One of the odder corners of my beloved Radio 3 is the slot for really avant garde contemporary music, Hear and Now. But I love a contrast - I'm a hot chocolate sauce on cold ice cream kind of a gal - so I was lying in the bath last night, reading Georgette Heyer and listening to a programme from Cut and Splice, a festival of electronic music. The piece was as much sound art as music, really, an extraordinary plaiting and weaving of white noise and sound, the fading-in-and-out of the old Medium and Short Wave radio and so on, at once apparently random and beautifully structured. It was entirely electronic but somehow seemed acoustic, breathing memories of all sorts of natural things like whale song and rainstorms. And for a while after it had finished, every sound I heard, from the sploosh of bathwater to the flump of the duvet and the click of the light switch seemed extraordinarily clear, present and, above all, itself: the splooshiest sploosh, the flumpiest flump, the clickiest click ever. It reminded me a little of Aldous Huxley's description of his mescaline trip in The Doors of Perception.

We think of fiction as telling a story which never actually happened but might have; as making narrative sense of a random world; as making us laugh or cry or think. The empathy which novels demand seems to me a fundamental human pleasure as well as necessity: we call those who don't feel it psychopaths. And of course there are the non-fiction pleasures of documentary and understanding that you get from fiction, whether it's some history you never knew, or an experience of a life or a personality which is remote from your own.

In Alan Bennett's delightful The Uncommon Reader, the Queen becomes a bookworm, and discovers that "books tenderise you."

Read Full Post

The words ‘Cornwall’ and ‘paradise’ are often linked. And yes, Cornwall’s glorious light and wonderful coastal paths drew me to move here from London seven years ago, together with the fact that for less than the price of my one-bedroom flat in Chiswick, I could buy a four-storey Victorian cottage with 180 degree views of the river from every floor. Yet for the last four years or more I’ve been struggling with a growing sense of misery. People here look at me with non-comprehension. How can you – dare you – be miserable in paradise?

But I have been.

Read Full Post

Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is one of my favourites - the aristos are ridiculed in the best English literary tradition. But watching An Ideal Husband made me sympathise with Lady Bracknell's horror of babies in handbags - not because it smacks of 'the worst excesses of the French Revolution', but because it glosses political corruption, as 'youthful folly'.

London in 1891: Sir Robert Chiltern MP, who made a fortune selling privileged information when he was young, is being blackmailed by Mrs Cheveley, a woman in possession of a letter that proves his guilt. If his high-minded wife finds out she'll divorce him and he'll lose his Under-secretary post.



Read Full Post

I did my first my NaNo in 1987, before the 'official' one took off. I started writing a novel from scratch because I didn't know there were was any other way. Were there any 'how-to-write' books around? Nowadays you can't move for them, but I don't remember seeing one back then.

Ah Happy Days! Education was going through a shrinkage era so I wangled a year's sabbatical from teaching. My partner was selling BT's products in the IT boom so we didn't need my salary. I'd just finished a dissertation for a part-time MA, so I was into writing mode.


Read Full Post

HOOP TWO: What the 2% have, and how to make sure yours is in that pile.

So, your competition entry is probably sandwiched between a bank statement and a lost return slip for football training fees, somewhere in the first filter reader’s living room. How do you make it stand out?

A strong title and first sentence are good places to start. I’d never drop a story because it had a dull or pretentious title, but will pull one from the pile because its title appeals, to start the reading session. So, a good title might mean your reader comes to your work fresh. What’s a good title?

Read Full Post

The plot is fairly straightfoward: In 1950 alcoholic actor Frank Elgin (Martin Shaw) is all washed up. Young director Bernie Dodd(Mark Letheren) remembers Frank at the height of his powers and wants him to lead a new play destined for New York. Despite producer Phil Cook (Nicholas Day)'s doubts Frank is persuaded to take the part but insists his wife Georgie(Jane Semour)supports him during a trial-run in Boston. The action mainly takes place backstage at the two theatres, with Georgie and Bernie at odds about who exactly is pulling Frank's strings In fact, Bernie accuses Georgie of 'riding him like a broomstick'. How soon will he fall off the waggon?



Read Full Post

Kate Long is the best selling author of The Bad Mother’s Handbook, published by Picador in 2004. The book was serialized on Radio 4, nominated for a British Book Award and made into an ITV drama starring Catherine Tate. Her other novels include Swallowing Grandma, Queen Mum, The Daughter Game and A Mother’s Guide to Cheating. Kate has had short stories published in Woman's Own, Woman and Home, The Sunday Express magazine and the Sunday Night Book Club anthology. She lives in Shropshire with her husband and two sons.

Which 3 writers, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?

I think it would have to be a selection of novelists who ignited my interest in reading as a child – say, A M Lightner (Star Dog), Joan G Robinson (When Marnie Was There), Elizabeth Goudge (The Little White Horse). I’d like to thank them for getting me started.



Read Full Post

I was really pleased at my progress with the novel today.

Yesterday I had printed off all the chapters, which seemed to take hours, from about 4.00pm when I came back from lunch at Penge Wetherspoons, to 10.30pm. It took ages because I had to set up each chapter separately and tick a box to get 'best' quality print. Teach me to economise on print cartridges.

I kept running upstairs in the adverts during two episodes of Downton Abbey, one which Roy had recorded, to make sure the paper hadn't jammed. The printer's held together with gaffer tape but stood up to the judder. I told Roy I might use some superglue on it.


Read Full Post

I received this in an email. I can’t say I approve. Far too disrespectful – even more than someone writing a series of detective novels featuring Porfiry Petrovich. Some people might find it funny though…

Read Full Post

HOOP ONE – The First Filter Reader

A talented, unpublished writer I know was recently told to enter her work for awards as her prose was ‘the sort that does well in competitions.’ She asked if such prose existed, and if so, what was distinctively competition-friendly about it? How did it differ from other good writing?

My instinct was to reply that there isn’t a single style that wins a judge’s heart: I’ve judged thousands of stories and hundreds of novels for local and national fiction competitions, and have shortlisted work I loved and work I loathed but respected or admired. But I didn't say that. Because however different in tone the top stories are, they do have certain stylistic traits in common that raise them to that crucial top 2%. (With a surprising consistency over the years, only about 2% of entries stand out.) This 2-part post is about what we’re looking for, why, and also why great stories can get overlooked but rarely do.

First - it helps to understand the process.

Read Full Post