Big Thoughts - Summer 2010
For as long as I can remember I've wanted to know everything. As a teenager I peeled off the wallpaper on one side of my room and began creating a map of the universe. It had to include everything: distant galaxies, socks, political systems, pencil sharpeners. Nothing vould be omitted. Everything would find its place.
It was, of course, a doomed project, and these mad scribbles were soon covered up by a poster of Talking Heads. But the urge to find some sort of system to understanding the universe soon propelled me into philosophy. I began with a 'teach yourself' book I bought in WH Smiths. I began to understand the differences between objective and subjective knowledge, empiricism, idealism and so on. Or I thought I did. I realise now that I didn't. All I undesrstood were the meanings of the words..
I've dipped into philosophy all my life. I've enjoyed, at various times, the pre-Socratics, Plato, the astonishing and weird Spinoza, the meticulous Kant, fastidious Ludwig Wittengenstein, Satre, Karl Popper, and more recently I've come across Richard Rorty and John Rawls.
At the same time, and in a parallel obsession, I've been infatuated by art, music and novels. And it seems to me now, after all those passionate years of discovery, that somehow those two great disciplines, the creative arts and philosophy have very little to do with other. Philosophy is a left brained activity, something for the rational, convergent thinker. Art and music is for the divergent, right brained amoung us. I am more inclined to the latter group, and despite my ambitions, never a philosopher.
And yet. And yet I can't stop hoping that one day I'll find a bridge, a way of connecting these two universes. That one day I could write a book that not only challenges intellectually, but also emotionally. 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' tried to do it. I loved that book, but it can't be ignored that it is two books stuck together: a page aout philosophy, the next page a travelogue, a road movie. Almost, not quite.
Fiction can't be about ideas, or rather, it can't begin with ideas. It has to begin with characters. People make up the world that novelist should be interested in, not ideas. Bad books have characters who are containers for specific theories or ideals - and there are better books (by Virginia Woolf, Bruce Chatwin) that openly explore ideas and retain a great emotional hold. But these are rare.
So here is my ambition, to write a book that explores the yearning to understand the world, but which is wholly about character, absorbed in day to day lives, tiny details, the delicious contingencies of our everyday experiences.
I shall begin the book with a slightly intense teenager tearing a strip of wallpaper from his bedroom wall. He scribbles until he dribbles, slurping from a mug of tea and eating biscuits. And then the phone rings, and it's the girl he was speaking to on the bus, just a few hours earlier. She had the most incredible eyes.
A White Room - July 2010
Back one night in February I woke at that three in the morning to discover a thread of water slithering down my bedroom wall. Tired and grumpy, I struggled into the attic and started pulling up floorboards. I found the guilty pipe, bound it with tape, and stepped back triumphantly. I put my foot on what I thought was a board, it wasn't, it was a sheet of card, and my foot went through the ceiling.
It's a very unpleasant sensation. First, the feeling is similar to descending stairs when there is one less step than you had accounted for, a sort of weightless jolt. Then, like a set for a science fiction movie, light gushes upwards from below. There is the noise of rubble hitting the floor below, and then a fog of dust. One of my children woke up, and obviously confused, shouted out.
My bedroom, once a sanctuary of calm, now looked like the lower slopes of the Brecon Beacons. In a fog. After a hailstorm.
Fortunately my house has a few spare rooms, and I moved into one of these, in what we call 'The Maid's Quarters' - a suite of rooms above the old kitchen. (The house was once a manse, the vicar lived in the main house, his maid in the annex.) The Maid's Quarters, however, has for a very long time been the place where we have buried the bodies. Old computers, TVs. cds, cameras, magazines, books, clothes live there. I had to sort out the M.Q., move in, then work out what I was going to do with the hole in the ceiling and a room full of lath and plaster.
Mr Pearce, a local builder, and a man I have always considered to be the reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci, came over, smiled, and after a long chat, several coffees, we came up with a plan. He would build a new shed for me to put the bodies, and then he'd sort out the ceiling.
It sounded so simple. It was. But it took months. Four, to be precise. Last week I put the final touches to the bedroom. It was a sage green, now it is white. Painting coats of white on green isn't easy. It takes layer after layer. Ten coats, I think it took.
But I loved doing it. I loved layering white on white, finding the right gesture for the brush, discovering a good sploshing rhythm. And a field of white before your eyes, for hours on end, creates a new universe. I found a zen like calm, one that within the whirlygig of the past few months, felt like a miracle cure.
I have a clean, white room, a glacial palace, a place to hang 'Cloopseend' (see below). A place to listen to the collection of shakuhachi music I have found suits my monk like state of mind.
It won't last. Between painting walls I have been working on a new novel. But it won't be a novel, it'll be something else. A four dimensional thought-form. A glass bead game. A set of instructions. Or maybe just my next blog.
