Writing Blog
Wishing luck to all you NaNoers!
Once again we’ve reached November, the month where crazy writers around the world embark in Marathon writing sessions under the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. The goal? To write 50,000 words of a novel during the month, and to do so by shutting down your internal editor and allowing yourself to be overtaken…
Read MoreAlice Munro on small town stories
“The writers of the American South were the first writers who really moved me because they showed me that you could write about small towns, rural people, and that kind of life I knew very well.” Alice Munro I like this quote from short story writer Alice Munro. And if anyone knows how to tell…
Read MoreI love Provence’s Le Bleuet bookstore
Wow – I’ve found my my new favorite bookstore in France! We were on holiday in the Luberon valley of France this summer when we were told we had to stop off at the Bleuet bookstore in the charming little town of Banon. We were visiting towns around the region, and so when we stopped…
Read More(Feels like) Summer reading: Americanah
Okay, this weekend I had to take my son to the beach for a fun track and field workout session for him, but it also turned out to be a wonderful, relive-the-summer day for me. At Ostia, the beach nearest Rome, the massive summer crowds were gone, but the weather was almost as gorgeous as…
Read MoreBravo, Kazuo Ishiguro!
To be frank, after last year’s nomination of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan as Nobel Laureate for Literature left me rather annoyed, I wasn’t expecting much to emerge from Stockholm this year. So was I ever so pleasantly surprised to hear that this year’s honor was awarded to fabulously talented and diverse Japanese-English novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. My…
Read MoreRereading high school favorites…
With my oldest son in high school, I’ve enjoyed some of the ‘joys’ of returning to some of the old Classics I haven’t read since my own (long, long ago) high school days. Of course, many classics I reread regularly on my own, but strangely enough, for some others I apparently need a little push.…
Read MoreDo you ever need a vacation from the novel you’re reading?
My true problem with reading is that I very rarely give up on a novel. It’s the same mantra I preach to my kids (with varying levels of success). However, sometimes it pays off. My kids’ generation are (sadly?) used to novels that read more like action movies – dumping them in the action in…
Read MoreMy thoughts will be in Matera for the Women’s Fiction Festival!
I’ve spent many a happy weekend at the Matera Women’s Fiction Festival in the spectacular, southern Italian “cave” town of Matera. After a one year hiatus, the Festival will take place once again at the end of this month, but sadly without me. My inability to attend this year doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking…
Read MoreBook review: Wake
Oddly, I’d had this book on my shelf for some time. I remembered it only after picking it up in French in a French bookstore and being drawn in by the story and the excellent blurbs – before realizing I shouldn’t buy it because I had the original version back home. : ) This novel…
Read MoreWise words (learned on holidays) to face the ‘rientro’
In Italian it’s called the ‘rientro’. In French the ‘rentrée’. In America, where holidays are so stingy – if you’re allowed to take them at all – I doubt the term exists at all. If it did, it would be called ‘The Return’. Back when I worked in my own country, I wasn’t familiar with…
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