Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or perhaps it’s just that I don’t have as much patience these days, but when I decide to add a new book to my ‘Want-To-Read’ list, it’s because that book has passed my Three C’s test. And no, I’m not referring to the business model developed by organisational theorist…
Author: colingarrow
The Book of Moron (Why Not Everyone Should Write From Experience)
There’s an old idea that talks about everyone having at least one book in them – the story of their own lives. So it follows that every single one of us should be able to write at least one original story, right? Nope. Nope. Nopedy nope. Sure, it’s fine to write about your own life…
‘A Clergyman’s Daughter’ by George Orwell
A Clergyman’s Daughter George Orwell’s second novel sat on my bookshelves for several years before I eventually got around to reading it. I feel a little guilty that it took so long, since in many ways, it’s a damn fine book. Living with an ungrateful and demanding father, Dorothy sees little to look forward to…
Three Easy Steps to Not Finding Your Writer’s Voice
Yes, you read that right – this is a post about not finding your writer’s voice. But first let’s just clarify what I’m talking about. Every writer has a voice. Sometimes it’s exactly like their actual voice (the writing sounds the same as the way they talk), but more often it’s a sophisticated version of…
The Trick is to Keep Reading
I remember reading ‘The Baader-Meinhof Complex’ by Stefan Aust and wishing I could somehow speed things up. Of course, I wanted to enjoy every word and not miss anything, but the book was so damn heavy and unwieldy, I sometimes felt like I was preparing for battle, instead of settling down for a good read.…
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell
Nineteen-Eighty Four George Orwell’s fusion of political and creative writing reached its climax with the dystopian future world of his final novel. Many of the ideas and concepts he created in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ are now a part of our language – Big Brother, Room 101, Newspeak and others are classic references to the authoritarian state…
Dipping a Toe in the Mighty Amazon
When I first started to look at putting my scribblings out as eBooks, Amazon wasn’t anywhere on my list of possibilities. However, having had a chance to see how things work at Smashwords, I thought I’d conduct a little experiment to see how the Amazonian experience differed. KDP UnSelect One of the reasons I’d been…
How to Not Write
Whether you’ve got a deadline to meet or not, the act of sitting down and writing every day isn’t the easiest of routines to stick to. And while the reasons we come up with for not working on that novel/play/story/poem are pretty much limitless, there are a few that always seem like a good excuse:…
How to Make Time to Write Every Day
As all writers know, one of the major things you have to do to succeed as a Writer is to write. All the time. Every day. But as many of us (in the real world) also have ‘proper’ jobs that we sort of have to do in order to stay alive, making time to write…
Book Covers Aren’t Us
It’s always useful to get a bit of a knock-back and realize that what you thought was fantastic isn’t so fantastic after all. But that’s fine, since it helps keep things on an even keel, provides a bit of the old sense of perspective and such like. My current cover for me eBook ‘The Architect’s Apprentice’…
Colin Garrow 