"Fabulous Storytelling" Mick Herron
I have been writing and publishing books on a variety of topics since my bestselling Angry White Pyjamas came out in 1997. Other bestsellers include Red Nile, a biography of the River Nile. In total I have written 15 mainstream books translated into 16 languages. The include creative non-fiction, novels, memoir, travel and self-help. My publishers include Harper Collins, Picador, Penguin and Hachette. I have won several awards including two top national prizes- the Somerset Maugham literary award and the William Hill sportsbook of the Year Award. I have also won the Newdigate Prize for poetry- one of the oldest poetry prizes in the world; past winners include Oscar Wilde, James Fenton and Fiona Sampson.
A more recent success was Micromastery, published by Penguin in the US and the UK as well as selling in eight other countries.
Micromastery is a way of learning new skills more efficiently. I include these methods when I coach people who want to improve as writers. If that's you, go to the section of this site titled I CAN HELP YOU WRITE. I have taught creative writing in schools and universities but I now find coaching and editing is where I can deliver the most value. In the past I have taught courses in both fiction and memoir at Moniack Mhor, the former Arvon teaching centre in Scotland.
"Micromastery is a triumph. A brilliant idea, utterly convincing, and superbly carried through" - Philip Pullman
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My instagram account is roberttwiggerinstantart HERE
Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 6:25AM "One of the oddities of modern history is that, though it tries hard to empathise with people from the past, it cannot do so too enthusiastically without impugning its own high standards of reason and rationality."
White Mountain
Friday, June 26, 2020 at 2:50PM “If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you believe it won’t, you will see obstacles.” ~ Wayne Dyer
When I set out to be the first person to walk without riding a camel or driving a car the 600+ km from Dakhla oasis to Siwa oasis across the Egyptian great sand sea I didn't think the biggest barrier would be permission to do so from the military. But it was. The Bedouin who helped us wanted me to quit and said it was impossible to get the persmission. But I knew we'd find a way. In the end we did- but only three days into the walk when it looked we might get turned back anytime. In the end an idea was suggested by one of the team that persuaded the officer in charge of the case. But that idea would never have happened in the office, being 100 km into the desert helped make it happen. So the moral is- believe it will happen and think of your effort as a tide of water finding it's way around the rocks of a beach, swirling up the beach it always finds a way. Think of effort as iterative improvements rather than 'your best shot'. I have very rarely been able to make my best shot, but I didn't let that stop me making my first shot. Once you are moving you are in 'the dynamic', the place where reality happens unlike the static pictures we think is real life but is really just our projected imaginings.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 6:46AM The Segway (that wheeled platform for carrying a pedestrian) has ceased production. They will now become novelty collector's items, things to reminisce about- like the time I was nearly run over by six of them in central Dijon- tourists of course....The idea that police and other paid pedestrians would use them was mad from the start- and yet why did so many buy into it?
1. It was hi-tech.
2. It looked like our idea of the future.
3. It seemed to solve a problem- walking (which is only a problem in a very weird world)
4. It looked kind of fun
5. It appealed to the left brain which loves wheels, machines, dorkiness...
I am sure there are more reasons but that seems to cover it. What it shows is that we are now in a post-technological world. In the past we just didn't have the tech capable of building our sci-fi fantasies. Now we do. We can have jet packs, driverless cars and kindles....and guess what- we con't need them or want them (or else the collateral damage they bring with them is too much). The reason is that the left brain conceives of things in glorious isolation- but we live in a connected the world 'the dynamic' I have taken to calling it. These nutty Professor Brainstawm inventions are very cool- as whacky theme park toys- the problem starts when they are foisted on us as the 'the next step' (or next roll as in the case of the segway). We become hostage to the pervasive but utterly false idea that the future BY DEFINITION has to look like some 1950s pulp sci-fi mag. Of course this isn't helped by the titans of industry these days being drawn from the empathy deficient, systems mad classes of the world...
But the world is teaching us whether we like it or not. And the death of the Segway as a replacment for walking (now hailed as the most healthful activity out there!) is a timely reminder to ignore the siren call of technofantasy and do something less boring instead...
Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at 6:36AM All my life I have known I am lazy. And a fair few people have told me too! One teacher of mine- Fat Frank- told me I was mentally lazy but physically less so. He meant I think that I was happy enough walking 30 miles but I wouldn't get out of bed for a job entering data into a spreadsheet- however important it was. To the lazy man nothing is that important... Whatever the nuances, I am something of a connoiseur of laziness and I can spot it in others and it's...commoner than you'd think. One form I am interested in is the kind where you do lots and lots of work that YOU WANT TO DO but actually isn't fit for purpose. So let's say you are fixing up a boat and you spend hours painting it (done that) when it really needs it's bottom fixing. But the painting is so much more fun...and the continuous activity cons you into thinking 'I'm not lazy'. But whether you are toiling like a madman or sitting on the loo reading Aescalus* the test of whether you are lazy or not is in the result. If toiling continuously is wilfully avoiding the pain of stop-start work then it is laziness.
