I heard women talking and tried to focus on what they were saying. “A most peculiar looking creature to be sure.” “Who is she, do you think?” “Foreign, of that there can be little doubt. It is not the fashion that a lady’s hair be cropped so close.” “And the clothes we found her in. Why! Little more than sacking.”…
I fill letters home with tales of a happier me: a young woman sitting in the shade on her balcony, trying to read a children’s book in Greek, and nodding “Kalimera” at the neighbour opposite, who is hanging out her washing and admiring our tomato plants. There’s no place for the flatmate tending to his marijuana plants strategically placed between…
When the first mist ribbon had snaked its way out of the forest and wrapped itself around their Saab on the road from Gothenburg, he understood how you could feel at home in a place for the first time in his life. Like being on one of those paths that only last for a limited time in fairy tales, before…
For writers’ group this month we had ‘time capsule’ as our prompt and this got me looking around my office and thinking about what I would choose to put into one. In the end, I decided that I’d want to put in the one thing you can’t always hold onto – MEMORIES – but that can come back to you…
Efthalia noticed the changes on her walk to the market that day. The worst potholes in the road had been filled in with great clods of earth, grass, roots and all. She almost stumbled on its evenness. Cratered for as long as she could remember, she’d often found her way home through the ruts and swells of the road in…
“It’s over. I can’t see you anymore,” Lucy had said to him over the phone. “Not now it’s summer.” What does that have to do with anything?” he’d said to the dialling tone. He looked out of the window at the park opposite his flat and saw nothing but couples and families. He put his palm flat on the glass…
“Don’t I know you?” She’d heard him perfectly well but looked up and said, “I’m sorry?” He shifted in his seat. “I was just saying, I thought I knew you. You look familiar. I’m sure I’ve met you or seen you somewhere before…” She half-smiled, dipping her head down a fraction. “We have? You know, I can’t place you, sorry….
He dislikes lying to matron. She is, after all, a decent enough person. But if he told her the truth, she would never let him go. She would probably force him to join in more of the activities at the nursing home. He thinks activities a strange choice of word when the home only really has a dimly-lit television lounge,…
I wasn’t going to do NaNoWriMo again this year. Right up until October 27th, I was firmly in the “Been there, Done that, Got the Winner 2010 Blog Badge” camp. And then I had an email exchange with a Twitter pal… …and, as you can tell from the shiny new blog badge, I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year,…
All I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of weeks is the rewrites on my work novel, Love & Freedom, which comes out on 1 June 2011. Rewrites, rewrites, rewrites, REWRITES.
Rewrites or editing or polishing or revisions – they come under several titles but they’re an inevitable part of a writer’s life. As soon as your work comes under the scrutiny of a fresh pair of eyes, every scamped piece of research, saggy bit, hole in the plot or break in the continuity might as well be highlighted in neon pink. To the fresh pair of eyes, that is, not to you – or you’d put it right before you sent it in.