I hate writing first drafts. The story either comes out too fast in a messy splatter, lacking substance, or every paragraph sits reluctantly in the bowels of my brain and needs coaxing out with a stick. Sure, there are occasional moments where a page will glide out that'll make me smile and think 'ahhhh! I can do this!' But those … [Read more...]
KJ Orr interview – Light Box
KJ Orr's debut short story collection - Light Box - has recently come out, and it's brilliant, so I wanted to ask her about it. Here's the interview. AM: Why did you call the collection Light Box? KJO: It made sense for a number of reasons, and my hope is that there is pleasure in coming across some of those while reading, so I won’t point … [Read more...]
A research trip and baby turtles
I just got home from a research trip to Turkey. I was at a little town I've visited three or four times before, but always with my holiday head on. This was my first trip there with my writing head on. I've used the town as a starting point for the setting of my current writing project, and there were a few places I'd written about that didn't feel … [Read more...]
Short stories come in pairs
When I write short stories, I write them in pairs. This is why: I think the best gift a writer could have would be the ability to read their own work as if they'd never seen it before. But a truly objective perspective on your own work is impossible. It helps to leave a draft in the draw for a few days, weeks or months, but I've found that if I … [Read more...]
How do you like your story endings, open or closed?
Do you want clear answers at the end of a story, or do you prefer doing a little investigative work and close reading to unpick the clues, or do you dig story endings that are wide open, where you can chew over the story and make your own interpretation? I ask because I got another email this week from someone who'd read my story, The Stormchasers, … [Read more...]
Happy birthday Haruki Murakami, and the year so far…
Today is Haruki Murakami's 65th birthday. Happy birthday, sir. I discovered Murakami the same way I discovered Kafka - via MTV. There was an MTV spot called 'An A to Z of Japan', and the letter M was, 'Haruki Murakami, Japan's coolest writer', or something like that. I Googled him and read about his books, and the plots appealed to my love of the … [Read more...]
A sketchnote: the evolution of an idea
I've always used doodles, drawings and diagrams as part of my note-taking process, but after discovering sketchnotes / visual note-taking through Sacha Chua's blog, I've started illustrating my notes much more deliberately, and legibly, with the intention of making them something I can share. Here's a sketchnote from this week, which I've tidied … [Read more...]
Writing tools I can’t live without #3: Scrivener
I'm always looking for new tools that make the writing process simpler, more effective or more fun, and Scrivener does all of these things. After reading a recommendation a couple of years ago, I saw that you can get a free 30-day trial of Scrivener and gave it a go. Now I write just about all of my fiction on it. Scrivener is an incredibly … [Read more...]