Andrew Blackman
From the monthly archives: April 2009
Just discovered the work of Wislawa Szymborska through a poem reprinted in an old edition of New Internationalist from last year. It was called Psalm and I thought it was a beautiful and humorous poem, perfectly illustrating the absurdity of man-made borders. Here are the first few lines to give an idea:
How leaky are [...]
Good prose is like a windowpane.
– George Orwell, “Why I Write”
To find out what this is all about and how to participate, please see last week’s post.
Mr. Palomar sets out to examine every possible aspect of his life and the world around him, trying to name everything and categorise everything scientifically. Of course he fails, and it’s in the episodes of life squirming away from his rigid attempts at classification that the absurd humour comes.
The arrangement of the book [...]
I was experimenting with writing my next novel in the present tense. For a while it went well. The present tense felt more immediate, a little fresher, and was appropriate to the story I was trying to tell.
But gradually I began to feel constricted. The present tense seemed to work well for describing scenes [...]
I often find myself reading something beautiful over the weekend, only to forget it as I get all caught up in the craziness of the week. So I thought I’d start posting some inspirational quotes here each Monday morning, in the hope that some of them stick with me through the week.
Feel free [...]
Uncle Sam does not believe
In the unemployed dole,
But Uncle Sam does believe
in the money lenders dole.
This debut short-story collection by Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah is a wonderful read. The tone of each one is perfect: the language is consistently beautiful but also completely natural. You get to know the characters very quickly, through small details artfully described, and are left at just the right moment to move on to [...]
Do you ever have that experience where something you’ve known for a long time suddenly hits you as it’s never hit you before? That happened to me this weekend. Here’s what set it off.
Every few days another huge chunk of ice seems to break off from Antarctica. Last week, for example, the [...]
This is a novel about secrets. It begins with Cara as a young woman attempting suicide, and most of the novel takes place in Cara’s old age, as many of the secrets within her family begin to unravel.
From the first scene, the first big secret is born. Cara is attempting suicide because she’s [...]
Came across some good back-to-basics writing advice over on How Publishing Really Works. The bottom line:
Just write every day, and read more often than you write, and your writing will improve.
I am a keen reader, but sometimes when faced with the competing pressures of finishing a manuscript, paying the rent and [...]
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