Author Archives: Andrew

How Not To Get A Book Deal But Write The Book You Want (FREE version!)

by Andrew | 8 Comments

I still can’t get over the fact of a literary agency charging £649 for a daylong course called How To Get A Book Deal. We all have to earn a crust, but I thought literary agents did that by taking a commission for selling author’s books.

There are some very good courses run by agents and publishers (and writers and editors and writing teachers too …). And there are also plenty of festivals and writing conferences where writers can pay to hear the advice of industry professionals and sometimes even pitch to them – hey, we live under the system of global capital, right? And until the Revolution comes the exchange of money is often the foundation for the use of other people’s time and expertise, okay?!

But £649 is a lot of money to shell out for a day. I trust the pastries will be first-class!

So, for FREE, I’ll let you into a secret.

The way you get a book deal is to write a book someone else wants to read.

It’s as simple as that. And if lots of people want to read it, you could be very successful commercially.

I am not being facetious! I really do think there is great value in grasping the clarity of these facts. Too much can be overegged and overpromised in the world of creative writing, and promises made are rash ones. No one can really predict what a publisher will acquire, or whether a book will sell once it is published.

Stop grasping – just write a good book. If you want to be published, it really comes down to the simple matter of writing something that readers want to read. And it doesn’t even have to be a good book: look in a bookshop!

But, too, what is a good book? Taste matters as much as technique, and we know there’s no accounting for it.

However: it does help to develop your craft and technique, and also to gain inspiration in establishing an effective creative process. And though there are many excellent resources out there that you can pay for, there are also many that are FREE. Here are some of the ones I recommend most frequently.

On intention
Carmen Maria Machado, On Writing and the Business of Writing: a powerful essay on the intersections of art and commerce, grounded in real-life examples. If you are serious about getting published, this is required reading.
Alexander Chee, How To Unlearn Everything: written to address that contentious topic of writing ‘the other’, this essay in fact goes to the heart of three of the most important things in writing and publishing: your purpose in writing; your chosen narrative style; and understanding your readers. All writers should read it.

On creative practice
Charlotte Wood and Alison Manning on the Writer’s Life: a series of podcast interviews, with plenty of practical guidance on matters ranging from finding focus and discipline to working with feedback. There are so many podcasts on writing and books, but I’d certainly make room for this one.

On understanding how craft powers your story
Lincoln Michel, On The Many Different Engines That Power A Short Story: or novel or memoir or any narrative form. And while you are there, I highly recommend you sign up for the LitHub Daily – plenty of excellent craft essays and reviews and matters book-related.

On the intersections of plot and character, and how they connect with readers
Parul Seghal, The Case Against The Trauma Plot: lots of food for thought here for how stories are presented as tidy fictions – or messy ones. Valuable reading.

On developing a narrative style
Tell Me A Story and A Book Is Not A Film: blog posts of my own about narration, showing and telling, and knowing who or what is telling your story.
Emma Darwin, Psychic Distance: What It Is And How To Use It: I tend to use the term narrative distance, which I feel is more accurate for relating both interior and exterior modes of storytelling; whatever the language, understanding this concept can really empower your storytelling. And there is a whole textbook’s worth of writing advice in Emma’s excellent Tool-Kit.

On story types
Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots: a checklist for the 20 types of story is made available for free by the publisher – really handy for marshalling your narrative content and shaping it into a story. The book it’s based on is a good investment for writers too.

On story structure
Michael Hauge, The 5 Key Turning Points Of All Successful Screenplays: okay, a book is not a film (see above), but it helps to develop an understanding of ways to pace and plot your action. I often suggest that writers watch a favourite movie and look for those key developments in the story such as the Point of No Return and the Major Setback.

On prose style and voice
Chuck Palahniuk, Thought Verbs: a niche matter, but choosing the best verbs to power your sentences is imperative. Lots of other useful craft essays on the LitReactor site too.
Constance Hale, Sorting Out Grammar, Syntax, Usage & Style: there are lots of other resources on Constance Hale’s site too, and her book Sin and Syntax is *the* book on style, grammar and usage I always recommend: practical, witty, and breezy.

On publishing
Margaret Atwood, The Rocky Road To Paper Heaven: a pithy overview of the path from writing a book to getting it out in the world.
Jane Friedman’s Writing Advice Archive: should answer most questions about the business of publishing. Jane Friedman is a good one to follow.

