Emma Darwin's Blog, page 30
July 13, 2011
Post(card) from Devon
So I'm not really blogging, because I'm buried in Devon at the entirely wonderful Retreats for You. So here, instead, is a little taste of my walk this afternoon (after 2000 words, in front of log fire, before delicious supper...
July 7, 2011
The Inner Calvinist and the Petrol Pump
I've blogged about procrastination before in terms of the immediate moment, but what's causing it? Why do we fail to get on with the thing we love doing: writing? We've got a lot of our lives arranged around it, and...
June 29, 2011
The red spot in the monograph
On a thread about Point of View, in the public bit of WriteWords, I posted a link to this admirable exploration by David Jauss of the whole business of point of view and psychic distance in fiction. Jauss starts by...
June 23, 2011
How do you eat an elephant?
A writer friend - a short fictioneer turned novelist - cried for help on a forum: So, I've been through the script of the novel and edited it and made masses of notes. I have reworked plot strands on paper...
June 20, 2011
The Daemon and the Prig, by the man who saw the torturer's horse.
I've stumbled on something that Auden wrote to an aspiring teenage poet, John Cornford: The real problem though for you as for every other writer... is that of the Daemon and the Prig. Real poetry originates in the guts and...
June 13, 2011
Jerusha Cowless, Agony Aunt: "How do I get myself to read my book in one sitting?"
Dear Jerusha: I can't seem to read my novel from start to finish – perhaps in one sitting, perhaps over a few days – without changing things. I'm not a fan of directionless editing, but I've never read my book...
June 9, 2011
Relax! It's only a synopsis
Your synopsis is not the thing which will make or break your novel's future. It's the voice, above all, and the characters and storytelling in the sample chapters, which will do that. A synopsis is for showing the big bones...
June 5, 2011
Finding the first line
In the film of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Leonard asks how Virginia work's going, and she says (as I remember) "I think I've got the first line". A reviewer was scornful: how typical of Hollywood to have one banal speech...
May 30, 2011
The darkroom and the double-helix
Because terror of the blank page and the "wrong" words hamstrings so many writers, I spend a lot of time saying, "Just write. Nothing's set in stone. You can change anything, once you've got words on the page to change"....
May 22, 2011
Have you heard the one about "was"?
Have you heard the one about "was" being a word you should cut out of your writing? No, really, it's genuine; I've seen it bandied about among aspiring writers, and even some teachers. Where did it come from? What is...
