Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
ANOTHER NEW FIRST PAGE …
… this is how it goes. Slowly. But here is a redrafted first page for the short story that was a novel. *** I drift from place to place and from year to year with such ease, now. But, despite what they think, I usually know that I am drifting. It’s just that I can’t...Continue reading→
The novel that was a short story, part 202
The beginning that I posted here on Monday isn’t as good as I thought it was when I posted it … but that happens all the time. The trick is to write on: and that’s what I’m doing. Cafe solo image (c) NouvellesImages S.A. et Kurt Hutton – Getty images 2005 Posted by Angela Young...Continue reading→
The short story that was a novel, part 201
After what seems like years, but has really only been weeks, of editing my head off, I find myself with a jewel of a day (today) when the paid editing has gone away, at least for a day, and so, after the beginning I wrote here I wrote this: …But I know I heard someone...Continue reading→
FICTION ALLSORTS
A literary agent friend of mine has just told me about a new website for writers and readers called Fiction Allsorts. There aren’t any links up to either readers’ sites or writers’ sites, nor links to books read or written yet … the site is still under construction. But I like the name (I can...Continue reading→
Writing about writing
George Mackay Brown wrote this about writing: Therefore he no more troubled the pool of silenceBut put on mask and cloak,Strung a guitarAnd moved among the folk.Dancing they cried,‘Ah, how our sober islandsAre gay again, since this blind lyrical trampInvaded the Fair!’ Under the last dead lampWhen all the dancers and masks had gone insideHis...Continue reading→
Booking Through Thursday
Here’s today’s: COMFORT FOODOkay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than...Continue reading→
The short story that was a novel, part 200
Hmmm … even though I’ve written that my relationship with my writing has changed, see here, I haven’t actually done any writing since then to test it. So how do I know it’s changed, I hear you asking? Because, just now, I returned from my writers’ group (we meet monthly but we haven’t met all...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes and synchronicity …
I was talking to a friend tonight, and I told her that I discover myself through stories, in every way. I find out who I am by reading fiction, and I find out who I am by writing fiction. But I didn’t know I did this until I began to read Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s...Continue reading→
The Man Booker shortlist, FIRST NOVELS
So, none of the first novels longlisted made it to the Man Booker shortlist but perhaps, because this list has been so wonderfully readable (no I haven’t read them all, hardly any in fact, yet, but I’ve been reading dovegreyreader’s reviews and Asylum’s and I’ll get to them soon) maybe there’ll be more next year...Continue reading→
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