The (at least) 10 Rules of Writing
Posted by Mick North in News, Resources on March 12th, 2010
Elmore Leonard’s famous 10 rules have just been published in book form (with brilliantly sinuous, hard-boiled drawings by Joseph Ciardiello) in the UK, but you can read them for nowt here on The Guardian’s website, along with more 10 rulers from Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy and many others …
Competitions compendium
Posted by Mick North in Competitions on March 9th, 2010
We can’t find a better competitions listing than that provided by The Poetry Kit. It covers short story and other creative writing competitions as well as poetry, so we suggest you bookmark it and visit frequently or – better still -sign up for their competitions newsletter (emailed on the first of every month).
Wordsworth’s Dead! – read our latest newsletter
Posted by Mick North in Downloads, News on March 3rd, 2010
If you don’t subscribe to our e-newsletter, read the March issue here – Wordsworth’s Dead No.1 Mar 2010
To subscribe, email us at enquiries@newwritingcumbria.org.uk
Cheap thrills in Orton?
Posted by Mick North in Events on March 2nd, 2010
Writers and readers are warmly invited to the Orton Scribblers Open Evening on Monday 8 March (7.30pm-9.30pm), discussing “Fiction and Non-Fiction” with thriller writer Zoe Sharp and Funny Farm resident Jackie Moffat. Bring your questions and join in the crack at Orton Market Hall.
Lake District-based Zoe Sharp is the author of the Charlie Fox crime thrillers Killer Instinct, Riot Act, Hard Knocks, First Drop, Third Strike, Second Shot and Road Kill. Ainstable’s Jackie Moffat is a columnist for Cumbria Life and author of The Funny Farm and Sheepwrecked.
Naming Dusk in Dead Languages …
Posted by Mick North in New Writing, Poetry on February 23rd, 2010
… is the title of Ulverston-based poet Gill Nicholson’s first poetry collection, deservedly praised by fellow Cumbrian poet M R Peacocke, who writes:
“Gill Nicholson writes about in-between states: she is ‘a woman who embraces dusk.’ The poems slip between light and dark, youth and age, past and present, what’s felt and what’s seen, without needing to urge the reader to take the point. At its best, there is an effortlessness in the writing which is rare. When you read that ’silence condenses over the tarn’, or that snow is ‘enough to smother currant bushes’, you are there at once in the place and the moment, listening.”
News splash – Words by the Water programme change and tickets latest
Posted by Mick North in Events, News on February 23rd, 2010
Sad news trickling in from the watery words fest in Keswick, which wonderful nonagenarian memoirist Diana Athill (pictured left is no longer able to attend. Festival President Melvyn Bragg wades in to fill the vacant slot (now an hour earlier at 9.30am on Sunday 7 March) with a talk about the life and times of The South Bank Show.


