This is Laika. I’m deep in the middle of a novel about Laika, and this week is the 57th anniversary of her journey into space. So it seems wrong to let this pass without some kind of commemoration.
Laika was chosen for the Sputnik mission because she was a good dog. Of all the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘novel’
a good dog
Wednesday, November 5th, 2014then we set ourselves on fire
Sunday, June 8th, 2014I live in a city where it is considered somewhat normal (even, in some quarters, desirable) to write angry confessional poetry and ‘perform’ it to friends and strangers in pubs. The performance usually consists of attempting to impose some kind of rhythm and meaning on a formless string of half-sentences by way of reading [...]
there’s a name for this
Monday, July 22nd, 2013there must be a name for this feeling you get in the middle of a novel when actually you HATE your novel and you want to throw it out of the window and start over and your friends have to talk you down and talk you up and you read blogs that say WHATEVER YOU [...]
from the bottom of a very deep hole
Sunday, July 14th, 2013It’s highly possible that by the time I get to the end of the first draft of this novel, all that I’ll have to show for it is the first draft of a novel. My home will be ripped apart by feral mice (they’ll become feral after eating the thyroid medication I’ve carelessly left lying [...]
here i am
Saturday, May 11th, 2013So the last few weeks have been crazy busy but yesterday I finally handed in three assignments, cleaned my flat (sort of), made dinner for some people, drank a lot of red wine and laughed a lot and rolled my eyes a lot at the silly things everyone was saying. And later I said goodbye [...]
what i know
Saturday, April 6th, 2013What I learned about writing this week is that you can research and plot and plan and outline and do all the preparation in the world, but when you actually start writing – that’s when you start to work out what your story is all about.
I’ve got my novel broken down scene by scene [...]
rummaging around
Monday, January 28th, 2013The trouble with research is that EVERYTHING IS INTERESTING. I mean, everything is really interesting. I start off looking for stuff about sisters, and end up reading a mother’s account of how her son went crazy smoking too much weed. Or I try to find out about religious music, and end up reading about anchorites [...]
how it is
Sunday, January 20th, 2013Oh how I neglect you, my poor little blog. Truth be told, I haven’t had a huge amount of fun things to write about yet this year, what with a freezing apartment, money worries, school assignments left til the last minute (of course!), work problems, health problems, family problems, crazy/neurotic/unpleasant/violent people being in/fucking up my [...]
the flame alphabet
Monday, October 15th, 2012The Flame Alphabet may be the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. The fact that it is beautifully written only adds to the nasty queasy feeling one is left with at the end. The sense of being made complicit in a series of cruel acts. I’ve never read a book which contains so much that [...]
