Tag: Jilly Cooper

Shelving books…

September 15, 2018

House is tiny.

It’s a small dwelling that was put together in fits and starts, bits added as the original owners decided they could afford it. It’s quaint, every room is on a different level and the rooms are small, but it is so perfectly idiosyncratic and the place just spoke to us when it was put up for sale 31 years ago by the original owner.

We renovated six  years ago and opted to remove the old wood-heater because we knew that in our old age, the last thing we wanted to be doing was carting wood and dealing with the ash, dust and mess that is a wood-burner, despite the obvious charm of flame and wood.

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Survivor…

March 8, 2014

 I was interested to read on Bopress’s blog what books she would take to a desert island and it prompted me to wonder what I would take if I was intending to be marooned. I toyed briefly with  RL Stevenson’s Treasure Island, (I need to search for the hidden ‘idol’ after all)

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What should I read?

June 23, 2010

I noticed there was a question from Nathan Bransford’s blog in the last week or so, asking writers whether they read only the genre in which they write?

It seemed some did, some didn’t.

I read a lot, not as much as I want as I seem to fall asleep by the second para of the page on any given night, but I love to read.  Once when I was a reader I read for pleasure totally.  Now I find my pleasure is overshadowed by a questioning mind: why did the author do that there, how do they accomplish that, why that word and not another.  And look, there is an adverb and wow!, an exclamation mark, lots of them!  And ooh-er, an edit blooper.

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A flash of inspiration . . .

February 11, 2010

Inspiration is, to an artist, the air we breathe.  It sustains us, suffusing us with ideas.  I’ve talked before about the things that inspire me to write a story . . . a piece of stitching, a paperweight, a length of cloth, a pocket globe.  Once in the distant past it was a tiny brass ball I found in my grandfather’s tool shed (which I’ve since lost, but imagine the quidditch snitch and you can see what I mean). Heavens’ knows what Pa’s little brass ball was.  Whatever it was, more than anything it was inspiration.

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