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When you get good at dialogue all your characters begin to sound the same. You know what people as a whole realistically say. You’ve cut out As-You-Know-Bobisms and Repeat-the-Nameisms. You write dialogue quickly and smoothly. But this familiarity means you also have shortcuts you’ve learned through your fingers over the years — my muscle memory […]
March 8, 2013
I met a group of people online who are now my critique group and one of them is kind of a hipster, even though she distances herself from that. She introduced me to Tao Lin and what’s-her-name and I have to wait a minute to finish this thought because I’m going to go look it […]
January 20, 2013
When I was in college, my stepmother crushed a cat’s skull with a hammer. He was my father’s cat, and his name was Harvey. My dad went on walks with Harvey through the long grass in the land behind their house. He was a beautiful, sweet, intelligent cat. I held him on my lap as […]
December 2, 2012
Before I saw Skyfall I happened to read this post [edit: alas, link is gone] about it by my favourite ecrivante roué (and source of many things feminist) Sarah McCarry. I didn’t think much of it – surely Sarah’s claim that a pretty woman is killed just to make a joke about whiskey was somewhat exaggerated? […]
October 30, 2012
Here is what I was listening to: Here is what I wrote (excerpt from work-in-progress Ugly Ink): I sit, flipping a coin, thumbnail to thumbnail, in the moonlight. As it arcs through the air it leaves a slime-trail of winking dew, points straight to where it will land and so I can catch it—again, over […]
October 23, 2012
In linguistics it is generally considered to be the case that each participant in a conversation will assume a particular set of things about every other participant. To put it more simply: we expect things from the people we talk to. A useful formulation of this “cooperative principle” of conversation is called “Grice’s conversational maxims”, […]
September 21, 2012
Part One is here, and is about me. I’ve split this into two so practical readers don’t have to slog through a personal post. (N.B. from the future: I’m represented by an excellent agency. Decision made.) ~~~ Idea I provide my fiction for free, including print copies. I hire artists and other professionals necessary to […]
September 21, 2012
Part Two is here if you want to read about the donation model and not introspection. (N.B. from the future: I’m repped by a fab agency. Decision made.) ~~~ It’s none of your business where my writing is on the path to publication, but I feel like sharing. At the moment, I’m just another frustrated artist […]
September 17, 2012
I started writing a story on the blog a few weeks ago, about strange soporific trees. It’s now plotted, and will most likely be my next attempt at a novel. It’s as-yet untitled. I’ve included the above painting in this post because she looks just like I pictured Eleanor. The first chapter appears below. Some further […]
September 16, 2012
Existing (carried over from previous post) There was a tree, in our woods, that would send you to sleep. We learnt to cultivate it – my mother’s family – to crossbreed it with oaks so the trunks grow strong and knotted. The original we cut down decades ago. A mimeograph of it hangs in the front hall; my […]
not very alice 
March 14, 2013
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