Monthly Archives: October 2016

9 Things Not to Do in NaNoWriMo

· by | in Bloggings, Doings, Storytellings | tagged , , , | 9 Comments

1. Don’t Bore Yourself When I’m starting a writing class, I usually emphasise that the most important thing in a first draft isn’t the idea, it isn’t the atmosphere, and it certainly isn’t the individual sentences. The most important thing in the first draft is excitement. If you write what you know are in-between bits, they will read as in-between […]

Against “Show, Don’t Tell” (With Walter Scott)

· by | in Bloggings, Storytellings | tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

‘Show, Don’t Tell’ (like ‘Less is More’) has become a cliché of creative writing teaching. It’s usually associated – to my mind at least – with American minimalist writing. Not just the more recent instances, such as Lydia Davis and Mary Robison. And not the middle distance of Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. […]