Writing is a pretty sedentary activity, which is problematic because apparently this leads to IMMINENT DEATH (much like everything else in the world – let’s face it, everybody dies. Still, I will endeavour to address this sensibly..).
Category Archives: 12booksin12months
Edinburgh Literary Salon
By Kyle Bean (http://www.kylebean.co.uk/)
This evening I am going along to a literary salon in Edinburgh to talk about 12 books in 12 months as part of a literary blog themed event.
I think this sounds rather grand for two reasons.
- If you know your history or have a Wikipedia tab open you’ll know salons started in 17th century France as a way to gather lots of very bright types to talk about literature and philosophy.
- I have been known to read a few literary blogs, and they are often maintained by very knowledgable people, far better read than I, who discuss worthy books in a sensible way.
Then there’s me, struggling for weeks to get through Life of Pi but cheerfully staying up all night to read George R. R. Martin in a hostel in Ljbljana.
Filed under 12booksin12months, blogging, writing
Book Six Revisited
Book 6 in my mind.
So, I was re-reading Book Six because in my mind there were sections of it that I might be able to remove and adapt into a story for a magazine submission. It turns out I was wrong – those bits existed in my head, but I neglected to write them down.
Here’s what I discovered on revisiting that draft.
- I didn’t write anywhere near as much of the story as I had previously imagined – which is sad because I thought about it a lot and had tons of ideas.
- Most of what I did write was background stuff that happened about 5 years before the story actually begins. It’s not badly written, but it’s not relevant to the book either.
- About 2000 words of what I did write consisted of a folk tale about an evil brooch, the justification being that one of my characters reads said story at a difficult time in his life and goes a bit wrong.
- I wish I was making that up, but I am completely not.
- See:
Filed under 12booksin12months, reading, writing
Going For A Walk (March Pictonaut Challenge)
It’s Thursday, it’s 7.30pm, it’s Top of the Pops Pictonaut Challenge!
This month, The Rogue Verbumancer (or Glempy, if you prefer) challenges the internet to write a thousand words on the topic of going for a walk over a bridge. Or y’know, anything else that springs to mind on seeing this picture… But as you will discover, my brain opted for a fairly literal interpretation.
Thus:
Filed under 12booksin12months, blogging, writing
Where do you get your ideas?
© Adi Respati
As a fiction writer I tend to feel like this is a stupid question, whilst as a journalist it feels amateurish and slightly redundant to ask it. Read their work and it’ll often become pretty apparent – Irvine Welsh didn’t come up with Trainspotting because he spent a lot of time hanging around Disneyland, for example.
Filed under 12booksin12months, blogging, reading, writing
