A bibliophile's dream

Last week, my twincess Irene & I languished in the devastation of celebrated our 29th birthday.

I'm not one to accept growing old(er) gracefully. I live in denial. I turned 25 last week, OK?

To soften the blow, Colin got me the best birthday gift my geeky little heart could ever wish for. I was taken to my favourite place in the world, Voltaire & Rousseau, and given free rein.

Free rein in this place!

4 carrier bags later, we were home, and I was delirious with happiness.

Here's the list, in all its stunning entirety:

• Ulysses - James Joyce
• Cal - Bernard MacLaverty
• The Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith
• Red Dust Road - Jackie Kay
• White Teeth - Zadie Smith
• Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
• Pulp - Charles Bukowski
• Not Not While The Giro - James Kelman
• The Acid House - Irvine Welsh
• Moments of Being - Virginia Woolf
• Any Human Heart - William Boyd
• Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord - Louis deBernieres
• Creative Writing (Pocket Essentials) - Neil Nixon
• The Peppered Moth - Margaret Drabble

With all this joy comes a great dilemma... in which order should I read the beauties? I'm slightly obsessed with Irvine Welsh at the moment and have started on The Acid House... I'm thinking James Kelman next. Have you got a favourite amongst them all?

Just when I thought I was all-booked-out for the immediate future, I received this lovely tweet from my writerly friend, Paul Forrester (be sure to follow him on Twitter):

Wayne & Maria were having their own book clear-outs, so I jumped at the chance! I came in to work to find this wee cracker on my desk:

I can't wait to read it, especially as I'm rewriting some of The Novel and about to embark on some serious editing.

I'm experimenting with close (third person) narration and took an extract of my latest attempt into writers group on Thursday. On the whole it was positive, although it clanged with a few people. I'm going to continue with it, though, I feel like I've got some momentum going at last!

How are you all getting on?

Take care
Catherine x ◦

A bibliophile's dream

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Gustave Flaubert

Helloooooo, how are you all getting on?

To supplement my lovely writers group, I enrolled in a writing class at Glasgow Uni, taught by Alan McMunnigall. It's great. Every Tuesday, I go along and we critique a couple of student pieces and focus on various techniques used in writing. The one I'm particularly interested in is “close narration”, which is what I use in my novel. Alan recommended this book to us:

There are two chapters on Gustave Flaubert, whom Wood thinks novelists should thank for modern narrative the way poets should thank spring! To this end, I downloaded Madame Bovary (free on the Kindle, by the way), and found it a thoroughly enjoyable read.

My novel rewrite is sitting at 67,260 words. I'm perilously close to where I want to be (compared to where I was, at least. I'm under no illusion as to how much work still needs to be done). I'm keen to impose what I've learned in class, but also hesitant in case it ends up reading like a cluster of creative writing exercises. As long as I let my characters continue to do the talking, I'm hopeful it will read well.

Meanwhile, I've been gladly, irrationally distracting myself with short stories, writing class and even my food blog, in some kind of Bampot drill in avoidance. I'm currently reading “A Disaffection”, by James Kelman and this passage sums me up to a T:

'But there was little to trust in reason. Fuck that for a racket. A method of approaching the thing, perhaps, was to say he had been subconsciously avoiding all thought on the subject because of a growing awareness that it could prove momentous, all too fucking momentous.'

In other words, I'm shiting myself about what to do with it once it's all done, dusted and wrapped up in a bow, ready to be subject to other people's scrutiny. I'm not one to take the nip at a critique, I promise you I'm not. But this... this piece on its third rewrite has been the work of many a weekend, lunch break, spare hour and post-work library trip for over a year. I'm filled with the crippling self-doubt and paranoia you'd expect any author to have at this stage.

On a lighter note, I've been obsessed with the New Yorker Fiction podcast series of late. Have you heard it? An author reads the work of another author and they discuss the work with the New Yorker fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. I thoroughly recommend the following podcasts: 

• Roddy Doyle reading "Christmas Eve", by Maeve Brennan
• Monica Ali reading Joshua Ferris's story "The Dinner Party"
• David Means reading "Chef's House" by Raymond Carver

You. Are. Welcome.

So what's new with you? Give me all your gossip.

Take care

Catherine x

◦

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.