(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,’ […]
Today, Galley Beggar announced they will be publishing my novel Patience in August 2019. I feel differently about this book to others I’ve written. It seems, to me, the best thing I’ve done. Not just written, done. This is largely because I was visited by Elliott, a once-in-a-lifetime narrator who is nicer, wiser and generally […]
There were some things I didn’t expect to be able to find out, whilst researching Wrestliana. For example, in the ‘Preliminary Observations’ at the beginning of his novel Henry and Mary, William Litt says – I have observed real dates and facts, which prevented me from complying with the desire of several friends, who wished me to introduce […]
As some of you may have been directed here by the Galley Beggar newsletter, here’s some info about the forthcoming Wrestliana and wrestling-related events. I don’t usually post this kind of thing, but it would be great if you were able to come along and say hello: 7th June 2018, 7.30pm – Wrestliana launch at Cakes […]
Last year, I gave a lecture on ‘Success!!!’ and how to cope with it. I quoted Junot Díaz extensively, and approvingly. (I also used some words from him as the epigraph of my non-fiction book, Wrestliana: ‘You wrestle with your family your entire life.’) In the midst of the dismaying, appalling accusations against him, I […]
It’s Too Original Your novel is ahead of its time. This means that no-one is equipped to understand it, because in order to understand it’d they’d have to have read it, and no-one has yet read it because – when they try – they find they’re not equipped. A very vicious circle, this. However, your […]
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