Toby Litt

London

Contributor at Freelance

Author at A Writer's Diary

Reader. Activist. Writer. Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton.

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Articles

What Goes Around Comes Around?

Dec 10, 2024 | amymakechnie.substack.com | Amy Makechnie |Toby Litt

My son recently told me this story…Happy December. May it be filled with stressful-that-brings-joyful-experiences…Amy <3Tell me something good…or stressful :)I had a super fun time drawing the story for you. I also have some observations:drawing is hardtelling a story with pictures is hardmy process: write the story first in notebook, then lightly sketch in pencil on watercolor paper, read and read, go over the pencil in black non-smudge ink like Sharpie or LePen, apply some light watercolor.
Nobody’s Empire by Stuart Murdoch review – Belle and Sebastian and me

Oct 19, 2024 | msn.com | Toby Litt

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Nobody’s Empire by Stuart Murdoch review - Belle and Sebastian and me

Oct 19, 2024 | theguardian.com | Toby Litt

I will leave it to the Belle and Sebastian obsessives, of whom there are many around the world, to figure out which details in this debut novel by the band’s lead singer and main songwriter are made up. As far as I’ve been able to work out, just a few names have been changed, of people and cafes. Apart from that, Nobody’s Empire could as well have been published as a recovery memoir. So let’s agree to call it autofiction, and take the book on its merits – which are considerable.
The Watermark by Sam Mills review - a time-travelling romp

Aug 28, 2024 | theguardian.com | Toby Litt

Sam Mills’s virtuosic new novel is – when defined in the strictest terms – a romp. By that I mean it’s an adventure story that doesn’t ask you to take it all that seriously. The Count of Monte Cristo is the definitive romp: a tale of repeated imprisonment and escape, of thwarted romance, of daring disguises and, in the end, of triumphant human grit and ingenuity. The Watermark has all that, but with added metatextuality and time travel. If you love Doctor Who, you will love this book.
On Slo-Mo

Jul 30, 2024 | awritersdiary.substack.com | Toby Litt

Here’s an exercise and an explanation. Next time you’re on a bus journey, along a crowded high street, get your phone out, point it sideways, and take exactly ten seconds of slo-mo video. Do this while the bus is moving, so you get a tracking shot. Press the camera up against the glass. Hopefully it isn’t juddering too much. Aim to catch the people on the pavement. As you’re 10 filming, 9 8 7 6, look at the street, 5 4 3, not the screen, 2 1. When you’re done, 0, watch the video back immediately.
On Vulnerability

Jul 29, 2024 | awritersdiary.substack.com | Toby Litt

The lyrics I’ve been thinking about are —You end up like a dog that’s been beat too muchTill you spend half your life just covering upFrom ‘Born in the USA’. There’s a lot to say about this song (in relation to America now), and about Bruce Springsteen generally (in relation to lots of things), but I’d like to focus on failure. Self-confirming failure. First, an aside —Last week, I did not go and see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live at Wembley Stadium.
On the Key to Writing a Novel

Jul 26, 2024 | awritersdiary.substack.com | Toby Litt

I was twenty and had just finished university. I’d written two short stories. Maybe three. One day, I decided to write a novel. The main reason for this was because I saw myself as a poet, and I thought that in order to support themselves poets needed to write novels. Hah. I moved to Edinburgh, found a bedsit up four flights of stairs, got a narrow-lined A4 pad. But although I’d just finished an English Literature degree, I didn’t really know to go about writing anything longer than four pages.
On The Pages of the Sea

Jul 25, 2024 | awritersdiary.substack.com | Toby Litt |Anne Hawk

Today is launch day for a wonderful first novel. The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk. It’s published by Weatherglass Books, who have put out some other amazing books — Cold New Climate by Isobel Wohl is perhaps my other favourite. I think this will come to be seen as a really significant debut. It’s a great and loveable novel of childhood, separation, cruelty and curiosity. A book to keep alongside To Kill a Mockingbird and Wide Sargasso Sea and The Bluest Eye.
On Performative Vulnerability

Jul 24, 2024 | awritersdiary.substack.com | Toby Litt

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether or not I’m lying to myself. That would make a good opening sentence for a short story. Sometimes he found it hard to tell whether or not he was lying to himself. But lots of readers would say, Oh, it’s too clunkily introducing an unreliable narrator. Maybe so. Yet what about those moments when one becomes too clunkily unreliable a narrator to and of one’s own self?
On Chills

Jul 22, 2024 | awritersdiary.substack.com | Toby Litt

I get that shiver up the back of the neck only rarely. Last night at the Proms, in the last few seconds of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, with the Halle Orchestra, conducted there for the last time by Mark Elder — zing went the string of my spine. I can’t explain it. I’d been standing among the prommers for an hour and a half. The Albert Hall was very stuffy. A young woman in front of me had fainted, been held up, fainted again during the Adagietto, been led away. The playing had been wonderful.