Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
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→
What kind of writer am I?
Thanks to an archived blog at John Baker’s blog, I discover that I am this kind of writer: You Should Be A Poet You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery…Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.You’re already naturally a poet, even if you’ve never...Continue reading→
A new relationship with my writing …
… is what I need. I realised over the weekend, while thinking about other relationships in my life, that the relationship I have with my writing is one of dread fuelled by the certainty that it will be a struggle: that I always expect to discover that what I thought was a story isn’t, that...Continue reading→
When is writing also a MAT?
When it’s another piece of writing. I managed to stop writing the short story (the one that was a novel, you remember) this week so that I could resurrect the idea for a children’s novel from a horrible first draft written one thousand (well, ten) years ago. And the reason for stopping? To send three...Continue reading→
Publishers and writers: the relationship?
These are what’s left of the boyf’s roses, and as I was looking at them last night and wondering if they had another day left in them (they have, because I decided to dry them this morning), we began a conversation about an idea that’s been in my head for a while, but hasn’t properly...Continue reading→
Booking through Thursday … on Friday
Just caught up with Booking Through Thursday (thank you Simon at Stuck in a Book)… where a weekly bookish question is posed. Here’s this week’s question: When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books...Continue reading→
Mostly Books, indie bookshops and indie publishers
THIS is the place to go if you want to learn how to sell your book into indie bookshops Last Sunday I and four others spent the day at the table you can just see through the window. We were given delicious and copious cups of tea and coffee all day (rudely I brought my...Continue reading→
Emily Young’s Wounded Angel
sculpture copyright Emily Young, photograph copyright Angelo Plantamura You can see this beautiful angel (called Wounded Angel I) in Kew Gardens, in London, or you can see a photograph of him in Tacit Hill’s A Light Touch and a Long View which was published in June and is full full full of colour plates of...Continue reading→
Editing, MATs and piles of paper
Most writers, in fact surely all of us except those with humungous sales, earn their living by doing something else (obviously not by MATing). I earn mine by editing other people’s non-fiction, and/or proofreading it. I have just quoted for a piece of editing work and while I am waiting for the editor at the...Continue reading→
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