CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Scientific research shows how we miss errors in our work - namely, because there is a contest going on in our minds between what we see and what we anticipate, being on a journey towards the overall meaning. Having published over 300 books, I have had the opportunity to proofread millions of words. These are some of the things I have learned: 1. Turn off your computer spell checker. Reliance on a machine to spot mistakes is a mistake in itself. Yes, basic computer spel

There are few things more annoying to a writer than finding errors in a manuscript after final checks have supposed to have been done. Actually, ‘mortifying’ might be a better word, as the work has often been published, marketed and sold to readers before some of those errors are detected. That means that money has changed hands; readers have made a purchase and rightly expect a fully professional product: typos, spelling errors, grammar mistakes, punctuation slip-ups, and

Please take a moment to look over the image above. It summarises the various stages that a writer might need to go through to achieve the free time and attention needed to be successful in terms of not only being a writer, but actually doing writing at a viable level. These levels can be traversed in a very short time, but most usually take years. Rearranging one’s life so that writing takes priority is not normally a simple operation. But it’s important to make the journ

Our quest to become a writer has been achieved. We’ve realised that we are writers, and that the feeling of discomfort associated with Lack of Time, and the constant nagging presence of Procrastination, were early signs that something was wrong, and that we weren’t being true to ourselves. We progressed, using some simple remedies, into using blocks of time to get some writing done. But then we confronted our lives, made major changes to the way we operated, and rose in

If you have come so far as to have set up the rudiments of a writing life, you have done well - but there is still a little way to go. And it’s probably going to be a little gruelling. What are the rudiments, first? 1. You have a lifestyle which enables you to write full-time. By ‘full-time’, I mean approximately 30 hours a week, enough time to get some serious writing done. Less than that, and a degree of compulsive behaviour enters into things: you get a slight feelin

OK, so you’ve begun. Not just talking about being a writer, or complaining about not having enough time to write, or hitting yourself on the head for procrastinating, but actually acting upon your innermost desire to be a writer. You’ve made a commitment; you’ve nailed something to the mast of your life; you’ve openly discussed this with people you need to discuss it with. Perhaps you have even managed to eke out a more serious block of time than you have ever managed to

Finding a voice as a writer is unfortunately dependent to a large degree on writing lots and lots and lots until a clear, individual voice emerges. And you can’t write lots and lots and lots until you escape the inertia of your current circumstances and have time to write. So it looks like a Catch-22. But it’s possible to get past this by looking at things another way. I’ve said that there are seven levels in the ladder from where a writer is bogged into current circu

Reaching escape velocity means finding a fuel powerful enough to blast us out of the grip of a gravitational field and into free space. In the 1963 comedy film The Mouse on the Moon, characters from the fictional European duchy of Grand Fenwick discover that their only export, wine, is adaptable as a highly effective rocket fuel which they then use to become the first nation to land upon the Moon. The wine is so powerful that it isn’t necessary to punch through the atmosphe