If it’s Monday it must be moped
Today I’m starting to put vocals on the music and song cycle now known as Twelvemonth. As you can see from my songbook, lyric writing is not always (rarely in fact) a straightforward affair. I work in...
View Article“Love, Retold” by Tikva Wolf
It seems like only yesterday I was reviewing Tikva Wolf’s Ask me About Polyamory! and quite frankly in this time of massive uncertainty, revealed oppression and polarized opinion I wondered whether...
View ArticleHow Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Created the Manchester Attacks
Britain has never taken responsibility for the bloodshed and exploitation which built the empire. This is evidenced by Theresa May’s hardline on Brexit. We want to take without giving anything in...
View ArticleWhat Can We Laugh at Now?: Political Correctness and Humor
What we find funny is indicative of our beliefs, attitudes, judgements and opinions. It is a useful barometer. When we mock those who by birth or circumstance are less fortunate, we become persecutors...
View ArticleThe Price of Polyamory & the In-Laws…
It seems incredible now, but I once thought the notion of intentional families was a simple one. Who wouldn’t want a family actively chosen from people whom you love and who love you with their whole...
View ArticleDear White Women: Why We Need to Stop Crying When POC Call Us Out
Are you crying because you've discovered our present world is far shittier and more abusive than you thought? Are you crying because YOU are far shittier and more abusive than you thought? Ouch, that's...
View ArticleFinding the Plot Structure in Your Story
Authors say that 'writing is rewriting.' Nowhere is this more true than when you write memoir in order to heal. I wrote the stories as I remembered them and as I felt them, in my younger voice. But as...
View ArticleFirst Line, First Paragraph, First Page
Yet even though your work is of immense personal value, your first draft will not be in any shape to be published and that is just as it should be. So if you're waiting to 'find' the perfect first...
View ArticleHelp! My Memoir isn’t Good Enough
It took me fifteen years to publish my first book and it is my hope that I can shorten that time for you because a lot of that time was spent on unnecessary self-doubt. Those fifteen years were spent...
View ArticleSilly Putty
The shell which included social etiquette, consideration and interest in the outer world is broken. I feel a desperate need to be intensely focused on being sad and I resent any attempt to pull me...
View ArticleWorking on Individual Scenes
But be careful that you don't make outright assumptions about others' motivations and behaviours. You cannot know what is in their mind, you can only know how you interpret their words and behaviour....
View ArticleWhat to Cut (and when to not)
So what should you be cutting (or rewriting)? Anything that does not move the story forward, anything which seems slow. This is the reason you need fresh eyes, because without them you will be too...
View ArticleAsk: Building A Consent Culture by Kitty Stryker
This book highlights a smorgasbord of situations which make you question your current ideas about consent. Consent is not true consent where there is a power imbalance. You cannot make a free and...
View ArticleThe Impossible Conundrum of Objective Journalism
Stephen Fry once likened the English language to a shameless whore. Unlike the French, he said, her purity was unguarded and just about every sentence contained “a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian,...
View ArticleReauthoring your Stories, Narratives and Uncovering Beliefs
So you’re here at last. Right now you may have no inclination as to what re-authoring looks like or feels like. To see different plot patterns in your stories, takes a great deal of distance. To do so...
View ArticleBringing Attention to Atrocities in an Apathetic Western World
But there is no victorious ‘democratic’ ending to this story. In Syria the civil uprising has gradually been transformed into a full scale civil war. Sayid and his colleagues have all lost loved ones...
View ArticleOnline Feminism has no common language
But since the hottest english debates are raging in America right now, it's their culture which is shaping our modern english language, a language I've studied and loved for years but due to an global...
View Article#MeToo: Will My Son Grow up to be a Rapist?
And if predatory behaviour is as ubiquitous among men as it appears and as I have experienced it to be, statistically it is likely that my son will violate someone, at some point, in his lifetime. That...
View ArticleOne Alternative Sex Shop in Berlin Leads the Way in Consent
Germans are more sexually adventurous than their European counterparts according to one unofficial survey, carried out across Europe by Björn Borg’s underwear company a few years ago. They top the...
View ArticleThe Body Is Not An Apology | When white people are silent in the situations...
It is the balance of power which determines whether an action crosses the line from hurtful to abusive. When the power dynamic is out of balance and the person with the power inflicts harm on the...
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