http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk Writing, copywriting and other stuff like that Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:22:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en After last week's moan about writing anxiety, I spent the days since tricking myself back into writing. Has it worked? Well, I’ve got myself 4,000 words for the trouble. Below, I’ve listed what I think I did better. It’s not a methodology. It’s not life-coaching for writers. But it’s something. Use Microsoft ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2010/01/nine-ways-to-trick-yourself-into-writing/ I am pregnant with a story. It's overdue, but I can't get myself into labour. It won't crown. It's kicking my belly but it doesn't want to play. It's a distraction; I feel it most of the time. It'll be the third time. The first time it was diarrhea. The second ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2010/01/on-new-writing/ Manchester's had more snow than anyone remembers. We woke to drifts a foot deep in places, and transport that scarcely worked. But there's no meaningful way to write about snow without cliche -- no point, even -- not least when so many pictures have already coloured our day. The south's ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2010/01/manchester-snow/ I’m on fences about aeroplanes. You know the cold physics add up, but it’s one of the few occasions you really fear gravity for what it is; for what it will do. My throat lumps every time the wheels leave tarmac. The lurch as the tail section dips, the engines screaming, ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2010/01/flying/ I’ve moved in with a girl whose legs I fancied in school. It’s a kind of deferred success. Back then, 13 years old and sprouting limbs, I asked her out. She wouldn’t mind me saying her hair was kind of weird. It went all up and out -- a hair-sprayed mushroom ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2009/12/new-flat/ We overtake the ghost of winter floods on the motorway North – a lorry with Cockermouth written all over its flanks. Past Lancaster, and the digital boards start shouting about closed bridges. Later, while the night tips fully into black, we see a couple of dented road signs. And that’s ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2009/12/somewhere-in-furness/ Let's get dramatic. In July, my book was unpublished. It fell from the pre-order listings of a dozen online book shops, was deleted from Nielsen Bookscan. The galley proofs were unbound, de-covered and bleached back to white. Reps got in their cars after really successful meetings with booksellers -- who liked and ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2009/11/getting-unpublished/ Look, me and suits go like penis and blenders. It seems foolish and feels worse. Suits, they’re for real men – men running for trains with cummerbunds flapping behind like some kind of heterosexual vapour trail. Half the problem is they’re far too hard to get right. You see all these men ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2009/11/suit-fitting/ If science fiction’s not dead, it’s not quite the same now we’ve bombed the moon. After all, we’ve done space travel and beaten communism. We got to the stars, and went past plopping pulp heroes on Mars when we crashed robots into it. We worried about plugging ourselves into each ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2009/11/science-fiction-technology-and-twitter/ Canterbury is Hollyoaks with more church. It’s walled on all sides and powered in turns by attractive students, Christian pilgrims and publoads of locals who pine for the old days, the older ways. Groaning with guest ales and strung with flags, it’s also handsome city – though if you whisper, ... http://www.matthewhillswebsite.co.uk/2009/10/canterbury-tale/