Tiah Beautement's Blog, page 105

On Love Interrupted

- ‘If I could learn in my mother tongue I could finish a four-year degree in two.’ – - I knew what was coming. This was a sensitive topic for me. I feared conversations about fathers the way other people feared dentists. I knew that men lacked the sensitivity to speak the truth with care. I had also become aware that most of those who grew up with fathers were painfully unsympathetic and insensitive to those who hadn’t. That is because they didn’t know how it felt. – - Were Christianity and God merely courteous formalities that people had learnt...

On dialogue

Bad dialogue, on the other hand, stands out like a man wearing a clown costume to a funeral. - Steven Parolini, How to Write Good Dialogue

On In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories

Lauri Kubuitsile, In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata - Her tracks crissed and crossed like a drunk staggering home after a binge, but they led nowhere. - - For Nokanyana men, it was a lose-lose situation and, as a result, each and every one of them despised McPhineas Lata merely for remaining single – he had made the right decision and they had not. – - It was more than being heartsore, Warona’s heart had been pulled out, knocked around for twelve rounds, then placed back into her chest to perform only the bare minimum required to keep her moving....

On Poets

For if I make them cry I myself shall laugh, and if I make them laugh I myself shall cry when the time of payment arrives. - Ion, by Plato

On Home Remedies

Diane Awerbuck, Home Remedies - Before the May of 2002, Joanna had believed that everything important in your life happened before you were eighteen. After that it was too late to change. – - Gladness – my wife – won’t let me have this chair in the house anymore,’ Oswald confided. ‘But I think it is a pity to throw something out just because it is old. – - Trying to sleep was the least useful way to get to sleep. – - The heart was the thing for the Egyptians, the textbook, the tablet, the service manual. It was...

On Flight Behaviour

Barabara Kingsolver, Flight Behaviour - Googling a butterfly. It sounded comical, like tickling a catfish. – - Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults? – - Now, see, that’s why everybody wants Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbours and your family, too messy. – - She tried not to stare at his midsection, but it did draw the eye, ballooning under the yellow shirt he’d tucked into his belt, sub-belly, in the most unflattering way imaginable. As men so often did. How they...

On failure

I have something called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and I've had it since I was four years old. Mostly I've lived the “do it all” kind of life that the magazines say one must, but there are certain realities at play that challenge much of what popular opinion holds to be true when it comes to decline, attitude and narrative. With a progressive disease, the reality is that there are limits to what you can do physically. Now, you can challenge those limits, and you should, but you also have to deal with the risk of mindless positivity. When you push...

First day of school

On Jenna Mervis' Next Big Thing

Who or what inspired you to write this book? A young woman visited me early one morning to tell me her story. She pulled up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo covering her arm in purple tendrils. It looked like it was moving under her skin. She told me she didn’t have much time. She told me that South Africa in the future was dark and dirty. She told me about this virtual world that people had invented in the future – a way to escape their lives, the overcrowding and the filth. You could upload as anyone, you could...

On dialogue

As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty. . . You must tell the truth if your dialogue is to have . . . resonance and realism. - Stephen King, On Writing -