Meghan Ward wrote an interesting post the other day about how she works, both as a writer and a book editor. It’s not my exact working method, but then a big part of the challenge of this business is finding what works for you, not hearing what works for others and trying to emulate it. I suspect the smart approach is to pick and choose the bits that fit.

One of Meghan’s ideas in particular really doesn’t work for  me. She highly recommends a couple of pieces of software that will forcibly close your Internet connection, ensuring you focus on nothing but writing, and never Twitter of Facebook, email or anything else on the web.

Couldn’t do that for a moment. Wouldn’t do it either. Oh no.

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Tags: Writing

Confession: one of my bad habits is eavesdropping. If someone’s having an interesting conversation within earshot, so loud that you can’t help but listen, I’m inclined to tune in. It’s amazing what you hear.

The other evening I was sitting minding my own business when a bunch of people walked in and started discussing publishing. How could I not listen, huh? And my was it interesting indeed. Because one of these people wasn’t just very proud of himself because he was an author. He was full of it because he was a publisher too. A publisher of himself.

So how did he feel about the whole thing?

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Tags: Technology, Writing

I was talking about the odd business of naming characters earlier this week. It seems to me I ought to mention one other related curiosity of this strange trade: naming authors. Do you write under your own name? Under a pseudonym? Or both?

I still get people who sidle up to me at events and conventions and ask, usually in a lowered voice, ‘Is that your real name?’

Well yes, sir. Yes it is. Would I make it up? It never occurred to me to try to think up some sexy, snazzy fake name to write under. The one I’ve got worked fine for a bunch of newspapers from the Sunday Times to the Independent. Why find a new one? Here are some of the reasons you will find out there…

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Tags: Writing

Venice in February - better weather next time?

Don’t get all huffy on me, but yesterday I booked myself into Venice for another week — the last week there — working on the new book. I know everyone thinks this life is one long junket, but trust me it isn’t. This book is set in Venice, and the first two visits for it took place in January and February when the city was bitterly cold and in some ways quite difficult.

I’m sure it will be a bit warmer by the time I get back there in May. But it’s worth putting down exactly why I’m heading back there because there are a couple of important points that need to be made.

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Tags: Travel, Venice, Writing

Here’s a piece of sheer cinematic beauty — a short movie of New York made using a technique known as ’tilt shift’ that turns the city into a kind of toyland seen from the point of view of a giant. Please don’t watch it embedded in this page. Follow the link to Vimeo, choose HD then hit full screen and be amazed.

Even more amazing is the way the filmmaker Sam O’Hare put the thing together. You can read the details here but in a nutshell:

• He shot 35,000 still pictures using a Nikon digital still camera attached to a simple Gorillapod, the same kind of clingy portable tripod device I use to much less effect for night scenes in Venice
• He then processed using techniques I can’t begin to understand, only to end up with something that looks incredibly natural, not the kind of over-worked CGI effect that seems to fill the cinema these days.

Mr O’ Hare: I am in awe. Please someone: sign this guy up for something big.

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

Tags: Film, Technology