50 shades of bad and a few shades of good

50 shades of Grey has been lambasted from here to eternity. I’ll agree that in most cases it has been rightly lambasted. The prose is appalling and the dialogue is cringeworthy (‘Holy crap”, “my inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves”), the plot meanders about forever, the one-dimensional characters… I could (and […]

Personal Writing: Granddad George

So I’ve been doing workshops with some sixth year students about how to answer the composition questions on their upcoming Leaving Cert Exams. The composition question is compulsory and it’s worth 25% of their total mark. Along with old favourites like the short story, one of the most popular options is the personal essay. I’ll […]

New Office Reveal (Ooo, Ahhh)

Finally, I’ve spent long years writing at the kitchen table or at a desk crammed into the corner of my bedroom or in cafés or libraries. This means that I always have to pack up after every writing session and spend good long whiles looking for notes and trying to find things and put up […]