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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Tag: writing

  • 30 Writing competitions for 2016

    Ohohoho! Saviours of the written word! As we look forward to a fan-frickin-tastic 2016 filled with a multitude of writerly insights and discussion, we’ve compiled a list of upcoming writing competitions scheduled for the year ahead. Included are details about word counts, deadlines and direct links to each event. If you’d like to add a…

  • Adam Gopnik’s love letter to winter

    As we slink by the winter’s solstice and our dark days grow colder (or milder and wetter, as the case may be in the UK), there’s certainly a heavy amount of cultural baggage that burdens our seasonal metaphors. Winter, after all, is so often presented as a season symbolic of spiritual barrenness – sometimes a…

  • Do poets dream of electric literature?

    In 2011, one of the longest-running student-run literary journals in the USA – Archive at Duke University – ran its annual call for poetry submissions for its Fall Issue. The editors, shifting through the reams of poetry, stumbled upon a short poem called “For the Bristlecone Snag”. It was environmentally themed. It struck a slightly…

  • The app and the paperback: is the future of literature electric?

    Faber and Touchpress have launched a “groundbreaking” new mode of publishing, which explores the future of digital reading after ebooks. Novelist Iain Pears has worked with the two media organisations to create a new reading experience which combines the traditional paperback novel with the new digital opportunities of the smartphone or tablet app. His new…

  • Is the commercial media machine killing creative culture?

    As prophetic dreams go, few are as discomfiting – due to their close proximity to reality – as one nocturnal epiphany John Steinbeck conjured up in the mid 1950s. A rare writer of uncommon integrity, with a deep resistance to commercialism and a supreme faith in the human spirit, Steinbeck felt the need to pen…

  • Writers on their favourite books

    Everyone has that book they can’t get out of their head. The story that will forever hold a special place in their hearts and souls. We were lucky enough to have the chance to ask* five famous authors about their favourite books** – here’s what they told us… Jonathan Franzen – The Hungry Caterpillar “This…

  • Self-doubt and the cure for procrastination

    The well-known ailment of any artist, writer, illustrator, photographer, comedian, actor – anyone creatively inclined at all, in fact – is of course creative block. So often, this mental obstacle that seems to stifle our ability to think clearly about creative challenges is met with hours of another well-known symptom: procrastination. Indeed, this symptom is…

  • The little-known poems of Chinua Achebe

    The Nigerian novelist is rightly regarded as one of the greatest writers of the past century. His debut novel, Things Fall Apart, is still the single most widely read book in African literature, despite being published in 1958. Yet despite his fame and status, few people are familiar with his lesser-known – though certainly not…

  • We’re breaking up: how technology is dampening our creativity

    Reading the wonderful exchange of letters between Pulitzer Prize winning author, Willa Cather, and her friend and fellow writer, Sarah Jewett, one is struck immediately by how rare such thoughtful examples of communication have now become. Where once it was common to place such great thought and care into penned – or pencilled – correspondence,…

  • Our silent friends: stunning short film celebrates our spiritual connection with trees and nature

    Trees – the oldest living things in our world – have been mankind’s ever-present, silent companions from the dawn of time and life. They have been transmuted into myths and metaphor, and have long been used to symbolise and visualise human knowledge and the cycle of life. “The Tree of Life” means so much and…