Blog Posts

  • Capturing Emotion: Inspiration and Evernote

    Capturing Emotion: Inspiration and Evernote

    (This post originally appeared on the Evernote blog) To slightly misquote Kate Sanborn, writing is 1% inspiration and 99% hard work. When inspiration strikes, the world…

  • Doctor My Eyes

    Doctor My Eyes

    The trouble with writing anything set in a consistent universe is the weight of what has gone on before. I’m experiencing this with my Recursion…

  • The Most Important Subject

    The Most Important Subject

    Part of my day job is preparing students for Oxbridge applications.Once they have researched their courses and written their personal statements I arrange practice interviews.…

  • Guest Post: Browsing the Bookshelves

    Guest Post: Browsing the Bookshelves

    Steve Croft is a former nurse, former police officer, current grandparent, keeper of dog, cats, chickens and bees. We also collaborate musically. I’ve always been…

  • Reaching for the Same Packet

    Reaching for the Same Packet

    I’ve just finished reading Everything I know about Love by Dolly Alderton (paid link). She’s a funny and perceptive writer, who gives a remarkably honest…

  • So Much Not Said

    So Much Not Said

    I was surprised when my daughter told me she’d never seen 2001: A Space Oddysey, so we watched it together. This film grows on me…

  • Inspiration Thursday

    Inspiration Thursday

    Looking for story inspiration? I was walking through the cellar of my school recently when I came across a trolley full of half used containers…

  • Enjoy Your Sunday Evening

    Enjoy Your Sunday Evening

    You’re a teacher: it’s Sunday evening and you can’t relax as you have work tomorrow. Why is that? Partly it’s stage fright. Those outside the…

  • Eyes Wide Open

    Eyes Wide Open

    I saw this statue of Justice on a recent holiday. She was standing outside the Palácio da Justiça in Porto.  The guide on our walking tour…

  • The Golden Age of Science Writing

    The Golden Age of Science Writing

    Following on from A Visit to the Zeppelin Museum… There is a charge often levelled at the technically inclined that they can’t write. Reading the…

  • What we want them to be

    What we want them to be

    I was travelling on a tram through Manchester during the recent heatwave. Two young women of about the same age were standing by the doors.…

  • A Visit to The Zeppelin Museum

    A Visit to The Zeppelin Museum

    (This article was first posted in 2011 – I’ve reposted it following something I heard this week on the radio…) Over the summer I visited…