I’m a big fan of Meg Rosoff. Her latest book, There is No Dog, is a quirky and irreverent look at our potential deity – though you may end up despairing of him, it all makes quite a lot of sense. And the wonderful How I Live Now is, as I type, being made into [...]
Posts Tagged ‘writing’
How to be a writer – a homage to Meg Rosoff
Posted in books, farming, festivals, Lifestyle, Parenting, Writing, tagged farming, meg rosoff, parenting, writing on February 23, 2012 | 32 Comments »
Must Try Harder.
Posted in books, Lifestyle, Parenting, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged apostrophe, grammar, SChool report, writing on August 30, 2011 | 7 Comments »
I remember myself as being a perfect gift of a pupil. Clearly not. Things weren’t much better the following year, though at least Mr Higgins had got my name right. I’m puzzled how any kind of standard could be considered ‘high’ that was also ‘tatty’ and full of ‘frequent errors’. Not quite the perfect pupil [...]
Word Counts
Posted in books, Lifestyle, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged alice sebold, candy gourlay, children's fiction, francesca simon, harry potter, horrid henry, jk rowling, kathryn stockett, louis sachar, maurice sendak, meg rosoff, michael morpurgo, philip ardagh, sarwat chadda, word counts, writersservice, writing on June 10, 2011 | 11 Comments »
Getting a feel for the right length of your novel is a puzzling thing. I know it shouldn’t matter – a story takes as long to be told as a story takes to be told BUT I do tend to obsess about it. I think I like guidelines – like to know I’m on the [...]
Take Heart, Writers in the Wings – Remember the Branford Boase Shortlist 2011
Posted in books, Lifestyle, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged anderson press, bella pearson, beverley birch, book awards, books, branford boase award, candy gourlay, charlie sheppard, chicken house, david fickling, frances lincoln, gregory hughes, hachette, imogen cooper, J p buxton, jason wallace, keren david, maurice lyon, pat walsh, quercus, roisin heycock, writing on May 19, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Meg Rosoff just posted a blog about Battery Books . It’s nothing to do with the ipad and everything to do with Factory Book Production. It briefly got me down – for a moment my vision was clouded with pulp fiction and celebrity books – but then I remembered this: THE BRANFORD BOASE SHORTLIST 2011 I [...]
Bookshops are Dangerous places
Posted in books, Lifestyle, Writing, tagged bryony pearce, candy gourlay, dave cousins, emma donoghue, gregory hughes, harriet goodwin, hayling island bookshop, independentn bookshop, JOn Mayhew, mal peet, mariam vossough, marian keyes, michae grant, miriam halalmy, nick cross, reading, sally gardner, sara grant, sarwat chadda, scbwi, steve hartley, undiscovered voices meadowside fiction, writing on April 5, 2011 | 12 Comments »
This is going to have to be the world’s fastest blog post as I am supposed to be painting the bathroom in the harvest manager’s house before he comes back next week. I sneaked off this morning, to the Hayling Island Bookshop where Miriam Halalmy was signing copies of Hidden. It was a low key [...]
Ipad, it’ll steal your mind.
Posted in books, ipad, Parenting, Writing, tagged angry birds, displacement activity, ipad, nhs drinks tracker, parenting, reading, writing on February 8, 2011 | 12 Comments »
It’s my agent’s fault, she first showed me Ipad’s lovely features: the bookshelf, the possibilities of easy editing, the ever-so-neat- general-gadgetiness of it. She fanned the embers of a quietly smouldering interest into a full-on burning passion. There were, however, one or two things she neglected to mention, that she might have pointed out before [...]
Why you should care about libraries.
Posted in Lifestyle, Parenting, Writing, tagged libraries, reading, writing on December 1, 2010 | 19 Comments »
When I was younger I had no money for books. Discovering I could borrow books FOR NOTHING was a wonder to me, a miracle, it truly felt like the best gift. In fact, that feeling has stayed with me, more than any Christmas or Birthday presents. Of course in those days we didn’t have computers… [...]
I Am Shrinking.
Posted in Lifestyle, Parenting, Writing, tagged ambition, shrinking, writing on September 27, 2010 | 3 Comments »
It dawned on me the other day, as my kids were laughing hysterically at the new pencil stroke marking their ever diminishing mother, that my reducing height is a massive metaphorical joke on my career. Once, I had 5′ 4″ with in my grasp. If I stretched my spine and backcombed my hair, I could pass [...]