On being realistic
Michael Neff, Why Do Passionate Writers Fail To Publish?: fierce but necessary! I disagree with a few points, e.g., that you must publish short fiction before submitting a novel, but a lot of sound advice here.
Editor’s Rejection Bullets: insights from the world of publishing.

On making yourself comfortable with uncertainty
Masterclass, John Keats’ Theory of Negative Capability in Writing: or cultivating the habit of being ‘in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’. Masterclass has a lot of free articles on other topics too.

On returning to the page
National Writing Project, Thirty Days Of Lockdown Writing: because we don’t want you spending *too* much time doing the reading, a month of daily prompts, many inspired by that guru of writing practice, Natalie Goldberg.

All of that advice: for FREE!

If I were doing this next week, I might have different suggestions. And ideas for podcasts and YouTubes could form entire other posts. Lots out there! Feel free to suggest in comments below.

And if you are really keen, and don’t mind shelling out on a few textbooks or going to the library: here is my DIY MA in Creative Writing. FREE. But you might want to find classmates or writing partners for that.

And there are lots other resources and writing experiments on this site, of course. FREE!

*

I’m right now not blogging as frequently; call this a special edition for the spring equinox, and maybe I’ll try to do something quarterly. But you can also find me on Twitter, and especially on Instagram.

NB: Revised 28 July to include Carmen Maria Machado’s essential essay.

Books of the Year 2021

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Some old, some new, some rereads – my books of the year, roughly in order of reading:

Raven Leilani, Luster
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste
Natalie Goldberg, Let The Whole Thundering World Come Home
Nora Krug, Heimat
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again
Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence
Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog

There were other good reads – Ash Before Oak, Three Simple Lines, Gathering Moss, Everybody, Just Kids, Miss Iceland, Red Love, Dragman, Second Place, The Weekend, The Promise, Oh William!, The Luminous Solution, Moonstone. Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up The Ghost was an excellent reread for book club. And this morning I finished The Fifth Season – what an introduction to the imagination of NK Jemisin, but maybe I need to let it linger a bit. If I’d finished listening to English Pastoral I suspect that might have made my selection too.

But the titles in the list above are the ones that really cast the greatest spell over me: drew my curiosity, got under my skin, fired me up, touched my heart, or equipped me with strength during what turned out to be a difficult year.

My standout read of 2021 is probably The Sentence. Before I read that, it would have been The Night Watchman. Clearly the year of Louise Erdrich. I love her. I just love her. Funny. I love that she is so funny. I love her characters: Tookie, Patrice. I love her political engagement. A couple of readers thought parts felt rushed, but to me that very rush of energy – the anticipation of what was coming – provided much of the pleasure of this book about books and book people set in a bookshop.

Enjoy this YouTube of Louise Erdrich’s launch interview held at Birchbark Books, which also provides the setting for The Sentence. ‘Sentences that bring people solace and comfort’ – just heard her utter those words again. And the thing about books is that you ‘can be alone but in the most splendid company’: another gem. UK readers: The Sentence comes in January.

If I had to ration myself, the other books I’d press on readers would be The Power of the Dog (clever western! fantastic prose! such pacing! such detours! see the movie too!), The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again (its mood! its mystery! its sense of place!) and Luster (the voice! the sheer bravura! the sheer lustrousness!). And Small Things Like These for an exquisite quickie, and Empire of Pain to fill you with fury and make you want to change the world.

There were a number of books I was looking forward to but their moment hasn’t come yet. The TBR piles teeter and totter.

And, as usual, hype (publisher/reviewer/social media) mars the experience of reading. Each to their own, etc., but! You *really* didn’t mind all those plot holes? You really fell for all that high-concept gush? I got the appeal of The Appeal – its format and its humorously observed characters were fun to start. But the closer you look, the less it makes sense. Surely those characters would be sending texts rather than emails, wouldn’t they? And don’t those insertions of additional evidence to the case seem a bit convenient? And those law students really hadn’t encountered this unusual legal case in the press: come on!? The foundation of the story’s drive starts to wobble, and isn’t this all getting a bit grating and silly now … But what do I know? It was book of the year here, a chain selection there, some notable blurbs. Are we really so easily pleased? Though I might not have cared so much if I’d not been led to expect something better. The hype: it was a problem.

And then Crawdads: insert horror emoji. It just didn’t add up for me – not least, one narrative prop is a poetry anthology that contains poems written maybe thirty years later than that book would have been published. A small detail – it’s not so much that it’s factually incorrect (I’m not that much of a purist), but it’s tonally off, and felt sloppy. At that point I started looking for flaws, and found many in the plot and the characterisation. I was no longer suspending disbelief that that child could have raised herself like that.

