Having teased you all with some big news that I thought I was going to be able to talk about this week… I can’t… so you will have to wait. Maybe next week.
This week I am off up to Hebden Bridge to do another residential Arvon course. I did one last December down at Totleigh Barton (with the lovely Sharlene Teo and Michael Donkor). This time round the tutors are Julia Armfield and Leone Ross, and I’m really looking forward to working with them. I haven’t read any of Leone’s work (yet), but I have read both Salt Slow and Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia and absolutely loved them.
We went to see Wes Anderson’s latest, Asteroid City and I don’t quite know what to make of it. It’s probably not in my top three Wes Anderson movies, which is slightly odd as my top three Wes Anderson movies are mostly the ones that people don’t rate highly (Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch, and The Life Aquatic for the record – although I also love Isle of Dogs). Asteroid City comes closest to “Wes Anderson movie that I wouldn’t bother watching again”, although I suspect that it would benefit from a second viewing. The layers of play within movie made me think of what a Christopher Nolan script directed by Wes Anderson would be like. Not totally sold.
Things I have been reading
Mostly I have been working my way through Tim Lott’s Yes! No! But wait! which is a pretty neat book on exactly the part of writing that I most struggle with: plotting, and how it relates to character. I am mostly what Matt Gemmell calls a pantser – I start writing and see where it goes – which means I get to a point in a piece of work and have no idea where to go with it next. It’s probably why I prefer writing short-form fiction to long-form: the plot is easy and very self-contained when you’re writing something short. Tim’s book is definitely helping cure me of that. A bit. Maybe. Perhaps that’s something I’ll be working on next week.
Things I have been writing
Does my latenote from last Monday count? Other than that, I haven’t written much – which is mostly down to the secret thing that I can’t talk about (and you are going to be really disappointed with when I tell you about it, because it’s really not as exciting as it sounds).
