Tag Archives: MATs

Writing, not Posting

I am writing or, more to the point, doing this before I write. I have laid the foundations and now I’m building the trellises and the supports around which the plants of my story will grow. (image found here) I … Continue reading

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When is a MAT harder than writing? …

… when it results in this: Describe your five strengths as a writer I found the challenge HERE and because I was busy MATing (reading readers’ and writers’ blogs to avoid writing) I told myself that I would do it, … Continue reading

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A new relationship with my writing …

… is what I need. I realised over the weekend, while thinking about other relationships in my life, that the relationship I have with my writing is one of dread fuelled by the certainty that it will be a struggle: … Continue reading

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When is writing also a MAT?

When it’s another piece of writing. I managed to stop writing the short story (the one that was a novel, you remember) this week so that I could resurrect the idea for a children’s novel from a horrible first draft … Continue reading

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Emily Young’s Wounded Angel

sculpture copyright Emily Young, photograph copyright Angelo Plantamura You can see this beautiful angel (called Wounded Angel I) in Kew Gardens, in London, or you can see a photograph of him in Tacit Hill’s A Light Touch and a Long … Continue reading

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Editing, MATs and piles of paper

Most writers, in fact surely all of us except those with humungous sales, earn their living by doing something else (obviously not by MATing). I earn mine by editing other people’s non-fiction, and/or proofreading it. I have just quoted for … Continue reading

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Orchids for Simon

I am overwhelmed. This orchid is for Simon at Stuck in a Book for his overwhelming review of Speaking of Love. See The word on … at the top on the right. Orchids, according to Clare Florists’ flower meanings are … Continue reading

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Writing, MATs and ticker-tape turn ups

On Friday morning, in the bath, before I started work (a bath can be a MAT, but only if I’m still in it after the practical stuff is over), the sentence, ‘On the whole we resist falling in love’ turned … Continue reading

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Making the language sing

So … I spent yesterday rewriting the first seven pages of the short-story-that-was-a-novel. Or, as I prefer to call it, making the language sing. Now that’s not a full-scale opera you understand, just one short under-rehearsed aria, but I hate … Continue reading

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First novels and short stories

The thing about writing your first novel is that as well as doing it you’re finding out how to do it. So, you would have thought that I’d have discovered at least the fundamentals of the how by now. But … Continue reading

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Man Booker Longlist, MATs and Natalie Goldberg

So … the Booker Longlist is out and it includes four first novels which can only be good news for those of us with books which have cleared the finding-a-publisher-for-the-first-novel hurdle. I looked in vain for Speaking of Love, knowing … Continue reading

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Thomas Keneally and the fear that haunts all writers

Did you hear Thomas Keneally this morning on Desert Island Discs? He was magnificent. He didn’t mention MATs (multiple avoidance – of writing – techniques), but he talked about the most stultifying thing for a writer: FEAR. He said, I … Continue reading

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Life in my writing room

The walls are covered with quotations, this is one of my favourites: ‘A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ Thomas Mann. My head is always full of words but, this afternoon, … Continue reading

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