30 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories
Tags
I’m sure you know how it goes.
You are working on a project. A long term one. Longer than you planned at first, perhaps – but sometimes things have their own way of stretching into something else, and… and… oh, you do know how it goes. Continue reading
02 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories
They come to you, and say that they have a story, a really good story that you should really write.
In time you learn to recognize this, a certain gleam in their eyes from the very first moment someone mentions that you write. Then they sit on it, they observe you, sometimes they ask questions, trying to determine whether you might be the right person… Continue reading
19 Thursday Aug 2021
Posted in Scribbling
I’m not writing enough.
I’m not writing enough.
I’m not writing enough!
And I could go on, you know. I could go on for a rather long time, because… yes, well: I’m not writing enough. Continue reading
10 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted in Books, History, Scribbling
You know those moments – those moments when a book speaks to you? When you read something that might have been written exactly for you to find it? Well, I had a rather peculiar moment of that kind, yesterday… Continue reading
29 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scribbling
Yes, yes – I’m doing it again. Because I liked the jolt it gave me last year, and because otherwise, considering the writing course I’m teaching, and the looming Summer Season, and a couple of largish jobs I’ve taken, I might be tempted to push my writing aside for now… Continue reading
15 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scribbling
Oh, the joys of Freewriting…!
Or Timed Writing, or however you like to call it. The deceptively simple act of sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper (or perhaps a keyboard and white screen), set a timer or a goal, and then… just write. Never stop, never edit, never overthink it, never mind grammar of spelling, never go back. Just write, as fast as you can. Just let if flow – until the timer rings, or the goal is met. Continue reading
01 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scribbling
There is always at least one pupil like that.
Whenever I teach a writing course, the first time I give a maximum wordcount for an exercise, someone will look puzzled: how do you even know how many words are in a piece? Continue reading
11 Thursday Feb 2021
Posted in History, Scribbling
A few months ago, as I was working on Road to Murder, I found trouble in the form of a French town called Montreuil sur Mer.* Well, for various reasons, my sleuth Tom Walsingham finds himself spending a night there, much against his inclination, and I needed to have a good idea of the place for that… Continue reading
28 Thursday Jan 2021
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
Tags
Historical fiction, murder mystery, Sapere Books, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Henry Cobham, writing
They stopped Walsingham and Paulo, my Italian, whom they seemed resolved to rob [… and] another Englishman in his company, called Skeggs, as I remember.
On the twelfth of November 1581 Elizabeth’s Ambassador in Paris, Sir Henry Cobham, wrote to the all-powerful Secretary of State – and spymaster – Sir Francis Walsingham . It was almost in passing that the ambassador slipped in this bit of information about the misadventure of Sir Francis’s much younger cousin, nineteen-year-old Thomas, riding as a diplomatic courier between London and Paris. Continue reading
14 Thursday Jan 2021
Posted in Scribbling
A new year begins, and everything – and I belong to the list-making sort, if only marginally. So, with a lovely new notebook to start, what was more natural than making a list of writing projects for the new year?
It is, of course, one of those hopeful lists, with way more items than I can reasonably expect to tackle – although you never can tell – and written down in full awareness of the nature of the best laid plans. Continue reading
