The first days of this new year have brought oddly mixed emotions. Happiness and gratitude that all those celebrations with friends and family went well, mingled with sadness for the absence of all those we used to celebrate with who are no longer alive. Memories of the dead weaving (wefting?) through the warps of our lives (and not always sadly). And then a … Read More
Writing
What it’s like to write and what it’s like to imagine you might write; and Suffragette
In Edith Wharton‘s 1925 The Writing of Fiction in the section called ‘Constructing a Navel’ – obviously a typographical mistake but one I like for its overtones of contemplation – Wharton writes about the creation of character in a novel: The creatures of that fourth-dimensional world are born as helpless as the human animal; and each time … Read More
Mindfulness; 18 things creative people do differently and the ever-magical Elizabeth Gilbert
Mindfulness, according to The Mindfulness Project in London, is: A simple and very powerful practice of training our attention. It’s … about paying attention to what’s happening here and now (sensations, thoughts, emotions) in a non-judgemental way. It can interrupt the habit of getting lost in thoughts, mostly about the future or past, which often generate more … Read More
How incomprehensible unworkable things inspire
Joanna Briscoe and Grace Paley caught my attention this month. They’re very different writers but I’ve just read articles about writing by both. Grace Paley died in 2007 but a friend sent me her thoughts on writing recently. Here’s an extract from an article, reprinted here): One of the reasons writers are so much more interested in life … Read More
Ideas are NOT stories; and the Biblioteca Jardim
It becomes obvious if you write, but perhaps not if you don’t: ideas are not stories. Before I wrote or, at least, before I finished a novel, I didn’t grasp this fundamental fact because ideas, when they come (and I’ve no idea where they come from) are so exciting. They’re the fuel; the energy; the surge; the … Read More
Electoral Reform in the UK. And Inspiration.
On 5 May 2011 a referendum on electoral reform was held in the UK: 68% of us voted No; 32% (including me) voted Yes; the turnout was 42%. We weren’t collectively brave enough, or we were too frightened of change to vote Yes conclusively (or to vote at all). Last Thursday, 7 May 2015, a Conservative government was … Read More
103 years on, Titanic; and the things that come unbidden when you write
One hundred and three years ago today more than 1,500 people died in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic when RMS Titanic hit the iceberg and then sank, in the early hours of 15 April. My great-grandmother, Nöel Rothes, was one of the lucky survivors and this year YOU Magazine in the Mail on Sunday has … Read More
Sequels, Literary Festivals and Natasha O’Farrell’s heavenly handbag
There have been some heart-warming reactions to The Dance of Love and several people have suggested I write a sequel, possibly set in the Depression and the lead-up to the Second World War because, they said, it would be fascinating to find out what happens next in the characters’ lives and how they do or don’t live … Read More
Haworth Parsonage, Richard Flanagan and Anselm Keifer
In September we holidayed in England: we travelled north-west to Stratford (and saw a wonderful production of The Roaring Girl, a play about Mary Frith, an astonishing sixteenth-century woman who lived and dressed as a man, partly in defiance of her times to give herself freedom, partly so she could act as pimp, procurer and … Read More
The Launch of The Dance of Love, History of the Rain, and Emily Young’s Kew Gardens angel video
The DANCE of LOVE was launched at the wonderful Barnes Bookshop last Thursday: I wrote about on Robert Hale’s blog – the book’s publishers – here. It was a happy family affair: my whole family was there: my two younger sisters smuggled my American sister into the country for it which was a wonderful; the family of … Read More
Niall Williams’s History of the Rain
I’m so full of Niall Williams‘s History of the Rain that I don’t want to write about anything else this month. It is the most beautiful and beautifully-written novel I’ve read, probably ever, and if not ever, then certainly for a very very long time. And it is – naturally – a book I would love to … Read More
Writing a novel is just like life …
… it’s only in the doing of it that I discover what works and what doesn’t. I can plan and plan and plan and I do, but when I do I tend, at least some of the time, to let myself get away with vague descriptions, half-formed theories or, sometimes, whole ideas that don’t hold … Read More
Failure is the Mother of Success; and Paula Meehan
失败是成功之母 Shībài shì chénggōng zhī mǔ Failure is the Mother of Success (a Chinese Proverb) Last week Anne Enright, Booker Prize-winning wonderful writer, gave one of BBC Radio 4’s The Value of Failure programmes. Sadly they’re no longer available to listen to again, but I’ll do my best to convey the essence of what she … Read More
The Shock of the Fall : hurray for mental illness in FICTION
The subject matter of this year’s Costa first novel winner (and now overall 2013 winner), The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Fileris mental illness. Hurray! (Because publishers so often swerve when they see one of those coming.) And hurray for the Borough Press for not swerving. I hope this win will help, as Lionel Shriver’s We … Read More
For the Love of Life in COLLAGES, the Man Booker shortlist and a glorious goat gouda
In my post in July I wrote about the September publication of COLLAGES, a collection of new writing by students on Maggie Hamand’s wonderful CCWC courses. Maggie has kindly included an extract from my third novel, a work in progress called For the Love of Life, in the collection and now you can buy COLLAGES here, if … Read More
Voice, and Bill Viola
I have never really been able to explain to myself what voice means for an artist, and particularly for a writer, even though I know it exists. But when I read this: Voice is a set of ideas and concerns that becomes distinctively owned by the writer. in the summer edition of The Author, at last … Read More
CCWC, Collages and the Peirene Press
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
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
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