Editing Humanity: Writing A Better Future
The stories we tell are failing us. It’s time to up our game.
If Women Wrote About Their Bodies The Way Men Write About Women’s Bodies
Lads. Lads. LADS. You know what we’re talking about. And yeah, #NotAllMen yada yada yada, but #YesSomeMen. Some published men. Some men who seem to think we spend our entire day charting the movement of our tits and gaze at ourselves in the mirror at every given opportunity. For most of us possessing boobs, our […]
A Pocket Guide to Resistance Writing from a Place of Privilege
In a time when headlines of injustice are more constant than ever, there is simply no shortage of social issues to resist through your writing. Whether you’re sharing your own story, advocating for new policy, or reacting to whatever fucked up thing is on the news, writing for change is no small act of protest, […]
Where Are The Working Class Writers?
I read my first Roald Dahl book, The BFG, to my daughter at the age of twenty-seven. Although I was a keen reader from the age of three, we didn’t have many books in my household. Learning wasn’t encouraged outside of school and I didn’t take part in extracurricular activities. Time after school consisted of […]
On Anger and How to Write Through It
There is no path to change that doesn’t come through some form of anger. Despite its taboo perception as a ‘negative’ emotion, anger is a fire that, when wielded correctly, will spark change. At the heart of anger is longstanding hurt, and, often, oppression. From Martin Luther King to #meToo to Parkland, the oppressed find […]
**A Writers’ HQ Manifesto On Bad Language**
At Writers’ HQ, we often get angry messages telling us that we can’t possibly be ‘real’ writers, or that we must not be very clever, because we swear, use slang and text speak, use bad grammar, and love puns. We’ve thought very long about this issue and have come to this conclusion:
Why You Must Keep Writing Even When The World Is Crumbling Around You
Writing and telling stories is more important than ever. We can’t allow the distractions of politics to let us forget ourselves.
7 tips for writing fiction about mental health
You wanna write about mental health but also not be a dick while doing it? Step right in, have we got the guide for you…
Reading Trans Writers: A Primer
In a nutshell: we have a dearth of traditionally published fiction from trans authors in the UK, so here’s a reading list of books that are both affordable and available.
Revolutionary Books for People who #Resist
Whilst pulling together some platitudes to introduce this rather self-explanatory list, I Googled “synonyms for ‘up the shitter’”…