Maggie Hamand who runs the Complete Creative Writing Courses, and the Treehouse Press, have collected and edited twenty-one stories from students on Maggie’s courses. The stories will be published under the title COLLAGES in September and I’m thrilled that a section from the beginning of my third novel, For the Love of Life, has been … Read More
Things I’d Love to Have Made
Second novel, and Cornelia Parker
I’ve just delivered my second novel to my agent for submission to publishers … and I’m about to plunge back into my third. It’s an exciting full-of-possibilities time and I wish the novel well out there in the real world. And in the meantime I wish fellow-novelist, Helen Chandler all the luck in the world … Read More
Dying Matters
It’s Dying Matters Awareness Week and, as Iris Murdoch said (she’s quoted on the Awareness Week page): Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved. I think – although everything changes in the writing of a novel – but at the moment I think my third novel will be narrated by a beneficent angel because, … Read More
Jacob Ross (and TLC)’s three-part master class, and campanology
Jacob Ross is running a three-part master class in writing the short story, the novel and genre fiction for the wonderful TLC (without whose wise criticism I doubt Speaking of Love would ever have found a publisher). The short story part was on 23 March, but the others are still to come and, should writing fiction … Read More
Breaking writing rules, and an extraordinary National Trust house
On Tuesday, at the last CCWC Advanced Writing Course of the spring term (where, by the way, is spring?) we broke the rules and found that, in breaking them, a freedom and spontaneous playfulness broke into our writing. If, for instance, you change point of view in the middle of a scene, you’ll very likely … Read More
Love, from the hert, for Valentine’s day
Charles Duc d’Orleans (1394-1465) wrote this love poem for his wife, in 1415, after his capture at the Battle of Agincourt: Go forth, my hert, with my lady; Loke that we spare no business To serve her with such lowliness, That ye get her grace and mercy. Pray her of times prively That she keep … Read More
The making of character
Sometime last week I heard part of an interview with John le Carre about the making of character. This is what he said: You can’t actually make up a character out of other people, you simply can’t. You grab the bits that are appealing to you, that touch you or alienate you, but in the … Read More
Modern Etiquette …
… at the turn of the century before last. Published by Frederick Warne & Co., (also publishers of Beatrix Potter’s work) in 1870 and reprinted many times since, Modern Etiquette is invaluable for a glimpse of the codes of behaviour people were advised to follow in the late 19th-century. In the Introduction it states: Society has … Read More
Second novels
Stephen Fry wrote (I found it here, thank you Lydia Netzer, although I couldn’t find it directly from him): The problem with a second novel is that it takes almost no time to write compared with a first novel. If I write my first novel in a month at the age of 23, and my second … Read More
Searching for the Secret River
I’ve just finished reading Kate Grenville‘s Searching for the Secret River: it’s brilliant, and a must-read for anyone who writes historical fiction (my second, about-to-be-redrafted, novel is one of those). Searching for the Secret River is a kind and wise book about writing and the process, the stumbling blocks and the breakthroughs. It’s about the gradual … Read More
Personal best
It’s the stories behind the gold medals at London 2012 that have intrigued and heartened me because they apply not only to sport, but to anything we each choose to do or to be or to become. In writing, it is in the rewriting (which often means many many drafts) that the real work begins: … Read More
The London Literature Festival …
… looks absolutely wonderful. It runs between 3 -12 July and Noo Saro-Wiwa and Mark Haddon I’d love to hear, but there’s so much, including a debate about last year’s riots in London, writing classes and much much more. And the thing I would like to have made, this month, is the present series of programmes on … Read More
And now for the third novel …
… which I’ve just begun. Its working title is FOR THE LOVE OF LIFE. That’s to say I’ve begun thinking about it, dreaming on it, planning it and writing a chapter or two (mostly because the writers’ group I belong to is meeting soon and I need some work to submit for their wise attention. Otherwise … Read More
No news … is good news?
My agent sent my second novel out to publishers on the 3rd of February and has given them until the 29th (that leap year day) to respond. So, perhaps an editor will ask me, or more to the point my novel, to marry her (or him) on that day. It would be good if s/he … Read More
A new novel for a new year
And so, in the days between Christmas and the dawn of 2012, I reread my second novel and revised it (yes, again, it is truly necessary and all part of the work of a writer) and then, on Sunday, 8 January, 2012, I submitted it to my agent. At lunchtime, by email, if you want … Read More
I don’t teach creative writing …
… I teach patience and stubbornness. So said Richard Bausch, who writes as well as teaching writing. Without patience and stubbornness a writer of fiction would die (fictionally speaking). We need patience while we dream up our characters and discover who they are. We need, as I heard Jeanette Winterson say at the London Book … Read More
Rewriting WRITTEN in WATER, Part 2
I thought perhaps my wonderful editor might have sent me her report on the final draft of WRITTEN in WATER by the beginning of this week, but because she is a careful thoughtful editor it won’t be with me until the end of this week now, to give her the time she needs. But she … Read More
Rewriting
It’s a hundred years, well, seven months, since last I wrote here and now my blog has become a column on my shiny new website. Welcome if it’s the first time you’ve been here, and welcome back if you’ve been to my old blog, writinglifeandtheuniverse, which has now migrated here. Since April I’ve been rewriting … Read More