White Rabbits, Wonderland and Writer’s Block

White Rabbits, Wonderland and Writer’s Block

Recognise this little fellow? Said to be carved in approximately 1330 and wearing the distinctive satchel of the pilgrim, he graces the archway of St Mary’s Church in Beverley, Yorkshire, a town where Lewis Carroll stayed while he was preparing to write Alice in...

Twenty Questions about Characterisation

Do you remember playing that car game, brilliant for long journeys, where one of you assumes a character and the others have to guess who it is by asking twenty questions? When we were little we whiled away hours playing it on the autobahns and autoroutes of Europe,...

Inspiration – It Must be the Sap Starting to Rise….

As time off for good behaviour went to see the inestimable Lambchop play The Fleece in Bristol yesterday. Kurt Wagner took three years off from making music to come to terms with the death of his close friend and collaborator James Vincent Chesnutt and the gig last...
It’s No Good Waiting for Inspiration

It’s No Good Waiting for Inspiration

You can put the idea for a novel or a short story down to inspiration, but the writing of it is much more like hard graft — that old saw about writing being 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration is uncomfortably true.  Once you have an idea bubbling away inside...
Digging Deep for Symbols

Digging Deep for Symbols

On our recent trip to France, we rounded a bend in the canal, those winding curves sinuous with promise, and were confronted with this! The French waterways board were doing maintenance work, dredging up mud from the bottom and we had to doodle around a bit until they...
A La Recherche du l’Eau Perdu…

A La Recherche du l’Eau Perdu…

Am skittering around on the River Yonne in Burgundy as I write and thought that the Proustian illustration above would give you a sense of the challenges we face in the drawn-out drought in central France. We’ve never seen the waterways so low and are bumping...

Literary Terroir

I’m still writing in my little Devon bubble, away from the real world, and in the last couple of days we’ve visited Greenway and Coleton Fishacre, homes of Agatha Christie and the D’Oyly Carte family respectively. Coleton was more beautiful (and the...
Word Association

Word Association

Here’s a nice old, seedy old, despondent old French door, which seems to me to be extraordinarily evocative, with its closed blinds and peeling shutters and faded paint. I think you could probably construct a whole narrative just from looking at it for long...
Picture this….

Picture this….

After all last week’s chat, some radio silence, and perhaps a fine old door to admire… In fact, pictures or images can sometimes be a fertile source of inspiration.  Why not spend a little while looking at the one above and then start asking yourself some...
When is a door not a door?

When is a door not a door?

I love doors.  They fascinate me.  They reveal and conceal.  They are a bridge from one state to another.    They can be a barrier that forbids,a dead-end which is frustrating and inhospitable.  They can be used almost as a weapon, as a form of assault — to have...