How Do Authors Over 60 Define Career Success? by Marylee MacDonald Career success for writers over 60 looks quite different from the success of writers profiled in such places as The New Yorker’s 20 Best Writers Under 40 or Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. Writers in their 60s, 70s, and 80s can’t enter these literary ... Read More
“Feelgood ” refers to films or books that portray people and life in a way that makes us feel happy or optimistic. “Uplit” – a new term which I found in The Guardian and which is derived from “uplifting literature” – seems to mean the same thing. It works best when there is some sadness, some realism, to ... Read More
Does anyone recognise this? If you do, please let me know. Years ago I used to perform it as a sort of party piece, but I’ve no idea where I got it from. A Russian peasant is trudging through the snow. He finds a poor little frozen bird, still breathing – just. He picks it ... Read More
Subtitles for the hard of hearing (that’s me ! – not deaf, you understand) require a particular writing skill when they go beyond merely transcribing speech. Describing noises well is a special talent, and while watching “The Man in the Orange Shirt” on TV this struck me forcibly. I wonder what the superb writer of the ... Read More
This little cartoon showing a cat reviewing among other things my novel Timed Out is by cartoonist Colin Shelbourn. It appeared alongside a very short story of mine published in The Author. The story, “How Many Stars?”, has earned me more accolades and almost as many pounds as the novel plus all my other published fiction. And ... Read More
One person’s witty, eloquent brainwave is often another person’s cliche. We are urged to avoid them: story cliches, adjective-with-noun cliches, metaphor cliches, phrase cliches. And how we hate being caught using one. After all, we writers call ourselves creative and we think we are original, daring, imaginative. And that’s especially true of those who have ... Read More
Some people who like to see and hold a printed copy, and that is what you can provide at a book launch or a literary festival talk. And meeting people is fun, even if you don’t break even when you have factored in your time and the refreshments. I have arranged two launches for my ... Read More
What follows was intended as a competition entry, but they wanted 1000 words and there wasn’t any more to say. I like to practise ’emotional economy’. The master of that is Colm Toibin, by the way. ‘My Writing Day’ or ‘What I did yesterday’ I lived other people’s lives, mainly. The lives of my imagined ... Read More
Am I alone in muttering ‘Aw shucks!’ and turning pinkish when WordPress tells me that another blogger considers my little unpublished short story or a few random reflections about writing to be ‘pretty awesome’? Couldn’t they just say the kind person ‘liked’ what I wrote? Certainly when I ‘like’ or start to follow, it may ... Read More
When I first moved to Oxford in 1975 I was amused when my elderly neighbours called me ‘my duck.’ I haven’t heard that recently. I love these regional variations and I’m sorry they are dying out. My parents lived in Cornwall and a colleague who visited there was so delighted with the Cornish habit of ... Read More
