Writing is like…

Just a quick thought as I work to finish my latest news story. I’ve been pondering the writing process. It is rare for a story to spring, fully formed, from the keyboard. What you usually have are various key points either from the press release or other source material. Getting these parts to come together in a cohesive story is a lot like making pastry.

Bear with me if you’re unfamiliar with the process. You start with flour and fat together in a bowl and with your fingers start rubbing the flour into the fat. After a while you end up with flour-coated pieces of lard – it feels as though it will never become a pie. Keep going, however, and the mixture ends up resembling bread crumbs. Add water and suddenly the individual crumbs come together into a lump of pastry.

Somehow writing is the same – keep plugging away, re-hashing the facts and arranging the different key points and eventually something coherent emerges. I’m not sure how it happens (with words or food) but it is very satisfying when it does.

Plenty of news

It must be because the Geneva Motor Show 2008 is only days away but there has been an avalanche of press releases today. This has included news from Maybach about the new Landaulet, Jaguar with a limited edition version of the XKR, the XKR-S and Renault with more details of the 4WS Laguna GT. I’ve done a quick write-up of those three stories for StreetCar.net, it would take up too much space on here but if you want to read more follow the links below:


Maybach


Jaguar


Renault

In print - A view on the Honda CR-V

A week or two back I drove the new Honda CR-V as part of The Independent's regular motoring feature, The Verdict. It was a welcome opportunity to try something new and I was interested to see how it compared with the original CR-V which I drove some years ago. There isn't much I want to say about it at the moment - I'd rather you read the review I wrote for the paper. My comments are near the bottom of the page.

One thing I did like and appreciate was the (optional) reversing camera, which was activated when reverse gear was selected and gave a wide-angle view from the back bumper on the sat-nav screen. For a long time I thought having a camera would be useful for reversing but I've never actually tried a car with it before. It works very well and I think it is more useful than parking sensors.