Saturday, 1 May 2010

vintage saturn's day

Today I have started Richard Ellmann's huge biography of James Joyce. On the flyleaf there is a portrait of the great man by the Italian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. It is a strange concatination of thin, straight lines and a large giddy spiral. I mentioned it to a neighbour and dear friend when I bumped into her in the street. She was familiar with Brancusi, sophisticated creature that she is, but had not seen the portrait in question. I said I'd pop round later with it. En passant, her delightful husband, who was accompanying her, asked if we'd finished the kitchen yet. I replied that it only remained to put the pictures back on the walls for the job to be done.
"Well, if you'd like me to come round with my power tool and drill into those lovely virgin walls for you, I'd be delighted"
In fact this is exactly what I had hoped he was going to say, and I felt a big surge of relief when I realized I might be spared the task. They're such wonderful people, these two.

This afternoon I have spent some time thinking about making one of my short stories into a novella- 25,000 words from about 12,500. Informed people are telling me 12,000 words just isn't a sexy length from the publisher's point of view. And as I thought it through, a number of quite good ideas came to me. So it is decided. I will add a "2nd chapter", spending two whole days with our hero rather than just the one as it stands at present. This feels good. It'll certainly be something to do while my wife is away in the Near East next week.

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