In Person
Monday, December 30, 2002
After Christmas is quite a delirious time. I'm never quite sure what to do. I've cleared up all the Christmas cards. I would quite like to live in a white box for a while. It's a good time for reading. This Christmas I read Jonathon Coe's The Rotter's Club, which I'd started before and lost interest. This time I ploughed on, and I really enjoyed it. Books are often like that I suppose. There's a right moment for each story. Anyway the Rotter's Club is all about the seventies and reel to reel tape recorders, and caring about politics. I was always walking about with a banner in the seventies even when I was about twelve. The only thing about it is I felt there were several unanswred questions which I think Coe intends to answer in the sequel, but which I find I can't stop thinking about now. I don't really like sequels.
Then I read Jackie Kay's Straw Girl, her first book for children. I loved it. It's full of sweet smelling cows and suffering and bravery. It's a fantastic read, and I'm going to give it to every child I know. Then, still feeling childlike, I read The Masters of The Slavery, which is the second book in a trilogy by William Nicholson. Last Christmas I read The Wind Singer. I liked the first book better. This one is rather war like, and reminded me of Gladiator, which he also wrote. I'm not really an action/fighting-loving sort of reader. His books are full of interesting ideas though, about power and societies etc. What shall I read now? A L Kennedy perhaps. Then I think I'll read Middlemarch. And lots of poetry.
I hope all my diary readers had a lovely time. I wonder what 2003 will bring? I'm looking forward to a peaceful writing year and hoping they'll be no wars, internally or externally or anywhere really.Posted by julia @ 04:16 PM GMT
Thursday, December 19, 2002
This year I am sending cards telepathically to many friends....here it comes....ZIP!
I have finished everything and now I'm going off on holiday to a house by the sea. I hope everyone who visits this site has a brilliant time at Christmas, and let's hope there's no wars in 2003.
best wishes and glittery thoughts. JuliaPosted by julia @ 11:51 AM GMT
Monday, December 16, 2002
So it's nearly Christmas. In my family we rent a house, so it's a bit like a holiday, and no one has a monopoly over the kitchen arrangements. Looks like I've finished everything I meant to finish, and it's a peculiarly neat year in that respect. I hope everyone who reads this diary has a lovely Christmas! I'll write more before I go, but now I've got to get in a taxi!
Posted by julia @ 03:21 PM GMT
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Days merge at the moment. Tuesday feels like Saturday. Shops are open too late, and it's alright to drink sherry at ten in the morning. I am trying to keep up a routine in all this chaos, plodding to my room every day despite all the tinsel and merry making. Sometimes it seems more orderly to exist in a made up world rather than a real one, especially when the real one is so unruly. At least in my made up world I can have sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Characters generally do what I tell them to. You never know these days when some drunken office worker is going to bump into you in the street. And the streets in the real world are much colder than in my made up one.
Actually, I haven't been going out much, although I did have a sentimental hour hanging things on the artificial Christmas tree. It has less branches than it used to, but I like the way it is recycled over and over again. Soon it will just be a plastic stand and a stalk.
I hope you are all feeling mulled.Posted by julia @ 11:38 AM GMT
Monday, December 2, 2002
I'm working on the novel all the time now. Attachments has finished its run at Live Theatre. It was a very happy production, and I'm sorry it's finished. When writing a novel there is very little you can say about it. Each day you have to step into a made-up world full of pretend people that you feel you know better than many of your friends. Tomorrow I'm visiting a prison so I can get some detail; it might only be a small paragraph, but I think it's worth the trip.
I must say, I do sometimes feel as if writing novels is rather like archeology in that you unearth the novel from some part of yourself. This novel is not at all autobiographical, but it feels very close to me, and I am very fond of the people in it. I wouldn't be surprised if I met them one day on the bus!
I went to a book launch last Thursday for the poets Peter Mortimer and Michael Standen. There was a good crowd there. The singer Katherine Zeserson 'sang' one of Peter's poems beautifully. Peter's book 'I Married the Angel of The North' was published by Five Leaves Press, and Michael's 'Gifts of Egypt' was produced by Shoestring Press. Both books look fantastic. Hoorah for the Small Press, and for Cannongate and Flambard whose publications have both been on major shortlists. The more that Waterstones seems to only stock about twenty best sellers the more important these eclectic, passion run presses are. My own press, Diamond Twig, is tiny but our writers are really like diamonds and our books are very beautiful and collectable. I hope everyone who reads this diary buys books from small presses. Everyone should have at least one they support.
Posted by julia @ 10:37 AM GMT
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