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Pamela Johnson
Interests: When not writing, reading, or teaching Pam is likely to be talking with friends and family, walking or gardening. In London she’s also often out to the theatre, an art gallery, a concert or a literary event. When in Aldeburgh she walks on the beach in all weathers.
Recent Activity
Ive assumed it is Lara Crippa, as credited in the post.
Failure? It’s just another writing opportunity
I picked this image up via a twitter link that led me to the Facebook page of a Lara Crippa. I don’t know who you are, Lara, but if that is your artwork it speaks volumes to me as writer. Amazing, isn’t it, how you can almost glimpse a whole novel in an instant of thought. There’s the vision...
Pamela Johnson added a favorite at Words Unlimited
May 17, 2013
Glad you enjoyed. I saw a review of Jonah Lehrer's book in The New Scientist... it's out later this month...looks good.
Don't be fooled ...
... by your frustration with your current work-in-progress. If you're sitting there thinking 'this novel will never work out' or 'why did I think this image would ever make a poem?' you should be happy. This is the creative process at work. Time to embrace your writer's block. Go and dig the ga...
Well, that's interesting ... the way we choose to reveal our lives and the way we work seems always to be changing.
Ashley Dartnell
Farangi Girl is the remarkable memoir of Goldsmiths creative writing graduate, Ashley Dartnell. In short scenes, intense as any page turning novel, Dartnell charts her extraordinary, chaotic childhood in Iran and Florida. She talks here about writing as pearl diving, shaping memories into a stor...
Yes, and Hockney has so much to say about process in art that makes sense in terms of writing
One Thing At A Time - The Bigger Picture
It's always interesting to reflect on writing by listening in to a practitioner in another art form discuss their creative process. Martin Gayford's interviews with David Hockney are full of gems. For those days when the draft of the next chapter of your novel looks rather too sketchy, conside...
Thanks! Glad you like it!
The T S Eliot Prize Awards Ceremony
To the remarkable Habersdashers’ Hall last night – never seen so much wood panelling and all brand new - for the T S Eliot Prize Awards Ceremony. Chair of this year’s Judges, poet Gillian Clarke, talked of the difficulty of choosing a winner in, 'an exceptional year.' She spoke at some length ab...
Kellie, thanks for this. I seem to be having an extended holiday from WU, nose buried deep in the new novel I'm working on ... Yes, which books to keep, which to pass on? I've just got a Kindle which solves the problem in part but now I think: do I want the physical book or the kindle edition?
Quote of The Week No. 16
“Except by prejudice there is no sentiment in the arts banned from expression and no story that cannot be told. The enchantment is in the feeling and in the telling, and that is all.” So says the narrator, Mia, in Siri Hustvedt's The Summer Without Men, one of the many books I enjoyed in m...
Yes, Mavis - that rush to publish the first collection is to be avoided. It's a tough one though, I think many poets send out a manuscript too early. It's a hard one to judge.
Anne-Marie Fyfe
Poet Anne-Marie Fyfe, organiser of Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour in London for over a decade, former Chair of the Poetry Society, and sought-after workshop leader, has just published her fourth collection, Understudies. She talks here about finding time to write, her busy life in poetry,...
Your last point is well made - commercial pressure - certainly with UK publishers. Let's hope the success of the likes of Strout, Vann and Egan will make them think they're missing a trick!
Thanks for reminding me to check out Jennifer Egan. I'm still catching up after my trip to the States, but I found an interview with her on Radio 4's Open Book, she says interesting things about writing, I plucked a quote from that and have just posted it as the new quote of the week from Egan. The link to the interview should still be live.
Are some writers better in the short form? I'm not sure that has to be so. I'm thoroughly enjoying Colm Toibin's new collection, The Empty Family, each one seems to pack a novel in a few pages, and yet he's had most success with novels.
Book of The Month – March
Easy choice this month – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. This is the portrait of a difficult woman, maths teacher Olive Kitteridge, and of a community, a small coastal town in Maine. But, is it a novel or a collection of short stories? What I love about this book is that it works as both. ...
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look out for the Jennifer Egan. I think this form is really interesting. Been thinking about it a lot since reading David Shield's 'Reality Hunger' - his challenge to novelists - too in thrall to 'plot'. Both Elizabeth strout and, by the sounds of it, Jennifer Egan, are exploring parts of the whole, perhaps with more 'authenticity' so that the cumulative whole feels more rich. Is dramatic story form more convincing over the short form than the longer form of the novel, in terms of the reader feeling in the presence of a lived life rather than a cardboard cut-out? Life is messy and episodically dramatic. Perhaps we readers engage quickly with intensely and authentically rendered incidents and don't mind filling in gaps between? So linked short stories feel more a reflection of the lived life than the novel? I'm still thinking about this, what do you think?
Book of The Month – March
Easy choice this month – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. This is the portrait of a difficult woman, maths teacher Olive Kitteridge, and of a community, a small coastal town in Maine. But, is it a novel or a collection of short stories? What I love about this book is that it works as both. ...
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Mar 15, 2010
Re: [Words Unlimited] Jane submitted a comment to Weekly Writing Workshop Prompt No 4
Nearly out of oranges, the only fruit ...
Weekly Writing Workshop Prompt No 4
Want to know more about weekly workshop? Click here ...
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