In Person
Thursday, January 30, 2003
So I went to London, and sat watching About Schmidt in Covent Garden in the afternoon. In my quest for relaxation it seems that sitting in cinemas is a good wheeze, especially if one is being paid for it. The film was fantastic. I never really liked Jack Nicholson that much, but he's really good in this film. It's so well written. Then I went to Broadcasting House and was quickly ushered into a recording studio, where I did my best to have opinions. It's very hard to converse in those situations. The other participants made statements that sounded very well thought out. I seemed to dart into the discussion with quick quips. Still it was good to have all these things to think about in January, and it was all over quite quickly.
I met my agent and realised that the new novel comes out in June! Usually books take years to reach the shelves, so that you've just about forgotten them by the time everyone wants to ask you questions. June will be a lovely time for a book to blossom.
Now I'm immersed in short plays/stories for Woman's Hour. There's always a deadline on the horizon.Posted by julia @ 10:20 AM GMT
Thursday, January 23, 2003
January seems rather busy. I'm never sure if being busy is a good thing. I try hard to relax, and I must have tried just about every form of complimentary medicine that exists. My main form of relaxation at the moment is looking at brochures of spas and amazing hotels, though I rarely go to any of them. I have acupuncture too. I find it really works. And I have an awful lot of baths at this time of year. But I'm still too hyperactive and find it very hard to do nothing. I think it's quite an art.
What I like best is going to places where I have no domestic responsibility. I'd be happy writing in a hotel!
This weekend I'm going to London to take part in Front Row, or maybe it's called Saturday Review on Radio Four. I'm looking forward to opining on various films and books. I've been listening to Lou Reed's latest cd, which I really like. He's quite a role model for the older rock star I think...still very original.
Otherwise, I'm reading Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and enjoying it immensely.
More later...Posted by julia @ 06:16 PM GMT
Friday, January 17, 2003
In my last entry I spelt epithany wrong...but am I spelling it right now?I am filled with that vague uneducated feeling. I'm learning how to spell all the time. This is what happens when you leave school at fifteen and think you know everything. I am always trying to catch up. I really enjoyed doing an MA because I got MARKS for writing, and this is something you never get in the real world. I also found that I could enjoy writing essays and that it wasn't so difficult as scholary types like to make out. I am rather missing being educated, and fancy doing another course. For years I felt outside the education system. I grew up in an atmosphere of learning, in the centre of a public school where my father taught. There were boys with gowns everywhere, flapping about, knowing everything. As a teenager I slouched amongst them, chewing gum, trying to be streetwise, which I wasn't. I went to art college in the end, where it didn't matter if you couldn't do joined up writing, and oddly, that's when I started wanting to be a writer.
I'm about to do loads of readings. For the past year or two I haven't been doing any readings at all, partly because of health and fears of having a funny turn somewhere like Barrow in Furness, and also because I've been doing so much theatre and actors can read my words so much better than I can. But it's about to start all over again, as I've got loads of poetry gigs now I have a new collection to read from...oh eek...it's very exposing reading poetry, like tearing oneself apart in public. And I get a bizarre stammer on words beginning with M and A...and wierdly these new poems are choc a bloc with such words. What was I thinking? I'll probably find myself reading from the novel too later in the year..at least with prose if you see a tricky word coming you can change the sentence...but you can't do that with poems. The answer might be to sing the poems, rather than speak them...like Gareth Gates! Oh well...if I can't stand the heat I had better leave the kitchen.
I'm going to be on Front Row...or that other Radio Four review programme. We're recording on 24th Jan, so it will be sometime after that. I'll put it on the website. That will be fun..luckily I don't stammer on the radio!Posted by julia @ 01:10 PM GMT
Monday, January 6, 2003
Epiphany. When everything comes together. In a short story it's the most exciting bit, when all the fragments of the story come together in an electrifying blaze of ideas. Still, it's a very hard thing to explain. I'm not sure novels have the same thing. In a novel it's more like a slow gathering of power as events gather together into one big wave. I'm reading Anita Shreve (have I spelt that right?). It's absolutely gripping...a novel called 'When We Last Met.' It's not my usual cup of tea...a heterosexual love story...but the writing is exquisite, and like all good writing, almost invisible, so that you can really live in the book as you are reading it. It really gathers power and is immensely satisfying to read. Someone gave it to me for Christmas, and now I shall read all her books.
One of my New Year's Res's is to read a new poem everyday, and to listen to what poets are saying. There are so many good ideas in poetry. I'm doing it alphabetically, starting with Armitage, Abse and allnut. I am also going to stop watching crap programmes on tv about success and failure, and abandon mass culture. This year I shall do all my shopping in small independent shops, buy books from small presses, listen to music produced in back rooms, and like the novelist Toby Litt said in the guardian, always put humans before inanimate things like mobile phones, tvs, cars, even nice views.
I'm happily working on the novel, lost in the world of it. I'm also writing some song lyrics. I'm not very good at tunes, but I love working with tune writers.
Posted by julia @ 02:52 PM GMT
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