I saw a rainbow this morning. It was a huge thing: impossible colours arced across a faded-denim sky. Even though the weather was cold, and flecks of rain spattered against my head and shoulders, I stood for a while admiring its improbable beauty. According to Greek...
Last month, in the UK, we celebrated National Poetry week. I have to admit I'm a big lover of poetry. I teach poetry, I write poetry and I read poetry. Aside from eating the damned stuff I don't think there's much else you can do with it. As part of our town's...
Whenever people ask me where I get my ideas from, I always admit that I steal them. I'm not a very original thinker. Hence this column, about stealing ideas, has the not very original title, 'Stealing Ideas.' (The sad fact is, it took me hours to come up with that...
Several times this week I've had people say the word 'anal' to me. I've even had people pay me the ultimate accolade and say, "Ashley Lister is anal." If I was of a different disposition, I suppose it would be possible to construe this as a worrying sleight on my...
Kipling is often quoted for his opening lines to the poem 'I Keep Six Honest Serving Men.' I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I remember once saying to a girl, "Do you like...
I've been doing a lot of poetry recently. I'm not a great poet. I'm more the sort of poet who can find pithy rhymes for the words ass or nob. Is this a poetic skill? Perhaps not (although it does follow the reductive stylings of Swift and Wilmot). However, it often...
There are websites, such as the inestimable Erotic Readers and Writers Association, where authors can find lists of publishers requiring erotic fiction. But The Erotic Writer's Market Guide is more than a list of publishers, websites and content requirements. I pick...
It has been famously said, by the likes of Woolf and Molière, that writing and sex have a lot in common. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and eventually you end up doing it for the money. This is a matter of some debate because some of us can't...
I gave a lecture on creative writing last week. We covered most of the basic topics - plot structure, character development and whether or not the use of adverbs should be punished with the death penalty. At the end of the lecture, there was a Q&A and, as often...
I learnt an important lesson this month. Well, in truth, I learnt several important lessons. Never test if the iron is still hot by using your tongue on the plate. Just because the words "fat" and "jolly" go together in common collocation, it doesn't mean that tubby...