misc.
The Unstrung Harp
It should be forbidden by law for any writer to practice the trade without owning a copy of The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey. My copy came courtesy of Sophie Blackall, illustrator extraordinaire and collector of tiny things, and I laughed and cringed with agonizing recognition all the way home from Brooklyn. Here’s how it begins: “On [...]
The Real Dogman
I’m back from Suffolk. Four days of relentless work and the draft is finished. OK, it wasn’t entirely relentless. I did a talk for the Woodbridge Oxfam bookshop (whence goes most of my royalties) which allowed me to sing the praises of the wonderful writer and poacher D Brian Plummer. I discovered Plummer by mistake [...]
Wrestling With The Angel
Every writer I know has lousy days and weeks when nothing goes right, waking up each morning to do battle with the little voice in the back of the head that shrieks “YOU’VE LOST IT!” We’re all in the same leaky boat. One of my favourite e-mails came from Hilary Mantel, to whom I wrote [...]
Reverse Body Dysmorphia Syndrome
Why do women have such a hard time seeing themselves accurately? When I was young and as beautiful as I was ever likely to be, I felt convinced that I was fat and unattractive. Looking back at the pictures of my twenty, thirty, and forty-year-old self, I can’t believe how wrong I was. It’s called [...]
Are you going to buy a Lamborghini? (FAQs about having a book made into a film)
So I guess you’re fabulously rich beyond your wildest dreams, right? When I sold the film option to How I Live Now, I had a figure in my head that, I’m embarrassed to say, was huge. And wrong. Writers are generally paid a small amount for the film option, and then a very small percentage [...]
Hollywood, Here I Come!
The film of How I Live Now is starting to look real. Not that there’s anything as real as a cast, but we have a wonderful director (can’t say who quite yet) and we have a script and just last week I signed a bunch of very official looking contracts. For once in my life [...]
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