MANUSCRIPT ASSESSMENT AND EDITORIAL ADVICE SINCE 1996
Blog
In 2016, TLC’s 20th anniversary year, we launched a blog as a space for thoughtful, non-promotional pieces on all things writing, editing and publishing. If you’d like to pitch a piece, please email Aki Schilz on .
We’d love to hear from you, and please feel free to comment on the blogs here.
The Poet's Work
January 02, 2022 | Blog, Other News
For the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the hard work poetry demands. For years I was shackled to the idea that all a poet needs is inspiration; that temperament and devotion were beside the point. But while inspiration certainly helps (I love the moment something unexpected wanders in),
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The Art of Not Giving In (Part Two)
December 01, 2021 | Blog
The Second Coming of the North Surrey Gigantopithecus
PREVIOUSLY, in The Art of Not Giving In, I described how I went from abandoning my novel, The North Surrey Gigantopithecus in 2017 to being around to witness its publication by Unsung Stories in 2021 to some acclaim.
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The Art of Not Giving In (Part One)
November 01, 2021 | Blog
Part 1: The Entombment of the North Surrey Gigantopithecus
Death, Rebirth, Resurrection:
In January 2018, all the cool kids sat in stunned silence and wept into their berets when, on this very blog I announced – grief and emotion adding palpable shake to my intense, kinetic and showoffy prose style – that I had abandoned my novel The North Surrey Gigantopithecus.
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Rejection: The elephant in the writing room
It can take us weeks, months or years to birth a new piece of writing; work that means the world to us and which we hope one day might mean the world to others too.
We move from idea to realisation, following inspirations and urges along the way until we have what looks like a novel or a story,
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Moving with the Times: the evolution of a literature festival
September 01, 2021 | Blog
The birth of StoryTown, a literature festival whose home is the Wiltshire town of Corsham, was in 2018. For a good while, the town council had wanted to host a festival which played to the many creative strengths of the town, from the home of the prestigious BathSpa University MA courses,
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How to Write Your First Page
August 04, 2021 | Blog
Mslexia magazine has teamed up with top Readers from The Literary Consultancy and Gold Dust to bring you the definitive guide to writing a first page that will hook potential readers and agents alike.
The How to Write Your First Page ebook, due for release on 9 August,
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Fiction vs Non-Fiction Pitches... What's the Difference?
July 02, 2021 | Blog
One of the things we most regularly get asked at TLC is, ‘What is the difference between a fiction pitch and a non-fiction pitch, when I’m sending my work to an agent or publisher?’
There are increasingly lots of creative ways to get your book into the hands of readers,
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Twenty Years a TLC Reader
June 01, 2021 | Blog
It was the summer of 2001. I’d recently finished working as a writer at Emmerdale. For several years I’d been teaching creative writing in Adult Ed, and had picked up some work as a correspondence tutor for the Open College of the Arts at Barnsley. My course leader there, Sara Maitland,
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Turning Down a Publishing Contract to Become an Indie Entrepreneur
May 01, 2021 | Blog | 2 comments
How I Learned What Made Me Tick as a Writer
I once started Haruki Murakami’s autobiography. His career as a writer started with a literary competition in Tokyo. He chiselled away at his first book every night for a month or three, sent off the manuscript and,
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TLC Online Writers' Day Write-Up 2021
April 01, 2021 | Blog
This month, we’re pleased to feature a write-up of our recent Online Writers’ Day, from friend of TLC Ciara Holly. We were grateful to Ciara for stepping in as a ‘roving reporter’ on the day and capturing the key parts of the day, so that those of you who may not have been able to attend can catch up!
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