Larkin’s Blog

It was certainly a big decision to make: to give up a well-paid full-time IT Consultant position. But that is what I will be doing this coming September as I start the MSc in Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh.
In the end it was not a difficult decision to bring my career in IT to [...]

He delights the crowd, flicking and swerving, darting and weaving. He scores goals for fun, changes games, wins championships. He tops the polls, wins the awards, receives the adulation. He earns big bucks, commands a huge transfer fee, is the envy of every club in Europe. He is a footballing genius.
He dives and feigns injury, [...]

Well, I had come accross the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests before - both the 0 to 100 and US grade school levels - but I never put them into practice or thought too long about them. But, can it be a useful tool for a writer?
I searched the web for some articles where people had applied [...]

As a published writer of anything - whether fiction, non-fiction, journalism, or whatever - there is that feeling of getting your 15-minutes of fame. “Look Mam, there’s my name in this glossy magazine. Look Dad, I actually wrote those words”. It probably sustains you for the next couple of articles (or short stories, poems, etc). [...]

Several times over the past few weeks I have begun to write what I hope will turn out to be long stories - novellas, novels, or whatever. However, I have found it difficult to commit to a long story once I have gotten about 5 - 15 pages in (when I mention page on this [...]

I created a new web-site dedicated to creative writing in Ireland. Originally a site specific to writers in Cork, I expanded the site to target writers in all of Ireland.
I’m not exactly sure what I intend for the site. I’m hoping that a community will build up around the site and generate the content organically, [...]