Category Archives: Writing

Seeing what I say

Next week I’m going to Moniack Mhor, the Scottish writing centre in Inverness-shire. It will be the twelfth time I’ve been since 2005 when we ran what was the second-ever Dark Angels course there, and the first one I took … Continue reading

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Mellow fruitfulness

First frost this morning. The trees on Birnam Hill are starting to turn—though not, curiously, as dramatically as they were in the Lot-et-Garonne where we were last week. There the oaks that mantle the vast Quercy forest had taken on … Continue reading

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Affairs of the heart

A friend wrote to me this week to let me know that a novel I had read for her a couple of years ago is starting to make waves. She has the interest of both a good Scottish publisher and … Continue reading

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Don Roberto and Me

For the last few months I’ve found it almost impossible to keep current events from my mind for very long. There’s a morbid fascination in the catastrophe that is British politics. Each time I think it couldn’t get any worse, … Continue reading

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Dark Angels on Writing

Over the years I’ve come to believe that people are sometimes drawn to Dark Angels courses in answer to an unspoken, perhaps even unacknowledged, need. They may not know it but at the moment they hear about our programme there … Continue reading

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Three cities

Place matters. It shapes thoughts and emotions. We have always encouraged people who come on our Dark Angels courses to connect as strongly as they can with the place where the course is held. We want that heightened awareness of … Continue reading

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Hawks and angels

Nestled into steep woods on the slopes of a Cotswold valley stands a manor house built of stone the colour of pale honey. It has tall chimneys and gothic windows and a walled garden full of vegetables and fruit trees … Continue reading

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Perfect lives

For the final day of our recent The Stories We Tell course at Cortijo Romero, in Spain, we invited people to write or tell a personal story that had not previously been told. The only rules were that it should … Continue reading

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Spirit of place

It’s fifteen years since I first started to work with my Dark Angels partner John Simmons, and it must now be nearly a decade since we both started our regular blogs. We have a lot in common and it would … Continue reading

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Of earth and sea

On Monday night I returned from Melbourne after a month spent mainly in New Zealand, the first ten days running Dark Angels workshops in and around Auckland, the following two weeks touring the North and South Islands. This is one … Continue reading

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