This is not where I saw my career leading. I am standing at the gates of the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Charlotte Square. To my right, a middle-aged Asian man is selling the Big Issue. To my left a woman is standing behind a trestle table offering a free book with every copy today’s… Continue reading Some slightly bitter thoughts on the snobbery of writers and readers
Read moreI am now seven days into my first experience of having a show on the Edinburgh Fringe. The week has had the sweaty, hazy intensity of a vivid dream, sometimes dipping into dark, clammy anxiety with occasional, brief glimpses of a dappled sunlit meadow  just out of reach. It’s tough place, Edinburgh in August. Big… Continue reading Selling my show (and possibly my soul) on the Edinburgh Fringe
Read moreA writers’ organization recently conducted an online survey. Is there anyone out there, it asked, who still writes by hand rather than on a computer? A few people confessed, shame-facedly, that, in spite of the many wonderful opportunities offered by the new technology, they still worked in the old-fashioned, inky way. As one of those… Continue reading From InstaNovel to NervousBreakdown: the next generation of apps for the busy modern writer
Read moreEarning a living as a freelance writer can lead one into some tricky situations – iffy earners, slightly regrettable commissions. It is what tends to happen when financial insecurity drives one to say ‘Yes’ when the logical, grown-up answer should have been ‘No’. Yet my oddest, trickiest situation, now heading towards me like a speeding… Continue reading On its way to the Edinburgh Fringe: My Village and Other Aliens
Read moreAt a reading given by Ian McEwan and Richard Ford, the question-and-answer session with the audience took an unexpected turn. One of the two novelists was asked about marriage and writing. There followed a strangely intense discussion about love and work, commitment and children – about life, in other words.. A hush descended on the… Continue reading Sex, children, friendship, health – by the experts (Tolstoy, Amis, Dickens, Mantel, Larkin and a few others)
Read moreIt was the usual highly-charged last day at a creative writing course. Some students wanted to ask one of the tutors a few last-minute questions (Have I got it? Can I send you my stuff to read? Could you mention my name to an agent?). Others were triumphant – or a touch muted – about… Continue reading The Careerist Author, the Purist Author – and the rest of us…
Read moreIt can be weird and unpredictable, the creative process, and,  if my experience is anything to go by, it gets weirder and more unpredictable over time. A small example: about five years ago, I found myself writing songs to sing on my guitar. This was not a hobby; the songs were not follies or sideshows to… Continue reading My inappropriate uncle – from song to story
Read more I’ve written a novel about rats and humans, set 150 years ago in a harsh, dark city very like Victorian London. Some stories come easy. The Twyning was not one of them. It can be tricky, I discovered, to write a novel in which rodents and humans share centre stage. Having two narrators, a young boy… Continue reading 105,000 words, 5 years’ work, price 99p, #17 in the charts: the mad economics of writing
Read moreWhen a recent contributor to The Author described himself as “something of a writing guruâ€, I was aware of a lurch of jealousy within me. What a wonderful life it would be to live as a guru for would-be authors, spending one’s days dispensing gnomic thoughts about irony, structure and narrative voice with a serene,… Continue reading The seven great questions in an author’s life
Read moreThere was Michael Winner in heaven. A dog was going to comment on cosmetic enhancement and Crufts. There could be a Transfer Day story, with a desperate English manager and a moody French footballer.  Or maybe something about a knackered old DJ trying to remember whether he did anything of interest to Operation Yewtree 50 years ago.… Continue reading Channelling Her Majesty for Radio 4
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