Lots of coffee this morning to celebrate 61,035 words written over the last twenty four days. Now to begin the slower process of shaping it into something resembling a novel. I know I know, Kerouac didn’t edit his [... more]

Read Full Post

I sized him up. He’d be in his mid forties, I guess, the same age as my daughter. He was too young to remember the TV ads of the fifties - ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’ - or those Bacall and Bogart films where you could hardly see the stars behind the clouds of cigarette smoke. Not to mention Jack Hawkins and his pipe in ‘The Cruel Sea’. Didn’t he know that medical practice has its fashions, like education? They must keep the historical aspects from them in training.

So I said nothing, but, as R’s mother would have said, ‘I thought the more’.



Read Full Post

I’m hung-over because last night I was up into the mid-morning hours struggling with the follow up to 'Clear History.' I pace the living room ranting at Cheryl because she is locked into her laptop and is therefore here but not here.

“They’ve got me over a barrel. They’re playing me like a puppet. I really want to just say ‘screw them’ and write what I want but they’re dangling this second book contract over my head and I’m jumping for it like a fat kid for cake and it’s embarrassing. It’s just such a horrible torturous process fighting to put a few hundred words a day down because my heart’s not in it and I haven’t got any ideas and everything’s horrible. But it’s the only chance I have of getting a new contract so I have to show them something definitive soon and it has to be good and…”

“Christopher,” Cheryl says, surprising me by looking up from the computer. She summons a sheepish, compassionate look. “I don’t think they’re going to offer you a second contract...”

Read Full Post

Still chilly round these parts, Carruthers, as the boiler has decided to give up the ghost entirely. Please send blankets and soup – we may not last long otherwise … Last night we went to sleep with the help of two hot water-bottles, the electric heater, extra blankets and a dressing-gown. Just like the war years. So I’m told. Not only that but one of the smoke alarms chose 3am to start its intermittent beeping as a low battery alert. Quite addictive after a while. However neither of us could stomach the thought of actually getting out of bed to investigate, so we just grinned and bore it. The bulldog spirit remains undaunted, you know. Bizarrely, this morning the beeping has stopped so we’re still unsure which alarm needs feeding, dammit ...


Read Full Post

This is a piece of art by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller commissioned by Modern Art Oxford and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. 5,000 books glued together as bricks to make a house you can step inside. The smell inside is wonderful, of starch and paper. But I wanted to take it apart and READ. Today I wrote four pieces of short fiction in just under three hours. I'd pledged to write three pieces within three hours. All four stories were written to prompts provided by a writer's forum. The prompts were excellent, thought-provoking and meaty. The forum is pledged to write a total of 100 stories within two days and looks set to achieve that target. Each story is posted anonymously and then commented on by the other writers. For each story you post you must comment on at least three stories by others.

Read Full Post

Joined WriteWords today after recommendations from Neil, and it looks rather good, seems worth the £35 a year, and it's a nice official place to put up all my work.

Submitted my first piece and had an idea while perusing the various sub categories of the fiction section - why not challenge myself to write something for each one? I pride myself on being able to create anything out of the blue so why not give this a go? Of course I can't do every single category, some are a bit vague:

- Contemporary (how does one go about specifically writing contemporary?)
- Gay/Lesbian (couldn't you have a gay crime drama? or a lesbian science fiction? Attack of the 6-foot lesbians!)
- Literary
- Popular (again, very vague, either this requires some very acute precognition or it's referring to popular series or something, help me out here?)
- Relationships (...are a part of a every good story, right? So how does one write a fiction story about relationships? doesn't that come under "romance"?)
- Short Story (but doesn't every short story have a theme/genre?)
- Translation (seeing as English is my first language and I could be better at that, I don't think I'll be touching this one, besides, translation isn't original work)
- Underground (I've always seen people or groups who openly refer to themselves as "underground" as being a bit pretentious. Surely being "underground" means being off the radar, underappreciated or niche... not claiming to everyone you meet how you're "underground")
- Women's (is this fiction that caters specifically to women or about women's issues? Throw me a bone, someone)

Complaints over, I'm looking forward to working with Black; Children's; Erotic; Horror; Noir; Romantic; Suspense & Thriller (isn't there Suspense IN Thrillers?); War and Westerns. I don't normally work with this stuff so it'll be interesting what I can come up with. Science Fiction and Fantasy is my home normally, so we'll see what happens.

I think I've rambled on enough for now.

Ja ne~

I had high expectations, extraordinarily high, due to having been spoiled - twice - by my stays at the Anam Cara writers retreat, and when you have such high expectations they are bound not to be met. Compared to Anam Cara I would describe La Muse more as "self-catering accomodation for writers and artists", which is different from a cushioned and all-catered retreat. It's not a place where you are allowed to think only of your writing, your characters, your plot knots and tangles - there are fires to be lit to keep warm, and three meals a day to be thought out. ....


Read Full Post

When you first start writing, it's wonderful: you're drunk on words, you're super-thin-skinned so you feel the brush of every idea and every emotion, you're obsessed with the magic of things in your head condensing, gaining colour and form, appearing on the page. You'll be seized with the passion at odd moments and have to run away and scribble. And then comes the point when something becomes big and important enough to need more: more work, more research, more planning and shaping and sitting down. Especially if it's a novel, it takes a lot of sitting down. It also takes a lot of ignoring of the voices (Anne Lamott's chattering mice) which tell you it's not worth it, you'll never be any good, it's old-fashioned or ahead of its time, you should be down the pub with your friends, or painting the sitting room, or whatever.

Then a new idea pops up so, since you're used to following new ideas and it might disappear if you don't, you divert and pursue that one for a while. Only inside the dark cupboard where you've left it the original One suddenly sprouts a bright new idea that demands to be followed, so you drop Two, and go back to it, but something you read for research gives you an amazing idea which can't be integrated into either, so Three is born, and so on. In the back of your head you know that at this rate nothing will get written, but, then, the chattering mice have said all along that it's not worth it, haven't they...

Read Full Post

Typical. The ruddy boiler waits till the coldest day of the ruddy year and then decides it's not working. Dammit. Ruddy cold in these parts therefore, Carruthers. Though it would, I think, be better if the boiler didn't on occasions decide that it could light up and give us a little lukewarm heat and water as we rush to make the most of its generosity. Which unfortunately doesn't last long, I am typing this in fingerless gloves and a scarf. Alongside my other customary fashion items, naturally ...


Read Full Post

I told R that as his ancestors were Welsh he could hardly claim St Pauls had been built on their bones. He said he meant his ancestors on the other side. As to that provenance I think I'll draw a veil.


Read Full Post