Writing prompts
February 7, 2023
“I don’t do Valentine’s Day.” Other than hello, this was one of the first things I heard my husband say in conversation. At the time I had no romantic interest in him—I’d known him for all of two weeks, after we’d started teaching at the same school—and we were enjoying after work drinks with colleagues […]
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December 5, 2022
In putting together a set of Christmas-themed prompts, I acknowledge that not everybody celebrates this festive season, for a range of reasons. While I have attempted to acknowledge this in some prompts, please feel free to adapt them further, or simply choose the ones that are helpful as you develop the characters in your […]
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November 29, 2022
How do you feel about Christmas? For some people, Christmas beings great joy and anticipation. They can’t wait to decorate the tree, string the lights and hit play on the Christmas music. For others, it stirs up painful memories, perhaps of family conflict, or loss and grief. And for some, Christmas is just not part […]
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October 29, 2022
If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, then it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel in during the month of November. If that seems insane, then you can set your own goal. I’ve only ever attempted it once, and even then it was a pretty half-hearted […]
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September 27, 2022
I was recently asked by a young writer for tips for character development, so this blog post is for her (you know who you are 🙂 ). When you meet someone, how do you get to know them? How do you learn whether you have anything in common, whether they are going to be a […]
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July 19, 2022
I recently read an interesting article about the way that constantly taking photographs “diminishes our ability to recall our experiences, diverts our attention, and takes us out of the moment” but that “at the same time, new research suggests that cameras can also be used to enhance our memories of certain experiences”. I guess, for […]
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