Author Archives: Beth Wren
Poetry Corner | Poem #3: Orbiting
Because sometimes you know that things won’t work out, no matter how hard you want them to. Especially when you’re moving like two planets away from each other. I’ve been trying to perfect this poem for ages and it got to the point where I just had to put it down for now and let it […]
Carrying Home With Me
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of home, and I guess that I had a kind of epiphany. Let’s set the scene, shall we? It’s about half past 6 in the evening and I’m on a bus on the way back from Prague to Dresden. I’m returning from a wonderful couple of […]
Some Call It Being Unemployed. I Call It Being A Writer.
Just a little public service announcement here to report a couple of life updates: namely that I’m back in the UK, that I’ve finished with my au pair job in Germany, and that I’ve decided now to take some time off to focus on my book and my writing. Yep, this is really happening. I have […]
The Truth About the Kindle
If you would like to see my previous long rant about the Kindle, please click here. Otherwise, please just accept that I am a hypocrite and that things have changed, ok? A year or two ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of ever getting a Kindle. To me there was nothing better than the sight of […]
Falling in Love with Prague
So I think this one will be short on words, but long in pictures. My trip to Prague was perhaps the least planned and organised one yet, and I can’t pretend that I wasn’t a little stressed out just before (“What currency do they even have in the Czech Republic?!”). Honestly, however, I fell in […]
A Weekend in Weimar
Having studied Goethe intensively for a year at university, Weimar had long since been on my list of places to visit in Germany. Finally realising a trip to the famous city was somewhat of a dream for me, especially finally visiting Goethe’s house after having watched a detailed video tour of it last year in class. […]
Poetry Corner: Let’s Talk About the Fear
Ok, it’s time to admit something which I think is probably fairly obvious, but nevertheless important to express: I’m terrified of sharing my words. I set up this little Poetry Corner section of my blog with the intention of regularly publishing the poems which I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. Somewhat naively, […]
Review: the Miniaturist, Jessie Burton
On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later […]
Lost in Leipzig
Hello, my name’s Beth and I’m terrible with directions. With this in mind, and with the knowledge that I had really done very little preparation in terms of looking at maps and other important things like where to go, I arrived in Leipzig on Saturday with nothing more than an unnecessarily overfilled backpack, and a lot […]
5 Problems All Writers Will Know
Or, at least, I hope I’m not the only one. When you think about it, writing creatively is one of the strangest things that you can do. Of course, it’s in equal parts terrifying, fulfilling and life-changing, but that transition from mind to paper can be a little tricky, can’t it? Here are the problems […]
Bethany Wren 