Writing Life
Attending local book club meetings has really driven home how the reader brings their background and life-experiences and emotions to a book, finding meaning that the writer may have never intended. Last week, on speaking to a club comprised of local mothers, I realised that in writing Half-truths and White Lies I had touched on a subject that would divide and might…
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It was with great excitement that I received my copy of the audio cassette version of Half-truth and White Lies. I rushed into the living room, anxious to hear Karen Cass and Graham Seed bring the voices of Andrea and her Godfather, Peter, to life. Only to realize that we longer own an audio cassette…
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Today’s recording of BBC’s Bookclub was revealing. Firstly we learned that novelists are usually shorter than we expect them to be. Jeanette Winterson told us how, when she found her microphone set at the lowest possible level, she is often ‘accused’ of being short as if this is conscious decision she has made purely to inconvenience…
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Having left school at the age of 16 with a handful of O Levels and a swimming certificate, I am very excited to have been accepted as a student of Kingston University on their Creative Writing and Publishing MA starting next September. Mine must have been one of the least detailed application forms they have…
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I had the very great pleasure of being introduced to the author, Siri Hustvedt, after being invited to be in the audience of Radio 4’sBookclub. Rather than discuss her latest release, the focus was on her earlier novel, What I Loved, the result of a six-year writing struggle to find the right structure for a story…
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In search of a January day out in London on a shoestring, we took a trip to the British Museum to view the Staffordshire Hoard, accompanied by dozens of sticky-fingered kids who had already left their marks on the two glass cases. Whilst I am sympathetic to the lobby for the retention of the find…
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John Irving is the author who made me want to write. No doubt about it. A Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules are, quite simply, two of the most inspirational novels that I have read. Why? The characterisation is extraordinary. But there is something else about his work that I admire: he has the confidence to approach…
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Remembering the days when there was an honesty box in the wall and you let yourself in, I was deeply saddened when Rosslyn, one of Scotland’s best kept secrets, was turned into a circus after the publication of the Da Vinci Code. So it was with great relief that I heard that Highgate’s visitor numbers…
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It was a rotten Wednesday evening to be dragged out on: dark by six o’clock and relentlessly wet. The whole population of London had simulatiously forgotten how to drive and parking in Wimbledon Town centre – well, you could forget it! As I stood at the door of Waterstones on ticket collection duty, it seemed…
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