Narcotics vs Art

Drugs and art have a complicated ebb and flow within our society. Drugs in the mainstream are, of course, a massive taboo for a variety of reasons. Ranging from legal alcohol to soft drugs like cannabis, and then to the potentially devastating likes of crystal meth and heroin. All of which serve their purpose as …

Limitations are an imagination’s best friend

"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it." The above quote is by children's author Roald Dahl, and while I don't respect the man's character for his 'alleged' anti-Semitism, racism …

Flipping tired tropes

A while back I wrote about the struggle we all find as creators to make something new and deeply original. Our world now is so saturated with media content, creating something new can be a daunting process. On the other-side, it can be fatiguing for us as an audience. We live in the age of …

What makes strong women characters, and how do they differ from strong male characters?

Calling a popular female character "strong" is almost redundant, and yet when we think of fictional role-models that are girls, that's often the term we use. If, however, someone was talking about a "strong male character", more than likely our thoughts would go straight to someone like Captain America or Superman; someone who is not …

Planning vs pantsing: and why neither are right

In the world of writers who compete against each other to see who is the best one-upping one another in pure pretentiousness, there is one constant debate that always rages on: Which is better, planning or pantsing? To elaborate, planning and pantsing are typically seen as two different, informal techniques to novel writing. Plotting is …

Something that no-one has ever seen before

We live in a time that is completely saturated by media. As a '90's child, we still had a huge back-catalogue of media to catch up on, affection ally called "old", when referring to anything from the '80's back to when recorded media first began to exist. Now we are positively spoiled for films,books, music …

Creativity vs Mental Health

Writing is hard. What  seems like an easy thing, sending thoughts to paper, turns about to be strenuous, to an almost overwhelming degree. A combination of the physical act of moving your hand to type or write, combined with the mental contention of forming your thoughts coherently, it leaves the writer feeling drained after only …