Matt Kendrick - Writer | Editor

About

I’ve always told stories in one manner or another, but I started writing “seriously” when I went down with a mystery illness nine years ago. Since then, I’ve been published in various literary journals and anthologies, and my work has been selected for the Biffy 50 list, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50 as well as being used as teaching material on university creative writing courses around the globe. Most of my writing is flash fiction, but I also write prose poetry and I’m currently wrangling with a novel about a man called Maxim who sets up a Museum of Meaning.

Outside of writing, I’m passionate about the arts more generally, and I love spending time with a paint brush, a pencil or a stick of charcoal in my hand. Over the years, I've also dabbled in sculpture, photography and drama, and I was once good enough at playing the piano to gain a place at Trinity Music College.

Since 2017, I've lived with a chronic health condition (I call him "Trevor") that incorporates a whole constellation of issues and drastically limits my possibility of leading a full life. While this is frustrating and often extremely debilitating, discovering my love for writing as well as developing my freelance editing and teaching practice has been a wonderful silver lining.

I've also worked out the best way of living around my illness rather than constantly fighting against it. As such, I live on the basis of crip time, a concept of existence where the clock is bent to meet the needs of the individual rather than bending the individual to meet the constant ticking of the clock.

One of the ways I've made life work for me is through developing a freelance business that adapts around the needs of my often ridiculous body.

With seven years' experience as a freelance editor, I offer editorial services across everything from flash fiction up to novels, and at both the macro (structure / narrative) and micro (word choices / sentence flow) levels of editorial intervention. I also work with writers on a one-to-one basis to help them with a particular project or to develop their writing in general.

As a teacher, I've developed a suite of courses under the umbrella of "Write Beyond the Lightbulb" which contemplate such wonders as anadiplosis, anaphora, appositives, collective nouns, epizeuxis, left-branching sentences, metaphors, similes, synaesthesia, and transferred epithets. The series consists of "Colourful Characters", "Glorious Words", "Go With The Flow", and "Lyrical Writing", and can now be taken on a work-at-your-own-pace basis.

More recently, I've developed a two-part editing course called "The Editorial Funnel" which aims to give writers plenty of tricks and techniques for tackling the tricky businses of editing, moving in a structured fashion from zoomed-out structural edits to zoomed-in line edits so that any story can really sing.

I also teach the occasional Zoom-based workshop, and there are recorded versions of some of these available to purchase through my website.

In addition to all of that, I publish a monthly newsletter called "Prattlefog & Gravelrap" where I delve into various elements of writing craft. Previous editions have tackled topics such as character uniqueness, points of view, dealing with declines, finding focus, knotty sentences, pacing, endings, titles, and voice. I also publish a second newsletter called "Mondettes" in which I invite writing friends to recommend ten pieces of flash fiction.

Another thing I do to try and share a bit of writing knowledge is to publish free resources on this website on everything from story planning to sentence construction, character creation to sensory inspiration. I also do my best to be a positive presence on social media, although my engagement with Bluesky and Facebook might be described as sporadic at best!!

If you'd like to work with me, or if you have a query regarding my writing, editorial services or courses, please get in touch on matt@mattkendrick.co.uk