MANUSCRIPT ASSESSMENT AND EDITORIAL ADVICE SINCE 1996
Blog
In 2016, TLC’s 20th anniversary year, we launched a blog as a space for thoughtful and challenging pieces on all things writing, editing and publishing. If you’d like to pitch a piece, please email Aki Schilz on aki@literaryconsultancy.co.uk. We’d love to hear from you, and please feel free to comment on the blogs here.
The Power of Words: Trick(s)y Language
October 01, 2017 | Blog
Dedicated to Rebecca Swift – who told me to be brave and to make every word choice count.
On speaking plainly…
We’re constantly reminded of the power of words. Case in point, following this summer’s tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, President Donald J Trump chose to include the phrase “on many sides,” when first called upon to condemn the violence and open displays of bigotry.
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Being a Writer: Six Pieces of Advice
Over the past year, Travis Elborough and I have been putting together a collection of musings, tips and essays from some of our favourite authors about the business of writing. We pored through old diaries and interviews, read memoirs, blog posts and newspaper articles, and asked some of the writers we know to share their thoughts,
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Are Plays Literature?
June 01, 2017 | Blog, Other News
The above is a thorny question. If you ask it amongst writers they tend to get twitchy. Some might wonder if it matters anyway? It matters to me, as a playwright, to see the craft of playwriting treated with as much respect as other forms of writing. Plus my day job,
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My First Job in Publishing - Joe Sedgwick
April 01, 2017 | Blog
One year after being made a full-time member of staff at TLC, Joe Sedgwick, our Editorial Services Assistant, reflects on what he has learned in his first job in the publishing/literature development sector
What have you learned about publishing as an industry, since starting work with TLC?I think the answer to this applies to all companies and industries,
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On Literary Fiction, and Literary Snobbery
Recently I read an article dating back to 2014 where novelist and journalist Will Self posed the question “is the novel dead?” The inference being that literary works, unlike genre specific fiction, had not transitioned well into the age of digital media. Throughout the article, Self makes several valid and interesting points,
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Craft: Why It Matters
February 01, 2017 | Blog | 5 comments
I run a local writing group – Wear Valley Writers – and we’ve occasionally had new members who’ve turned up, said they’re poets, and read us a few of their poems. We’ve listened politely to their heartfelt navel-gazing odes to love, illness, death and general misery, filled with generic abstractions,
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The Tricky Question of Genre
December 01, 2016 | Blog | 6 comments
Emily Brontë never worried whether Wuthering Heights fell into New Adult or Adult, Jane Austen didn’t lose sleep about whether her tone was too literary for her target market. So, why are we so obsessed with identifying our ‘writing type’ before lifting a single key-tapping finger, and what does it mean for debuts just dipping the tip of their shiny wellies into the quagmire of genre-classification?
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Writing from the Periphery
November 01, 2016 | Blog | 2 comments
Writing is a lonely business, especially when you are a BAME poet writing from an island, far away from mainstream UK connections. Island life has its own idiosyncrasies; you are not able to fly off the rock that easily, in order to participate in UK literary festivals and events, you are part of a periphery of the literary centre.
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How to Receive Professional Feedback... Professionally
In the past four years, I’ve received feedback on my manuscript from so many people that I’m losing count. I can think of at least 20 people who have recently read and commented on parts or the whole of my manuscript. Some of that feedback was offered by professionals. From the moment I started generating material,
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Write to us: The Literary Consultancy Ltd, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
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or phone: 0207 324 2563
or phone: 0207 324 2563