16th March, 2026 - ai ew, bootcamp and Mitsubishi pencils

I just logged into my Wix account to write this blog post and I was hit by an AI prompt asking me "what kind of blog post I'd like to write". I'm sick of AI. It's seemingly everywhere and for me it seems completely hollow. It's become a buzzword at work with zero substance behind it. Someone will occasionally chime into a conversation with something along the lines of "...AI can help here..." with no detail beyond that. Just some vague suggestion that AI will help somehow. It doesn't matter if nobody understands it, we've been told it will be helpful so, we'll keep mentioning it until the AI actually gets smart enough to do the work for us and make it look as if we knew what was going on all along. Rant over. Anyway, writing.

I've been doing some of the exercises in The Creative Writing Coursebook. It's been a mixed bag so far but there's been some good bits generated by it. I also booked myself onto a course run by Curtis Brown Creative - a 30-day writing bootcamp. That should get a bit more writing time under my belt hopefully. It has been tricky lately as we got a puppy just over a month ago. Puppies take a lot of time from your day. The bootcamp starts in April I think so it will be good to get some proper writing time clocked in with that. Until then I've got my book and any random moments I can snatch when puppy (Blue) is asleep and I have the desire to sit down and put words to a page.

I also saw an Instagram post earlier from a writer that describes his writing toolkit. He writes in Mitsubishi pencils on yellow legal pads and has his pencils stored in a rolled leather case. Naturally, I now want all of those things. The pencils is an interesting one to be fair as I always like writing in a fine Bic pen but I am well aware they are crap for the environment. I did get a nice pen that sold itself as a cross between a ballpoint and a fountain pen but it wasn't as nice to write with, despite it being refillable and so better for the planet. Maybe pencils are the way to go.

6th January, 2026 - It's a new dawn, it's a new desk for me.

My partner Duncan was having a rearrange of his gaming room and we ended up with a spare desk. Turns out it fits perfectly on the edge of my bookcases so I now have a desk set up in my library room, transmogrifying it into a library/writing room.

I've wanted a separate desk for a while to create a physical distinction between my regular job and writing. Writing surrounded by books I'm inspired by feels much nicer than attempting to write surrounded by bits of paper filled with scrawled and crossed out to do lists.

I've now got my Mac, my journal, my exercise books, my reading record book, and all my writing guide books on my desk.

Speaking of guide books, I feel like I have a good collection now. I'm currently working through Ursula K. Le Guin's 'Steering the Craft' - I've given myself a deadline of end of January to finish the exercises in that one. And my current plan is to move onto a real chonky book I got for Christmas this year: The Creative Writing Coursebook. Who needs to pay £10k a year for a masters in Creative Writing when you can just steal the reading list online and work through material yourself (A general summary of how I found this book)

I've also updated my calendar to put writing time in for 16:00 everyday which is when I usually finish work. If I do it before then great, if not then I have the time blocked out once I finish work. I'm going to try and show up everyday to "get the reps in" as Arnold talks about in his 'Be Useful' book (a surprisingly good self help book actually)

I've got a new desk space, a plan, and the voice of Arnold in my head telling me to fu**ing get on with it. What more can I need.

28th October, 2025 - I swear I'm not always ill...

The seasons are turning - which means I have a cold. Only pointing that out because i've logged on and seen I was also ill when I wrote my last post. I think it was A L Kennedy's book that talked about the writers life where she spent 80% of the time talking about being in a constant state of mild illness. I'm not sure if thats me grabbing onto whatever i can to validate calling myself a writer when I've done very little else to qualify as one recently.

I've been absent since the start of Spring and there has been no writing since then. I've more recently started wanting to come back to it. I've been taking the approach I mentioned a few posts back of going topic by topic and focusing on craft. I'm currently focused on something that feels very basic, but I honestly cannot remember ever being taught it despite having a degree in English: basic grammar.

I can tell you about how theories of masculinity intersect with the works of modern writers like Ian McEwan, but ask me what the difference between an adverb and an adjective is, what a subordinate clause requires to work, or what rule is used to determine whether we pair an or a with a noun - I'm lost. A serious gap in my education that I'm working to correct. There are a lot of foundational components I think I'm missing which feels like a nice thing to actually focus on. It gives an obvious sense of progression which can often be lacking when just writing fiction without an objective beyond creation.

Ramping back up to action with a focus on craft. Gonna get myself some flash cards.