How to be modern

Here is some dialogue that you won’t find in Northanger Abbey. 
“I’m glad you liked that Candace Bushnell book I bought you. I saw you updated your status on Facebook. What was it you wrote? Reading One Fifth Avenue is better than going to bed with angry thoughts. I can’t stop reading it. Does that make [...]

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The monstruosity of love

Lanying was nagging me to finish my novel again this morning. She didn’t know that I’d been writing for a few hours while she was asleep. “You have to publish it while the technology is current,” she said. She meant the social networking sites through which the characters get to know one another. “Technology moves [...]

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Keeping me on the strait and narrow

Lanying is getting restless again. “When are you going to finish your novel? I can’t take any more of Edith Wharton or Somerset Maugham. I want something contemporary!”
I’ve been busy painting the house, throwing away years of clutter, shopping for a flat, writing to solicitors. How does she expect me to write a novel too?
So [...]

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How to write a sex scene

I’ve been studying how the novelists I most admire handle sex scenes. There are hundreds of examples to choose from. There also seem to be quite a lot of articles on the internet about this so you’d think modern writers have it easy; they should all be experts by now. 
But, as with every artistic topic, [...]

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Pedro’s vampire story

Pedro Almodóvar has done a vampire story.
It’s true. It’s only a short one but it oozes style. The story crops up in his new film Broken Embraces, which was released in the UK yesterday.
Writer Harry Caine is discussing the story with his manager’s son, Diego. It’s Diego’s story but Harry is helping him develop it.
The [...]

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The lady-killer

Lanying has lost interest in my blog.
“I don’t want to read your blog, I want to read your novel,” she told me. “How is it coming along?”
I’m behind schedule. I’m still revising Chapter 5. She’d like Chapter 5 as it’s about Ernst. I told her what happens in it and she said, “That’s very funny. [...]

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Why I didn’t laugh at Coco

Yesterday we went to see Coco Before Chanel. For once the cinema was full. They even gave us numbered seats, which never happens. Sometimes we sit there and watch a funny film and we are the only ones in the whole cinema who are laughing.
This time Lanying sat at the back and I sat at [...]

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EyeLeash

There’s a scene in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth where two men are talking about masturbation. The conversation struck me as totally fake. I’ve heard a lot of men talking about masturbation but never like that. Maybe it was supposed to be funny, I don’t know. I didn’t find it funny. I found it phoney. I [...]

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The snows of yesteryear

Last week and this week I have been writing about a woman called Greta. I’m finding it really hard because she’s very different from me.
She is an extrovert and she is not very analytical. What she says isn’t always the truth. She says things I would never say and she brushes aside things that I [...]

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A Chinese orchid

Lanying is envious of my blog. I had assumed she wasn’t reading it but she claims to have had a quick look. It’s a good job I didn’t post that article I wrote on Tuesday night then. There are certain things about my novel that I don’t want her to know yet. She knows she’s [...]

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