I am really bored of the sound of my own voice. Not just my writing voice, which I’ve barely exercised recently, more my actual physical  chatting into a camera voice. The new term is coming up and my face to face course on ‘writing for children’ has been put online....

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have done very little work in these extraordinarySpring days. Instead, I have walked through Richmond Park, along the Thames path and through Sheen Common as if I have never seen them before. I know I am privileged to live n...

Once upon a time I was a perfectionist. This will come as a surprise to anyone who has known me over the last thirty years. I am untidy, careless, a last minute by the skin of my teeth kind of person, an optimistic, ‘it’ll be all right on the night’ under-preparer.

 Lon...

I suppose I should write something funny about working in isolation. To be honest I have been ill for most of it so far – not desperately-not-breathing ill, more fall- asleep-in-the-afternoon- blancmange- brain kind of ill, which has been almost restful.

 Of course I’ve...

As a chronically clumsy person, it is usual for me to trip over my own feet, struggle to put my head through the arm hole of my sweater, smash plates, spill glasses and generally make things difficult for myself. As a writer I self-sabotage just as effectively, though...

I’ve just been editing my novel ‘Badwater’ which I hope will be out next year with the small independent publisher, 'Kristell Ink.'I enjoyed reading it again. I hope it is OK to admit that? 

   I wrote the first draft many years ago. It is set after the impact of climat...

Sometimes I wonder why I bother. No, really. What with Climate Change and Brexit and so much depressing news, sitting at home writing stories seems a very inadequate response to the challenges of this world. I have started writing poetry too, which is even more useless...

One of those days: N M Browne

Some days I struggle to come up with anything blog worthy.You might say that has never stopped me before and you wouldn’t be wrong, but today it did. I addressed this problem as I do too many others by drinking black coffee and eating dark...

So this month I’ve mainly been thinking about Brexit but I’m not going to talk about that. My other obsession has been fake news, social media outrage, and identity politics. I’ve been pondering the way in which writing and the nature of the writer has some how become...

So this is a post about still being here. Not In a depressing way, but in a grateful and optimistic way. 

To clarify, I recently had a birthday - not a big one by the usual reckoning - but a birthday that neither my father nor my aunt made and therefore a birthday of...