And then there was Kate Clanchy’s memoir, which in some ways is the book of the year in terms of how it generated, for me, so much thought about what constitutes good writing and good publishing. We can do better.

I sometimes feel bad about expressing criticisms of books. I mean, someone went to all that trouble, and authors can be sensitive souls (don’t tag them!). But I am a booklover, goddesssdammit, and making books better is part of my job. I task the writers I work with on ways to improve their manuscripts, but certain published books – and sometimes, it seems, whole genres – seem so mediocre that I wonder why I bother. Just rustle up a high concept that will satisfy the marketing department, then flesh out a synopsis (how I’ve come to dislike that word ‘twisty’), and hone a first page that will grab the attention of an agent or a judge. That sounds cynical, but so is publishing.

I really enjoyed Parul Seghal’s The Case Against The Trauma Plot in the New Yorker this week (27 December), not least as she seems to share my taste: Reservation Dogs was one of my favourite shows of the year. I like how this article identifies how trauma can provide too easy or tidy an explanation within stories:

The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority. The solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost. It disregards what we know and asks that we forget it, too—forget about the pleasures of not knowing, about the unscripted dimensions of suffering, about the odd angularities of personality.

Hanging on ‘twisty’ reveals that milked shocked responses to characters’ suffering, the trauma plot was what spoiled It’s A Sin for me on tv too (I’m clearly going against some grains of popular taste this year). Ooo, and trauma porn reminds me that the follow-up to A Little Life is out soon. I promise to read with an open mind, honest! But I retain the right to judge harshly.

Many of my favourite books this year did in some way or other go to the heart of suffering and injustice, but they did so without implausible contrivances and mawkish stitching. They worked their magic with humour, with affection, with complexity, with an awareness of mystery, with a sense of negative capability. They usually had well-crafted sentences and paragraphs, and a voice. A personality.

Though I carefully observe professional boundaries, I am giving a special mention to Jo McMillan’s The Happiness Factory, coming in January 2022. I read earlier drafts, and perhaps am biased, but it gives me great joy to see this very funny and bittersweet novel make its way to publication, and from the esteemed indie Bluemoose too. The premise is fantastic: an estranged daughter uses an inheritance to buy a sex-aid factory in China just as the country is opening up to the global economy. And the concept is matched with a real voice and plenty of heart.

I vowed to blog every month this year – and I did that, and even managed the first of the month most of the time. This one: the end of the month, an hour to go. Because. Sometimes these things become chores, and sometimes we need to move along a bit. I am going to blog this coming year only if/when I have something that requires the longer form.

Blogging, is it over?! Should I be doing a Substack? Newsletters are an exciting format, though I find I don’t actually have the time to read various of the ones I’ve subscribed to, and some are quite mansplainy. Austin Kleon’s is one I always find time for.

But what do I have to add? And everyone’s a teacher now, everyone has an offering. Masterclass does it so well. I loved the David Sedaris one recently, and we’re working through Shonda Rhimes currently – both are funny, both are practical.

One thing I’ve noticed during the pandemic is that there are lots of people with lots of things to say, but sometimes there’s a value in quiet. I’ve muted and unfollowed a lot of people this year. Maybe I’m just a bit jaded at the end of 2021. ‘Just sitting: what a relief in this busy world’ – something Natalie Goldberg said as she led us in meditation during a virtual retreat earlier this month.

The solace of sitting and sentences. Maybe that’s something to aim for in 2022. And tulips! And crocuses, and daffodils. More to plant this weekend while I continue listening to English Pastoral. Priorities.

You can also find me at my new Andrew Wille Writing Studio account on Instagram, which seems an easier place for engaged interactions. More there, and Happy New Year! I’ll leave you with this beautiful poem from Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave: Eagle Poem.

Days of the Dead

by Andrew | 6 Comments

Today is All Saints’ Day aka All Hallows aka the Feast of All Saints aka the Solemnity of All Saints aka (my fave) Hallowmas.

Tomorrow is All Souls’ Day, when we commemorate ‘all the faithful departed’.

And yesterday of course was Halloween, when we scared the hell out of ourselves watching episodes 3 and 4 of Midnight Mass.

I was going to post an All Saints’ Day writing experiment based on the idea of celebrating our own personal saints, but I realised I’ve done that before: Saint’s Day.

