nothing in the rulebook

A collective of creatives bound by a single motto: There's nothing in the rulebook that says a giraffe can't play football!

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Category: Professor Wu’s Rulebook

Opinion pieces; blog posts; articles

  • Bad Sex in Fiction: extracts from the 2018 shortlist

    What’s that sound you hear, drifting through the air? Could it be the sound of spasming muscles, grunts and groans, salacious sighs? You’re almost there – that’s right; its one of the greatest times of the literary year – the annual Bad Sex in Fiction award, which has just released its shortlist of nominated entries.…

  • Open for submissions – where to submit your writing

    You there, writers! Wordsmiths and expression explorers! We can see you, hunched over your laptops, feverishly searching the annals of the internet for places to submit your work. You’ve done the hard part; you’ve spilled your soul on the page, edited and re-edited, torn apart, rejigged, stitched back together, you’ve gone round the houses entreating…

  • Creatives in profile – interview with Laura Potts

    Laura Potts is twenty-two years old and lives in West Yorkshire. Twice-recipient of The Foyle Young Poets Award, her work has been published by Agenda, Aesthetica and The Poetry Business. Having worked at The Dylan Thomas Birthplace in Swansea, she was nominated for The Pushcart Prize and became one of the BBC’s New Voices last year. Laura’s…

  • Found in the Crowd – the case for crowdfunding anthologies

    Authors, publishers and literary journals are all finding new ways of connecting directly to their readers – and their wallets – on online platforms such as Kickstarter. In this article, Dan Coxon examines how the social financing can bring new book ideas to life.  Recently there has been a lot of chatter about the future…

  • British phone box libraries

    Across the UK, people are turning famous British red telephone boxes into micro libraries – casual book exchanges where there is no registration, and no fines. Anyone is free to take home a book, provided they bring it back or replace it with another. It’s a novel, if simple idea, and one that has sprung…

  • The duty of writers

    Our world faces catastrophic climate breakdown. True facts are now described as ‘fake news’, and biased media reported hailed by pseudo-Nazis as gospel truth. Political turmoil is growing as inequalities deepen across so many dividing lines in society. In such times, a challenge facing us all as artists, creatives and writers – but also simply…

  • Why is BoJack Horseman so popular? Simple: it’s real

    If you’re reading this article, the likely reason is that you’ve seen the name BoJack Horseman and clicked on a link somewhere out in the wilds of the internet or social media. You’ve recognised the name and it’s peaked your interest. Why have you heard that name? Simple – because since BoJack Horseman was released…

  • Book review: The study circle, by Haroun Khan

    Nothing in the Rulebook’s resident book reviewer Tom Andrews digs into ‘The study circle’, by Haroun Khan, published by Dead Ink Books. This debut novel by Haroun Khan follows two friends from a South London council estate. Ishaq is devout and well educated, a regular at the titular Islamic study circle. His education at a…

  • Originality and self-discovery through reading

    Writers are always told they ought to read more: to learn the rules, to understand the language better, to figure out which stories work and which don’t. As Stephen King notes, you need to “read widely, and constantly work to refine and redefine your own work as you do so.” Yet is there a greater power…

  • Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and a poet

    As poetry enjoys somewhat of a renaissance thanks to social media, ever more aspiring writers are using platforms like Twitter to get noticed. With over 100,000 social media followers, Birmingham-based poet Maavi Raja writes about his poetic journey so far. When you think about poetry and making something like poetry as a career, or as a…