misc.
I smell a rat.
It’s all gone very Beatrix Potter around here. We have a mouse in the kitchen. We think it’s one mouse, though for all we know, it could be twelve mice on two hour shifts. He (she?) is very large. Like a small rat. The reason he/she is very large, is that there’s lots to eat [...]
It’s a sign!
My mother says I put an eccentric amount of faith in ‘signs.’ Like the Bedlington terrier at the park who got me writing again. Or the fact that when I fell off a horse 18 months ago, it was due to an imaginary dog. “Where’d the dog go?” I asked when I regained my feet, [...]
Lost in Translation
Ever since I became friends with both my German and Dutch translators and began hearing their anecdotes, I’ve wanted to write about a translator. My Dutch translator, for instance, finished converting How I Live Now to Dutch, felt unhappy with the result, threw it away, and began again. “I just didn’t have the voice right,” [...]
Writing for fun and profit. Or at least for fun.
“I have always believed that advertising is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.” That line was written, you might have guessed, by an ad man. As someone who spent far too many years “rattling a stick in a swill bucket” (George Orwell), I have to say that [...]
The New Book
I put off starting a new book because I didn’t know what it was going to be about. I had an idea for a title. Which also suggested a subject. I had an idea for a protagonist, but not one particularly related to the title or the subject. A few themes have been drifting around [...]
Empty Nest Blues
There isn’t much talk about the gloom that hits when your book has finally packed up and left home for good. Partly that’s because of the initial relief. WOO-WOO!!! Good riddance! I did it! I’m free!!! But soon, you start feeling a bit lonely. You phone up your book. You sound pathetic. It’s just me. [...]
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