If I were writing about a saint today, I’d have to write about Saint Guinefort, the dog saint from France. Guinefort was a greyhound who saved a baby from a snake but whose humans mistakenly thought he’d attacked it and killed him. (Note to self: I called the baby it. Oops.) Discovering their mistake, they created a memorial to Guinefort at a well, where they planted trees. Locals visited, made offerings, brought belongings to be blessed, such as baby clothes to be protected. It became a shrine, it became a cult. Sounds like my kind of religion.

We find echoes of that story in the Welsh folk tale about Gelert, who gave his name to Beddgelert, where I went camping in my teens. It also makes me think about the scene where Tramp saves the baby from the rat in Lady and the Tramp. Dogs are the best! Dogs are saints, they are angels walking among us. They are tricksters. They protect us, they guard our homes, they teach us how to be patient, they teach us how to love.

Of course: I’m remembering today Charlie, our beloved whippet, who died at the start of last month. How will I ever forget. Grief is an ongoing process. Typing messages about his passing still makes me weep – every time.

Words really do fail – writing seems pointless. Limits are shown, particularly when we think about the vast power of those nonverbal forms of communication we share with dogs. Charlie understood an extensive English vocabulary – naturally! Two dads who’re writers, and a house full of books. But so much more was expressed in other ways: soulful eyes, shake-a-paws, a sigh. The heavy weight of a resting body using your ankle as a headrest. The electricity of another presence in the room. A subtle nod of his head in a certain direction told us exactly what he wanted. He was a playful imp – so much is expressed when we play with a dog. And there is no sight on earth more beautiful than a whippet running at full speed.

How can words replicate all that? What good does does writing do? We can write I Remembers. We can testify to the power of stories [insert generic writing festival cliché]. But I’m not feeling that currently. Doesn’t bring him back. A dog, a wood, a well … ingredients for a story, maybe. And there are other things to say. But another time.

Though maybe I’m wrong. Writing this, and posts (finally) on Instagram, have perhaps made me feel – not better, no. But fractionally more at ease and maybe able to get on. But never better, really. Maybe we never are – maybe we never should be.

I had to make those posts on Instagram today though. It was time. It’s just pictures we share of dogs (and plants and cakes and books), but there is a community there, and friendships have been made.

What I am now understanding more deeply is why people take part in temporal and physical acts of memorial.

The word memorial has often for me conjured up the Cenotaph-and-poppies style of memorial. Sorry – though I once honoured family who made sacrifices in wartime by wearing a poppy, of late I’ve found myself resisting the idea; it’s turned into a mawkish cliché remote from the suffering of war, doing dirty work for the liar classes of politicians and the media. Each to their own, but I guess I’m not performative in that way. I’d probably prefer to wear a pansy anyway. Not least, their blooms are more resilient.

I am talking about memorial in terms of personal things. Gathering things to remember your people. Things you can touch, hold. Little things, knick-knacks of no monetary value that are priceless in other ways, ornaments, toys. Things that resist institutions, playful things that enjoy intimacies. Things that hold memory and association.

More and more I find myself drawn to the idea of the Day of the Dead. I have been confused as to whether the Day of the Dead takes places on All Saints’ Day or All Souls’ Day, and I imagine there is all sorts of liturgical hairsplitting we could get into about who qualifies for being remembered when. Maybe we should plump for a three-day festival called Hallowtide for this time when the veil between the worlds is thin.

What attracts me to the Day of the Dead, though, is its earthiness – how it uses tangible objects to remember and conjure up those who are no longer with us. I love the skeletons, I love the neon colours, I love the fancy stitching, I love the flags. I love the pagan reference points: the devils, the little imps (those imps). I love the candles and smoke, and the cloying sweet smells, I love the marigolds and the chrysanthemums. I love foody offerings: the breads, sugar skulls, tamales, hot chocolate. I love the music. The colour and rowdiness and gaudiness of all these mortal objects are joyfully embodied in the movie Coco – where Miguel’s Xolo, named Dante, is surely a type of whippet, and is even silver-grey too?!

And then too there is the idea of visiting cemeteries en masse – families, friends, strangers, all backgrounds and walks of life – a jumble of people dressed up to celebrate those they have loved and those who’ve gone before them, making merry and shedding tears as they sweep vaults and clean gravestones and say prayers and tell stories. I love this community of reverence and the irreverent. These rituals unify us with an honest and collective acknowledgement of not only that common destination, but also what is left behind – and how we got here.

