Hello! Remember me?
Over this long, hot summer I have occasionally contemplated posting something here. But I have not.
Reader, I have mainly been lying on the sofa grumbling about the weather.
I have not even read very much, because I have joined Twitter and I cannot cope. There is so much information! I have to spend eight hours a day just reading updates from people I don’t know and watching important films of animals doing amusing things! Fortunately, I have no friends except for a bot, so I don’t have to write anything interesting myself.
I am at @hejparry should you wish to say hello because I am far too weedy to introduce myself to anyone.
Although I did read Barchester Towers which I unreservedly recommend to you all despite my being on Team Slope the whole time and thus doomed to disappointment.
(How I spent the summer in my imagination: Claude Monet, La Liseuse (The Reader), 1872; oil on canvas; Walters Art Collection, found here)
I have written some more of my second novel. The first one was objectively bad in every way. This one I hope is going to be an improvement on that low bar. I am now on about draft number five and when I have finished it, it will be akin to most people’s first drafts i.e. still a baggy mess. I keep changing my mind about significant elements and then have to start again. When people describe Important Qualities for a Writer, they don’t usually mention Decisiveness and yet it should be there. I am mostly enjoying the experience and would do more if I could let go of the worry: will this ever be any good? Ultimately, of course, I want it to be read and loved by actual children and so it has to be extremely good.
(I did also bake some cakes with my daughter for her party)
And finally, although I do not watch much television, I did watch Marriage, and I am here to tell you all that all the people who disliked it are Wrong. It is often uncomfortable, but brilliant.
What have you been doing? What can you recommend?