I’m soaking in hot bath water at home, having run an ancient canyon in soft slanting rain. The track picked a tremulous line between arching cliffs and gurgling streams. Gnarled tree roots sprawled as if they possessed all the time, and oddly shaped river boulders...
Upper Shipley climbing area: a line called Hot Flyer, amber rock catching the sun. Bolts for protection, chalked grooves marking the route like reassuring breadcrumbs, except the rock is vertical for fifteen metres, then overhanging, and gravity is waiting for a mistake. Mark is on...
When this lonely writing life sucks me down, I look to my books for solace. I kneel first by the lower shelves, home to racier friends, legendary abusers of the literary life, and quietly binge. I binge on London and Bishop, Faulkner and Sexton,...
I leave the confines of my study soon – the simplicity and profundity of this mountain wilderness, the tracks, cliffs and canyons, the shores of this country for global escapades. Prague first for valuable time with my adult sons. We have roughly a week together in...
I read from Rainer Maria Rilke’s, ‘Letters to a Young Writer.’ The poet is one of my Gods, in that he endorses so much of what I value in my life, and he offers me a blueprint for growing meaningfully as an artist. ‘Go inside yourself, if you really must...
How Fiction Works by James Wood James Wood has been at the forefront of literary criticism and reviewing for most of this century, and deservedly so. His knowledge of fiction is astounding and his writing brims with energy. Wood also knows intimately, and by association, what it...
A love affair - JG and ETFs forever. I have here a lively group of funds and while it takes patience to bond with them, to learn their vagaries, the effort will probably be worthwhile. If I treat them with respect surely they'll reciprocate...
The first workshop. I am ready. No more red tape, just a venue designed for 12 students and an audiovisual system prone to moodiness. Back-up plans are in place – my colleague Mike is coming along to help in any way and I have made...
Poetry and fiction are intertwined, and rightly so, because many craft skills required in poetry also serve fiction – take the quest to convey a message with clarity, triggering emotion in the reader or catering for reader involvement in the narrative – they are all...
FIFTEEN ESSENTIAL BOOKS ON CREATIVE WRITING Introduction The danger lurks: having studied books on writing, having carted off barrows of advice, trouble confronts you on the page. Here’s the scenario: You lay down a nine-word sentence and then subject it to a checklist of do’s and...