INKY SQUIGGLES

I've just excised a venomous influence from my life. And, as a dedicated yet chronically suffering writer with "little or no money in my purse", I would like to take this opportunity to post a sobering caution to all those who live by the pen. I've been writing on topics that inspire me for a long time. I've rarely had the pleasure of being paid to do so; it's simply such a vital part of my being that it would be unthinkable not to. When it comes to writing for money, however, I've had to resign myself to the reality that my options are limited; I have successfully pursued careers in both journalism and copywriting, and have personally found both to be soul-sappingly dissatisfying. Reporting the facts and representing a client's brand left little room for my own voice and creativity. When I found an advert on TotalJobs for a fully paid content producer position for a successful entertainment website, therefore, I was intrigued. WhatCulture were...

Version reviewed: PC (also available on Mac and Linux) Available from: Steam or www.GoneHomeGame.com How well do you really know the people closest to you? When Kaitlin Greenbriar returns home from a gap year in Europe to find her entire family gone, it’s up to her to uncover the secrets that didn’t make it into those long-distance letters. Picking up the threads of her family’s lives, the player must explore the colossal house they have since moved into, examining letters, newspaper clippings and, if one so chooses, the hundred thousand other details that make up a life. If it’s the people, and not the house, that make a home, then this game shows how each individual has inhabited every room with their cares, uncertainties and basic humanity. From hastily scrawled notes passed between friends during class, to adult magazines buried under work documents, Gone Home is teeming with meticulously authentic details of family life that the player is at liberty to snoop through, tu...

Manga and anime character tropes are a lot like gravity in that they can be said to follow a kind of unwritten law ; the silver-haired pretty-boy, the bespectacled brain, the plucky but naive hero. These archetypes stay in circulation because, for the most part, they work. But for fans drawn to the medium for its idiosyncrasy, these cookie cutter characters, though comforting, can get kinda tedious. Sadly, I know people who have given up on manga and anime altogether out of sheer exhaustion at these recurring clichés -- and Japanese anime fans are getting just as fed up as everyone else.

Do you ever wish that life had a soundtrack playing in the background? The soundtracks to Gladiator and Batman have gotten me through many late-night study sessions. Just today I woke up to  Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1  (guaranteed to instill the instant belief that today will be beautiful and grand), cleaned the kitchen with the excitement of  Vivaldi's Spring , and then proceeded to make scones with melancholy and foreboding thanks to part of  Dvorak's New World Symphony . Music just makes everyday moments so much more epic. I used to live waiting for epic moments. How could I possibly enjoy the day's hum-drum assignments when there would be a party at the weekend, or a wedding next month, or a vacation abroad soon? As a young teenager, the film  Inn of the Sixth Happiness  caught my imagination, and somehow I got round to believing that life would be incomplete unless I did something as similarly glorious and noteworthy as leading orphan ch...

Entering the working world can be riddled with paradoxes for the creative type. Since you have an artistic temperament, it makes sense that you should gravitate towards more creative careers. But herein lies the dilemma. Once you transfer your creativity to the workplace, others start putting sanctions on it. Regulating it, directing it. Compressing it into a cramped and clinical office cubicle. Because when you're working for the man, man , it's all about the profit  –  which can sometimes mean muzzling your muse.

The sudden strains of my ringtone pierced through my sleep, and my grogginess evaporated as I realized who was calling. It was my supervisor. "I'm sorry to disturb you," he said. "I know you're not supposed to be working today, but  can  you teach today? One of our teachers is in A&E." During the summer, I teach English to groups of Brazilian students who come through our schools near London, and this morning I had just one hour from leaping out of bed until I had to be in the classroom. My brain scrambled to think of what I could do with the classes. Flexibility, I've been told, is the first rule of teaching.

...and I'd given up hoping that my first time driving a car would come any time before my 25th birthday, after which I might finally have the time and money to learn. However, I got my first taste of driving a couple of weeks ago. I watched from the safety of a picnic rug as my brother and two of his friends raced around a field in my brother's black Vauxhall Corsa SRi.  "That looks like so much fun," I thought. "Such a shame I don't know how to drive." I looked back down at my book and determined to content myself, but somehow the pages had lost a little of their charm.

I began the spring semester of my second year at university with the firm resolve to be a kitchen goddess. Four months before, I had finally moved out of the residence halls into a stylish little apartment (albeit university-owned), and I was still enormously excited at the thought of having a proper "home" with lots of space to entertain, and without having to rely on the campus cafeteria for my meals. I pored over recipe books like The Bean Book and Vegetarian Meals in Minutes (acquired during Christmas break back home in England) with all the joy of a 1950s housewife. I made menus and shopping lists and planned dinner parties. "Just wait," smiled my senior-class friends knowingly. "You'll soon be living off ramen and sandwiches like the rest of us."

This is an archival post from April 2010 migrated from my previous personal blog. On a grainy April morning my partner and I trudged into the city centre to catch a 6am Megabus from Newcastle to London. In total, the return trip lasted around 14 hours. The reason? Why, for the summer of lovin', of course. The exuberant Broadway revival of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical  is currently showing in London's West End (at the Gielgud Theatre), and the hippie spirit was, at least on that day and for all those involved, vigorously, hip-thrustingly alive.

Starting a story could well be the most difficult part of the creative writing process of all. A blank page can be terrifying in its openness; words feverishly penned at 4am in a seeming revelation can result in the writer's equivalent to morning-after remorse. When I set about writing my first blog post, I had a strange impulse to begin as my primary school English teachers told me I should never, under any circumstances, open a story. 'Hi, my name is Sarah', 'Hey, kids, you wanna hear a story?', or perhaps even ' It was a dark and stormy night '  –  you know  –  to set the scene.