The Recycled Sparrow
by Bill Kirton (I know I used this book cover on last month's blog but it's relevant this time, too. Anyway, I've also messed around with the image and added the official accolades it's gathered - spoiling Sessha Batto's lovely cover design in the process. Sorry Sessha. It's another of my feeble attempts at marketing.) Sometimes, in workshops or talks to writing groups, I remind people that you don’t ‘write a novel’, you write some words, then some more words, then some more – and eventually there’s a substantial pile of paper on the desk and you realise you actually have written something that’s a lot longer than a short story. I then add that, although that makes it sound easy and unstructured, it’s not, and I have great respect for the form and conventions of novel-writing. But it was a realisation that dawned on me as I was writing my first novel, which, after several years and many rewrites, became The Sparrow Conundrum . It’s also a reminder of th...