by rdw | 9 September 2024 | News, Writing
My dear old Dad loved language. Besides Dutch, he was fluent in 15 other tongues, from Hindi to Hungarian. But his all-time favorite was hifalutin English. He loved using English, so rich compared to Dutch (EN = 755,000 vs. NL = 400,000 headwords; estimates vary) and...
by rdw | 19 August 2024 | Writing
Can you remember when you discovered the word “chronicles”? For me it was when I was about ten (I think) and a weekly visitor to the Dunedin Public Library in New Zealand. There I came across Clive Staples Lewis’s classic series, The Chronicles of Narnia. An...
by rdw | 12 August 2024 | Editing, Writing
Would I ever have become editor of ES World, the in-house magazine of the biggest science publishers in the world, without Abi Daruvalla? No way. She was my first ‘real’ editor. Recently Abi and I chatted about her career as a journalist and professional...
by rdw | 22 July 2024 | Writing
Everyone quotes the Russian playwright and short-story writer, Doctor Anton Chekhov. “Medicine is my lawful wife” he once said, “and literature is my mistress.” But perhaps his most famous quote for writers is: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the...
by rdw | 10 February 2024 | Writing
How do they do it? All those authors who produce vast series of books? Some series vaster than others, like those produced apparently effortlessly by the super-prolific Alexander McCall Smith (to date he’s written seven huge bestselling series and umpteen successful...
by rdw | 30 January 2024 | Writing
Yippee! I am delighted to announced that Becoming Janice will be published by Iguana Books, a hybrid publishing house in Toronto, Canada. Iguana are going to publish both ebook and paperback versions, maybe an audiobook too, which will be available worldwide in all...