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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Making the language sing
So … I spent yesterday rewriting the first seven pages of the short-story-that-was-a-novel. Or, as I prefer to call it, making the language sing. Now that’s not a full-scale opera you understand, just one short under-rehearsed aria, but I hate clunky language. I’m a huge fan of the less-is-more-poetic school of writing, but when I’m...Continue reading→
First novels and short stories
The thing about writing your first novel is that as well as doing it you’re finding out how to do it. So, you would have thought that I’d have discovered at least the fundamentals of the how by now. But it seems that I haven’t, or hadn’t. My second novel, which I had the idea...Continue reading→
Man Booker Longlist, MATs and Natalie Goldberg
So … the Booker Longlist is out and it includes four first novels which can only be good news for those of us with books which have cleared the finding-a-publisher-for-the-first-novel hurdle. I looked in vain for Speaking of Love, knowing that it wouldn’t be there but hoping, fantastically against the odds, that it would be....Continue reading→
Bookarazzi and Find me a Bluebird
I’d intended to post every day … so much for the best-laid plans, or even the worst-laid. Anyway, one of the things I’ve discovered while trying to find ways to midwife my first novel, Speaking of Love, out into the world (yes, that’s another MAT) is Bookarazzi, and on the Bookarazzi recommended blogs page was...Continue reading→
Mark Thornton and selling to indies
Mark Thornton’s seminar at the Society of Authors today was inspirational. His fundamental message to writers who want to persuade independent bookshops to stock their books was to think like a bookseller (not like a writer trying to persuade a bookseller to stock her book). And as soon as you start to think like that...Continue reading→
Arvon Foundation and Mostly Books
One hundred years ago I went to Totleigh Barton on my first Arvon course. It was run by two writers, only one of whose names can I remember – David Benedictus (who was famous at the time for his first novel, The Fourth of June). But the thing about Arvon and the writers who teach...Continue reading→
Selling a First novel, and writing
I’ve been thinking about Mostly Books ever since I typed ‘sell my novel’ into Google (it came up with 15,500,000 sites so I don’t know now how I happened upon Mostly Books, but I am so glad I did). Because I discovered that Mark Thornton at Mostly Books runs a course which gently explains to...Continue reading→
Thomas Keneally and the fear that haunts all writers
Did you hear Thomas Keneally this morning on Desert Island Discs? He was magnificent. He didn’t mention MATs (multiple avoidance – of writing – techniques), but he talked about the most stultifying thing for a writer: FEAR. He said, I can’t quote him exactly because you can’t listen again to Desert Island Discs, but here’s...Continue reading→
Speaking of Sales Figures
I have just discovered that my first novel Speaking of Love (published by the utterly wonderful Beautiful Books) has sold five copies in a week, in my local cafe, Il Molino, on Battersea Park Road. These sales figures will not, self-evidently, make so much as a mizzle in the mugglemist of today’s HP publication celebration,...Continue reading→
Book Quiz, literary blogs, life …
I just did the Book Quiz (at Blue Pyramid) which I found on BooksPlease‘s blog (thank you) and I find I am this: You’re One Hundred Years of Solitude! by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Lonely and struggling, you’ve been around for a very long time. Conflict has filled most of your life and torn apart nearly...Continue reading→