The poet U. A. Fanthorpe wrote poems in her Christmas cards to friends. They were published as a collection. She generously allowed me to quote Christmas in Envelopes in my novel Finding Home, which is set in the run-up to, and around Christmas time.
1. The writing muscle needs exercise. Write everyday if you can. If you can't write something, write anything.
I write romance fiction - not 'Mills and Boon', as the term is understood today (in earlier days Mills and Boon published P. G. Wodehouse, E. F. Benson, Hugh Walpole, Georgette Heyer); and not 'chick-lit' (a term first used in the title of a 1995 anthology of post-feminist women’s writing: Chick-Lit: Post-Feminist Fiction. The work was serious, the title sardonic).
Read MoreA Short story... I hang clean white shirts in the wardrobe with a twinge of guilt, thinking I should wash and iron them myself. Harry is a traditional I’ll bring home the bacon your job is to raise the children and run the house sort of man. I know he would…
Read More“Is it possible for an ordinary person to climb over the area railings of no. 7 Eccles Street, either from the path or from the steps, lower himself from the lower part of the railings till his feet are within 2 or 3 feet of the ground and drop unhurt? I saw it done myself but by a man of rather athletic build. I require this information in detail in order to determine the wording of a paragraph.”
Whenever I speak to a book group, I’m struck by how little attention they pay to the mechanics of writing, to the architecture and engineering of a novel, the nuts and bolts of sentences and paragraphs. I urge them to think about what makes a good sentence, a good paragraph,…
Read MoreWhen I started writing fiction, I thought the screenplay would be my natural format. I had worked as a television documentary maker, had read drama scripts for the BBC and had been consulted by the drama department about making a film based on a factual story. I didn’t think at…
Read MoreThe publishing industry categorises books as either 'literary' or 'commercial'. The former being the ones which win the prizes. The latter being the ones that sell. The two categories are not mutually incompatible. I prefer to define books as well-written or badly-written.
Read MoreI have been thinking about sentences and about opening sentences in particular. Good opening sentences stick in the memory. Offhand, I can think of several that have stayed with me, although it is years since I read the stories they introduce (an exception being The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford…
Read MoreWhenever I need inspiration, or want to work intensely for a while, I go to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig.
Quand j’avais dans les vingt ans, je n’aurais jamais rêvé que je pourrais devenir romancière. Si on m’avait dit que je serais romancière après cinquante ans, j’aurais été étonnée. Et si vous m’aviez dit que je parlerais dans un festival littéraire en France, je vous aurais dit, “quelle absurdité.” Je n’avais pas la moindre ambition d’écrire un roman.
Read MoreHow the European Union was, for one reader, a gateway to literary delights.
