by Chris Smith | Apr 26, 2021
We’re taught from an early age that trying to do such and such is admirable – and indeed, it can be. But in reality, making yourself do anything through willpower alone is a trap. It’s demoralising and rarely gets results. Forcing yourself to write, stay focused...
by Chris Smith | Mar 25, 2021
Writing routines work because they help you get the writing done in a more automatic way. But when your routine becomes an unhelpful rut and you start doing and thinking things that don’t work – you need to shake things up. In her book Mindfulness, which extols the...
by Chris Smith | Mar 1, 2021
You’d never call Cheryl Strayed (pictured) a shirker. Today, her books regularly hit the bestseller lists, her memoir Wild was made into an Oscar-nominated film. She’s successful and prolific by any measure. But for years she was stuck – she didn’t write a thing. She...
by Chris Smith | Feb 9, 2021
Everybody writes differently but one thing’s the same. The writers who have a more balanced, easier and less wrung-out relationship with writing have all developed some kind of personal system to keep them going and to stop them from stalling. Before lockdown I used...
by Chris Smith | Jan 29, 2021
June the 18th 1858 should go down in history as the day when one of the world’s most influential, revolutionary books was finally sparked into life. On that day the English naturalist Charles Darwin – who was little known at the time – was opening his morning mail...
