Death Of 1000 Cuts Archives – The Best Writing Podcast 2018

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

Happy Christmas and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I hope you’re having/have had a pleasant yuletide replete with small, discrete, flavour-rich events which you can observe and later exploit in your fiction. Reviewers will quote these specific, idiosyncratic moments with approval, and you … 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

Hello, fellow lovers of the tongue that binds, and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog about writing, writing better, and the deep love of stories that I know we all feel, pulsing within our hearts like a dino birthing from … Read more

Glad seasonal tidings and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week it’s a Mailbag episode. Hope you enjoy! Please remember to share the blog with your friends if you like it, and do have a splendid week of writing and reading. – Dear … Read more

Hello and welcome back to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This is a blog for authors, editors, readers and people who are interested in how stories work. If you’d like to submit the first page of your novel or short story, please read our submission … 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 anyone interested in the craft of writing. The blog comes out every Thursday, and most weeks, we take a novice author’s first page and look at ways … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Yes yes, it’s another week out of The Barber’s Chair while I push the second novel to project status and hammer away at the keyboard in a dismal spectacle of obstinancy triumphing over craft. I will … Read more

Hello and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. For the first time in my many-faceted and frankly baffling life, I’m ‘doing’ Nanowrimo. That is to say, I have resigned myself to the arbitrary daily wordcount goal (is it okay to make ‘wordcount’ a compound … Read more

‘How do you think we stand it here?’ said the nurse. ‘You specimens come in here talking like ordinary people and then you go down to Shayol. Terrible things happen to you on Shayol. Then the surface station sends up parts of you, over and over again. I may see your head ten times, quick-frozen … Read more

Booya and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Each week we take the 1st page of a writer’s novel or short story and look at ways of making it better. If you’d like to submit a piece of your own work for consideration, please … Read more

Hello dear friends, and welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week I’m doing another Mailbag, because I’ve had some more questions, and I enjoy answering them. It helps mix things up and allows us to deal with some familiar topics in a bit … Read more