“Our work will at least have distracted us…it will have given us a sense of mastery, it will have made us respectably tired, it will have put food on the table. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.” — Alain de Botton, The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work It was a week of … Read More
“Brightly coloured beach huts are an essential part of the British coast. They go together with ice creams, sandcastles and the unreliable British weather to form part of our experience of summer by the seaside.” — Seasidehistory.co.uk Catching the bus for Southwold, I am distinctly aware of being the youngest on board. By about four … Read More
“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.” — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird I’ve recently taken to comparing travel within the UK to Internet dating. It’s one thing to spend a few hours getting your itinerary together–buying regional train … Read More
“This is a new kind of adventure. I want to capture a sense of remoteness and send it back home. It’s about traveling in real time with the online community in my backpack, connecting travelers everywhere to my footsteps.” — Andrew Evans on “Where’s Andrew,” his new project with National Geographic After we settled in with … Read More
“NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month.” As confused as I was by that crazy jumble of … Read More
“A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.” — Emily Dickinson I feel the way about reading my writing aloud to others as I do about musicals. I love music, I love movies (or plays), but never the twain shall meet. Similarly, I love writing … Read More
“A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes is certain for those who are friends.” — Richard Bach It’s been almost two years since I went to Paris. As I wasn’t working during my last few weeks in London, the subsidized trip offered by the International Student … Read More
“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” — Anna Quindlen If there’s one thing my university has been great for so far is the number of extracurricular opportunities there are–readings, “Writers in Context” talks, masterclasses, workshops–you name … Read More
“Conurbation: noun–an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of a central city.” I learned a new word yesterday: conurbation. It’s one of those words that sounds tricky, but when broken down to its roots actually makes a lot of sense: the Latin words con, “together,” and urbs, “city,” combined … Read More
“In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.” — George Orwell Theory. The word has a ring of the classroom about it–the act of learning and not doing. That’s how the Greeks themselves defined it–the word theoria meaning “a looking at, viewing, beholding”–and as Wikipedia says, it’s more about … Read More