Monday Motivation: Unhappy families
“So who was Alan? Is he your cousin, or your brother-in-Law?” Laura said, clearly perplexed. “Neither,” I said. “He was my second cousin. Thomas’s son.” “Was? Won’t he be at […]
Monday Motivation: It’s what our world is made of
In a little more than a month, we will be hunting for truffles in Istria during the course of our Croatian writing retreat. It’ll demand a keen sense of smell, […]
Monday Motivation: We are the word-wielders
I’m still entangled in the wilds of The Magic Mountain. I learned during a break in my hectic reading schedule that a lexical analysis of the original German version of […]
Monday Motivation: The beauty of brevity
I’m sometimes asked how long a novel should be. I begin by talking about the length of various pieces of string, but then, after a little humming and hawing say […]
Monday Motivation: Of mice and moral conundrums
We’ve just spent three days with friends in a remote village in the Klein Karoo. We were alerted to the plague of fieldmice they’re experiencing when a solitary mouse emerged […]
Monday Motivation: Buttons and hypodermic needles
On Page 382 of Colm Toibin’s The Magician, a biographical novel which takes as its subject the life of one of the twentieth century’s most revered writers, the German Thomas […]
Monday Motivation: The colonel finds his teeth
The curtains are drawn around the corner bed diagonally opposite me in our ward, and have been for some time. Now a plaintive cry arises from the occupant, an elderly […]
Monday Motivation: Blood and laughter
She’s loud, she could very well have had a drink or two too many – and there seems to be nothing the matter with her. Which is puzzling, since we’re […]
Monday Motivation: Where am I?
The patient in the bed nearest the bathroom is, of course, old. He’s also confused. “Where,” he asks in a north country accent, “am I?” The nurse at his bedside, […]
Monday Motivation: Love in a time of illness
My stream of Monday ruminations was rudely interrupted a couple of months ago by illness – and an unexpected visit to the Elizabeth Ward of Bedford Hospital. Over the next […]
Monday Motivation: The simple point of creative writing
We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]
Monday Motivation: Art is the daughter of artifice
We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]
