Information and materials
When I began to write I was prolix. One day the filmmaker, Bill Douglas, advised me to cut an entire scene. If you write something and take it out, he said, readers will know it (even if they haven’t read it) because your remaining words will be freighted with a sense of what you’ve cut; they’ll imply it. He was right, and I’ve followed his counsel ever since. That’s why I’ve drawn an iceberg. The tip above the surface suggests the greater bulk hidden below. That’s my emblem, at least of my practice when I write. I drew in pencil and coloured in with crayon. The fish in my first (draft) attempt doesn’t read. The fish in the finished one is better. I signed using the pen (a Mont Blanc) I write with.