The Creative Identity

Try This

May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through! -Anonymous (or... is it?)- On Wednesday I recommended you buy the fabulous Christmas Stories from the Everyman Library. It's one of my favourite volumes of short stories, the other one being Love Stories, also by Everyman. It all comes together nicely with an email I received recently. It was sent by one of the entrants of the short story compo. She linked me to her first Christmas story, right here. Thank you Kate! As my wish is to write something like The Polar Express, maybe I should start today. Write a Christmas story. Dear reader, I am off for the holidays. Have a peaceful Crimbo and I shall see you on 10 January, when I shall return online with the new issue of The Creative Times, some writing on here and, no doubt, plentiful tweeting. Until then, big kiss and much love! Read more →

Intermission

Intermission

Christmas Reading

I've just returned home after a day spent having a gander at the shops. I now have a 75p bottle of scourer for the bathroom (it's excellent, Vim from John Lewis) and an old copy of Agatha Christie's The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. I triumphantly finished Evil Under The Sun yesterday and I also have The Secret Adversary, Murder in Mesopotamia and a few others aside. I guess that I shall spend the holidays indulging myself, as one should do at such a time of the year. Something else that I shall enjoy over the next few days: The Polar Express Get your hands on the original book authored by Chris Van Allsburg. The illustrations are completely fabulous and the message of this story (the bell keeps ringing for all those who truly believe), is the stuff of writing dreams. Every time I leaf through this book I always tell myself that this is the sort of fiction I want to write and illustrate. I am obviously immensely modest and have zero ambitions. And after you've read the book, watch the fabulous movie. How The Grinch Stole Christmas When people speak of Dr Seuss, they often do so by associating him with 'stuff for very small children'. Well, not so insofar as Mr Grinch is concerned. My copy came with a real Grinch I have placed on my Christmas tree and I have already re-read it twenty times over the past couple of weeks. I love it especially because... Read more →

Winter Solstice Fever

I’m afflicted by Winter Solstice Fever reader, and I've got it badly. This is my favourite week of the year and, this time that winter actually looks and feels the way it should, it’s extra fab. Yet, I am sitting here cursing myself. Why have I left so many things unfinished? I am saying things but I really mean… yes… pieces of writing. What was I doing back in October? How about September? Why am I always caught out like this every single December? It’s just the end of another month, this ain’t the apocalypse. And if it were, would I really care that I haven’t finished whatever it was that I was writing? Who do I think I am, Shakespeare? Despite all my ingrained belief that my new year starts in September, because of my birthday and because of the associations with the academic year, there is something quite powerful about those two weeks that straddle the old and the new year. I want to stare into nothingness while I knock back eggnogs (real ones and Starbucks ones as well) and I want to watch Home Alone and The Polar Express, I don’t want to be thinking about editing this and that, and adding this and that because I’ve cut out this and that and now I’m left with a piece that is 2,000 words short, dammit and me. Yet, here I am, again, doing exactly the same I was doing a year ago, except I was at least... Read more →