misc.
Everything you need to know to be a writer.
The truth can at last be told: I’m a life-long professional dilettante. I know how to rock-climb, ski, speak French. What it’s like to work on a presidential campaign and The New York Times, at an ad agency and Time Inc. And on a farm. I’ve worked on advertising shoots in foreign climes, so I [...]
What’s your number?
It occurred to me this morning that the sum total of all the phone numbers I know from memory can be counted on the fingers of two and a half hands: My mobile. My husband’s mobile. Our home number. My best friend’s home number. My mother’s home number. My (2) sisters’ home numbers. Our oldest [...]
Finding A Voice
I always said I wouldn’t teach creative writing. There are too many ways to be a successful writer, and my taste only encompasses a small percentage of them. But over the past year or so, I find myself more and more interested in ‘Voice’. Not ‘voice’ as in how-to-write-like-a-man-or-a-baby-or-a-penguin. No. Voice in the sense of the [...]
ONE MILLION FREE BOOKS!!!!
No, this is not spam. If it were, you can imagine what sort of books you’d get for free. Books with titles like How To Marry A Sexy Girl You’ve Never Met or Best Penis Extensions (while we’re on that subject, why do I get those e-mails? Do you know any insecure middle-aged men named Meg?) [...]
Yeee haw! Charmed I’m sure.
I’d barely unpacked from a book tour of Amsterdam and Belgium when I had to head straight into a tour of America. Yesterday, I was in Washington D.C., Boston, Albany NY, Texas and Santa Fe. Today I’ve been to Louisiana, Colorado Springs, Grand Rapids Michigan, Tulsa Oklahoma. Tomorrow I’m mostly in California. And then for the [...]
Too Rich and Too Mean.
My daughter and her friend were asked to work pouring drinks at a cocktail party for a woman the friend had met briefly — two hours for £20. Not great money, but not bad for pouring drinks, and with youth unemployment at 22% (as I keep reminding her), they accepted. Here’s what happened. They [...]
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