CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

It is not the purpose of editing to reconstruct the writer’s story. The purpose of editing is to delete from the existing work those elements which have resulted in the distortion, misrepresentation or non-communication of the writer’s central ideas and images, and to restore in its entirety the proper working function of the writer’s vision of the story. Even more succinctly put, an editor’s role is to continually connect or re-connect the writer with his or her own concepti

Every writer has an ‘inner editor’.   Some writers have this internal analytical monitoring function turned on and operational all the time. Others have it switched off and barely activate it at any stage. Thus we can theorise that there are several levels of operation of this editing apparatus, none of which is ‘senior’ to any of the others - in other words, there is not necessarily a 'right' way or a 'wrong' way of doing this.   The first level is that stage in which the wr

There are four basic genres in fiction - Epic, Tragedy, Irony and Comedy - and each have their own patterns, though all are based on the Epic, or what we normally think of as a story. The Epic forms about 90% of what we consider to be fiction, and it is upon its power that the other three genres largely draw. Irony, in particular, can be savagely effective when it teases the reader with a framework which at first appears to be leading them towards the standard ‘victory’ at th

There are a number of possibly important parallels between our behaviour as readers and writers and what we do as consumers of food.   Most of us these days go to the supermarket to get our weekly supplies as food shoppers. While there, though some of us might concentrate on the fresh food aisles, a great many of us will of necessity buy pre-packaged items - not necessarily highly processed stuff, but things that have been prepared for us in certain ways and which are recogni

During the fall-out from a particularly painful second divorce (second divorces being all the more excruciating because they draw an awful lot of power from the preceding trauma of the first divorce), I decided that, to try and ‘convalesce’, I would go ‘off-grid’ - I would develop a lifestyle which would enable me to side-step as completely as possible what was considered ‘normal’ by society, and take off into the wilderness in a mobile home.   This took some planning: first

The Inner Circle Writers’ Group  continues to expand at an extraordinary and unexpected rate. It began in 2008 with just me; it grew to a handful of members over the next few years, but in 2017, adventuring onto social media in the form of a Facebook group, it began to grow rapidly. Within a couple of months, membership had topped 500; soon afterward it reached 1,000. Now, nine years after its first appearance in Facebook, it is climbing more steeply than ever, past 12,000 me

Readers familiar with my book How Stories Really Work  may remember the ‘cup of tea’ analogy that is drawn in the first few pages. It was an analogy designed to describe how a work of fiction is put together, but it also applies to other things, including marketing a book (or any product). In order to explain how, and to refresh your memory, here is the analogy in full:   Making a cup of tea begins with the idea  of making a cup of tea. You might be at work, or reading a maga

A few years ago, a colleague of mine, a kind and capable man known as Neill Roskilly, hosted a conference that I attended as the headmaster of a school. Though much of the conference was interesting and useful, it was one phrase uttered by Neill which remained with me long afterwards.   Being a headmaster is a thankless task: one is swamped with responsibilities branching off in all directions, from child welfare and safety, to academic results, to staff management to financi

As a writer who has perhaps published a book and is engrossed in the mysteries of marketing, you may be able to discern seven distinct stages to the whole process - though you probably haven’t experienced all seven. I’ll try to summarise them for you here.   1. No marketing.   When you are in the throes of writing your masterpiece, you probably give little thought to its future marketing. And that’s perfectly understandable and acceptable. As you type out your next scene, you