Portraits are claimed as Sargent's forte, but there were few enough of them in the recent RA 'Emperors and Citizens' show, lost as they were among flounces and fancies of the aristos and royals.

So it's good to see another side to his talent. Turner's influence is very evident.


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Musicians are in the house and as usual are putting me to shame. What I envy – these are proper, conservatoire-trained classical musicians – is their work ethic. Every day I hear the piano start off at around 8 am and it continues for the whole morning. Practice, practice, practice. Why am I not so committed to my writing?

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In Lots of Them I was agreeing that loving the sound of your own voice is a bad thing in a writer; it's like the dinner-party talker who is so busy singing their song that they ignore who their audience is and how they're reacting. And of course the fact that with a novel the singer and the audience are at one remove from each other doesn't absolve you of the duty - not to mention the common commercial horse-sense - to consider them. Then, as I said in Fiddling, hangovers and the Paris Review, we all love the sound of our own voice, except when we're hating it. That's fair enough: if something is a real pleasure for you to read, it probably will be for others; if it clunks each time you read it, however subliminally you register the clunk, it will never be right till you act on that subliminal recognition. Having said that, this kind of "hate", in particular, is as much to do with your nature as the quality of the writing: is your Inner Critic on the rampage? And is "love" actually a "that'll do" reaction which is born of resistance, and so needs interrogating?
And then I started wondering if this question has another side. And, of course, it does. Taking "loving the sound of your own voice" in a different sense, I think it's essential for a writer to love the sound of their voice on the page.

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Will you have your five portions of fruit and veg today (or your eight if you live in the USA)? And your protein? Your carbs? Your essential fats? Will you be taking some exercise? Will you be going out into daylight for at least thirty minutes?

It's quite a project, eating a balanced diet, living a balanced life. And it's vital for our well-being. Far too easy to spend the day with the seat of our pants welded to the seat of a chair, grabbing at junk to keep us going and only venturing out at dusk to buy new print cartridges and another bottle of wine. Or wasting another day in procrastination, then getting down to some decent writing at midnight and being unable to tear oneself away from the screen until the early hours, when it's so light you might just as well stay up...

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.... or maybe not spooky, just a rather strange coincidence. Over the weekend I've been having a serious sort out of the real clues and red herrings for The Monochrome Landscape, and I had to find out which single was the UK number one on a particular date that's important to my antagonist (and yes, it's vital to the plot but I'm not giving anything away).

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It's not because I'm desperate to get published. It's not even because I'm desperate to get read. It's because I'm desperate to write. It may seem strange, but it's just to get stories on paper. Stories that are already there somewhere and just need writing down. Like the sculptor faced with a block of stone; he knows there's a figure in the middle of it, all he has to do is uncover it.
I want the stories to be neat, tidy, smooth, and as readable as I can make them, and when I feel I've more or less done that, I put them in a folder in a drawer, sit back and smile contentedly. Until another story floats in and off we go again. Am I crazy?
The bug to write something comes and goes, it's not a constant, I go long periods when I don't even think about writing. Over the years I've accumulated quite a few stories like that, but only a small part of them are what I call finished. A novella, (70,000 words - is that a novella?), about ten shorter stories varying in length up to about 7,000 words, and a few non-fiction pieces. Unfinished are two novels, 2 more novellas, some odds and sods, and I've just started another novel. Am I typical or am I strange?

I happened to say on a forum just now that I'd much rather see a beginner's manuscript which is very over-written, than very under-written, since being drunk on words is a very honourable state for an apprentice writer. From the teacher's point of view it's not so hard to teach why wearing one diamond necklace is actually more effective than wearing three, and how to choose which one to leave on. Whereas a beginner's manuscript which is just bald, 'Then he did this, then I did that', over and over again, is usually a sign of someone who for whom words will never really be a workable medium of expression. Either that, or someone who mistakenly thinks that Hemingway is God. Too often the talk among writers assumes that the opposite of 'spare' writing is 'purple'. (Hemingway is a relevant name-check here, because the talk among such is so often busy covering up a terror of emotional engagement, with a neurotic machismo.) You could equally well say that the opposite of 'rich' writing is 'impoverished'. What's really going on with a successful spare writer is that they've learn to use the richness of individual words to their full extent, by being in very close control of the setting of each jewel, including a sharp ear for what will be read in the spaces between all the elements. But that takes a kind of mastery which is exceedingly rare in a beginner. Equally rare in a beginner is the mastery which can use a huge palate, filled to overflowing of colours and substances, in such a way that they enhance each other rather than cancelling each other out: a lavish richness which is controlled.

On that forum, someone disagreed with what I'd said, on the grounds that being drunk on words is the same as loving the sound of your own voice. But I don't think it is at all.

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