From the airport blockbuster thriller, to the fantasy epic, to the literary prize-winner, BBC Arts’ Tom Churchill mocked up five clichés that pervade the book stands, then hilariously pulls out laughably bad real examples that have sold by the truck load. …
Depending on where you’re from, five foot seven may not seem that short. The trouble is that epée fencing, with its lack of priority or right of way rules, makes epée all the more attractive for the taller fencers.
Having the whole body as the target means that, unlike foil, almost anything goes. You only have to hit somewhere on your opponent before the 1/25th of a second lockout to score before they do. And if you’re in the lead, you can afford to take a few risks, concede double hits and still win the bout. …
Microsoft announced in April that it was closing the Microsoft Store’s e-books section. The short-lived foray into e-books began in 2017 as part of the Windows 10 Creators Update. With the closure of the store, Microsoft also set a date this month (July) by which it would remove all purchased books from the libraries of those who bought them. The how and the why? Digital Rights Management – DRM. …
Take a look at the output of the Big Five publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, along with their multitude of subsidiary imprints) and you’ll see a tendency to spend big on a few titles in the hope of getting enough big hits to cover losses on the rest. Like the Hollywood studios, the Big Five gamble on their reading of the mass market to move volume, on an International scale, and not cater for the full spectrum of audience tastes. …
The last two decades have seen huge changes in the publishing industries – the consolidation of publishers and agents, the advent of cost-effective digital printing for small runs, and the rise of the Internet as a discovery and distribution platform. It’s an industry my father would barely recognise from his time in publishing during the 1970’s. …
There are many ways to start writing a book, both fiction and non-fiction. Without a first draft, you don’t have a book, just an idea. But a completed first draft is just that – a beginning and not an end.
Whether you sit down and start at the beginning and just write down whatever comes from your stream of consciousness, or you carefully plan and outline the whole thing from beginning to end, whatever gets you started has value. …
The BBC used to have an educational site called Get Writing, no longer live but some of the content migrated into BBC Writers’ Room.
Get Writing was a fantastic resource for aspiring writers and would regularly post tips, exercises and how-to’s from renowned authors. One of these concerned the discipline of writing regularly.
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Everyone teaches Creative Writing these days, but it often looks like no one teaches Precise Editing. We’re all led to believe that creative writing flows effortlessly from our finger tips in an unbroken stream of consciousness. It doesn’t. Good writing is hard work; good, finished writing is down to good, solid editing.
Few texts can fail to be improved by several rounds of re-reading and re-editing, cutting and honing until the best possible version is achieved.
And how do you edit, exactly? Here’s a basic tool set. …
Somewhere between John Perry Barlow’s poetic and wildly optimistic A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and the recent suicides of several teens bullied on Facebook and Instagram, the Internet became a brutal and seemingly unforgiving space.
We decided to document our own (short) set of rules for social media. Apologies if this reads like Baz Luhrman’s self-help record Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) … …
Welcome to Proactivity Press.
Our new website is now live with our existing titles in print and some upcoming publications available to back order.
Our online shop is also live integrated with a secure PayPal checkout, so you can buy titles direct from us. …
