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- First drafts: allowing the worm to navigate the soils of your mind
- The boy whose butter I ate: writing from the inside out
- All a writer can ask
- Throwing away material without a sense of failure
- What happens when a character’s skirt gets hitched in her knickers?
- Playful child and iron teacher: the two halves of the writer
- It’s an anxious job, pulling out of the comfort zone
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Tag Archives: Gabriela Blandy
The blank page is like a first kiss
I live in the student heart of Oxford. The supermarket is always filled with groups of young twenty year olds, wearing coats over their pyjamas – shopping baskets filled with jumbo bags of pasta. Some of them are discovering each … Continue reading
Posted in Essay, Memoir
Tagged drama, first love, Gabriela Blandy, how to write, Kiss, Oxford, Relationship, the blank page, the writer's voice, the writing process, truth, Writing
35 Comments
When you find yourself in a room with two strangers, having to fake an orgasm, it’s best to leave the country and change your life
I’m in the upper gallery of the Sheldonian Theatre, watching a graduation ceremony take place in Latin. Ad honorem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, the Vice-Chancellor intones, but I’m distracted by the fact that a few hours earlier I had to … Continue reading
Posted in Memoir
Tagged Acting, Audition, Gabriela Blandy, Graduation, how to write, Lisbon Story, Memoir, Mexico, Oxford, Photography, Poetry, Sheldonian Theatre, short story, travelling, Writing
21 Comments
The magical act of returning
The sky is beginning to drop its heavy white. Clumps of fog tumble down from the mountaintops into the valley where the cottage is. I stand by the window with my dad. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to … Continue reading
Posted in History, Memoir
Tagged Adventure, Battle of Camlann, Bedivere, climbing, Excalibur, Gabriela Blandy, happiness, Hiking, how to write, King Arthur, Llyn Ogwen, Memoir, Mexico, North Wales, travelling, Writing, writing advice
25 Comments
What we write about when we write
A sheet of A4 is pinned beside the bar. It hangs loose against the stone wall. There’s an image of a four or five year old in an orange sundress. I notice a plaster at the top of her arm. … Continue reading
Maes Caradoc
For weeks I have been trying to explain to people how I came to be going to an isolated cottage in North Wales for a holiday. It was a friend of my dad’s who told me I had to go … Continue reading
Posted in History, Memoir
Tagged Adventure, Caractacus, Compass, Gabriela Blandy, Hiking, History, Holiday, how to write, Maes Caradoc, Map Reading, Memoir, Nant Ffrancon Valley, North Wales, Silence, Solitude, Writing
28 Comments
A place to write
Daphne du Maurier was five when she first discovered Cornwall. That summer, she had watched as the gardener caught a snake in the grass of her Hampstead home. He nailed it to a tree, standing back to watch it writhe. … Continue reading
Posted in History, Memoir
Tagged advice, Daphne DuMaurier, Gabriela Blandy, History, how to write, Manderley, Memoir, Rebecca, Writing, Writing process
27 Comments
The story of a room
Don’t believe anything you see. This is what the curator says as I enter the Whistler Room at Mottisfont Abbey – a line he repeats as more people come and go. I can hear the pleasure in his voice as … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, History
Tagged advice, Fiction, Gabriela Blandy, History, how to write, Memoir, Mottisfont Abbey, Norah Lindsay, Rex Whistler, Trompe d’oeil, Writing
13 Comments
Lost Belongings
Dan is on the station platform, holding a woman’s handbag. He stops and looks back in the carriage. What’s that? I ask. Someone’s left it, he says. Maybe they’re in the loo, I tell him. I don’t think so. I … Continue reading
Moments that change us
Something happened last week, which made me refer back to the diary I kept when Dan and I were living in Denmark, WA. It was the end of February, 2011. Dan’s mum was staying. I wrote that I was going … Continue reading
Posted in History, Memoir
Tagged Falmouth, Father, Gabriela Blandy, History, how to write, Humphry Davy, Memoir, Penzance, Sailing, Writing, writing advice
8 Comments
Gabriela Blandy - The sense of a journey 