Posted by on Jan 28, 2010 in Uncategorised | 4 Comments

What I really wanted for Christmas And have been wanting for years, is something like an atlas of physiognomy. I want to be able to judge, definitively, whether the character I have in my mind’s eye really has hooded eyes, or not. What, exactly, is a Roman nose or a Grecian brow and if I […]

2010 is a better writing year already … Last year was depressing beyond expression (which is probably why I spent the year writing a novel about autism, suicide, adoption and race! Art imitating life etc) but already I am enjoying 2010 more because: On 5th February a story of mine is being read aloud at […]

Writing about unattractive characters I’m wading my way through A Game with Sharpened Knives by Neil Belton and thinking about how people write unlikeable characters. When I say wading, I don’t mean that the book is badly written because it’s not; it’s an allusive, complex, disjointed narrative that opens up the lives of Erwin Shrodinger […]

Snow interrupts play Or rather, it interrupts work. I have just finished writing a commissioned erotica (paradoxically, featuring a parasol and a tropical waterslide, very inapposite to the snow outside) and spent several days turning over a pile of short stories, deciding what to send where. It’s a thankless bloody task, as any writer will […]

Book review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog One of the issues I end up debating quite a lot with other writers, and with readers too, is whether it’s better to read an ambitious book that’s flawed, or a flawless book that’s pedestrian in scope. And of course the question, in part, depends on your definition […]