A definition is beginning to emerge here- being lazy is avoiding real work. And we all know what real work is- it's stuff that needs to be done rather than what we want to do. Oh yeah, I know, all those people who just do their 'passion'- be it cooking, photography, gardening- haven't we heard enough about that already? But all these people use the MOMENTUM of doing the thing they love to power over the real work, the in-between bits that just aren't much fun but have to be done. Obvioulsy you want to make these road humps on the path of sweet living as low and undisruptive as possible but they will always be there and you have to face up to them one way or another. That's when you cease being lazy. So laziness is really a refusal to see what is right in front of your face. Why? Because you are scared you might just have to take the harder of two paths. There is a crazy old samurai saying which is; "In a 50/50 life or death situation the samurai chooses death". I think this is just a way of saying, get used to taking the hard option. Since in most situations you know what you have to do (deep down), by being mentally prepared to take the hard option you take the distorting pressure off the decision; you certainly take away that classic lazy response; "I just don't know what to do!"
Laziness is about taking the easy option, not necessarily the most painfree option (quite a few lazy masochists) but the one that is least disruptive to our comfortable way of thinking. I have been comfortable under a boulder in a rainstorm- comfort is not about physical conditions really, it is about that good old mental nest we have in our heads. The lazy person just wants to lounge around in that nest and 'do stuff', maybe lots of stuff, as long as it doesn't mean getting out of the nest.
What I am saying is that the lazy panacea is 'as long as I work really really hard and do loads of stuff everything will be alright'. Well, maybe not.
Are there ways to outwit laziness? I think momentum is one way. A designated 'shit hour' or 'shit day' is another, a time when you do all the hard stuff. But is there a nirvana triple bells in a line lazy solution to laziness? Can one use one's own laziness to be less lazy? Well you can spend hours writing about and observing laziness in self and others, become an expert on it, become more aware of it in different cultures and situations (any one size fits all 'efficient' solution is often a mask for laziness). You can shift yourself out of the lazy nest by using 'I am lazy' as a way of becoming more aware of that nest in the first place...
* I am aware that this is not the usual spelling..indeed all variations on the conventional letter order in a word, punctuation and capitalisation are ways to loosen that leash that chains you to the machine...or I am just too lazy to check...
Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 9:16AM I just read an interesting facebook post by a guy who reposted two pictures of wavy walls with an explanation (a wavy brick wall can be only one brick thick but a straight wall needs to be two bricks thick for structural support) which states that wavy brick walls- though longer because of the waves use less bricks and so are cheaper...Anyway the item was shared 24k times and counting. The re-poster (who only translated the piece) said nothing had EVER approached this viral activity. Wavy walls (plus the explanation) have something about them...maybe a deep down feeling that something organic like a wave is really better than mechanical straightness? Or maybe that the counterintuitive idea (like bumblebees not being able to fly in theory) was very appealing to our sense of mystery? Whatever the reason I thought this wavy wall thing is more of what I like (and other people too it seems). It is strange and unusual and almost everything- owing to the blasted interweb- mostly isn't. It is all the same old repiped and recirculated by a dominant group of fashion setters. I am guilty too- even posting some tripe about a current news item. Get REAL! Let the mob do that. The real work is finding the jewels that have been stamped into the mud by the mad hoardes rushing hither and thither...
Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 9:08AM I just read an interesting facebook post by a guy who reposted two pictures of wavy walls with an explanation (a wavy brick wall can be only one brick thick but a straight wall needs to be two bricks thick for structural support) which states that wavy brick walls- though longer because of the waves use less bricks and so are cheaper...Anyway the item was shared 24k times and counting. The re-poster (who only translated the piece) said nothing had EVER approached this viral activity. Wavy walls (plus the explanation) have something about them...maybe a deep down feeling that something organic like a wave is really better than mechanical straightness? Or maybe that the counterintuitive idea (like bumblebees not being able to fly in theory) was very appealing to our sense of mystery? Whatever the reason I thought this wavy wall thing is more of what I like (and other people too it seems). It is strange and unusual and almost everything- owing to the blasted interweb- mostly isn't. It is all the same old repiped and recirculated by a dominant group of fashion setters. I am guilty too- even posting some tripe about a current news item. Get REAL! Let the mob do that. The real work is finding the jewels that have been stamped into the mud by the mad hoardes rushing hither and thither...