I’ve struggled to understand free indirect style, let alone how to use it in fiction. But in James Wood’s brilliant How Fiction Works all is made wondrously clear through his lucid prose. As he writes, on page 11: Thanks to free indirect style, we see things through the character’s eyes and language but also through the … Read More
Writing
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
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
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
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 still agree with John Fowles when he says that writing is an organic process. He … Read More
Monet and painting, MATing and writing
Today MATing translates as ‘writing this before I begin to stare through the window’. Sometimes it takes much staring before I can write. This story knows what I mean: One day Monet was sitting on the bench in his garden at Giverny staring at the waterlily pond. His neighbour walked by, poked his nose over … Read More
BUILDERS and FISHERMEN, a MAT with a purpose
I am MATing, but there is a point. (Well, I would say that wouldn’t I?) Last night the boyf and I were talking about writing and I said I felt as if I was assembling, not writing at the moment. I’m just collecting the already-written pieces of my third (sorry, second) novel and putting them … Read More
The writing process …
… or should that be the thicket? I seem to go from a simple idea for a novel, a contemporary Beauty and the Beast in the case of my next novel, into a thicket of handwritten notes, ideas scribbled on stray pieces of paper, written scenes, more ideas, bits of plot, character notes, more ideas, … Read More
The LibraryThing
I have spent most of today making a library of my books (no, I mean making a library of a small number of my books) on my library at the LibraryThing – a wonderful invention which I discovered when a member kindly wrote a review of SPEAKING of LOVE there. And as I chose the … Read More
Back to reality
So, back to reality in my writing room (I’ll be there in a minute, when I’ve written this MAT … er, I mean, blog) after a dizzy day yesterday living on the adrenalin that Stuck in a Book’s review of Speaking of Love generated. Before I was published, a line or two from an enthusiastic … Read More
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 up in my head. This isn’t unusual (not that sentence, but sentences in general, or … Read More
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, they seem to be mixing with each other and making a grey sludge, rather than … Read More