Here I am thinking many of us could gain from a mark on the calendar for this sort of collective commemoration of body and soul, this festival of memory. E.g., I’m not sure the British are very good with how we handle our past right now, and I’m not sure we’re very good with religion either. We seem to just fudge it, e.g., by watching The Crown, or by wailing on Twitter.

The Day of the Dead is associated with Mexico, but holidays celebrating our ancestors are found all over the world. As with many religious celebrations, institutional observances have grafted church rituals on to local traditions such as Samhain, but too they have subsequently been adapted by family rituals and personal practice, accommodating the household and the everyday. We could/should think about cultural appropriation, and we should certainly be respectful of others. But I think personal shrines have a magpie glory all of their own.

I’m also thinking of friends and relatives with shelves or ledges where they keep photos and tchotchkes and vases of flowers for those who’ve gone before. I’m thinking of my friend Bhanu, who has taught a writing class called Shrine, Ritual, Installation. I’m thinking of my friend Alex, whose shrine has a picture of Tolstoy (Alex is obsessed with Anna Karenina).

As a writing experiment: create a shrine for Day of the Dead. Memorialise your own inspirations – writers, artists, influences, and especially those beings you’ve loved and been loved by, who are in truth your greatest literary influences. Your ancestors. Frame photos, clip postcards. Arrange knick-knacks. Light candles. Burn incense. Share some candies or biscuits. Put some dahlias in a jamjar.

Take some time there tomorrow, All Souls’ Day. Every day. You could of course draw upon the energy of your shrine to do some writing, and there’s plenty to consider there. Memoirs, elegies, prayers.

But perhaps, for now, just let the shrine be. Light a candle. Listen, behold. Just be with it, be owned by what’s there. Soak it up, and feel it.

***

Another post for this time of year: Bring In The Light. Though Saint Guinefort does ask that you refrain from letting off bangers and firecrackers. Saint Guinefort is probably a better saint than I am, but – in memory of Charlie, and on behalf of all small creatures and the easily cowed – I might have to ask him to curse anyone who lets off noisy fireworks, okay?! Oh, and let’s also curse Thor and the thunder gods while we’re at it?!

And a sidenote: I dithered whether to add apostrophes and at first decided they’re fussy and to go for a streamlined style: All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Consistent in my villainy. Then I found further justification in thinking of All Saints and All Souls as adjectives rather than possessive nouns, but then I wondered: should these terms describe us, or should they own us?! So I shifted back to the apostrophe, and the idea of being owned by the dead. A haunting. See: punctuation is important! The devil – or the imp – is in the detail.

***

And most of all: RIP Charlie – remembered always, and enshrined forever. He was such a good dog, and always will be. Such a good boy.

 

 

 

I Want (A Dyke For President)

by Andrew | 4 Comments

 

The idea of want crops up so often as a basic driver of stories – in defining a character’s motivations or yearnings, or in getting down to basics in a memoir.

I often suggest that wants have an inner dimension, which can be broad and abstract (love; a place to call home), but that they work best if also grounded in tangible and specific objects of desire that are located externally in our material world (two old shirts; a little ranch, or maybe a trip to Mexico).

I also relate the idea of want to the idea of intention. When working with writers, I often start by asking them what they intend their writing to do, and direct them to discussion of the subject in Susan Bell’s The Artful Edit (a book I recommend to all writers). Among other things, she asks simply: ‘Why do you want this piece of writing to live? Your intention lies in how you answer.’

We can take the ideas of want and intention further, into the idea of manifesting. I am thinking of the creative desires expressed in Octavia Butler’s notebooks. So bold, so powerful – and eventually so prophetic!

I’m also thinking about Bernardine Evaristo’s memoir Manifesto. Which I’ve yet to read – only just out. The idea of the manifesto is such a good way of making your wants real in the world. I’ve posted a writing experiment about this in the past: Write! A Manifesto.

The text that excites me most when I think of want in writing is Zoe Leonard’s I Want A President. Leonard was inspired to write this poem when her friend the poet Eileen Myles ran for president of the US in 1992, as discussed in this video. I always think of its title as I Want A Dyke For President, because: yes, so do I, and ALL of the rest of that fierce and brilliant poem too.

Oh! It’s so good and so powerful. The power of the simple repetitions, the power of the simple syntax of Subject-Verb-Object, the stark imagery of nouns, the simple expression of want. Also, the clever variations – the patterning, the emphasis created, the reinscribing effect of the repeated want. And of course its content – its transgressions and taboos and what it reclaims, its urge for social justice. And its eternal truths: those last lines speak to us even more strongly thirty years later. Above you can see it displayed as a huge poster on the Highline in New York during the 2016 presidential election season (though a lot of good it did then! Which does beg questions … Another time).

