- Format
- Reading and conversation
- Length
- 45 – 60 minutes
- Price
- Guide: standard author fee
Who it is for — Festivals, bookshops, libraries and reading groups.
- A fifteen-minute reading
- Conversation or interview
- Audience questions
- Signing afterwards
Speaking
Talks, festivals, workshops and what each one needs.
Workshops
A day on writing about place, for twelve people who bring something they are stuck on.
Read more- Format
- One day, maximum twelve people
- Length
- 10:00 – 16:00
- Price
- Guide: fee on application
Who it is for — Writing centres, universities and festivals.
- A full day, capped at twelve participants
- Three pieces workshopped in full
- Written exercises to take away
- Follow-up notes by email within a week
Commissioned writing
Essays and long-form pieces, for anthologies, catalogues and magazines.
Read more- Format
- Per commission
- Length
- Typically 6 months lead time
- Price
- Guide: standard rates per word
Who it is for — Editors, anthologies, galleries and magazines.
- One long-form piece to agreed length
- Two rounds of editorial revision
- First serial rights, other rights retained
Process
How the work gets written
Slowly, in longhand, and mostly before eight in the morning.
- 01
Notebooks
Everything starts in one. There are currently thirty-one of them and they are indexed, badly, in a single document.
- 02
Mornings
Six until eight, in longhand, five days a week. About nine hundred words on a good morning and none at all on plenty of others.
- 03
Typing up
The second draft happens while typing, which is where about a third of the words disappear.
- 04
Leaving it
Three months in a drawer before anybody reads it, including me. Nothing survives that stage unchanged.
- 05
Editing
Two rounds with an editor who is right more often than I would like, and one pass out loud.
Testimonials
What editors and readers have said
Read something
The essays are free and there are two hundred of them. If you would rather have the books, they are all in print and available from any bookshop that will order them.
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