Author, keen blogger (since 1998), writing teacher.
Adelaide, South Australia
Joined April 2007
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Writing fiction: begin with the story
“A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.”
Quote from “Wired for Story”, by Lisa Cron.
Yes. I no longer do book editing. Today it's mostly AI slop slapped together. Author has no concept, no insight, nothing new. Makes editing impossible. It's not an EDITOR'S job to tell an author what to think and say.
Angela Booth retweeted
Every book is evidence that somebody once had an entire world inside their head and somehow found a way to let strangers into it. The characters, the conversations, the places, the heartbreaks, all of it began as something that existed only in someone's imagination.
Do you capitalize when using “Google” as a verb? As in: “I Googled that.” Gotta admit I do. Reason: “Googled” is a proper noun, used as a verb. It’s imprecise to use “Google” for any and all web searches. BTW, this argument re capitalizing trademarks has been going on for years.
Angela Booth retweeted
“Today, the Big Five publishers are staffed almost entirely by women. According to the most recent data, more than 70 percent of staffers are women. More than 70 percent of editors are women. Even 70 percent of all interns are women. At the executive level, more than 60 percent of leaders are women. In 2026, American publishing looks like lululemon.”
Is the "boys don't read" problem a matter of supply or demand?
More than 70 percent of staff at America's Big Five publishers are women, as are more than 70 percent of editors and a majority of executives.
Adam Szetela argues this is the single biggest transformation in the history of American publishing, and that an industry recruiting almost entirely from elite universities has narrowed what reaches the shelves.
quillette.com/2026/10/23/why…
How to journal?
Ideas include: “Lists, portraits, maps of consciousness, guided imagery, altered point of view, unsent letters, and dialogues …”
From Tristine Rainer in “The New Diary.”
Writing fiction: dramatic questions
“Skilled writers know that what you’re supposed to do is continually open up your story. You do this by creating scenes in which you lay down – but do not answer! – dramatic questions.”
From “Write Away”, Elizabeth George.
“Your internal critic is that part of your mind that is constantly telling you why something can’t work or can’t be done. The strategy is to generate as many ideas, both obvious and novel, as possible, without criticism of any kind.”
“Cracking Creativity”. Michael Michalko.
Try easy outlining: use index cards.
Physical index cards are great for outlining projects. You can carry a stack of cards with you. Scribble snd doodle on a card whenever you get an idea: one idea per card.
Angela Booth retweeted
Telling people who don’t use AI shite that they’ll be “left behind” is like telling a Titanic passenger that they just missed the boat.
"The poorer the language, the less thought exists." True. You need words. Love them. Read Shakespeare and the Bible.
Merci à Christophe Clavé pour cet éclairage sur l’appauvrissement de la langue et la ruine de la pensée 🙌
"La disparition progressive des temps (subjonctif, passé simple, imparfait, formes composées du futur, participe passé…) donne lieu à une pensée au présent, limitée à l’instant, incapable de projections dans le temps.
La généralisation du tutoiement, la disparition des majuscules et de la ponctuation sont autant de coups mortels portés à la subtilité de l’expression.
Supprimer le mot «mademoiselle» est non seulement renoncer à l’esthétique d’un mot, mais également promouvoir l’idée qu’entre une petite fille et une femme il n’y a rien.
Moins de mots et moins de verbes conjugués c’est moins de capacités à exprimer les émotions et moins de possibilité d’élaborer une pensée.
Des études ont montré qu’une partie de la violence dans la sphère publique et privée provient directement de l’incapacité à mettre des mots sur les émotions.
Sans mot pour construire un raisonnement, la pensée complexe chère à Edgar Morin est entravée, rendue impossible.
Plus le langage est pauvre, moins la pensée existe.
L’histoire est riche d’exemples et les écrits sont nombreux de Georges Orwell dans « 1984 » à Ray Bradbury dans « Fahrenheit 451 » qui ont relaté comment les dictatures de toutes obédiences entravaient la pensée en réduisant et tordant le nombre et le sens des mots.
Il n’y a pas de pensée critique sans pensée. Et il n’y a pas de pensée sans mots.
Comment construire une pensée hypothético-déductive sans maîtrise du conditionnel ? Comment envisager l’avenir sans conjugaison au futur ? Comment appréhender une temporalité, une succession d’éléments dans le temps, qu’ils soient passés ou à venir, ainsi que leur durée relative, sans une langue qui fait la différence entre ce qui aurait pu être, ce qui a été, ce qui est, ce qui pourrait advenir, et ce qui sera après que ce qui pourrait advenir soit advenu ? Si un cri de ralliement devait se faire entendre aujourd’hui, ce serait celui, adressé aux parents et aux enseignants : faites parler, lire et écrire vos enfants, vos élèves, vos étudiants.
Enseignez et pratiquez la langue dans ses formes les plus variées, même si elle semble compliquée, surtout si elle est compliquée. Parce que dans cet effort se trouve la liberté. Ceux qui expliquent à longueur de temps qu’il faut simplifier l’orthographe, purger la langue de ses «défauts», abolir les genres, les temps, les nuances, tout ce qui crée de la complexité sont les fossoyeurs de l’esprit humain. Il n’est pas de liberté sans exigences. Il n’est pas de beauté sans la pensée de la beauté."
Christophe Clavé
Angela Booth retweeted
Whatever you do, please don't stop reading. Read for joy. Read for education. Read for resistance. Read books. Read about experiences that differ from your own. Just. Keep. Reading.
“... wait for whatever comes into your mind, and write it just as it comes, without worrying about whether it makes sense. You let your hand do the writing.”
From “The New Diary: How to Use a Journal for Self-Guidance and Expanded Creativity” by Tristine Rainer.
Keep a daily log: journaling helps...
Many “bad” habits are unconscious. We are so used to spending time in a certain way, we don’t think about it. Journaling helps. Keep a time log each day, so that you can see where your time is going.
Angela Booth retweeted
Would I like to put our clients' work, without their consent, through an LLM to teach it to do the work that we have been doing with heart and integrity for 30 years?
Get fucked.
Angela Booth retweeted
Here's Why Reading Old Books Is More Important Than Ever:
“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. … None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.”
— C.S. Lewis, On the Reading of Old Books
Blame social media and maybe AI? Please, use a dictionary; I do, every day. I should collect the ridiculous "it doesn't mean what you think it means" examples I find. But that would be obsessive. :-)
