... and now I'm otherwise engaged for a few days, and may not be able to moderate comments or post. Funny how quickly you get addicted, not least to everyone's encouraging and interested comments so far. Talk soon. Read more →

I've been reading Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer and it's immediately joined my short list of the 'How to Write books' worth bothering with: the ones that don't tell you how to write. Pam Johnson recommended it to me; Pam's a novelist and poet who also teaches on the Creative Writing MA at Goldsmiths. We met to talk blogging but when Pam says a book really tackles the core issues of what good writers do, I listen. The next day I dropped in on one of my local indie bookshops and there it was on the shelf. I escaped,... Read more →

Hello, and welcome to This Itch of Writing (and thanks to John Donne for the title). I wasn't going to start a blog, though so many writers have, because I spend quite enough time on the computer and online as it is. But one of the drawbacks of being a novelist is that your big writing project - however excited you are about it - takes so darned long. For months and years you're immersed in particular voices and places and times and ideas. And it's all very well being up to your neck in such rich and rare substances,... Read more →