In this strange spring and early summer of ours, where March’s snow, frost and ice stopped all plant growth and May’s hot days and tropical rainstorms encouraged it wildly, I’ve been wondering how many writers worked as gardeners. I only found one: John Clare. John Clare, 13 July 1793-20 May 1864 (aged 70) by William Hilton, oil on canvas, 1820 … Read More
Author: Angela
Writers on writing, and an exquisitely beautiful tea
When our writers’ group met this week one of our number described how the rise of the ‘plotting and typing’ approach to writing was driving her demented. How all the work is done before you’ve typed a word and then you just carry on thwacking through, typing typing typing … .But how, however much is planned ahead … Read More
RMS Titanic: on this day 106 years ago … & Samira Addo, Portrait Artist of the Year
It’s 106 years ago today that the ‘unsinkable’ passenger liner, RMS Titanic, hit an iceberg and sank in just two hours and forty minutes. For years the tragedy was a matter of private internal horror: people didn’t talk about trauma then and only two years later the First World War broke out, eclipsing Titanic’s tragedy with its own tremendous … Read More
Social media and the writer; Modigliani and Akhmatova
It’s wise for writers to have a social media presence these days. Publishers don’t exactly insist on it, but they like writers who have significant followings. (Followers equal interest in the writer and so potential sales, obviously.) But how does a writer balance the time she spends on social media and the time she devotes to … Read More
Teaching kids to fall in love with science (a different kind of love for Valentine’s day); and things to do with rubbish
I was noodling around on the internet wondering what I was going to post about this month when I discovered Arvind Gupta. He won the Padma Shree on 26 January (India’s Republic Day) for his work in literature and in education, particularly scientific education. He’s an engineer, toy-maker, scientist, teacher and book-lover who spends much of his time … Read More
A new writing resolution; and a new (to me) altruistic way of advertising
I’ve made a new writing resolution: I will not allow the confusing complexity, the sheer size and the constantly changing, shifting nature of a novel’s first draft to eclipse the excitement I felt when its guiding idea first electrified me. I. Will. Not. Ever. Again. Which means I’ll hang on to my curiosity however much confusion and chaos threaten to … Read More
Our Christmas Tree: a work in progress … and The Connection at St Martin’s
My other half put our Christmas tree together yesterday (it has hundreds of branches, all with different colour codes, all with their own little slots in its metal trunk). He also strung the tree with lights. Now it’s my turn to put on the decorations. So it’s a work in progress.As everything is. Especially our lives. So … Read More
Atul Gawande and Being Mortal; and a Remembrance Poppy Badge
Atul Gawande‘s Being Mortal – which I wrote about here in the context of his 2014 Reith Lectures – is extraordinary for its courageous and honest confrontation of our failure to confront how we want to die. Or, as Atul Gawande would say, from a surgeon doctor’s point of view: We’ve been wrong about what our … Read More
Chaos & Creativity; and Beautiful Bookshops
I dislike hate chaos. Very much. Who doesn’t? But it’s an essential state if you want to write fiction. Messiness of the mind is the sine qua non for writers. But, when a piece is finished, it looks so orderly that we – when we first dream of becoming writers – think the process must also … Read More
Rejection is a rite of passage for writers, and the Raw Chocolate Company
One of the things that a writer takes a while truly to believe (it’s taken me a while) is that rejection is part of the process: it’s necessary, inevitable and makes our work better. It’s a rite of passage.But the thing is, no piece of writing is born fully formed, just as no child is … Read More
A very small trawl through a few less well-known news sites
This month – perhaps because it’s the silly season when news tends towards the frivolous because the House of Commons is in recess and us ordinary folk go on holiday – I thought I’d have a little light trawl through a few lesser-known news outlets. Obviously not these: I found one called KarmaTube whose aim is to: bring … Read More
Blurt It Out and Instead of a Card
I’m submitting the manuscript of my third novel to literary agents. It’s a process that requires much patience, a certain amount of luck and, most importantly, the ability to pitch my work well to the right agent at the right agency at the right time. (I’ll post the result when there is one.) Recently I … Read More
Words on Writing, and Pass on a Poem
There are hundreds of thousands of words written about writing fiction: how to write, why we write, what to do when we can’t write and on and on so that, sometimes, I feel as if I’m adrift on a sea of advice. But at other times wise words become the lifeboat that takes me safely back … Read More
Auditioning to become a WI Speaker, and ‘BORN BAFFLED: Musings on a Writing Life’
In March I auditioned to become a WI speaker. The WI, you say? Don’t they just make jam, sing Jerusalem and talk a lot? Yes to all three, but no to JUST. There are 6,300 WIs in this country with 220,000 members and their community interests and campaigns have a long reach and are extremely varied. They campaign … Read More
Spring in London, and The Kid Stays in the Picture
Spring in London is an astonishing thing: blossom among the grey buildings and pavements; green and blue and pink and white making us look up at it and then at each other and smile, us Londoners who spend most of our time walking around looking at the pavement (or the now-ubiquitous technology in our hands), making … Read More
A History of Britain in 21 Women, by Jenni Murray
This is both the thing I’m writing about this month and the thing I’d love to have written, in a parallel universe where time is infinite and all things are possible:What an entirely brilliant and inspiring idea. It begins with Boadicea, not Boudicca, because: To me … she will always be Boadicea because I was … Read More
Anselm Kiefer and Heywood Hill
On the weekend we went to the Anselm Kiefer Exhibition at the White Cube in Bermondsey. It’s just closed, but if there’s any of his work anywhere near you do go and see it. He is the most imaginative of artists. He sees with a keen but compassionate eye: several of his works made me … Read More
John Berger, Ways of Seeing … and PEN International
John Berger, who died aged 90 on January 2nd, was a critic, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and poet and well-known to many. Occasionally, in his early writings according to this Guardian obituary, Berger’s ‘Marxist dialectic did force him into uncomfortable contortions’, but whenever I heard him or read his fiction I loved his originality and his extraordinary ability to make the … Read More
Dare Always Dare, and Guerilla Grafters
A friend pointed out to me a week or so ago that this: DARE ALWAYS DARE is written in neon above the foyer entrance to the Old Vic Theatre (no idea why I’d never noticed it before): And so we should, if only we could, all the time. But I think it’s good enough to DARE SOMETIMES … Read More
Third novel, and the Reith Lectures, 2016
This month I finished my third novel. Finished to be interpreted loosely: there will be redrafts when I’m working with an agent and then with an editor. It’s working title is For the Love of Life. Rejoice. At least for now. But now, while I do all the things I haven’t had time to do (updating … Read More