Hello Reader, This week on the water: Venice! Politicians are, in essence, storytellers. They tell their own stories, thereby hoping to align themselves with voters’ lives and aspirations. This is why the mega-rich don’t try to attract voters by telling them the story of their profligate ways, their private jets and super yachts, their island hide-aways and their privileged upbringing (nannies, private schools, gold-plated egg-cups). They don’t tell these stories because they know their...
12 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, I’ve been having that feeling again. The sense that you exist on another plane from other people. That there’s no one on earth who can truly understand where you are right now. Puffadder shyshark @comeseawithandy For the longest time, I feared it would never return. But I felt it when I was buying yoghurt last week. And unpacking the dishwasher on Tuesday. And I laughed into my snorkel – overjoyed at spotting a perfectly camouflaged puffadder shyshark – but, mainly, because that...
16 days ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, This week on the water A couple of weeks ago I wrote about restraint – although it’s true I didn’t use the word specifically. I said, write as much as you need to – but no more. Don’t over-egg the pudding. But let me drill down a little deeper this time into some of the reasons it’s good not to spread things on too thick for your reader. Urging writers to employ restraint in their writing is another way of saying, don’t write on the nose. Don’t say what’s obvious. Allow the...
17 days ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, This week on the water Taking on a difficult writing challenge can be amongst the most daunting of all challenges for a writer who’s already established her expertise in one or other field or genre. She might already, for instance, have earned herself a sterling reputation as a journalist, whipping off long-form, in-depth pieces with great adroitness. She might have made her mark as a short story writer, won a number of prizes in international competitions. She might have...
26 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, This week on the river For a moment assume that your story takes place on, or otherwise involves a river. Your protagonist goes for a row on the stream. His paddle will end, let us say, when something happens. That could be: he discovers a body beneath a bridge; or he spots someone on the bank whom he believed to be dead; or he capsizes his boat and is rescued by someone with whom he then becomes romantically involved. For my current purposes, it’s not important what his...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, This week on the river The universe we describe in our literary creations is what mathematicians would call a model: it seeks, in other words, to match the objective world, giving us the ability to make various predictions about it. Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s equations constitute the most elegant and accurate models of the universe, and the particles of which it is made. These models are considered accurate because the predictions it’s possible to make on a basis of their...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Take a simple story of a man called Arthur who forges a Picasso and either does or does not get found out. The plot will revolve around his failure as an artist, perhaps. It will describe how his frustration turns slowly into resentment about the “art world elite” that refuses to acknowledge his talent, his genius. At last Arthur decides to turn his hand to forgery. He’ll show the bastards at Sotheby’s and Christie’s! He produces a modest blue period nude, and “discovers” it one...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, A few weeks ago, I took a Thameslink train to Blackfriars in London. My mission: an appointment with Dr Patrick Murphy, a specialist in the rarefied field of what is called post-polio syndrome. The NHS explains that post-polio is “a poorly understood condition that can affect people who have had polio in the past.” This might seem to have very little to do with writing, but you’ll know that I am able to turn many subjects so that the light falls on their utility to writers. So...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Writing is a sedentary occupation, we’d probably all agree. You sit down quietly at your desk, or the kitchen table, or with your back against a tree in the woods (yes, I’ve done just that) and sentences flow in a mysterious way from your brain onto the page. In order to facilitate this serene process, we seek peace and calm. Perhaps we fashion a little island of order in our working environment. Some of us, like George Simenon, create rituals to frame and stimulate the creative...
3 months ago • 2 min read