I am delighted to see this book come into being. Johanna Isosävi’s and Camilla Lindholm’s Yhteisöllisen kirjoittamisen opas (Art House 2023) came out last month. It’s the first guide to social writing in Finnish. The book is both practical and inspirational; it packs a lot into a handy paperback. Lindholm and Isosävi run social writingContinue reading “Social writing – a guide in Finnish”
Tag Archives: writing about writing
Bodies, writing
We’ve been online and on screen too long. We need to get off, and get out. We know this, but we don’t do this. We need other people to help us do it, together. It’s three years since Covid-19 hit. I wrote about how it affected our writing then. Now, many things are back toContinue reading “Bodies, writing”
The carrier bag theory of fiction
If you read one thing about writing this year, try this. It’s tiny – but transformative. Ursula Le Guin’s own writing is beautiful and she writes about writing wisely, from Words are my Matter to Steering the Craft. But here she goes back to the first stories at the dawn of time and forward toContinue reading “The carrier bag theory of fiction”
Pitch your book
You have a great idea for a book, you’ve begun writing it, you’re sure your readers will appreciate it. You only have to convince a publisher. Where on earth do you start? I’m going to talk about non-fiction here, particularly about creative non-fiction. That means bringing ideas out of academia to a wider readership. I’llContinue reading “Pitch your book”
101 ways to write
Sometimes imposing restrictions on your writing can be freeing. Translators know about this. We turn other people’s words into new ones in a different language that doesn’t work the same way. To quote Ginger Rogers, we do everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards, in heels. If you want to ginger up your writing, get yourContinue reading “101 ways to write”
When to stop writing
Inspirational unlock-your-inner-novelist books, beware! Here’s a Nobelist to tell you like it is. To be fair to Szymborska, she’s not a grand old man of literature who looks down her nose. And when she was writing the letters published in this book, she did mention the Nobel, but not because she’d won it yet. BecauseContinue reading “When to stop writing”
Memory Speaks
Writing in your own language is not as easy as you might think. What if you have more than one language? What if your first language is so deeply buried within you, you have real trouble digging it out? What does that do to your brain, your heart, and the society you live in? InContinue reading “Memory Speaks”
King On Writing
I resisted reading King’s On Writing for a while. A friend doing a clearout passed it on. A colleague who’s committed to writing well reviewed it. And then my brother gave it to me as a late birthday present. “It’s good,” he said. So I read it, in a day. Here are ten things fromContinue reading “King On Writing”
How easy is your language?
Imagine that… everywhere in Europe, it is easy to find information it doesn’t matter how well you can read writers make their message easy for everyone to understand. The Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe imagines just that. It shows what works and what still needs doing to make language easy for everyone. Camilla LindholmContinue reading “How easy is your language?”
A Room of Our Own
Virginia Woolf was clear: £500 a year and a room of one’s own is what one needs to write. More than a century later, more than a year in, we are still mostly stuck in our rooms, but whether those rooms are solely our own is another question. Unlike many, for me the move toContinue reading “A Room of Our Own”
Ridge Writing Retreats 