Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
Free indirect style, and the CCWC
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...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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:...Continue reading→
Beyond the Border …
… is the name of a magical storytelling festival held at St Donat’s Castle in south Wales every other year. It takes its name from Dylan Thomas’s Poem in October. Here are the second, fourth, fifth and seventh verses: My birthday began with the water – Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
On this centenary of the tragic sinking of RMS Titanic
My great-grandmother, Noël Rothes, set sail from Southampton on RMS Titanic on 10 April 1912. She was one of 2,224 passengers and crew bound for New York. She was also, very luckily for her, one of 712 who were saved. She boarded lifeboat number 8 at 1 am in the morning on 15 April 1912....Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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