An idea had taken root in the general consciousness that ‘creative writing’ meant reaching into the soul to bring out secrets. Some tutors fed that need by encouraging their groups to explore terrible things that had happened to them, instead of writing about the more mundane aspects of life – the difficulty of walking a powerful dog, of

By the time I was twelve, my brother and sister were in their twenties and lived away, first at university then in London, where they worked. Every few weeks they would come home trailing cigarette smoke, casually swearing and starting arguments about politics. My sister, who worked in advertising, might bring a copy of Vogue which I could look at

Her husband’s defence, that he wanted a last chance at happiness, casually wrote their marriage off as unhappy, when Susie felt sure that wasn’t how he had experienced it. Her hunch that this was some kind of mid-life crisis seemed borne out by the fact that, a year after leaving, her husband had got back in touch, saying that he thought he had

They may have come here to get away from other people. All the same, it was interesting, and poignant, to see how everyone arrived on the first day ready to reinvent themselves and how, by midweek, all the original character traits were reasserted, for better or worse. People settled into groups – the popular ones, the quiet ones, the odd

‘You mean fictionalizing your experience? Or writing something different inspired by it? Or just totally different?’ ‘What do you think?’ ‘I think making stuff up is harder.’ It was like being a doctor sometimes, sitting there at my desk, hearing about symptoms and trying to locate their source, dispensing advice while discreetly keeping an eye on

like the man in Robert Frost’s poem, took the less travelled path, then continued up, half running, half walking, towards the brow of the hill, thinking how Frost’s poem had been misconstrued as an argument for taking less obvious choices in life, when in fact it had simply been meant as a joke about an indecisive friend. I had read somewhere that

You could write regularly in a notebook – or keep a diary – do you ever do that?’ ‘Not really,’ Susie shook her head. ‘Not for ages.’ ‘It might help you identify what you’re good at and what you’re interested in. You could try writing every day, about the things that happen, the things you think about. Use the diary to explore your feelings and

Peter’s face settled into the arrangement of ridges and furrows in which his pained certainty had found expression over many decades. I wondered briefly if a comparison could be made between his undulating forehead and the hilly landscape and decided that was too much of a stretch. Peter’s forehead was not like Yorkshire.

‘I hope you enjoyed this morning’s workshop?’ ‘Well yes,’ he said with a chuckle that sounded as though it had been selected from a range of chuckles, each conveying a marginally different degree of condescension.