Were my impulse to write anywhere near my impulse to consume ice-cream (or dark chocolate), then I would have a prodigious output. I love ice-cream, often crave it in an ‘it doesn’t matter if it is cold and dark and wet and ten o’clock at night, I’m going to out to buy some.’ Inevitably, when … Continue reading One True Sentence
Kate, my niece, is making a Recency-style Spencer jacket; she downloaded the pattern from the internet. ‘It’s spare on instructions,’ she tells me. ‘It says things like – then attach the arm, and not a word more.’ She is a surgeon with fabric, and can, somehow, execute this reverse amputation with minimum trial and error and … Continue reading Unpick and Start Again
Without success, I am trying to write an ending. I have selected some novels from my bookshelf to see how they do it. Welsh (Trainspotting, 1993), Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890) and Woolf (The Waves, 1931) are huddled together at the end of one shelf. I decide that, between the three of them, they should … Continue reading Thinking of Ending It
I recently came across the dictation function on my computer, a find that, initially, gave rise to much excitement. My excitement was dashed, however, when I set about using it and realised it was hard of hearing. What other reason could there be for how appallingly it transcribed my flowing, spoken words? My rolling Northern Irish accent … Continue reading Finding My Way
Make like a Gumble and get through the new lockdown.
‘Who is your ideal reader?’ It was the question posed by one of The Saturdays – the given name of the five of us who zoom-write at the weekend. Hard to say, was my answer, easier to say who my ideal writer is. After all, I’ve thought about that, I’ve even acted upon it: told … Continue reading Dear Reader
Is there anything new under the sun? Is anything we write or paint or compose truly original, or is every creative act influenced (hopefully for the good) by what has gone before, so that what we produced has been re-learned, repeated, tweaked? Apparently whenever W.H. Auden read something in a book that he liked or … Continue reading Good Enough to Steal
Sometimes quoted as, ‘murder your darlings’ other times as, ‘kill your darlings’ -- whatever your preference, the advice amounts to the same thing: don’t scrimp when it comes to editing. Take to your writing with a red pen and the eye of Marie Kondo going through kitchen cupboards that haven’t been reviewed in a decade, … Continue reading Murder Your Darlings
Do you ever come across a line of text that is as ripe and full as a fig and if you don't stop and eat it there and then you’ll forget what it is saying to you? I’m talking about words that you must read again, re-view, go back over slowly so that the feeling … Continue reading Honest Attention to the Particular
Were you ever part of a conversation that veered into a spat and you longed to have the last word, but the other person wanted it just as badly, so you bickered on, losing yourselves in a futile spiral of words? Then, maybe you were lucky, and you realised the last word didn't matter; that you … Continue reading Quiet Settles On The World
My Edinburgh Press 