I'd walked around beforehand watching the runners doing stretching and limbering up, smelling the tang of liniment and asking could I take photos. As I pointed the camera towards a young man in a Batman costume his friend encouraged him to move about: 'You could be famous on YouTube, man'. So I switched to 'video', only, as you'll see, towards the end of his display.


Read Full Post

Well, outside the sun has been a shinin' and the breeze has been cool - pretty much perfect in my book. But I've been inside. Working. And I've been reaonably productive, I think. I've written a couple of bits, I've worked on a guest post (I should have done long, long ago) and I've made headway with the photo book.

And on that subject I'm delighted to be able to say that we've had a load of entries for the competition. And there's still time for you to enter. Go on, you know you want to!

Read Full Post

AAARRRGGGHHHH! Finally reached page 4 of 7 filling in the Marathon 2010 entry form and the website has temporarily closed...

I have been sitting at my laptop for nearly two hours trying to enrol in next years marathon. I am getting chucked out from various stages through the long processes of web pages, which are taking an age to download and then finally got excited as I reached a page that allowed me to enter my name. I then had to press 'next page'. I pondered over this, took the plunge and now I am back at square one and trying to just get back onto the home page..... Maybe I will try a different marathon while I am still young and fit enough to take part!

The dreaded toothache has reared its massively ugly head; it seems to be coming from a tooth that was filled a few months ago that should probably have had root treatment – aaaarrgghhhhhh!!!

Read Full Post

So I was flipping through a notebook, looking for something else, and I came across a scribble. "Learning, as a writer, to get out of your own way/light" was all it said. I can't remember what prompted me to say that, nor decide what exactly I must have meant. And then I was talking to an aspiring writer who's hit the ugly duckling stage, where their knowledge and skill in writing have gone up a step, but they have yet integrate that into their writing, so everything's awkward and self conscious, and in lots of ways the new writing seems worse than the old. And I suddenly remembered the story of the Wooden Duck Making Kit. Inside the box are a knife, some paints, a block of wood, and an instruction leaflet. The leaflet says, "Cut away everything which is not a duck".

Quite. In Just for the sake of it I was talking about Richard Sennett and the 10,000 hour rule for learning a craft. But this time I remembered Grayson Perry and Ian Bostridge, in the same conversation, talking about how self-consciousness creates physical tension, and how, whether you're a potter or a singer, that tension in your body affects how you work the clay, or the music. I often find myself thinking about learning to write in terms of learning to work wood.

Read Full Post

Susie’s Monthly Update (April)
Highs: Got a job in a gallery. This will fund a four-day course on Women’s Commercial Fiction in
London. Hoorah!
Lows: Agent has turned down full manuscript (culmination of a six-month competition).
The hardest thing is that this process was carrying my hope and now I have to carry it on my own
again.
Goals: Edit/rewrite of opening chapters – again.
How about you guys?

The Falmouth Five are communicating across the e-waves, as we do at the end of each month. We’re a diverse bunch of novelists: two women, three men, published and unpublished, writers of thrillers, speculative sci-fi, comedic crime and women’s fiction. We get together several times a year to eat and drink and crit one another’s work, celebrating one another’s successes and commiserating over problems and knock-backs.

As novelists, we’re in it for the long term. We’re the marathon-runners of the writing world. It takes much practice, much motivation, much energy and much downright dogged determination to complete a marathon. As it does to complete a novel. Only difference is, the marathon-runners know that the culmination of all their efforts will be that splendid day when they race through the streets, clapped and cheered and supported all the way. Who supports the loneliness of the long-distance writer?




Read Full Post

Find it difficult to read at night so keep a notebook and pen by the bed - sods law - ideas strike just as I’ve got comfortable. But I do keep a selection of books - either reference (see photo) or books I can read short sections of without losing the plot. Have a great one at the moment; Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief...[more]

Read Full Post

Under Strictly-controlled conditions (i.e. Sam's son pulling a name out of a hat), the prize draw for a signed copy of Kill-Grief has taken place, and the winner is...



Read Full Post