Portrait of an Artist as Dilettante
You know I’m a modernist. I believe that creative product is forged out of effort, self-evisceration and the work that has gone before in equal measures. Something Hazel Dooney wrote on her blog has triggered a desire to rant. I’m tired of meeting people who suddenly ‘decide’ to be writers, artists, photographers or musicians and […]
Here Lies…
I just finished Gibson’s Zero History. One of the locations in the novel is a fictional private hotel called Cabinet with an address at Portman Square in London. Before we found a house in Montague Square, my parents and I lived in a flat at 15 Portman Square – it had an old rickety cage […]
Communing: Place, Time and Mood – Wandering with my iPhone
I just finished reading @Marousia’s brilliant blog post on wandering with a camera. As an academic, it’s @Marousia’s wont to be reflective about what she does and her way of doing them, and she’s taught me so much about the value of doing this, that when she wrote the post, I was really inspired to […]
The Things that Grow in a Vacuum
I have recently had a friendship come apart. It died from neglect and I admit complicity in its demise. I get too focused on things. I don’t water the flowers as much as I should. I tend to assume that, once I have had a meeting of minds with someone and a level of affection […]
I Sing to the Body Electric – Persona in Motion
It is 7:30 am. I wake up, make my way downstairs and lean sleepily against the counter as I wait for my coffee. Then, sitting down to my laptop, I open it. Sweetly, accommodatingly, it connects to the web; I open up Twitter and say my good mornings. I am become Remittance Girl. Of course, […]
Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory – Weinsheimer, Joel – Yale University Press
Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory – Weinsheimer, Joel – Yale University Press. Book lust.
I have no advice to give
Every so often, I get a spate of DMs and emails asking for my opinion or advice on matters sexual. This post is mostly so I don’t have to keep repeating myself. It feels rotten to just turn people away, but I do. I’m just a writer. I just write about people and sex. That […]
The Death of the Editor…
There is someone else in the writer-text-reader relationship that is not spoken of much anymore. And it’s sad, because a good editor (I’m using the old sense of the word here) really can make a good book excellent. They can, of course, also make a poor book readable. But when an editor works with a […]
The Living, Breathing World of the Reader-Writer Relationship
If there had not been a web, I would probably never have been a writer. I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have the kind of dialogue I have with the people who read my stories and my essays. Of course, the interaction does get addictive. And I have been accused of […]