I've had a nice weekend, which makes a pleasant change if I'm honest, in that I've seen people. Yes, very nice indeed.

I've also had chance to write, which, as last week was a definite Other Writing Work Week, has also been most welcome.

I'm still getting emails about my Pacifier story over at the brilliant Metazen, which is cool. Thank you for enjoying it, folks.

Talking of cool things, I enjoyed reading this post by Teresa Stenson and her story at Tomlit. Thanks Teresa, and congrats.

And while I'm talking about Tomlit, I should also mention that I've a story appearing in the first issue of Tomlit Quarterly, which should be live tomorrow. I shall link when I can.

Read Full Post

Don't use passive voice
Don't use adverbs and adjectives
Avoid the verb 'to be'
Delete anything that you actually like
Shoot yourself immediately if you ever feel tempted to use a dialogue tag other than 'said.'

All right, so I exaggerate just to be stupid, but sometimes it feels as though the advice given to 'aspiring' writers is designed to stop you ever actually writing anything. How come you can pick up any published book and find adverbs, characters whispering or shouting things rather than saying them, and the verb 'to be' used perfectly sensibly without ruining the entire story?

I don’t think there’s one rule for published writers and another for first-timers. I think what’s really going on with advice like this is that the same problems crop up over and over, and helpful people want to warn against them. The trouble is that there’s nothing to catch the writer before he or she tips too far in the other direction, and one analogy that springs to mind here is with learning to ride.

Read Full Post

I have an interesting topic I'd like to discuss, and would love to know what others think. First, a few words on what I am reading right now. A great blog called Writers Read asked me this a few weeks ago and they have just posted my answer today - and you might be surprised that it's not all short stories, or even fiction!

And, to shock you even more, dear blog readers, sometimes.... I just don't want to read short stories. (I know!) Sometimes... I want to have that delicious experience of immersing myself in one story for several hours. I did this yesterday, and in one day read two novels, straight through: Dear Everybody, by Michael Kimball (thanks, Nik, for the recommendation) and the Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano. Both were excellently written, devastating and moving. Both, oddly, dealt with characters who were deeply wounded in some way, and with the themes of disconnection from one's family, but in very different ways. I highly recommend them both.

Now, to the other topic I wanted to discuss. ...

Read Full Post

I came up with an idea for an article earlier this week. I shared the idea with Alex, my press officer at Faber, and she seemed to think there might be something in it, though it was a little too Dostoevsky-focused, perhaps.

I was going to write something about the theme of child rape as it occurs in Dostoevsky. There’s no doubt he was preoccupied by the crime, some of his critics said in a morbid way, leading even to accusations from his enemies that this was something he had engaged in. I don’t for one minute believe that, but I thought that the subject might have resonance at the moment because of the Polanski affair.

Read Full Post

only realised this morning that I'd been so taken with the floor-to-ceiling window in the kitchen and the light, I hadn't even noticed whether there was a table in another room. The kitchen has only a breakfast bar, and I hope to do lots of writing in the flat, located in a street called Puerto Novo. 'A new door' said Olga, which sounds very auspicious


Read Full Post

One of the classically irritating things non-writers say to us is "I've always wanted to write a novel, I just need the the time to sit down." Once we're out on bail, most writers still burn to explain that just sitting down isn't all it takes to write a novel. It takes hard work, craft, imagination, a lot of thinking, a lot of reading, learning, practising, and more sitting down than most people would believe possible. It's also frequently frustrating: some days/weeks/years the words come about as readily as wisdom teeth pull out, and I'm sure I'm not the only writer who's been known to pummel her forehead when the brain-cogs won't turn properly and shape the sentence or the idea into what I want. And all to make something which may be read with one eye while strap-hanging on the Tube, or get a single, missing-the-point, one-star review on Amazon. Indeed, most of us spend a lot of time, like ballet dancers, practising very difficult things to the point where we make them look easy. Am I alone in disliking books which parade how difficult they were to write? (That's with my reader's head on, of course: my writer's head is most awed by books which pull off things which as a writer I know are very difficult.)

Okay, so writing's not up there with gold-mining in South Africa or looking after dementia sufferers for hard work, but still. Combine the hard work with the fact - also unknown to non-writers, who only see the occasional headline figure - that we are paid so little for what we do that most us need other sources of income, and it's hardly surprising that we all spend a lot of time trying to convince the world that being a writer isn't an easy or soft option.

The trouble is, that can lead to a certain macho posturing, either about the craftsmanly agony of writing and re-writing and re-writing, or about staring at the page till your forehead bleeds, or about mining your innermost soul-agonies and exposing them to the world. At the risk of sounding like the Grumpy Old Woman of the writing world, each of these may have a grain of truth in it, but each, when protested about too much, annoys me, in a different way.

Read Full Post

The room for the official reception at Vallalodid reminded me of the Painted Dining Hall at Greenwich Naval College. It was smaller and older - the tenth-century building had played various roles, including tenth century monastry and a twentieth century psychiatric unit. On Tuesday the Minister for Education in Castile-Leon greeted us volunteers for the 'bilingual schools' project.


Read Full Post

I’ve started work on a new book, so naturally my writing partner tries to muscle in on the act.

Read Full Post

*Claps hands!* - I’ve managed to blag an extra hour on the laptop to do homework. Little does Mum know I’m here to write her blogpost. I mean, it’s not like she’ll get around to it herself - *rolls eyes*. She's going through another of her writing crises.

You’d think I’d be the over-emotional one. You know, with boyfriend probs, SATs exams, pressure to binge on cider, do ecstasy (yeah, I read the Daily Mail) or shag (Mum hates that word). But none of that compares to her latest rejection letter or crappy editorial report. And those supportive emails she gets from her writing friends, covered in smilies and kisses… Ugh! I’m never going to be like that when I reach their age. It’s so unsophisticated. You should see the flirty emails she sends to various men at WriteWords… Yeah, okay, I peeked at her inbox. That’ll teach her to read my school journal and spot the detention I forgot to tell her about. Anyway, I left one open on the screen so that Dad might ‘accidentally’ take a look - but all he did was close it so he could Google the football results.


Read Full Post