a blur of plans and admin, writing and not-writing, gazing at the screen, praying for literary deliverance. Next week I’m going to go … Read more
Hello dear friends and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I now have a Facebook author page, which I will be using to give updates on my latest work, offer prizes and basically share cool stuff I think you’ll like. Click through and click … Read more
Five or six persons, standing up, filled the narrow apartment, which was lighted by a single window looking out on the yard, a sofa of brown damask wool occupying the interior of an alcove between two door-curtains of similar material. Upon the chimney-piece, covered with old papers, there was a bronze Venus. Two candelabra, garnished … Read more
Happy New Year, and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Do you write? Do you want to write? Do you read? Do you want to read and write better? And by ‘better’ I mean ‘with the angry intensity of a jilted bride hurling wedding … Read more
Hello, joyful siblings and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I hope you are brimming with festive cheer and delirious with the weird frothing upswell of seasonal feeling and repressed childhood complexes endemic to this bizarre carnival of colliding cultural nonsenses. This is a … Read more