There are encouraging whispers about another book contract  –  calm down, that girl at the back. It’s not in the bag yet   –  but in the meanwhile I’m still rather conveniently in publishing limbo and therefore available to nurse my injured husband. And move furniture. I’ve been in my current study for five years and  realised…

      The indefatigable Fay Weldon has been opining again, dishing out advice to writers. She says we need to get with the program and write fast, page-turning reads because people nowadays are too busy for contemplative or demanding reading. There may be some commercial wisdom in what she’s saying but her reasoning is flawed. People don’t…

It isn’t the first time I’ve written on the topic of book overload but I’m hoping to turn things round this time and actually do something about it. I’m spring-cleaning, which is to say I’m dusting around the high-rise piles of Laurie Graham books. My study is starting to look like a Dubai skyline. I tried…

  This has been a roller-coaster of a week. After nearly a month of waiting outside the Principal’s office (or as we say in the business, waiting for reactions to first draft) I heard first from my agent who, rather seriously, didn’t ‘get’ the book at all and predicted a considerable rewrite. Twenty four miserable…

 During these languorous days, the calm before the rewrite storm, I find myself (sometimes) thinking about the writing process. Generally, when I’m at work on a novel, I don’t give the process a second thought. Actually, I fear to do so. I’ve never taken a course. When I started writing I don’t think there were any courses. What…

Now here’s a nice story. Twenty years ago I wrote a feature for Country Life magazine. It was probably called something like My Country Childhood  –  a bit of a stretch really because I was raised in suburbia and only sent to the country during school holidays in a misguided attempt to cure my asthma. But…

   My list for today: DELIVER FIRST DRAFT TO EDITOR     check OPEN BOTTLE OF CAVA              check DRINK  DEEPLY THEREOF          hic & check EAT BLOW-OUT INDIAN              check DECIDE WHAT TO DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE      pending                  

Unlike most of the Western world I’ve been back at work since December 28th, setting the bar a bit higher every day. Go on, woman, get on with it. Another 500 words before you put the kettle on. The end isn’t yet quite in sight but I know I can get there. In London Marathon terms I’m closer…

     There are very few stories I read again and again but Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is one of them. It is one of those instant pathways to my own childhood Christmases. My father, who never read any other book and who worked long hours, came home on Christmas Eve with just two things on his agenda.…