Take a close look at these women, Audrey Heath (standing) and Alice May Spinks. For several years, while the men have been away fighting in the trenches, in France, these two have been running the office in London. Both women started work as secretaries. The war gave them a precious opportunity to do more, but with the war’s end their position became precarious: the economy was unstable, and the men came back. They could have reverted to being secretaries, if the company generated sufficient...
1 day ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader Recently in the zooms about writing a book proposal, I told the story of a woman I worked with who printed a beautiful limited edition booklet of her work in progress. It wasn’t the whole work in progress, just a sample chapter that we agreed was in terrific shape. I don’t remember the exact number of copies she produced. Ten? Twenty? Not many, anyway. Each copy had a beautiful photograph on the front cover - a photo that had been supplied by one of her friends. - Having printed...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader Sometimes, the best way to learn something – anything – is to do it all wrong first, on purpose. It’s a bit like a vaccine: having absorbed the wrongness, we become stronger. To show what I mean, I’ve taken some fairly recent nonfiction books that have been hugely successful, and attempted to write bad pitches for them. To be perfectly clear, I invented these bad pitches myself – they’re nothing to do with the real authors of these real bestsellers. Don’t worry if you haven’t...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Go into a branch of Waterstones (or other well supplied bookshop). Take photographs of the front and back cover of books much like the one you intend to write. Use the text reading thingy on your iPhone to copy all the text on everything – or other type of phone, but I don’t know anything about other phones. Feed all that text into your favourite AI wotsit. Command the AI wotsit to make sense of it all. Repeat previous step a few times because let’s face it the AI wotsit won’t be flawlessly...
30 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader Can you guess which film inspired these two drawings: Clatter clatter clatter ding! Some years after the Watergate scandal pictured here (oops, did I give away the answer?) I would spend many hours in my mum’s office after school and during half-term etc. Mum worked as a lawyer, and dictated letters into a dictaphone. The tapes were taken away to be typed by her secretary, Debbie. Other typing was done in a typing pool, where three women (yep, all women) typed and typed and typed...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader The typewriter drawings continue. This woman with a beehive is typing on a manual. For your info, the photo on which this was based is black and white. Tapetty-tapetty-tap. Ding! Etc You may wonder what has prompted this sudden interest in the old-fashioned typewriter. Well, it has a lot to do with my growing anxiety about AI. I’ll attempt to explain a bit more tomorrow. Plus, I’ll post a picture of a later typist with an electric typewriter. I bet you can’t wait! *** Thanks for...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader I had a very positive response to yesterday’s email about the advantages of typewriters. Thank you. Here’s a less positive account. I invite you, as you read, to consider how much has really changed with the advent of computers. Erika Typewriter (Cyrillic). The Erika typewriter company was established in the early 1900s by Carl Laufer and Ludwig Kracker: Erika was the name of Kracker’s wife. By the 1930s, Kracker had stepped down. Under Laufer, the company became one of Germany’s...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Greetings Reader A typist in the Churchill film. - no cable or batteries,- satisfying tap-tap-tap-ping!, - no problems (ever) with wifi, - unlikely to be hacked by bad actors, - auto-saves your work,- rare metals not generally reqd.,- no strangers asking to “connect”,- smaller than a piano,- more legible than handwriting,- familiar qwerty keyboard,- no subscription fee,- good enough for Hemingway etc Thank you for looking. Till next time. JPF You can SWITCH any time to Daily, Weekly or Monthly
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello hello! Yesterday, I spent a whole therapy session talking about a book proposal I'm trying to write. It was quite helpful, actually. (To be clear: I'm not a psychotherapist. I was the client / patient.) This is the monthly newsletter from John-Paul FlintoffYou can unsubscribe any time, using the link below The book I want to write is about interviews. Not about dialogue, as such, but about what happens when dialogue is shared with some kind of audience. That's what makes it an...
3 months ago • 4 min read
