Edith had had a strange dream involving sea kelp. In her dreams she was quite sure she knew what sea kelp was; she was an expert. She’d been given a lesson…
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I often wonder when I’m creating characters how much they are related to myself; how much they are kin or palimpsets of myself in various guises, my relations?
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A little cameo to secure relationships between character, because in life we also require a little time to get to know one another and sometimes it can be as minor as plumping up the cushions for someone to sit on…
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I have been fussing over this scene for a while; it is a fussy scene: those hands like rabbit paws lying upon the counter, a symbol of accurate recall. Does Edith really remember them like that…
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I have been practising merging voices, layering, echoing, and layering again. In life we are all subject to the rumours of existence. It’s a miracle that any of us believes the other still exists…
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She wanted to borrow someone to locate herself and Greta was flimsy enough, that’s the cruel fact. Greta hadn’t enough of herself to go around…
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A little bug has got into my writing and is crawling over my pale limbs. The word ‘rather’ keeps appearing as an adverb…
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A thought on character building which arose from this phrase I can’t get out of my head: ‘Mary is a composite character.’ It is from a book I am writing. I like to call it ‘a book’ because it sounds better. ‘Manuscript’ is too medieval. Likely to be lost or burned…
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Editing, I tell my students, is writing. Writing is only editing, nothing more. You edit and revise and you edit and revise yourself into a book; it is all elbow work; a violin playing off in a side room…
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Edith wants to be bathed in light. To be chosen, to be elected, to be one of them: the on screen stars. To be or not to be?
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She looked and saw his canvas covered in murky patterns. The pond, he said, for atmosphere, the criss-cross of light. I see, she said, but she did not…
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Edith Cull was finding the pencil a less critical an implement than her pen. For one thing she could rub things out or smudge them if they began glaring back at her…
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The character of Edith has grown from the glimpses of women I saw as a child: women living alone, often remotely, and scuttling around like peculiar insects…
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Withdrawal can be exquisite, that time spent behind the arras with the curtain blowing over shading your sight. Embroidered patterns flutter across the mind’s eye drawing out the shapes…
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