' The readings seem shorter than usual', said J. We were at at the annual Carol Service at St Pauls on Tuesday. Except it wasn't a Carol Service, it was 'A Celebration of Christmas', and some of the reading were poems.


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Have you ever learnt a dance step, or a musical instrument, or a tennis stroke? Felt how it gradually makes sense, how getting your weight in the right place makes the other arm move sweetly to where it needs to be, over and over again, whether it's a bow or a golf club? How suddenly your dancing body finds its place in the music, so that you're free by virtue of being part of the pattern? Can you imagine now, this minute, riding a bicycle down the road, pedal by pedal, push and turn and swoop? No, not the road beyond the window, that one at your grandmother's: the steep lane with the stony bit all down the middle which was bone-shaking if you strayed onto it, and the sharp bend at the bottom? And how once you didn't take the bend right, but flew off into the gravel and nettles? And got a graze on your chin, of all places, as well as the base of both hands?

One of the more valuable dividends of the Darwin bicentenary, for me, has been encountering the book Sparks of Genius, by Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein.

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The Strictly Writing crew are herewith signing off for a couple of weeks. We'll be back posting on Tuesday 5th January - 2010!

We hope you all enjoy the festive season and wish you the very best for the New Year.

I shall be attending a Bollywood themed party on New Year's Eve. Last year's theme was unspecified - I wore a Twenties style costume and my husband went as a giant whoopee cushion (it's amazing, the variety of fancy dress outfits you can buy nowadays). We and the group of friends there really only chat, in depth, at this party, once a year. So I am bracing myself for questions about how my writing went in 2009 and whether I am published 'yet'. Erm... Nope. But I'm one book closer. Hopefully. Well, it's easy to be 'half-glass full' when it's champagne!


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There seems to be a lot of love for cats and snow right now, so here's a little Simon's Cat treat for you.

Happy Christmas!

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It’s a slippery thing, fiction! So I looked up a few definitions.

Story: a fictional narrative of briefer length than a novella. Then I looked up ‘Novella’ and discovered that the original ‘novels’ were probably the verbal relating of news from one town to another. The news was told to entertain as well as inform. The sequence of events changed. Some was held back, making the listeners desperate to know more…and so was born the ‘art’ of the story.

Art: the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.

The short story is one of the most powerful forms of fiction. An arrangement of fictioncraft elements to elicit a response from the reader. ( Something that varies from mere enjoyment through to a real emotional punch in the gut). It is also one of the slipperiest forms of fiction –on one level it is easy to write (anyone can scribble a story in a few minutes – a sequence of events; a beginning, middle and end). But it is one of the most difficult to do well –that is the challenge for those of us who adore the form.

Maybe we love it for its power. The strength embodied in so few words, the way it can elicit a depth of emotional response that cannot be sustained (and rightly, or the reader would collapse!) for a whole novel. The way it can literally be life-changing.

Life changing? What IS this woman talking about?



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A wonderful time last night at the special launch event for Short Circuit hosted by Ride the World XX at Cafe Yumchaa! Here I am in full flow, reading three flash stories (photos courtesy of Elizabeth B):

.....



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'Er, well, it's a kind of hole in a rock, perhaps all covered in snow'.

Last week I'd met with puzzled faces and blank stares from the Spanish teachers in Zamora. They'd enjoyed my Christmas Quiz, but were stumped by the question: 'Where does Santa live?'

Was it in:

a) a cabin

b) a chimney

c) a grotto

My Oxford Dictionary Thesaurus says a grotto is ' a picturesque cave' and I recall they were popular as writers' retreats in the eighteenth century. Alexander Pope had one in the garden of his house in Twickenham. The local History Museum and Art Gallery in Blackheath, a converted convent, had one too. Maybe it's iconic, associated with Lourdes and other places where the Blessed Virgin appeared. I've always hankered after a grotto, although I'd settle for a caravan at Whitstable.


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For those of you who remember Top of The Pops, I need you to get into the mood. Remember Dave Lee Travis? No? Just me then…

Imagine the countdown music. It goes something like this:

Na Na Na Na – Nah, Nah, Nah! Na Na Na Na – Nah, Nah, Nah! (Repeat repeatedly)


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