David Rain's Blog

Thank you to everyone who entered the competition to win a copy of my new book, Volcano Street.

Copies are on the way to the three winners: one from Houston Texas, another from California, and the final one from Perth in Western Australia.

Best wishes,
David

I have a notebook called, pretentiously no doubt, my ‘Commonplace Book.’ I took the title from E. M. Forster, the first writer – so far as I recall – whose book-length biography I read (the one by P. N. Furbank). Forster’s Commonplace Book was published, long after his death, by an American university press. I don’t expect mine to achieve such immortality, but I go back to it often. What I do in it is simple. I take quotations that have struck me in my reading, and copy them out by hand. Quotations may take in any subject that interests me, but more often than not the subject is literature. Here are thirty quotations I like. Do I really believe them all? Maybe not. But I find them interesting. Continue reading

Reading Pamela’s letters, readers came to feel that they were Pamela; Richardson had obliterated reality and substituted the Pamela-world in its stead. It is for this reason – and not, I would argue, for some putative development of ‘realism’ – that Richardson is most to be valued as a major imaginative genius. The defining characteristic… Continue reading

Writers are often asked about their favourite books, so here are some of mine. I say favourites, and that’s what I mean. This is not my list of the greatest books, or books I think everyone should read. Nor is it intended, consciously at least, as a list of my influences. These are simply books that have gripped me: fiction or non-fiction, adult or children’s fiction. There’s just one rule about what I include, and what I don’t. There are no fleeting enthusiasms here. Each book is one I can’t forget. They’re not listed below in order in preference, just alphabetical by author. Nor are these my only favourites, just the ones I’ve written about so far. Continue reading

There’s an anecdote about a board meeting at Desilu Studios in Hollywood, circa 1964, where Lucille Ball presided over the TV production empire she had set up with one-time husband Desi Arnaz. According to Desilu vice-president Herbert F. Solow, Lucy seldom said much during meetings. But one day, as Solow was about to update the board on series in development, network deals and the like, Lucy said suddenly: “Herb, what’s happening with that South Seas series?” Solow was perplexed. There was no South Seas series. Lucy said, “You know, Herb, that South Seas series you mentioned last time.” Solow, Lucy insisted, was producing a show about USO performers entertaining the troops in the South Seas during the war. Solow did not know what she was talking about. He said he had never mentioned a USO show. “Oh yes you did,” cried Lucy. “Oh, yes, you did, Herb. You called it Star Trek!” Continue reading

This is a (slightly rewritten) version of a paper delivered by David Rain at the Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference, Imperial College, London, on Saturday 29 June 2013.

The prolific English novelist, playwright and essayist J. B. Priestley published an excellent book about his literary career called Margin Released: A Writer’s Reminiscences and Reflections (1962). One section of the book, in which Priestley discusses his many publications, bears the title “I Had the Time.” He explains: “During the past thirty years or so, hundreds of people have told me they could write a good novel, play, or book of essays, if only they had the time. Well, I had the time.” Continue reading

When students tell me they want to be writers, I ask them three questions. The first is: “Why?” The answers are usually vague. Seldom, indeed never in my experience, does anyone talk about being rich and famous. The commonest response is: “I just enjoy writing.”

This is better, but not as promising as it sounds. Plenty of people enjoy writing without being good at it, and professional writing, with its endless drafts and revisions, involves difficult and often frustrating work that the most hardened professional won’t, in any immediate sense, enjoy. No worthwile occupation is enjoyable all the time. Being a writer is an activity as serious as being a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, or a physicist. If you think that’s a pretentious thing to say, fine. But you’ll never be a good writer unless you’re sustained by a deep and abiding sense of mission. Continue reading

There is a law of diminishing returns in most things, and this is abundantly so with that curious genre, the how-to-write book. I’ve lost count of how many of these I’ve read over the years. I was about to say I’d read most of them, but that wouldn’t be true: there are hundreds, probably thousands by now, and they keep on coming. Look in any issue of Writer’s Digest or The Writer and you’ll see the adverts for this or that latest guide to how to plot, how to write dialogue, how to research your novel, how to revise it. Everybody, it seems, wants to be a writer. Continue reading

I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the word “expatriate,” just to prove that I know how to spell it. You’ve no doubt noticed how almost everyone nowadays, including journalists for so-called quality newspapers, believes the word is “ex-patriot” – the abbreviation of which is, of course, “ex-pat” rather than “expat.” Even I have been referred to as an “ex-pat,” which I certainly am not. Continue reading

The Classic Typewriter Page is a brilliant website exploring pretty much everything you could want to know about typewriters. Among its many features is a series of essays in which contemporary writers explain why they still love – and use – these great machines. David now has an essay there, titled “Hermes of the Ways,”… Continue reading