How John Cleese came to terms with unproductive writing days — I’ve just finished reading Creativity by John Cleese. It’s a short book, but full of practical advice for writers. In particular, he said: “When Graham Chapman and I started writing together we would get terribly frustrated and despairing when we hit a fallow period — sometimes a whole morning or…

How to request a backup of all your Twitter data — Will all the #Twittergeddon talk about the potential collapse of the social media service (which I’d be very surprised if it came to that . . . but stranger things have happened), it’s a good reminder that we should be seeking backup of our Twitter data regularly. If you’ve never…

Getting to grips with double trouble — I’m just coming to the end of my latest three night stint of dog-sitting duties. It’s only the second time I’ve dog-sat Betsy and her seven-month-old daughter, Phoebe. I did one night last month, but that wasn’t really long enough for Phoebe and I to get to know one another…

How to end your articles and leave your readers satisfied — A couple of months ago, I wrote an article focussing on beginnings, because if we failed to grab a reader’s attention, there was little point in writing the rest of the feature. But endings are just as important as beginnings, if not more so. A reader has given up time…

How a Shropshire Flax Mill Changed The World — The tarmac path I’m standing on used to be a canal. It’s the perfect vantage point to capture Shrewsbury’s latest visitor attraction. With my lens at its widest setting, I’m struggling to get the entire building in shot. Stretching five storeys high, the Flaxmill Maltings is huge! …

How to break into, and write for, the greetings card market — The UK might be the second biggest greetings card market in the world, with a value of around £1.5 billion, but we Brits send more greetings cards per person than any other nation. In 2020, we sent 835 million cards. That’s a lot of cards. …

Without having to use a scheduling service like Hootsuite, Buffer, etc — You know when something is staring you in the face, yet you can’t see it? Well, that happened to me recently on Twitter. Or rather, it happened when I was logged onto my Twitter account on my desktop computer using my internet browser. I was typing a tweet and noticed…

If you want a regular income, get an employed job — So, the first three stories in my Medium feed this morning have been written by writers moaning that their latest monthly payment is less than the previous month’s. I’m not sure why Medium’s algorithm suggested those specific stories, or placed them in that particular order, at this precise time, but…

Ditch the perfect prose and allow the sloppy copy to flow — Picture the scene. It’s 1st November and you signed up to do NaNoWriMo, and write 50,000 words in the next thirty days. The house is empty. You’re sat at your desk, fingers poised at the keyboard (or pen poised above your notebook), and you’ve got two hours all to yourself…