Month: August 2021

It seems, though it isn’t so, that I’ve been languishing all summer long, searching for writing challenges, making do with compiling earlier work, re-configuring for eBook presentation, that sort of thing. But very little actual creativity, except for one story for a competition, as I may have mentioned. And I know, already, that that effort… Continue reading New term, new writing challenges . . .

Yesterday, I think it was, BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour had a little feature correspondence from a lovely person who categorised herself as kind of ‘normal, average.’ No thrilling success story, just regular muddling through life. ‘Just the once,’ she implored, ‘Just one salient piece about those of us who quietly persevere, who persist through… Continue reading For most of us, success is a distant dream . . .

I think this sort of pleasantry, at the beginning of any academic year, is of the same ilk as the daily ‘How’s it going?’ A greeting for which the only reply expected is ‘Fine thanks, how was yours?’ Nobody really wants to hear what the summer holidays were like for anybody else, not really. Fortunately… Continue reading ‘How was your summer?’

An upland hay meadow could be said to be fallow, and yet it’s bursting with new life. It’s just, perhaps, not producing the intensive crop that it could be; rather, it’s an incredibly successful panoply of diverse species all contributing to, and jostling for, space to grow. I imagine that ideas are like that. A… Continue reading Just what do we mean by ‘fallow?’

. . . what then? Overnight, I’ve been thinking –> maybe the novel form is actually . . . actually, for me. Maybe, apart from the headbanging spacebar challenges I’m having on my ageing MacBookPro, I really need to put my head down and develop the story and the characters of Sequel, just … for… Continue reading But if I actually have to write . . .

Sometimes it feels like just continued pounding away. Creativity is wonderful when the merest hint of received delight is forthcoming, but it’s, well, it’s somehow excoriating to put things out and get nothing back. This image seems like the last thing I’ve done that has elicited any kind of feedback, and that was way back… Continue reading Speaking of banging your head against the wall…

Before I began on this fiction lark, some two years ago with a week’s Writer’s Retreat as part of the Arvon Trust, I was not particularly receptive to critical assessment. But the kind interventions of two experienced authors there, Rajeev Balasubramanyam and Diana Evans, showed me quite clearly how listening and learning, and putting into… Continue reading Critical analysis and author receptivity

Allendale Diary is added to my Amazon/Kindle bookshelf I may have written already about using Calibre to create an eBook from the collated pdfs that went into making the paperback of Allendale Diary. That was fine, as far as it went, and a kind of rough-and-ready version is now being served. But on browsing through… Continue reading The bookshelf grows