Posted by on Oct 30, 2007 in Uncategorised | One Comment

Normal progress will be resumed … This doesn’t happen very often, in fact I think it’s the first time since I started this blog that I’ve had to make this announcement – but as things stand I am ‘finishing something’ and that means not stopping the work to update you on thoughts and doings, dear […]

Zoetrope writer and accomplished eroticist Donna George Storey has recently had her novel, An Amorous Woman, published in the UK and the USA – she’s had an interesting journey in many senses, on her way to publication, so I caught up with her and asked how she’d got into the writing business: How did you […]

Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 in Dublin, research, travel and writing | No Comments

In Dublin’s Fair City … which is where I was on Sunday and Monday. And it was a truly enlightening experience. Not because it was new – I’ve been to Dublin half a dozen times in my life, sometimes work, sometimes pleasure, usually a mixture of the two – but because I was travelling with […]

Dealing with reviews After the Booker judge lambasted reviewers, and my own recent reading of Simon Gray’s excellent memoir The Year of the Jouncer, my advice is – don’t. Just don’t deal with them. Unless you have the hide of The Terminator, the self-belief of a TV evangelist and the waterproof feathers of a duck, […]

Posted by on Oct 16, 2007 in inspiration, writing, writing as therapy | 4 Comments

The Taxi Driver Scenario People sometimes ask me how different life is, now I’ve become a writer – it’s a question I’ve never really known how to answer, perhaps because what (to most people) were the highlights of my former career: international travel, meeting politicans and business leaders, wearing Armani – didn’t thrill me that […]

Posted by on Oct 11, 2007 in non writing days | 3 Comments

Life does not imitate art So this is my day. Last night (week two of the radio play course) fascinating, rewarding, so much to understand and learn and me definitely with the most to learn as all the other students seem to have much more dramatic experience than me. Hit the bed with ideas for […]

So – I have a story live … Which means published online, as if you didn’t know, as opposed to published in print. I don’t know what goes through other writers’ heads when they get something published, but I’m about to be honest about what goes through mine … Is anybody going to read it? […]

Readings (the other side of the story) I have a terrible confession, especially after my blog about people who don’t read. I don’t read poetry! I’m a lazy tyke and I find poetry on the page is quite hard work, so I just don’t read it. However, I’m not entirely without hope, because I do […]

Posted by on Oct 2, 2007 in reading as a writer | 6 Comments

Reading for writing I’m involved in a number of discussions, in a number of forums, about the value of reading for writers – and my views on this are vehement. Let me put it this way: if a writer tells me they ‘don’t read’ I’m immediately suspicious of their writing commitment. This is not to […]