Writing, like life, has a nasty habit of turning around to bite you in the bum when you least expect it. So it has been while I was gently pondering what to write in this column. Rather to my surprise, I found that I had never written about that constant companion of a writer’s life,… Continue reading The Seven Rules of Rejection
Read more1 Even as a mewling and puking infant, he shows signs that one day he will be an author. There is something about how he grips his copy of The Cuddly Cloth Kitten in his little hand, the way he looks out of his cot, observing the world around him with oddly knowing eyes. She,… Continue reading The Seven Ages of Authorhood
Read moreThe book fair crowd was streaming past me on their way to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. That evening, in another part of the city, I would be performing a musical show about writing and the life of an author as part of the Edinburgh Fringe. I had thought, in my innocence, that readers and… Continue reading There’s no snob quite like a book snob
Read moreThe great American novelist Jonathan Franzen is a man who takes his role as a writer seriously. He was snooty about the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. He abhors the internet. He disapproves of the use of ‘then’ as a conjunction after a comma. I like him. On most matters, he takes the uncompromising, purist line… Continue reading Writing v. Living: a conversation with myself
Read moreThe BBC bigwig was shouting at me. Every time I started to speak in the debate, he came barrelling in, objecting and refuting. The audience of writers gathered in the lecture hall seemed, rather to my surprise, to be on his side. After repeated interruptions, I said with mild exasperation that I was very glad… Continue reading An ill-fated journey into the world of TV writers (contains sex and violence)
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 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 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 On being a careerist or a purist
Read moreMy latest Endpaper column for The Author magazine poses the big question. Inner authorliness: have you got it? * In the manner of the 1950s Persil ads which asked ‘What is a mum?’, the poet Robert Hull raised an important issue in these pages last year. What, he asked, is an author? It is a… Continue reading On discovering whether you are really, truly an author
Read moreWhen a recent contributor to The Author described himself as ‘something of a writing guru’, 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, goofy smile.… Continue reading On the seven great questions of an author’s life.
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