CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Whether or not a person recognises it, they are endeavouring to sanctify their experiences.   People enter the world and what visibly occurs is normally growth, learning, maturity and ageing, then death. What invisibly occurs is sanctification  - in other words, the product of processing the experience of Life. For some, Life is overwhelming and they fail to gain any kind of coherent integrity; for others, things come together in a wholeness.   That group of people called art

Thor was always my favourite Marvel superhero. It was the fact that he was feeble, even crippled, as a mortal man, Dr. Don Blake, but, by striking his walking stick - the symbol of his decrepitude, if you like - on the ground he could become the God of Thunder, majestic and powerful, that appealed to me. I was physically weak as a child, wore glasses, had to be skilful to avoid bullying. The idea that all of this might be circumvented by a bolt of lightning was attractive.  

Writing fiction is a wild thing.   Writers who just want to write can do whatever they like. They can take words, or even letters, and put them in any order; they can even make up letters of their own. If they form words, they can string them together randomly for as long as they like. Whole paragraphs, chapters, page upon page, can be devised in whichever way they wish, if they just want to write.   Just like a painter can take a brush and splash colours at random over a can

Let’s talk about the alchemy of dreams.   Many writers enter the fray wanting to become rich from their writings. Very many of them hope to be able to write a best-selling book which will not only make them famous, but will provide them with money for the rest of their lives. Just one book. So good, though, that Hollywood will call and offer vast sums to turn it into a movie. Then the movie will take off at the box office, thus ensuring abundant wealth for decades…   It’s a c

There are seven types of writer.   At the top of the writing tree are master authors.   Master authors can write something of any length, in any genre. They can transport readers from almost anywhere to almost anywhere else, mentally emotionally, spiritually. They are experts in conjuring up grand ideas and images, capturing attention, gaining commitment, structuring masterpieces, commanding respect and enchanting readers with style. Their works resonate with fulfilment and c

In earlier articles about marketing for writers, we learned that marketing is largely the same as writing.   ‘What??’ I hear you protest, especially if you haven’t read the earlier articles.   It’s true though: just as our imagination selects out key elements from the depths of our imaginations and then places them in a carefully crafted sequence to build an effective story, so does marketing select out key publics from the populations of the planet and then places a campaign

Why would writers not want to improve their craft?   One possible answer is that many writers don’t realise that there is such a thing as ‘craft’ or that it has anything to do with them.   ‘Craft’ is defined in the dictionary as ‘an activity involving skill in making things by hand’ and comes from the Old English word cræft , meaning ’strength, skill’. I think the problem probably arises because writers have a misunderstanding about the ‘thing’ which they are making. They thi

If you have been following this series of articles about marketing, you should know by now that it is a lot less mysterious than it seems, provided that you apply certain principles.   What happens more often than not in practice is that a conventional writer crafts a book, which is hopefully designed to create a particular impact upon readers; this is then prepared for publication; then, in traditional publishing, a separate entity called ‘the publisher’ pumps it out into th