Have spent every spare minute over the past few weeks thinking and sketching out a plot for a big, complicated novel I’ve been desperate to write. It covers two worlds and three timelines, and it combines all the things I love about ghost stories and haunted houses with everything weird in science fiction, and a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘novel’
big fat book of doom
Friday, February 8th, 2019i am dreaming
Monday, April 3rd, 2017
You know it’s time to start writing your book when words bleed through the palms of your hands, in mirror writing, and lightning sparks from your fingertips. It’s one of the more obvious symptoms.
I’ve been dreaming of this book for a very long time. It’s just a book. But like dreams, it makes [...]
my top ten books of 2016
Saturday, December 31st, 2016Because books didn’t let us down in 2016. Books didn’t allow Poundshop Cruella to take over the UK. Books didn’t elect Dipshit McHairdo as US president. Books didn’t exacerbate and instrumentalise divisions between people. Books didn’t conspire with evil dictators around the world to usher in a new age of fascism.
Because books are good.
how to write a novel in no easy steps
Thursday, April 7th, 20161: Start writing. An idea is not necessary at this stage.
2: Keep writing. Pay no attention to mundane matters such as plot, character, setting, structure, or story. Just keep writing words until you have around half a million of them.
3: Now take those half a million words and throw. them. away.
4: Stare [...]
a good dog
Wednesday, November 5th, 2014
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 [...]
then 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 [...]
