I have friends who writing comes easily to. I have friends who produce a manuscript in 6 months, a novel every second year or so, who write sharp witty lengthy pieces two to three times a month. I envy these people. Writing does not come easy to me. Granted I […]
I spent the end of winter at a Writing Residency at Ledig House in Ghent which is in upstate New York (about a two hour train ride from the city). At different times of the year they host musicians, artists, writers and dancers. It’s been running since 1992 so with […]
Writing is like designing houses in people’s minds. They walk around your corridors, down the stairs you lead them, into the cellar where the floor is dark and wet. They climb up and explore the attic that you weren’t even aware of in the plans. They sit in your kitchen and […]
I can’t imagine anyone not falling in love with Sarah when they meet her. She is incredibly alive and so fragile I feel quite tender when I handle her.
When I was young and easily influenced by the likes of Chicken Soup for the Soul and Dr Phil, I scratched a line in my Life Goal book: Publish a novel by 25. And while I even surprised myself when I did it, I think it proves that all my life I […]
In the sudden stillness of midnight when the sky is silent you return. Quietly you open the door and slip in to lie beside me breathing hard from where ever it is you’ve been walking. And I don’t know where you’ve been and I don’t want to know what you’ve […]
Add caption (Originally published in O, the Oprah magazine, October 2011)
I’m writing ugly again. It’s just ‘dark’No longer‘the food scented dark’
Everyone has a secret. Everyone is hiding something. Hiding thoughts in their mind. Hiding smiles behind their hands. Hiding fear in their laughs. Hiding people in their backseats. Everyone has a secret. Everyone is scared of being discovered. The child with the smashed tea cup on the floor shivers when […]
There is something about writing, writing a lot actually. It tends to take over your life. You no longer just experience things, you start imagining how to capture them in the confines of a sentence, a word. A letter. You’re not yourself anymore. You’re her, him, them. You start doing […]
