James Garside
Bio
NCTJ-qualified British independent journalist, author, and travel writer. Part-time vagabond, full-time grumpy arse. I help writers and artists to do their best work. jamesgarside.net/links
Stories (56/0)
How to Get Inside Your Character’s Head
“If only I had a…” — what? A desire to work under any adversity, remembering that creative work for an artist in any field is as essential as food or sleep. Happiness, mental health itself, depends on your continuing to work. You need it like a diabetic needs insulin, and you have a right to it. — Natalie Goldberg
By James Garside2 years ago in Journal
All Writers Are Assholes But Not All Assholes Are Writers
“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.” — Franz Kafka Kafka one said that “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.” I say that all writers are assholes but not all assholes are writers. So it’s better to be an asshole who writes than an asshole who doesn’t.
By James Garside2 years ago in Journal
Mark Thomas — Showtime from the Frontline
What is the protocol for trying not to stare at your favourite comedian? Stare at your shoes and you look like you’re not paying attention but stare at them the whole time, unblinking like a fish, and you’re likely to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the auditorium.
By James Garside2 years ago in Journal
Please Don’t Read This
They say you should face your fears. One of my biggest fears is that someone will read my notebooks and realise that I’m mad, that I can’t write, and that even when I do write, my first drafts are so terrible that I should be shot in the name of literature. So, here it is. Several pages of my notebook. Uncut. The only thing I’ve corrected is the spelling.
By James Garside2 years ago in Humans
Why Don’t We Just Talk About Loneliness?
Loneliness and social isolation are silent killers, according to the statistics. Health studies suggest that social isolation is as bad for you as obesity or heart disease and that loneliness can be as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
By James Garside2 years ago in Families
How to Use Twitter to Sell Your Books
I’ve had this review to write for about a year. That says more about me than it does about the book. But I’ve genuinely wanted to review it all that time and now at last have done so. That says more about the book than it does about me.
By James Garside2 years ago in Longevity
Death and Taxes
Take care of your own room; change your own ways of being. Take baby steps AWAY from the adults and PLEASE once and for all, abandon the species in its larval state, and embrace evolution towards becoming creatures no longer held captive by the laws of physics, or politics, or identity or gender. Make this day the beginning of an open story that you write, instead of passively colluding in a fictional character with your given name and apparent body, a fictional identity assembled by the expectations and needs of others. The greatest possible freedom you can ever have is the freedom to realise that you can be anybody, ANY-BODY, and any character, any identity, any creativity that you truly desire. The only limit to what we can become is the limit language puts upon us in its service of control. All hail the PANDROGYNE messenger of a possible New Way On. — Genesis P-Orridge
By James Garside2 years ago in Confessions
