This is about rabbits. Not your fluffy Easter Bunnies, but General Woundwort’s thugs from Watership Down, red-in-tooth-and-claw. The bullies who think they have all the answers. As they manically excavate their bunkers and scratch out secret passages, they blindly discard treasures and truth. Things of no value. Flints and buttons and fragments. Priceless incidental things. Part of… Continue reading Up-cycling the past
Category: Writing tips
Lockdown activity for kids (and their grown-ups)
You’ll find them in Christmas crackers and The Hobbit. We all love a riddle (except for Gollum when he can’t work one out!). Why not try out the p|arts ‘Riddling at home!’ lockdown pack with your kids. It can be downloaded here: http://p-arts.co.uk/lockdown-activity-for-kids-and-their-grown-ups…
Curiosity killed the cat
If you believe some blogs, the cat was first killed at the turn of the 20th century. Wikipedia claims that the saying first appeared in print in 1873 but a brief search of the British Newspaper Archive reveals it was in common usage in Ireland well before that.So what does that prove? Not a lot.… Continue reading Curiosity killed the cat
Finding your voice
It is said that every poet should find their own voice. But perhaps not every poet should use it – or not in public, at least. Reading your work in to an audience is not the same thing as reading it at home. No matter how good the words are, someone needs to breathe life… Continue reading Finding your voice
The challenge of writing history
When you treat history creatively, how do you ensure you aren’t faking it? This is one of the things I was asked to discuss for the ‘Doing History in Public’ blog: A Cracked Voice.
Riddles
Bilbo Baggins bets his life on a riddle in The Hobbit. Fortunately, for the story he doesn’t lose (or else the dwarves would never have kept their appointment with Smaug!). That riddling competition takes place in a dank deserted cave under the Misty Mountains – all very lonely and sinister – but riddles are mostly… Continue reading Riddles
Welcome
As Mark Twain wrote, ‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ I’m keeping on crossing out.