The Creative Identity

Write

The first book I bought as soon as I moved to my new house was selected one evening in February at my local Daunt Books. I remember killing time, shelf to shelf, even though killing time isn't accurate. I always go into bookshops with this idea that I've got ten minutes to kill so I may as well, then I always come out with some loot. That isn't really killing time then, is it? Still, when I scroll through my online banking I often tell myself that Hatchard's, all the Daunts, Slightly Foxed, Sandoe and Persephone have me to thank for staying in business. What was I saying...? Right, one bitterly cold night in February, yadda yadda. They're my very favourite type of nights. So I'm in Daunt Chelsea and I find myself in that corner they call REFERENCE. Among the dictionaries and grammar books and Reading Like A Writer (why, oh why is it always sitting in REFERENCE?), I found Write. It is split into four sections and can be described as a composite book on the art and tribulations of writing. The fundamentals of fiction set out how to write according to Andrew Miller, Kate Mosse, Meg Rosoff and others. How I wrote tells us a little bit about how certain authors managed to get their masterpieces across to the finishing line. Susan Hill, AS Byatt, Iain Banks, Margaret Drabble and others contributed to this section. A few final tips are provided by three other authors, one of... Read more →

The Carlyles, and me, at Home

I wrote about books that rapture us before, specifically about Misery. I don't think much of the term 'un-put-down-able' and even less do I think of its bandied over-use from rags to supposedly reputable broadsheets but, on occasion, one can think of nothing better to describe a gripping read. Yet, it may come as a slight surprise that I may be thinking of such a description for a book that isn't a thriller, nor a horror, nor one of those fast-paced children's novels whose chapters always end with a cliffhanger, like an episode of The Bold and The Beautiful. Said book is The Carlyles at Home which I picked up at Sandoe Books (which I love, more on it another time) following a visit to the Carlyles' own home in Chelsea. A Chelsea Interior by Robert Tait But I should really make time for a digression at this point. It would be disingenuous and not a little bit arrogant of me to expect to slide back into a writing routine on here without at least acknowledging that my life changed drastically over the past year. When I last wrote in August 2012 I was, in some inadequate form, 'preparing myself for grief', except I soon discovered one cannot prepare for grief at all, not even when you've grieved many times before. Oddly, each grief is different and yet so much of it is instantaneously recognisable. In my desperate googling of 'coping with grief' I was doubly-hurt and stricken to find... Read more →