Category Archives: Writing

Rules for Writing

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lee

I’m trying to write something for my Substack, which I haven’t updated in months, and it’s got me realising how much I still have to learn about the business of writing. I’m reading Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and thinking … Continue reading →

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Solitude and Struggle

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Lee

Haven’t blogged for a while. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write, why write, why share what I write. I write almost every day and I know at least why I do that: it’s for myself, to get my … Continue reading →

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A Cigar is Just a Cigar

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Lee

On the “magic mountain,” what once seemed serious to you will become trivial. Death, for example: Joachim thinks that illness and death might “just be a sort of loafing about” and nothing really to worry about. We’re born, we live … Continue reading →

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On Poe and Writing with Purpose

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Lee

H.P. Lovecraft said the genius of Edgar Allan Poe was that he expressed human sensations the way they really are. The sensations he was interested in describing were those of pain, decay, and terror. Poe was carrying out a scientific … Continue reading →

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Friday, 21st February 1997

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Lee

Besides getting his toilet fixed by a man called “Dirty Dave,” William Burroughs spent the day reading Asylum by Patrick McGrath. It’s been a long time since I read that book. I remember I enjoyed it but little more. What … Continue reading →

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How Wrong We Are

Posted on May 16, 2022 by Lee

I’ve been reading Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling. Aspiring writers might want to read the book in full, but here’s some ideas I found interesting: Stories are about change. In other words: something happens. The best stories gradually transform … Continue reading →

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The Imperfection of Henry Miller

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Lee

Henry Miller has made a vow not to alter a line of what he writes because perfection is no longer his object. He wants to get to know his own mind, with all its faults and weaknesses, and share with … Continue reading →

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A Life for Wandering Through

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Lee

Paris in the 1930s was a place where you could simply be an artist. It didn’t matter if you produced any significant work or not. For example, Henry Miller tells us that an acquaintance of his, called Sylvester, will never … Continue reading →

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Zipporah

Posted on May 19, 2021 by Lee

Life into art: taking what you find, a smokestack or a button, and finding what is abstract in it, and thereby transmuting it into art. Miller, of course, the great example. Even in a button you can find the stuff … Continue reading →

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You must be ecstatic

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lee

In The Night Manager, Madame Latulipe asks Jonathan if he is in love. “Not that I am aware, madame,” he replies. “You are unhappy? You are lonely?” “I am blissfully content.” “But to be content is not enough! You must … Continue reading →

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