writing

  • Writers Bureau revisited

    Slack blogging around here since Christmas. Sorry about that- pressure of work, and a trip to a snowy Munich are to blame. You can see the view towards Odeonsplatz from the Englischer Garten in the new header – schön, oder?It seems that Topsyturvydom’s glorious victory against the mighty Writers Bureau was not the unalloyed success…

  • Cultural Amnesia

    “It is so immense, I have no words for it” was T.S. Eliot’s reaction to Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God. Old Tom was possibly just relieved that he had escaped being skewered on Lewis’s satirical blade, unlike virtually everyone else in the precious hothouse world of the London literary scene in the twenties. I…

  • Writing for Profit revisited

    Some time ago, I blogged about the advertisements that the mail-order writing course Writers Bureau place regularly in the national press. The general tone of the adverts was that their course could open the door for you to become a professional writer, earning lots of money. This was supported by testimonials from apparently successful clients.…

  • Writing for profit?

    Recent analyses of what writers earn confirm pretty much what we all knew anyway, which is that, unless you are JK, or Salman, don’t give up the day job. That is, unless you can live on four grand a year.In that financial climate, the claims of the mail-order writing schools look a bit dubious. But…