Jenni Ogden, Off-Grid Writer

Is there a creative writer who hasn’t at times wondered what it is that impels thousands of people to spend thousands of hours thinking about and writing made-up stories, that at best will be read by thousands of people who have got nothing better to do than read made-up stories! Is there some evolutionary imperative that has moulded our minds to seek stories? Even Steven Pinker, the cognitive scientist and author of How the Mind Works --such a wonderful title-- who controversially suggests that music confers no survival advantage and describes it as “auditory cheesecake” (p. 534), submits that fiction can, like gossip, be biologically adaptive. “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcome of strategies we could deploy in them.” (p. 543.)  Read More 

I have never read a Stephen King novel. My daughter was a fan of his from her early teenage years and I once attempted to read one of his books but found it so gross I gave up after the first few pages. So it has taken me years to get around to buying his book On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft, a book that seems to have only positive reviews, whatever the “genre” of the writing of the reviewer. It was a page turner,  Read More 

Wonderful writers to discover: Banks, Miller, and Packer.
One of the great pleasures of reading is discovering good writers who have been around a long time. Melissa Bank’s book Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing first published in 1999 is worth seeking out.  Read More