Wait for me.

A friend told me the other day that the novel she just finished was not the one she wanted to write. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that the sound we hear as we tap, or type, or scribble? The sound of our own heartbeat, and maybe we’re panting a little, maybe even sobbing, as the…

Tweet f*%@king tweet.

I woke up late this morning. To bird song. And if you’ve ever woken up to birdsong in Australia, you know that it never fucking stops. It’s not like birdsong in America, which politely diminishes by mid-morning, and by noon is just a distant memory. No, over here, it’s a constant, euphoric shake rattle and…

Day 1

Subbed four stories this week, sold one so far. So now, everything ‘in progress’ is now outbound and I am in novel mode. My brain can barely function. Those stories meant a lot to me, they took all I’ve got. I got nothing left. Maybe some yoga. Maybe run for a while. Something. Maybe a…

Tricky Truman

Truman Capote likened the finishing of a novel to taking your child into the back yard and shooting it. As a parent, I’m intrigued by the mind that could have created that sentence. Still, I take his point. I was all but undone by the completion of my previous novel, cried for days, became physically…

A new post up on The Nervous Breakdown…

One of my favorite rejections to date came from an editor who knocked back my submission but told me by way of consolation that one of my colleagues—an enviable Irish wunderkind—got in instead, and how proud I must be. The editor went on to say that my story (which has since been published elsewhere) was ‘a little too dry, a little airless.’

‘She talking about your story,’ said a supportive friend, ‘or her vag?’