Louis & Louis

Summer Holiday

Unable to choose my summer holiday destination for this year, I used the work of a contemporary artist for inspiration. The work of Debra Stroud is somewhat reminiscent of another famous beachscape artist, yet her use of colour is much more inventive and therefore striking. Some of her paintings look like tranquil beach scenes in paradise, whereas others look like vivid explosions of light. The beachscapes in particular reminded me that I want more than anything else to experience the More

Get Rich Quick

Writing a novel is not necessarily the best get rich quick idea, it is probably up there with the Enigin scam in terms of hair brained ideas to earn a decent living. The problem is, what is an aspiring writer to do? There is a wealth of literary heritage to draw on to provide one with excellent ideas to make a living while suffering through writing a first novel.

J.K. Rowling, I am told, was a struggling single mum writing More

Poor Sally

Probably my worst habit is watching people on the tube. I look at their designer jewellery, eavesdrop on their conversations, and if they are any good, I proceed to imagine how I am going to integrate them into my novel. The hallmark of a good writer is not necessarily their imagination, it is their ability to steal from life without getting caught.

After some experiments that went horribly wrong in drama school (read that I learned the lesson the More

Writing Novels

I answered an ad for a a job as a life coach SW london. I thought it would be good for my writing to sit with people who don’t know what they are doing with their lives and offer them expert steps to take one after the other to get it together.

I thought, I would be absolutely fabulous at the job, because as a writer, I know absolutely everything. When you write a novel, you pretend that you More

A short poem

I just wrote this the other day to keep my creative energy up in between a couple of projects - sometimes I find that you just need to keep the enigin running by trying out a couple of things. So here goes - let me know what you think. I kind of wrote it after seeing some old movies with some friends - particularly I guess I was thinking of people like Ingrid Bergman and - my personal favourite - More

I am a character.

I was hanging out with a mate of mine who’s a budding playwright (doing some traditional “I’m a writer, let’s loiter about in Soho pubs so we can look all artsy and inspired”acting, which is one of my favourite ways to spend my time) and we got into a whole long extended conversation about custom rings on our mobile phones. See, I’ve never been too bothered about them. I reckon that there’s a maximum amount that I can care about More

New starts

Some more thinking about New Year happening over what’s begun to feel like an insanely long holiday break. Resolutions are all well and good, but one of the things that me and a lot of my friends who I’ve seen - school friends, uni friends, some of the Enigin guys - have been thinking about is what we really want to achieve in 2011. I think this is maybe a stronger way of looking at it than making resolutions, which More