Category: writing
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Edited out
*Apparently* — and I don’t quite believe it — editing is completed on A Book of Endings. I am heartily sick of everything I’ve ever written. On the plus side, nice to know I can endure a rapid editing phase (I remember Karen Miller telling the story of her worldcon adventure one year where she…
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Ninety per cent
The window is replaced, the excitement has died down, I still can’t find anything missing from the house after last week’s uninvited visit. But now we have a motion-sensitive light over our backyard & a locksmith scheduled to make our internal door even more steadfast than it proved to be last week. (What a great…
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Economical writing
Reading today about John Cheever: He wrote stories in his underpants, not to wear out his clothes. — Morris Lurie, The Big Issue, #331, 16-29 June, 2009 Which is the kind of detail that grabs your attention. “No one, absolutely no one, share his life with him.” This is Federico, Cheever’s younger son. “There was…
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The week already feels long
Somewhere around the beginning of June I wondered why I was still receiving the poets.org April Poem-a-Day emails. Not that I’m complaining. I love getting a new poem every day. And today it was revealed: in honour of the poets.org 75th anniversary, this year the website sent SEVENTY-FIVE poems! My quote-a-day emails, however, from a…
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Covering up
OK, so I’m getting a little obsessed with cover art (ever since Nick Stathopoulos turned in the fabulous A Book of Endings cover!). Yesterday I spent a couple hours staring at these sites: http://www.thebookdesignreview.com http://shelvedbooks.blogspot.com http://henryseneyee.blogspot.com I also followed various links, finding myself in a world of cover debate. Including a link to a rant…
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A Book of Endings gets a cover!
It’s here! Nick Stathopoulos has done something really special — and really quite different to his usual work — to create this striking, modern, urban cover. A far cry from his trademark surreal landscapes or beautiful portraits. I love it! Buy the book, get yourself a Nick Stathopoulos cover. There’ll be stuff inside, of course,…
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That sly addiction?
Yay! For Will Self: I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction; short stories are foreplay, novellas are heavy petting – but novels are the full monte. Frankly, if I didn’t enjoy writing novels I wouldn’t do it – the world hardly needs any more and I can think of numerous more useful things someone…