Thoughts at the End of a Long Year

“Nothing in my education or experience prepared me even to expect the horror and anxiety and moral bewilderment that I have felt during these years of racism and disintegration at home and a war of unprecedented violence and senselessness abroad. The attempt to keep meaning in one’s life at such a time is a continuous strain, and perhaps ultimately futile: there is undoubtedly a limit to how long private integrity can hold out in the face of, and within, public disintegration.”

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Writing and Not Writing in 2020

“I BELIEVE it does not matter at all; I believe it is all that matters.”

Sara Baume “handiwork”

It was fifteen years ago this autumn that I first began the practice of writing daily. I’ve missed the odd day here and there but for the most part I’ve managed an hour or more at my laptop everyday for the last decade and a half.

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Julie Carsonwriting, 2020, writers
Some Thoughts on My Year With Agatha C

Last weekend I completed my 2020 reading challenge. Sleeping Murder - Miss Marple’s Last Case, was the final crime fiction novel of the 66 Agatha Christie wrote in a publishing career which spanned six decades. I managed to complete all 66 in around about 11 months. I have to admit I feel a little bereft now.

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She’s Always Swallowing Things

We thought she’d have grown out of it by this stage. It’s the sort of thing little children do. Babies, I mean, and toddlers. They’re inquisitive when they’re young, and always hungry. Babies are forever putting things in their mouths. Marbles. Cigarettes. Leaves. Great, filthy handfuls of soil and sand.

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