Perhaps more than anything the power of this piece lies in its VOICE: strong, direct, uncluttered. Back in the olden days, at a Fire workshop with Words Away, we had great fun with theatre maker Kate Beales running us through drama studio exercises in which we acted this poem out in different styles and voices. Modestly, sarcastically, quizzically – defiantly, fists in the air, we all cried out in unison: I WANT A DYKE FOR PRESIDENT! What a rush that gave us – what a charge.

So: as a writing experiment, let’s charge ourselves up by writing about our own wants.

* First read I Want A President to yourself. Here is another version. You might want to print it out – such a fantastic document to hold in your hands.

* Then: read it aloud to yourself. Try it in a few different styles – timidly, boldly, with curiosity, with rage, with love.

* After reading it, watch performers who’ve interpreted it too, e.g., Mykki Blanco, activists in Washington, Zoe Leonard herself.

* Now, right away, write for ten minutes using the prompt I want. Maybe write about who YOU want for President (or Prime Minister). Or write more freely, seeing what arises for your wants. When you stop writing about one want, carry on writing about a new one. Harness those desires, and let your voice ring.

* You could adapt this for other wants. What you want your book to do. What you want as a writer, professional wants, personal wants.

*  You can use I want within a programme of fieldwork for a larger work too, also exploring, e.g., what characters Can and Can’t do, what they Must and Mustn’t do, and what they Remember. Writing in their first-person voices, or adapting for third-person He/She/They. Or even try second-person you: you want. How might your characters’ wants conflict with each other to create drama? It works for fiction, and it works for real-life stories too.

* And try reading your pieces to friends/family/colleagues – it is a good one to share for its directed energy, even if it’s just as a voice note in a message. Get them to join in too! This is a fun and powerful form for writing.

 

Must and Mustn’t

by Andrew | Leave a comment

 

Once you’ve established what your characters Can and Can’t do, you can make things more interesting by feeling your way through what they must or mustn’t do. This might even be the starting point for a character.

Personal obligations and legal boundaries that define what we must or mustn’t do introduce constraints and possibilities to our stories. Duties observed – or disregarded? Promises kept – or broken? Laws respected – or disobeyed?

The Oxford comma, telling instead of showing, misgendered pronouns. Thou shall not kill, wearing white shoes after Labor Day, making an illegal crossing into another country. Rituals, niceties, taboos, transgressions: what we must or mustn’t do brings energy and thrills to plotting in fiction, layering in complexities, seeding conflict, and launching change in the world. It can also draw out the urgent matter if we are writing about real-life experiences.

As a writing experiment: For ten minutes, and following the list format of I Remember or I Can, use I Must as a prompt for a character or for your own personal experiences.

For another write, use I Mustn’t for that character or yourself.

Another variation: using the list format, alternate I Must with I Mustn’t sentence by sentence (or paragraph by paragraph).

Use these prompts for different characters in your story. You might also want to play around with tense forms and perspectives, e.g., I had to, He had to, She had to, They had to.

Do your prompted writes in ten-minute sprints, without stopping, feeling the energy as it travels from gut to heart to shoulder down your arm to your hand and on to the page. Each Must or Mustn’t is as long as it has to be: a couple of lines, a few words, a whole paragraph. And when that’s done, on to the next Must/Mustn’t. Let the pressure of timed writing force stuff out of you.

You can also use these prompts for brief free writes if you get stuck at any time in your writing. A ten-minute dash of mustn’ting might free something up for your work. As fieldwork for a novel or short story, you could work with these prompts for a set of different characters across the course of a week – you could also apply this to different players in a memoir or a real-life story.

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In other news: I’m reorganising and refocusing my work and also space online. Welcome to the Andrew Wille Writing Studio!

I like the word studio, because I feel writing is a studio practice that gains from trying things out. I also feel that writing belongs as much to the art school as it does within the English department – if not moreso.

More to come, but for now I’m concentrating on: launching a few Zoom classes (coming later in the autumn); developing structured mentoring programmes tailored to writers’ needs; and building online community on Instagram, where I shall be posting tips, guidance, news, and reviews.

I’ve also added a page with a few testimonials from people I’ve worked with: Endorsements.

See you on Instagram, I hope! It’s where one of my better selves resides.