Avoid like the plague
A cliché may be defined as a phrase whose aptness in a particular context when it was first invented has won it such popularity that it has become hackneyed, and is now used without thought in contexts where it is no longer apt. Clichés are notorious enemies of the precise word, and thus are by...
Month-to-month loyalties
I cannot recall a specific moment in which I told myself that I would become a writer. But I know I was twenty, taking a bath in a crappy apartment in Columbus, Ohio, the first time I read something that made me feel the author was writing for me alone. I was reading Joan Didion’s...
Staying home
Joseph Connolly’s comic novels are always written as interior monologue, a writing technique he recently told the Guardian “just falls out of me… I sort of become the person when I am writing in their voice.” So how does he live from day to day deep within his writing chamber? Where are you now? At...
Hailstorm
Siem Sigerius is a maths professor who delights in putting his students straight about coincidence theory. When he sees an image that might depict his adopted daughter on an erotic website, he has to weigh up the probability that she and her photographer boyfriend have started a sideline in porn… The tepid downpour shades the...
At the chopping board
Dibden’s section is sprayed with bits of fruit and crumb and peel. Spilt sauces and dark reductions are clotting like blood. Mint leaves tremble in his hands. His mouth is slack and open, his movements awry. His head folds one way, then the other. There is no use left in him. He is a punchdrunk...
Climbing without a rope
The ‘temporary gentleman’ in the title of Sebastian Barry’s latest novel is an Irishman commissioned into the British Army during the Second World War who looks back on past demons and a tumultuous marriage to the enigmatic beauty who slipped from his grasp. Here’s a slice of his writing day. Where are you now? At...
The conversation
Before my novel The Death of the Poet was published, I was used to experiencing certain sorts of conversation about writing. After all, that’s what I do for a living – talking and writing, I mean. Talking, as in radio; writing, as in novels; talking about writing, as in critical discussion. For a good number...
Notes to self (for sharing)
I’m always wary of sounding bossy when compiling lists of advice. So what follows is a kind of ‘note to self’ which I hope will work for others too. These points generally reflect the times when I’ve gone wrong (based on a ‘learning through mistakes’ principle), as well as some writing touchstones which I suppose...
Portals of discovery
From Out of the City is set in Dublin, Ireland some years from now. The President of the United States is assassinated during a state dinner and while the official account takes hold, an octogenarian named Monk discovers a version of his own, one which involves some people very close to home. This is the...
Weapons of mass diplomacy
Written by a former speechwriter and adviser to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, and set during the run-up to something very like the Iraq conflict, Weapons of Mass Diplomacy is a political satire that gets under the skin of modern politics and diplomatic relations. Published in France as Quai d’Orsay, it won the Grand...
The importance of red sneakers
The award-winning historian and novelist discusses his writing routines and rituals – including a very particular type of footwear – as well as his literary influences, favourites and preferred relaxation methods as he plans a new book on the Romanovs and the final novel in his thriller trilogy set in Stalin’s Moscow. Where are you...
Catching the tap-tap to Cayes de Jacmel
Lucien pulls at bits of broken wood near his sore leg, hoping to hear the hard rattle of plastic. He found two bags of crisps here before, and some sweets. But that was a long time ago now. Two, three days? He’s been down here now, he doesn’t know how long. How do you tell...
