Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
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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...Continue reading→
The rewrite, continued …
For various reasons (life in all its glorious unpredictability, mostly) I find myself re-rewriting my second novel. It’s not an unusual state, after all, all writing is rewriting (finally found the man who said it): Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the...Continue reading→
Rewrites and primroses
I’ve just delivered the rewritten manuscript of my second novel, WRITTEN in WATER (as it is now called) to my agent. Wish it luck, please. I’ve written about the novel before, here, but it was a while ago (writing a novel is like climbing a mountain, you keep reaching a summit which, you discover, has...Continue reading→
Just When … will we do something?
Just published by the wonderful Beautiful Books, is this volume of short stories: Inspired by Kipling’s Just-So Stories, the Just When Stories focus on the animals we need to protect today. There are stories about turtles and cranes, seahorses and chimpanzees, ducks and elephants and dolphins, tortoises and tigers and more. The stories are published...Continue reading→
Nine months later …
… and exactly the right amount of time since my last post, because I have just delivered the manuscript of my second novel to my agent. The process hasn’t been painless, but what birth is? But the most important thing I’ve discovered is that a story can be told in many different ways without its...Continue reading→
And now for a complete rewrite
When George Plimpton of The Paris Review [pages 6-7] asked Hemingway why he rewrote so many times, he said: I do it to get the words right He was right. Of course he was right. He always is. (He also wrote standing up. Perhaps I should try that.) Since 16 June, when I delivered what...Continue reading→
Thursday last …
… on Thursday last I gave my second novel, whose working title is Hope Remains, to my agent. And now I feel oddly bereft. I have become so used to spending my days immersed in the sadnesses and joys of the characters, in watching them move about in my head, in omitting long passages that...Continue reading→
Not posting, but writing
I’m working on my second novel so I won’t be posting for a while (not even to MAT). I don’t know how long a while is, and I won’t know until I get there, but the SOED says: A period of time, considered with respect to its duration. and, a little less obliquely: The time...Continue reading→
The White Tiger wins the Man Booker
Congratulations to Aravind Adiga whose first novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker prize last night. Michael Portillo – chair of the 2008 judges – said it ‘knocked his socks off’. I haven’t read it yet, so I’ve still got my socks on … but I heard Adiga interviewed this morning on the Today...Continue reading→
The Troubadour Cafe
The Troubadour is, as they say on their website, a proper cafe. It’s been around for years but it just gets better and better. It’s in London, find out where here, and it’s in Speaking of Love because, in the Sixties in London, it was the place for poets to read and perform their poetry....Continue reading→