A quiet sort of working day. The Gentleman Friend went into the office for much of the day so I had the flat to myself and later wento to a cafe for the better intenret. The internet in the flat is usually ok for browsing and downloading, but even attaching a 30kb document to an […]
Writing Asian (not Asian-American)
I read an interesting interview with Filipina Isabel Yap. To begin with the standard American voice dominated a great deal of discourse. This is followed by diverse voices, but they remain in an American context: the concerns of Asian-Americans (or South Asian Americans, since in America ‘Asian’ refers to people with epicanthic folds), which feels […]
Trouble with an astrolabe
The ending to ‘The Astrolabe’ remains unsatisfying. Usually I’m quite good at final scenes, but it occurs to me this is because they are often the first thing that comes to me, whereas with this I didn’t have an ending before I began. I read Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West last night, and that clearly suffered […]
Ending
I redid much of The Astrolabe today and am generally happy if not enthusiastic about it. The one major bit that remains is the very ending. I know where it finishes and what I would like to convey but it’s not particularly striking or interesting, and perhaps a bit abrupt. Hopefully it’ll just come to […]
Finally finished
I sent off the report last night and overslept by an hour this morning. The day was spent cleaning and tidying, with a brief pointless trip to the post office where I couldn’t get the label printer to work and so flounced back. This turned out to be for the best, though, as instead I […]
Diverging paths
Perhaps I should have been a hiphop editor. I seem to have the knack.
Animal dreams
Two vivid animal dreams over the past few nights. In one, I was to ride around a meadow on a horse, but get back inside before the wolf attacked. The horse’s back was very vivid indeed. On one circuit as I was at the far end of the meadow I looked up to see a […]
A seed to fruition
A seed of a story suddenly came to fruition today and I have been writing all morning. I hold the shape of it in my mind. There is not much of a plot – perhaps I should abandon stories with plots as that is not my strength – but I hope it is interesting nonetheless. […]
Duck rice
The GF is off to Dhaka for a week, but we had time for a quick lunch of duck rice from Kenny Hill. Quick in eating, but it actually took about an hour to arrive. Had he not had a flight to catch it would have been worth the wait; it was delicious and I […]
Hard going
After yesterday’s thoughts about Rufa Rujab I did a good lot of outlining. I’m not sure I actually work well with outlining, but this is a plot driven story unlike those posted on the website, so I should know where it’s going and what needs to be done to make it more compelling than it […]