Trinidadian writer Earl Lovelace was the second attraction last night at Bim Literary Festival. For my report on the first part of the evening, with Austin Clarke, click here. Lovelace was asked about the themes of his writing and spoke about the search for selfhood, both on an individual and a societal level. He said [...]
Tag Archives | Writing
Learning from Derek Walcott: Bim Literary Festival, day one
How often do you get to meet a Nobel Prize winner? That was my main rationale for going along to a Master Class with Derek Walcott yesterday – that and the prospect of seeing Earl Lovelace and Austin Clarke afterwards. The occasion was the inaugural Bim Literary Festival, a celebration of writers both from here in [...]
How to write a book review
Just saw a nice post on Read.Learn.Write which goes into the methodology of writing book reviews, using my novel On the Holloway Road as a model. I’ve never really thought about a method for writing reviews before – I tend to just give my response to the book in whatever form seems natural. That’s probably [...]
Beauty is a sleeping cat
So, a post in honour of one of my favourite book blogs. My wife and I have adopted a little kitten here in Barbados. Well, not sure if that’s the right word — she was hanging around the house, and we brought her inside and started feeding her and my wife gave her a name (Bluebell). [...]
Today I’m at Read.Learn.Write
Yes, I’m back! Fresh from my guest posting debut yesterday on The Undercover Soundtrack, I’m over at Read.Learn.Write today, talking about Why Reading and Writing are Inseparable. In the post, I talk about how I used to read widely but passively, just consuming books rather than truly engaging with them. And then I started this blog, [...]
Finding some inspiration
Sometimes, as much as I like writing, I get tired of it. Towards the end of last year, it became difficult, and I started to dread it, and I wasn’t happy with what I was producing, and I let myself get too busy with other things. I needed a change of scene. I am fortunate [...]
The ingredients of fiction
Writing fiction is not really about making stuff up. It’s more about making sense of what you already have stored somewhere in your memory or subconscious, dusting it off, ordering it and making it intelligible to the rest of the world. The hope is that the things you write about will also resonate with other [...]
Life is too sweet to waste on self propaganda
Came across a good little article in the LA Times on author self-promotion. It seems that a letter from Jack Kerouac has just turned up at a literary auction, and it bears an interesting quote: I can just see the shabby literary man carrying a “bulging briefcase” rushing from one campus to another, one lecture [...]
A Virtual Love
Hmm, this site seems to have been on autopilot for a while now. What’s going on? Well a few things. First, summer. It’s a fleeting thing in England, and you have to grab every sunny day you can get. I’ve been outside a lot, enjoying London. Now that I’m starting to hunker down for the [...]
“Becoming a Writer” by Dorothea Brande
This is a wonderfully lucid book. I would not hesitate to take writing advice from Dorothea Brande, for the simple reason that her own writing is so elegant and clear. As I was reading, I was reminded of George Orwell’s dictum that good writing should be like a window pane. Brande’s book, written in 1934, [...]
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“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
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The Sense of an Ending, explained
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Introducing “A Virtual Love”, coming to a bookshop near you in Spring 2013
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Finding some inspiration
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Beauty is a sleeping cat
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Test of stamina at Bim Literary Festival, day two
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Earl Lovelace at Bim Literary Festival
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Austin Clarke at Bim Literary Festival
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Learning from Derek Walcott: Bim Literary Festival, day one
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Great opportunity for unpublished UK writers
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Island: Very, very interesting and vivid account of the ex...
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Vishy: Nice post, Andrew! It was an introduction to me to...
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