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Find a book club
Find a Book Club, a club that does what it says on the tin, asked me to recommend 10 books for book clubs (including two of my own).
Author Archives: Angela
Literary Villains, Literary Summer Reads and an idyllic treehouse in East Sussex (where you can stay)
Forty of the Best Villains in Literature appear in this article at The Literary Hub (where you’ll find many literary goodies). The villains include the obvious: Mr Hyde, Mrs Danvers, Uriah Heep, Mr Rochester, Dr Frankenstein, Hannibal Lecter and many more. But … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Fiction, Places, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writing
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Women writers, and children; and Retro Peepers
I’ve never had children and the reason (apart from meeting the man whose children I’d love to have had well beyond my fertile years) is that I was always afraid that looking after children would eat so far into my … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Design, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Women, Writers, Writing
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John Clare, gardener and writer; and Bloom & Wild
In this strange spring and early summer of ours, where March’s snow, frost and ice stopped all plant growth and May’s hot days and tropical rainstorms encouraged it wildly, I’ve been wondering how many writers worked as gardeners. I only found … Continue reading
Writers on writing, and an exquisitely beautiful tea
When our writers’ group met this week one of our number described how the rise of the ‘plotting and typing’ approach to writing was driving her demented. How all the work is done before you’ve typed a word and then you … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Fiction, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writers, Writing
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RMS Titanic: on this day 106 years ago … & Samira Addo, Portrait Artist of the Year
It’s 106 years ago today that the ‘unsinkable’ passenger liner, RMS Titanic, hit an iceberg and sank in just two hours and forty minutes. For years the tragedy was a matter of private internal horror: people didn’t talk about trauma then and … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Titanic
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Social media and the writer; Modigliani and Akhmatova
It’s wise for writers to have a social media presence these days. Publishers don’t exactly insist on it, but they like writers who have significant followings. (Followers equal interest in the writer and so potential sales, obviously.) But how does … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Love, Social media, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writing
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Teaching kids to fall in love with science (a different kind of love for Valentine’s day); and things to do with rubbish
I was noodling around on the internet wondering what I was going to post about this month when I discovered Arvind Gupta. He won the Padma Shree on 26 January (India’s Republic Day) for his work in literature and in education, … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Design, News, Science, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Uncategorized
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A new writing resolution; and a new (to me) altruistic way of advertising
I’ve made a new writing resolution: I will not allow the confusing complexity, the sheer size and the constantly changing, shifting nature of a novel’s first draft to eclipse the excitement I felt when its guiding idea first electrified me. I. Will. Not. … Continue reading
Our Christmas Tree: a work in progress … and The Connection at St Martin’s
My other half put our Christmas tree together yesterday (it has hundreds of branches, all with different colour codes, all with their own little slots in its metal trunk). He also strung the tree with lights. Now it’s my turn to … Continue reading
Chaos & Creativity; and Beautiful Bookshops
I dislike hate chaos. Very much. Who doesn’t? But it’s an essential state if you want to write fiction. Messiness of the mind is the sine qua non for writers. But, when a piece is finished, it looks so orderly that … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Bookshops, Creativity, Fiction, Psychology, Writers, Writing
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Rejection is a rite of passage for writers, and the Raw Chocolate Company
One of the things that a writer takes a while truly to believe (it’s taken me a while) is that rejection is part of the process: it’s necessary, inevitable and makes our work better. It’s a rite of passage.But the … Continue reading
A very small trawl through a few less well-known news sites
This month – perhaps because it’s the silly season when news tends towards the frivolous because the House of Commons is in recess and us ordinary folk go on holiday – I thought I’d have a little light trawl through a few … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, News, News Outlets, Science
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Blurt It Out and Instead of a Card
I’m submitting the manuscript of my third novel to literary agents. It’s a process that requires much patience, a certain amount of luck and, most importantly, the ability to pitch my work well to the right agent at the right … Continue reading
Auditioning to become a WI Speaker, and ‘Born Baffled: Musings on a Writing Life’
In March I auditioned to become a WI speaker. The WI, you say? Don’t they just make jam, sing Jerusalem and talk a lot? Yes to all three, but no to JUST. There are 6,300 WIs in this country with 220,000 members … Continue reading
Posted in Psychology, Talks, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Titanic, Women, Writers, Writing
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Spring in London, and The Kid Stays in the Picture
Spring in London is an astonishing thing: blossom among the grey buildings and pavements; green and blue and pink and white making us look up at it and then at each other and smile, us Londoners who spend most of our … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Spring, Theatre, Things I'd Love to Have Made
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A History of Britain in 21 Women, by Jenni Murray
This is both the thing I’m writing about this month and the thing I’d love to have written, in a parallel universe where time is infinite and all things are possible:What an entirely brilliant and inspiring idea. It begins with … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Psychology, Reviews, Women, Writers
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Anselm Kiefer and Heywood Hill
On the weekend we went to the Anselm Kiefer Exhibition at the White Cube in Bermondsey. It’s just closed, but if there’s any of his work anywhere near you do go and see it. He is the most imaginative of … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Fiction, Things I'd Love to Have Made
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John Berger, Ways of Seeing … and PEN International
John Berger, who died aged 90 on January 2nd, was a critic, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and poet and well-known to many. Occasionally, in his early writings according to this Guardian obituary, Berger’s ‘Marxist dialectic did force him into uncomfortable contortions’, but whenever I heard him … Continue reading
Posted in Artists, Equality, Women, Writers
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