The festival has finished, the nights are drawing in, and it is time to reflect upon the sensory overload that has become my go-to excuse for not writing as much as I ought to in August.
Continue reading “Stories Worth Telling? Reflections on the Edinburgh Festival 2017”
In Edinburgh it is festival time.
Well, actually, it’s almost always festival time here. We can’t move for the things. We’ve got an art one, a film one, an international one, a fringe one, a book one, a jazz one, a magic one, a science one, a Mela one, and a Hogmanay one. But August is when we have the International, Fringe, Book and Mela festivals all at once, so I’m going to go ahead and refer to this month in particular as ‘festival time’.
Continue reading “That Festival Feeling”
The thing about writing is that ideas come from everywhere and anywhere – that’s why all writing advice ever advised suggests carrying a notebook everywhere you go. I personally have two or three different ideas for different stories, novels and comics bubbling in my brain at any one time. I probably write down around 80%, and get round to executing less than half. I don’t have the time to focus on all of them, so I have to pick and choose the ones that will work best – or sometimes, the ones that will fit in with a specific brief or theme. Continue reading “Making Submission Themes Work For You”
Ross McCleary and Andrew Blair are becoming fairly familiar faces on the Edinburgh spoken word circuit. Between them they’ve been published in Gutter, Valve, Dactyl and The Grind; they’ve headlined Blind Poetics and Inky Fingers, and appeared at Story Shop and Illicit Ink. They are also the driving force behind the increasingly popular Poets Against Humanity, and the main reason I have any knowledge or understanding of poetry outwith Dorothy Parker, Edward Lear and John Hegley. Continue reading “Is This Poetry? – A completely unbiased review*”
It’s August in Edinburgh, and that means Festival time. So far I have – perhaps not surprisingly – mostly been to storytelling and poetry events. Here are a couple of listicles – although not with gifs in the way that Buzzfeed would do it, I don’t want to get too populist – of what I’ve seen and what i have yet to see. Just in case my opinions are likely to sway you. Continue reading “I Wish To Go To The Festival”
Those of us who live in Edinburgh (i.e. me) are two weeks into the Edinburgh Fringe, a rather massive arts festival that annually bankrupts countless comedians, actors and spoken word artists. Continue reading “Five free literary events for the fringe”
12 Books in 12 Months 