I’ve posted previously on the way that music can inspire me to write, and this time, for a change, it’s poetry. I’ve been thinking about the lead character in a novel I’m writing, and in my quest to create his backstory, I have turned to music as one of the…
I’ve been thinking and talking about creativity quite a lot lately. First of all, I participated in a podcast which veered a long distance from its normal subject matter (wargaming with miniatures) because my co-host and prolific blogger, Neil Shuck, has decided to retire from his role as a regular columnist…
I’ve started a few businesses over the years. Back in 1991, I co-founded a graphic design partnership, H A Design, and then in 1998 started its digital arm, H@://Wired. Then in 2001, after splitting from my business partner at the end of 1999, I re-branded myself as Gladius Creative Communication,…
Just what is it about Joanna Penn that makes her such a wonderful companion on the road from novice to pro? Her authenticity, that’s what. I read her books, listen to her podcasts, watch her vidcasts and now engage in her Facebook Live events — and for every single second…
It’s been a momentous few days, folks! On Sunday, I hit the milestone age of 55 (so technically I could start taking my pension, if I had a pension worth taking!) and I decided to take stock of where I am in life, and where I want to be. As…
Does this ever happen to you? You decide on a course and set out with the best of intentions, only to find yourself overtaken by life events, work, health issues and a general sense of weariness. Well, that’s what’s happened to me. Just emerging from a cold, but still swamped…
I’ve written previously about how I gain inspiration from a piece of music, and some tracks take me so firmly in their grasp that I just have to write with Spotify on a single track loop until I wrestle that sucker to the ground and get it out of my…
It’s that time when we look back over the previous 12 months and start thinking about the coming year. What have I done? Where am I now? Where am I going? To be honest, I gave up making new year’s resolutions a long time ago, when I realised that convincing myself…
The last time I posted here was just after the appalling bombings in Paris. The shock of those events, and the intensity of the subsequent debate about the appropriate response, both for us as individuals and collectively as an international community, left me somewhat lost for words in the form of blog…
This week, I interviewed Roz Morris who tutored our group of enthusiastic writers at the first ever Creative Retreats in Italy event, hosted by my sister Janys Hyde in Venice. Q 1: Hi Roz and thanks for agreeing to tell my readers something about the course you ran recently in Venice.…