We’ve dealt with our spaces and places, as they relate to story-time, now we need to deal with our time. This should be a lot simpler. Imagine a big invisible clock, hovering in the sky of our flat empty space. It’s not an ordinary clock, showing the hours of the day. It’s a countdown, and […]
Last night I introduced Clare Farrell, one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, at the second Writers Rebel event. The first event took place last October, on Trafalgar Square, where 40 writers – including Ali Smith, Robert Macfarlane and Susie Orbach – read and gave speeches. At the event, I read Blake’s ‘What is the […]
I wrote this for a panel event at Birkbeck College. The brief was to write about ‘A Book that Change my Life (Involving Critical Theory)’. It was intended for the MPhil and PhD students attending, but is about how early work relates to completed work, within individual projects but also within lives and oeuvres. If […]
King Death Life-Like Lilian’s Spell Book (My Mother’s Seven Spirits Demand Justice) Notes for a Young Gentleman (O: Short Stories) Patience Mutants Wrestliana Dead Boy Detectives Vol 1: Schoolboy Terrors Dead Boy Detectives Vol 2: Ghost Snow Free Country: A Tale of the Children’s Crusade Vastation (opera) with Samy Moussa Toby (album) […]
‘I’m usually waiting for you to stop talking, so that I can. Concerning two-way streets I have to say that I am not a fan.’ The American songwriter, John Grant, nails Ignoring dialogue in his song ‘GMF’. GMF stands for ‘Greatest Mother Fucker’ – and this is also helpful to me in defining Ignoring conversation, […]
HIDING DIALOGUE The English playwright Harold Pinter was famous for his dialogue. This is what he had to say about the reaction to his work: We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: ‘Failure of communication’… and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that […]
(This is the written version of the podcast I did for my publisher, Galley Beggar Press. If you’d rather listen to it, you can do so on Soundcloud or Stitcher.) Could you just sit still for half an hour. Just that. Sit still, without distraction or interruption? For thirty minutes. No phone, no screen, no music, no […]
BACK TO THOSE THREE MODELS OF DIALOGUE I am going to give you three models of dialogue, to help you think about what’s going on when people speak to each other on the page. (If you’ve read the Starting to Write – Lesson 4: Writing better dialogue, you’ll have seen a version of what follows. You can […]
My mother had a stroke. Luckily, it was quite minor. She was still able to read, though more slowly. There was a gap in her vision – an absence where sight simply didn’t take place. Because of this, she wasn’t able to drive. My mother’s stroke changed our family. None of her children had started […]
Receipt ‘Would you like the sea?’ I say yes, puzzled. Tamp, and another afternoon’s second coffee – she is Russian, or Ukrainian, and so I realise she said receipt. ‘I gave you a hard time earlier today,’ her Indian boss says, alongside the machine where she’s making my milk bluff. And she, ‘Not so much,’ […]
