After a few disappointing reads this year, at last a serious novel. I am reading After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell – who has yet to serve up a bad book. The interesting thing is that she does something which as writers we are told not to do – head hopping. She has several point of view in this book and they interchange within chapters separated only by a line. She also changes from third to first person, again withing the same chapter.
It took me a couple of chapters to get my head around it but she has mastery of what she is writing and I am so immersed in the story that I care not. Writing rules are made to be broken and I love it that she has the confidence to bring it off, even with a debut novel.
I am taking a break from writing, having done quite a lot last month. I think I need to take time to rethink aspects of my WIP. I am hoping that a booked walking tour of Norwich next week and a visit to a relevant exhibition at the Royal Academy will help me focus.
I am excited that our village hall will be hosting a talk All About Books in the not too distant future and that I have been invited to participate. I have to come up with some ideas over the next couple of weeks. It may give me the opportunity to set up a local writing group if we can find enough people interested.
Meanwhile our guest suite is coming along. Four months after ordering our new arched bedroom window, it was fitted today (second time lucky as the first didn’t fit) and by the weekend all doors and windows will be installed and the building will be watertight. I am thinking of colour schemes and fabrics now, not my strongest area, so I am going to keep is simple but tasteful.
Rosemary Noble - author page 