Suspension and Falling in Literature and Life

Latest stop on the virtual tour for Too Many Magpies is at the blog of Words from a Glass Bubble author, Vanessa Gebbie, who uses the fact that I recently had a bad fall down a flight of stairs as a thematic springboard for a pretty wide-ranging discussion about not only Magpies but my writing in general.

Voice in Fiction

On the latest of my virtual tour stops, at poet Barbara Smith's blog, I talk about the importance of voice in fiction, and the way that, as far as I am concerned, getting the right voice dispenses with any need to 'develop' or 'profile' characters.

Writing methods

For anyone interested in writing methods - and mine in particular - I'm interviewed on the subject today on the blog of writer Tom Vowler, as part of Flying with Magpies, the virtual tour I'm conducting for my novel Too Many Magpies.

An Innovative Book Tour Hosting

Flying with Magpies, the virtual tour for my latest novel, receives innovative treatment today on the blog of Tania Hershman, who ingeniously portrays my novel and my aims by conducting a word association game with me.

The Writer's Need for Silence

From a review by Kathryn Hughes of Maggie Gee's memoir My Animal Life in Saturday's Guardian Review:

In one of the most powerful parts of the book she lays bare an awful period in the mid-90s when her editor at HarperCollins turned her sixth book down flat. Part of the problem, he explained helpfully, was that lots of people hadn't really heard of her and, in an age when "profile" counted, this was proving tricky. Gee hadn't been in the habit of going to the right literary parties, preferring to stay at home with her husband and child and simply write. She'd always believed that the work was what mattered and now she was paying the price for her ignorance/arrogance.

I hope that's ironic, that 'ignorance/arrogance'. The trouble is, as Robert McCrum indicates this week, the writing of a novel can need the kind of immersion in solitude which Maggie Gee was cultivating, and with which all those other activities increasingly associated with the life of a writer - networking and marketing - can interfere.

It so happens that similar matters are touched on in my visit today to writer Nuala Ni Chonchuir's blog, for the virtual tour for my novel Too Many Magpies. She asks me about my typical day and how I fit other such things in with writing, and this is part of my answer:

I can only write well to my own satisfaction, I find, when I can become truly obsessed with what I'm working on and entirely adrift on its dream world... My ideal writing day ... is to write from nine in the morning until about half-one, after which time I'm pretty done in and need to stretch and get some exercise ... as well as, most importantly, have some pondering time for the next day's writing bout. Well, I wish! Now I so often spend the rest of the day into the evening on the web doing all the things we writers need to do nowadays to market our books - and end up with nothing else done and the next day's writing unpondered, and feeling really frazzled!

Flying with Magpies: Stop 2

This week's stop on the virtual book tour for my novel Too Many Magpies is at the blog of the thoughtful and erudite John Baker, who reviews the book (very positively, I'm thrilled to say). He also asked me some searching questions about my aims in writing novels and, since this is a theme of the book, our present-day sense of ourselves in the world. You can find his questions and my answers in the comments section of his post.

Final Leg of my Virtual Book Tour

The final leg of my virtual book tour is up today on the blog of Tania Hershman, author of the inventive science-inspired collection of stories, The White Road . Promotion over, folks - though it has actually been more than just that, an opportunity for some in-depth discussion about the nature of fiction, the writing process and the writing life.

Prose fiction v drama and adaptation: new leg of my virtual book tour

The penultimate leg of my virtual book tour, Around the Edges of the World, is now up. Crime-thriller writer Debi Alper asks me about the different processes in writing prose fiction and drama, and about the special problems of adapting one's own work from the first of these forms to the second.

Literary Lenses, Writing Jumpers and a Prize Draw: my Virtual Book Tour

For someone so keen in theory on separating the work from the person of the writer, I am revealing a ridiculous amount of stuff on my virtual book tour: this week, on dovegreyreader scribbles, I even talk about my ruddy writing jumper! I'm beginning to think it's a joke, my having these principles...

We do also however talk about a more serious matter: whether short stories are 'miniatures' concentrating microscopically on the minute details of life, or whether they are something much more potentially dynamic and less cosy, capable of telescopically encompassing huge themes.

And this week there's a prize draw: a free copy of Balancing on the Edge of the World to each of three winners who leave their names in the comments section.

Fact versus Fiction

Today the Bitch abandons her principles. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my arguments against biographical readings of fiction, and as a writer in the past I've avoided discussions about the real-life triggers or 'components' of my fiction as reductive and leading to mistaken biographical readings of my work as a whole. Many of the questions of my virtual book tour, however, have centred on the writing process, so it's sometimes been hard to avoid.

This week the question has arisen: precisely HOW do I turn a real-life incident in to a fiction?, and I have had to bite the bullet.

My Virtual Book Tour: Stealing Stories and the Literary Dinner from Hell.

The latest leg of my virtual book tour is now up on the blog of novelist Sarah Salway, whose own excellent collection of stories, Leading the Dance, I wrote about here.

Discussed are the way so-called short stories can encompass huge themes, and whether or not stories can be 'stolen'. I also comment on our current literary climate by describing my idea of the literary dinner from hell.

You can get to it here.

John Updike in My Headspace.

Apologies for not getting to this blog so much at the moment: just now my virtual book tour seems to have replaced it as the thing which takes up more (and the wrong kind of) head-space than is decent for someone who's supposed to be also immersed in a fiction project.

A quick thought instead: I've been less than positive about John Updike's novels now and then, but this week I have kept remembering how, when I was around fourteen, I kept getting Rabbit, Run out of the local library, and reading it over and over... As I've said already this week on my other blog (where I don't have to think so hard), you can be surprised sometimes about your own influences.

Meanwhile, Dan Green, who never lets up on the intellectual front, offers us two views of the future of fiction in the digital age, a pessimistic prophecy and his own more optimistic prediction.

My Virtual Book Tour

The latest leg of my Cyclone virtual book tour for Balancing on the Edge of the World is on Keeper of the Snails, the blog of novelist Clare Dudman. Discussed are my use of a child's perspective in my fiction and the possibilities of child narrators in fiction in general, the extent to which I use people and settings from life and the way in which acting relates to writing, among other things.

As a writer I'm finding this book tour an instructive and fulfilling process, because of the variety of response to my work and also the opportunity to talk about it in such depth, as I discuss in greater detail on my other blog today.

My Virtual Book Tour: Experiment Versus Saleability Discussed with Scott Pack

Scott Pack, publisher and former chief fiction buyer for Waterstones, hosts my virtual book tour this week and gets me talking about experimentation versus the need to please readers, and about the effect the pressures of the market have had on my writing.

My Virtual Book Tour: The Writing Process

My virtual book tour kicks off today on Barbara's Bleeuugh, where, taking her cue from a comment by Anne Enright about her own writing process, Irish poet Barbara Smith asks me about mine.