The true story of how my mobile phone turned my novel into a love story in prose poetry
The length of the line that can fit on a mobile phone screen had everything to do with it. Maxpixel
My mobile phone, resolutely rectangular and sized to my palm, decided the form of my seventh book. The first line came on the fringes of vague intention. It was evening, I was weary of my laptop, slumped in my reading chair, trying to brush aside a phrase, an image that hounded me to distraction, and I did what all writers do to release the gnat of creative unease – write it down – and there was my phone at easy reach.