Recently in General Writing Category

It is often said that the key to great comic delivery is timing. I would go further and say its the key to great writing too. But before I get into that, let's examine the power of timing in the best way possible - Morecambe and Wise.

My gorgeous daughter, Hazel, moved back into our spare room last week. As Shelley and I don't live in the largest of houses, this meant a weekend of clear outs, cupboard re-organisation and large bags of old clothes sent off the Salvation Army.

But, joy of joys, look what I found.

Working in an office as I do, it can often be particularly difficult to focus, uninterrupted and without distraction, on a piece of writing. This is why the iPod is the greatest ever invention for office-based writers.

Searching through folder after folder on the hard drives trying to find an elusive doc a few days ago, I came across an old short story I penned way back in 1995. Originally written as part of a creative writing component of my journalism traineeship, it hasn't been published elsewhere.

Agh - few things annoy my linguistic sensibilities more than random capitalisation. Sure, misplaced apostrophes are probably a greater grammatical blot on the language landscape, but the capitalisation of words is more irritating because of its intentional nature.

I'm currently editing and rewriting the copy on a massive IT website and still come across examples of nail-on-blackboard level irritation.