Harlem-born jazz singer and writer Sandi Russell talks about her novel, COLOR, published this month 1. What was the inspiration behind COLOR? When my parents retired, they moved from New York City to the area near Jamestown, Virginia, where my mother’s people had been living since before the arrival of the English settlers in the 17th Century. That area …
What writers can learn from the Olympic games
Despite all I feel about the cost of hosting the Olympic games in London this summer (siphoning funds that could, in my view, have been put to much better use), I have to confess to finding the dawn-to-dusk media coverage not only impossible to boycott, but also on occasion compelling. For example, women’s archery. Amazon-like contestants raise their bows, release …
How to write well
This month I contributed a short article to one of the Arvon Writing Guides. Here, ahead of publication, are my top tips for writing. They are compiled from years of trial and error. I’d love to hear yours…. Do leave a comment in the box below. Never wait for inspiration. This may come – but it will have more chance …
Displacement before writing
Why is it so difficult to start a piece of writing? This week I cleared space to begin working on a new novel but for some reason I have managed to fritter away the time, persuading myself that I really should send that reference/keep on top of my inbox/clean out the fridge/take that picture I’ve had since Christmas to the …
Weaving
Earlier this month I visited the Gobelins in Paris, where tapestries and carpets are still made by hand using techniques that have hardly changed over centuries. After the history-for-tourists preamble by our guide we were taken on a tour of the workshops. There was something mesmeric about the row of weavers working with only the simplest of tools: a shuttle …
Public and private
This month took me to New York for the US launch of Vanessa and Virginia. While I was there I contributed to a round table discussion about Virginia Woolf. The other panelists included Ruth Gruber, who wrote the first Ph. D. on Virginia Woolf in the 1930s. Ruth (now 97) described tea with Virginia and Leonard Woolf in their London …