My old cat Pushkin (after the Russian poet, playwright and novelist) used to love laying on my laptop keyboard, more for the warmth, I think, than attention-seeking.
Monthly Archives: April 2019
A rabbit that sends your child to sleep
A book called The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep, written by a Swedish behavioural psychologist and linguist Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin, is currently outselling Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman and Paula Hawkins The Girl on The Train.
It’s sending children to sleep all over the world. Useful to know, should you have a troublesome toddler.
The Laughing Heart
I’ve mentioned Charles Bukowski before, and here’s Tom Waits reading one of his most inspirational poems.
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/A-517528-1203765307.jpeg.jpg?w=474&ssl=1)
Called ‘The Laughing Heart’, it should be the mantra for any writer:
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
The Perfect Rejection Letter
I’ve just finished re-reading Noah Lukeman’s ‘The First Five Pages’ – excellent, and I recommend it to you.
The book has an epigraph, a poem by Louis Zukofsky, from his major work called ‘A’. As writers querying literary agents and publishers, we should be so lucky to receive such a letter….
Most honorable Sir,
We perused your MS
with boundless delight. And
we hurry to swear by our ancestors
we have never read any other
that equals its mastery.
Were we to publish your work,
we could never presume again on
our public and name
to print books of a standard
not up to yours.
For we cannot imagine
that the next ten thousand years
will offer its ectype.
We must therefore refuse
your work that shines as it were in the sky
and beg you a thousand times
to pardon our fault
which impairs but our own offices.
– Publishers
Favourite Books in Tweets
Former Booker Prize Chairman Professor John Sutherland has come up with a novel idea – condensing the nation’s 25 favourite beach reads into 140 characters for the Twitter generation.
Finger Trick
We all tend to take our hands and feet for granted, and it’s only when something goes wrong that we come to appreciate how they function.
This was brought home to me in 2014, while writing my first novel which featured a serial killer, that caused me to have a nightmare in which I kicked out at a shadowy attacker, hitting the bedroom wall and breaking a big toe in my fury.
Our hands really are one of the key tools of our trade as writers. I take care of mine, manicuring the nails and rubbing in moisturising skin cream regularly.
All the same, it’s still possible to pick up the occasional injury to the fingers. One of the most painful is a burn, usually from cooking activities or clumsiness with the kettle. Immersing the wounded digit in cold water is a well-known and effective remedy, but in the absence of cooling water, try this: simply press your burnt finger to an earlobe – preferably your own!
This trick was taught to me by an ex-girlfriend, who was a Cordon Bleu trained chef. Gripping your earlobe with the fingertips that you’ve burnt helps to draw the heat away, limiting damage without harming the ear itself. There are a lot of tiny blood capillaries in the ear, as anyone who’s had an ear pierced knows, and they help to disperse the heat.
Try it, by carefully pressing a finger to a hot mug of tea or coffee, then giving your ear a fright!
Secret Bookcase Rooms
I think that I’ve found my favourite hotel in Amsterdam. Hotel No Hotel features extraordinarily themed suites, including Secret Bookcase, whose various rooms are hidden behind swinging bookcases.
http://www.hotelnothotel.com/rooms/
Even better, they have one-way windows, disguised as mirrors or paintings so one can check if it’s safe to come out!
I’ve been hiding behind books all of my life…
Back up your work!
A friend in Portland, Oregon sent me this sad story about a writer who lost all of her work when her car was broken into:
She’s offering a good cash reward for the return of her work, so let’s hope that she sees it again.
I back-up my work in half-a-dozen places, including Google Drive – a free cloud storage service. Many writers have lost their manuscripts – which qualifies as the ultimate rewrite, I guess.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/1000-novels-lost-manuscripts
Self-Publishers: Who Grants You Permission and Who Tells You No?
This is an interesting article, which argues that self-publishing and putting our books before the public, is just another way of entering a slush-pile – but one with more freedom to escape from, by providing discerning readers with what they want to read:
Tolkien reads from The Hobbit
There are links to other authors reading from their own work at the bottom of the article:
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/06/tolkien-reads-from-the-hobbit/
