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Updates Made by Brian Keaney
Saturday, April 30, 2016 4:03:35 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled A Rough Guide To Racism:
Brian said, "Those who have not been following the UK political scene avidly may be surprised to learn that analysts have made a remarkable discovery about racism. There are, indeed there always have been, two distinct kinds of racism: Bad Racism (the well-known..." more
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 2:59:43 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Old Man With A Handbag:
Brian said, ""When I grow up," observes Zoe, "I will be a mummy and Theo will be a daddy". I consider pointing out that it is not quite so simple, that there are adults who cannot have children, adults who decide not to have children, adults who do not actually..." more
Thursday, September 3, 2015 2:11:29 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Planting Trees:
Brian said, "I have been reading the poetry of Po Chu-i, a minor government official living in China at the end of the eighth, beginning of the ninth century. This is one of my favourites. He wrote it after being packed off to be the governor of Pa district,..." more
Monday, July 6, 2015 11:02:41 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Activate Kadinskis!:
Brian said, "My five year old grandson was running around the house last week with his four year old cousin shouting out, "Activate booster-packs!" at regular intervals and then, from time to time, "Activate Kadinskis!" After a while I stopped him and asked,..." more
Thursday, January 15, 2015 3:42:58 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Je ne suis pas Charlie.:
Brian said, "I'm sorry if this doesn't accord with fashionable liberal sentiment but I thought those cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo were an unnecessary and offensive provocation. The thing is this: Islam is much more than a religion. It's a matter of..." more
Thursday, November 27, 2014 12:48:15 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Pillow Talk:
Brian said, "I've always had a problem knowing what day of the week it is. I'm not talking about just being a bit absent-minded. I really have experienced considerable difficulty with this all my life. It was an absolute nightmare when I was at school because..." more
Saturday, November 8, 2014 9:50:30 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Narrative Focus:
Brian said, "We spent last week at our house in Leitrim. I needed a break from looking after grandchildren, helping people write novels and trying to find time to write my own. I'd spent a week in which I found myself constantly having to explain about..." more
Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:59:38 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled My Symbolic Life:
Brian said, "Yesterday, I had to go into hospital for an operation to repair an inguinal hernia. Today is one of the days my wife and I look after our grandchildren. My daughter emailed me to say that she had explained to two year old Noah that they wouldn't be..." more
Wednesday, May 21, 2014 5:41:09 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Do You Go To Dublin?:
Brian said, "I spent last week in Ireland at our family house in Leitrim. The drive down from Belfast was wonderful, the gorse blazing away on the hillsides, the hedgerows frothing with cow parsley. Then we left the main road and made our way across the border..." more
Friday, February 28, 2014 12:38:53 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled This Is The Why:
Brian said, "I was in Ireland in November, driving down from Belfast to our house in North West Leitrim. Everywhere I looked the countryside was ablaze with colour – the yellow gorse flowers, the golden leaves of beech and maple, the skeletal orange larches,..." more
Thursday, September 5, 2013 7:39:26 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Writing For Il Duce:
Brian said, "I have been teaching some classes in Writing For Children recently and one of the things I keep noticing is how many people bring a great deal of sentimentality about children along to the class. It’s one of the first things I try to get them to..." more
Thursday, September 5, 2013 7:39:26 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled The Garden For The Blind:
Brian said, "I have had no less than five emails in the last two days from different commercial organisations to inform me that ‘the most anticipated book of the year’ is now available for purchase. They’re talking, of course, about Dan Brown’s Inferno. ..." more
Thursday, September 5, 2013 7:39:26 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Hold Your Nose!:
Brian said, "At this time of year I do a certain amount of teaching. One of the things that always strikes me is the preconceptions that people bring to the courses. As one student put it when I asked him why he was there, ”Creative writing is a form of..." more
Thursday, September 5, 2013 7:39:26 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled There Is No Such Thing As An Ordinary House:
Brian said, "One of my students asked whether she should describe the ordinary house in which her character lives. She could see that somewhere exotic like a fairy kingdom needed describing but the house in her story was more or less like her own childhood home..." more
Thursday, September 5, 2013 7:39:26 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Inside The Mind Of A teenage Girl:
Brian said, "During July and August I teach Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. Students come from all over the world and they’re mostly pretty wealthy. Last week in a tutorial we were looking at a short story one of my students had written. In..." more
Monday, March 11, 2013 9:22:08 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Whispering To A Boy Who Imagines He Is Clever:
Brian said, "Once upon a time, if I were at a party, someone might say, ‘So what do you do for a living?’ and I would say, ‘I’m a writer.’ They would look very interested and say, ‘Really? What sort of thing do you write?’ to which I would reply...." more
Monday, March 4, 2013 1:32:18 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Waiting For The Roar:
Brian said, "Looking after my grandchildren is sharpening my understanding of story structure. The current craze around here is Hide And Seek. It works best when I hide and they seek because they’re terrible at hiding. Another adult has to help them find a..." more
Wednesday, January 16, 2013 6:26:03 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Stop Thief!:
Brian said, "The other day somebody asked me to look at his manuscript. But when I agreed, he got anxious about showing it to me, worrying that I might steal his work. I was insulted, of course, because it's as if he'd invited me into his house and then asked,..." more
Friday, November 30, 2012 8:56:53 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Happy Endings:
Brian said, "When I was at school my favourite activity was writing stories but we were often given very uninspiring titles to work with. One that has stuck in my mind, down through the years is An Unfortunate Accident Is Narrowly Averted. It made me groan at..." more
Thursday, November 1, 2012 6:40:36 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled The Tug At My Finger:
Brian said, "I have been in Ireland for a week, in North West Leitrim to be precise, in the house my father built on the land on which he grew up. It's a modern house standing on a hill and on a clear day commanding a view of three counties but it is dominated..." more
Monday, October 15, 2012 11:34:46 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled How Not To Become A Children's Author:
Brian said, "I'm always getting asked to look at manuscripts by people who have written a story for children and are looking for advice before sending their work off to an agent. Unfortunately, a lot of people accompany their manuscripts with statements that..." more
Friday, August 31, 2012 2:07:23 PM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled The Fallacy Of The Dedicated Agent:
Brian said, "I have been up since three o'clock this morning looking after my very excited and slightly apprehensive grandson while his mother went, with her husband, to the hospital to have a baby. Consequently this blog post may not be my finest piece of..." more
Monday, August 13, 2012 10:58:55 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Flash Cards and Fondling - How To Do Setting:
Brian said, "I have been working on setting with my students. It's something that some of them have trouble with, particularly when the setting is a part of the contemporary built environment. Somehow if the story is taking place somewhere we're not used to,..." more
Thursday, July 26, 2012 7:30:08 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled No More Choo Choo Trains:
Brian said, "One of my students isn't very keen on dialogue. She writes beautiful vignettes composed of crystalline imagery and carefully observed detail. But absolutely no dialogue. Since it's obvious that she already knows how to do this trick and since..." more
Wednesday, July 13, 2016 1:41:54 AM
Brian Keaney wrote a blog post titled Have Yous All Gone Mad?:
Brian said, "I spent the weekend after the British EU referendum at our house in Ireland, on the southern side of the border. I'd hoped to avoid discussing the vote entirely but it was all anyone wanted to talk about. Here's a snapshot of some of those..." more