Category Archives: Uncategorized

If Twitter has taught me anything it’s that people who create stuff are a deeply neurotic bunch, quick to panic and anger, sliding into hopelessness at the slightest knockback, yet at the same time doomed to megalomaniac dreams of world … Continue reading →

Thanks to Vic Watson for nominating me for a Very Inspiring Blog Award. In return, I’m going to tell you seven things you might not know about me.     When writing this post, I really struggled to think of … Continue reading →

Last year, I taught a term of creative writing. Ten weeks. Intensive stuff. At the end of the term, I said to my students that I was going to tell them something very important about writing. Maybe the most important … Continue reading →

These days half of writing is Tweeting. Or have I got that wrong? Anyway, authors everywhere are being urged towards the be-dazzled empty stage that is SOSHUL MEJEEA and told to perform. Turn tricks! Do a twirl! Dance, Baby! No … Continue reading →

Of all the professions regularly committed to celluloid, some are more common than others. Journalist, say. Lawyer. Professor at a university. You rarely see films about binmen or sewage workers, yet someone has that job. Novelist is for some reason … Continue reading →

(Originally published here http://vagendamag.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/your-vagina-how-to-guide.html)   The vagina is pretty amazing. It can expand and contract up to 200%. It’s self-cleaning, like an oven. It almost never gets caught in your zip. If you’ve got one of these essential bits of kit, … Continue reading →

(originally pubished here http://vagendamag.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-mid-life-crisis-of-womens-magazines.html)   There comes a point in every woman’s life when she tires of reading about blow jobs (like, tell me something I don’t know) and yearns instead to read of paint jobs. The questions that keep you … Continue reading →

(Originally published here http://vagendamag.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/keeping-up-with-kirsties.html)   Christmas these days seems to be all about the ads. What latest witchcraft have John Lewis employed to jerk upon our tear-ducts like the evil scarf-peddling puppet-masters that they are? Who’s that dancing in the M&S … Continue reading →

My name’s Claire and I’m a book obsessive. I mean I own about a thousand. I like the smell, the feel. I get shivers when I walk into a book shop. I spend most of my work and leisure time … Continue reading →

I spent the weekend on my second ever writers’ retreat. I had gone on one alone before, and while I got a lot done, it was hampered by 1. not being bothered to make any food, so living off wine … Continue reading →