Writing Life: insights, updates, and craft
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FOLK = HORROR
What’s a freak? It’s anyone or anything worth talking about, and peering at, for its exposed so-called ‘weirdness’. Those best friends in Central Perk cafe are freaks (and that’s before the Meat Trifle). That Lear bloke who cast out his loving youngest daughter for not being a toady. Dracula, well – obviously. Madame Bovary – a…
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Place and space to write
I’m sitting on a late night train out of Bristol – my other-home since I moved to Bath from London in the economically adventurous summer of 2007. The plan was to be here for just one year, then return. But both Bath and Bristol were too creatively welcoming for me to be able to resist.…
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Hear the music of your planets
….and if you do this, you are paying heed to that gorgeous, complex, frustrating-as-hell, magnificent universe that is you. That’s all.
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Time of Death
“ONE TIME, IT WENT LIKE THIS. “Time of death, twelve twenty-three.” He looks again at the head wound. Why can’t he make it make sense? He did not, could not, he still cannot find that bloody bullet. Entry wound, but no exit. Now she’s finally dead, it’s tempting to get stuck in. But he’s been…
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More Here
Following the video of the other day, some sound. Short. Sweet.
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(Listen)
Fewer words; more feeling.
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Accepting You’re Creative When You Doubt You Are
“Unheard wishes tug at the sleeve of your consciousness. They bother. They are – understandably, dissastified. Unhappy. And sometimes, as they get older, they grieve.” Inspired by an acquaintance who’d been made so miserable by her utter conviction she didn’t have a creative bone in her, I wanted to encourage some self-care in others, and…
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Rewriting, using comic book techniques, and other energy-boosters….
Tips and resources to get the energy going when it’s time to rewrite…
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Give me 4 minutes and I’ll read you a story for 6
Give me 4 minutes of your time by completing a survey for me, and I will reward you with 6 minutes of free, super-sizzling storytelling. That’s gotta be a win, right?
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Safe in Uncertainty
I’ve been floored by a lurgy – the culmination of a couple of weeks sliding grimly under the weather. The b*gger of it is that it’s a big work week with family obligations. But as you all know, if you keep applying the technique that got you here, nothing’s going to change. So. Surrender it…
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Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law
Tell me something that drives you mad when people do it. Not a crime. Not cruelty. Just one of those small social laws we all obey without thinking. Talking during a play? Not having your ticket ready at the station exit? Sliding into the parking space someone else has clearly been waiting for? Now ask…
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All of 2025 in one post
If it’s how you pay your bills, being a scriptwriter has been a bit depressing the last few years. The screenwriting world is in crisis. Theatre is in freefall. If you back this profession up – like I do – with writing-related corporate work (I do more than write, but words are still significant), too…
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Gill Kirk, writer 