Category Archives: Writing

Five lessons

We never stop learning. A cliché, but only because it’s true, or at least should be. So I thought it might be instructive to reflect on a few personal highlights of the past year by asking myself what I have … Continue reading

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Dark matter

I’ve been doing some pre-Christmas stock-taking. It’s not an inventory of goods, though the stock in question is certainly good, but of assets of a less tangible kind: the writing generated on Dark Angels courses throughout the year, which I … Continue reading

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The Weight

Sometimes you just have to start writing. I’m sorry if there’s a sense of déjà vu about those seven words, but this is another of those increasingly frequent days when as the (self-inflicted) deadline approaches I realise I have not … Continue reading

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Lost in the fog

From to time fighter planes come roaring over our village on their way to Lossiemouth, or heading off to do whatever they do over the emptiness of the Highlands. Dunkeld sits in the cleft of the Tay valley, at the … Continue reading

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Shuffling in backwards

Several years ago, 26, the writers’ collective I’ve often mentioned here, ran its first big public creative project. 26 Letters, as it was called – appropriately, since the title of the collective is a reference to the DNA of the … Continue reading

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The stories we tell

Here is a story. Fifteen years ago, Catherine Lockerbie, then the literary editor of The Scotsman, was appointed director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. For several years I had regularly written book reviews for her. We had also sat … Continue reading

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Feeling it?

This week my Seattle writer friend and newly fledged Dark Angels associate, Richard Pelletier, has picked up the quill with an inspirational post about where writers themselves find inspiration. Are you feeling it? he writes. Inspiration is the soul of your … Continue reading

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Be prepared

It’s nearly book festival time again – by which I mean the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Every August, Charlotte Square Gardens sprout canvas and are transformed into a kind of intellectual carnival of some 800 events that seem between them … Continue reading

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Nudge, nudge

Until yesterday I had never heard of the government’s Behavioural Insights Team, otherwise known as the Nudge Unit. Last night I watched a news item about how they have been changing the way officials communicate with taxpayers and consumers to … Continue reading

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Sonnet with Indian

Perhaps one is more aware of it as one gets older and looks more and more for meaning in things, but serendipity seems to me to strike with increasing frequency and impact. At our recent Dark Angels gathering we asked … Continue reading

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