Human Document - June 2010
In April this year that I finished what I now call 'How We Became Trees'. My third book, and, I feel, the strongest by far. A writer's career, like a drummers, seems to be spent waiting around, and I've been waiting for responses to it. But as much as I would like to wait around, other things have happened.
The ceiling in my house collapsed, and, to put it mildly, things started to get on top of me. One hundred year old lath and plaster contains, amoung other things, lime and horse hair. This particular ceiling also has a high percentage of bat crap. I felt like the world had dumped on me from a great height. It took two months to sort it out, in which time I've been thinking about my next literary move.
I've been blogging for the children's author site 'An Awfully Big Adventure' for a while and have recently have started doing the same for a Welsh book blog 'Dragontongue'. Attempts to find backing for a movie of 'Oswald and the End of the World' are still alive and kicking, and I've started a new book, one that takes me in a radically new direction.
In May I went to meet the artist Tom Phillips. His 'Humument' is an illustrated text he has been working on for more than thirty years. He showed me around his studio, signed my 1978 edition of his celebrated work, and I bought a piece of his I have loved for decades - 'Cloopseend'.
Although Tom told me he wanted to buy an ipad, he said he had no interest in developing his ideas in digital form. He loves working with his hands, with pen and ink, paints and brushes. I understand that completely, but at the same time I wondered whether Tom's 'Humument' points towards the future of the book. I won't say more about Tom here. If you're interested, go to: http://humument.com
When I returned home, I began thinking of how I could develop ideas for my next book in digital media. I have some experience of developing websites and software, so don't feel completely out of my depth. But I don't know how long this will take, and whether it will appear in any form whatsoever. It is an idea, and in a state of beautiful, unfocused chaos.
Spring - March 2010
That was a long winter. It was a cold one, too. For most of December the snow prevented me from getting the car within comfortable distance of my house. The three or four miles I had to walk whenever I wanted to go anywhere should have made me fitter, but the flu, then a pulled muscle in my back, and a nerve in my tooth that decided it wanted to send messages to my brain to tell it I was suffering some extreme form of torture (think 'Brazil' and 'Marathon Man') made the trip to the car so daunting I may as well have been housebound for three months.
At one stage the teeth hurt so much I would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming, or dreaming I was screaming. Michael Palin, or Laurence Olivier, or both, are leaning over me, Palin smiling patiently, Olivier gurning.
Not a good winter then, and I'm glad it's over. Having so few distractions (and no extractions - my dentist can't seem to find the cause of my suffering - I think he thinks it's psychosomatic) I've managed to settle down to writing. As always it's an excellent source of therapy. If I can write, I don't notice the annoying back pain, or the excrutiating teeth.
"Dai of the Triffids", which I think will eventually be called something like, "How We Became Trees" is pushing seventy thousand words, and, if I have any time, I should be able to make it even shorter. I've also written a prequel, and have started work on a sequel. H.W.B.T. has to be good. Publishing is going through a sort of midlife crisis, it sees the youthful iPads and Kindles and iLiads, and it wants to be young again, but it can't. It's musty and dusty and thinks it's going the way of the cd, vinyl and the wax cylinder.
I beg to differ. Books will always be with us. Unlike cds or vinyl records, they don't need a host device, except the human brain. They are cheap, replaceable, smell beautiful, and what's more, you can scribble in them and all over them, and they usually are even better for that.
Nevertheless the industry is having its doubts, so to allay them, I must write a book so good, so scintillating, no one will ever doubt the power of the written word again. And then my teeth will stop hurting, too.
The Film of the Book - December 2009
A few years ago, when I was dreaming up "Oswald and the End of the World", I toyed with a fantasy that one day it would become an animated movie.
Even so, it never occurred to me that anything would ever happen. Of course it didn't. And yet, a couple of weeks ago, I signed a deal agreeing to give Arc Films a film option on 'Oswald'. An option doesn't mean that a film gets made, only that the interested company reserves the right to try and develop the film knowing that no one else can do so whilst that option is in place.
In August I met Adam Harvey and Chris Wright of Arc Films. They'd come across "Oswald and the End of the World" and liked it enough to consider a film adaption. I was enormously impressed by their knowledge of the book (they knew it in far more detail than I could claim to) and also taken aback by their vision of the story and their ability to see how the narrative could be streamlined.
At the end of that meeting I had the feeling that if anyone could transmute Oswald into a good movie, it was these two.
So when they decided to go ahead and buy the option I was delighted. Since then Adam has kept me up to date with how things are progressing: it's like watching the book emerge into the world all over again, through someone else's eyes.
The Abbey Hours - October 2009
August and September flew past, if you saw them, please send them back in my direction. I had been hoping to announce something extremely exciting, so was putting off blogging until I could reveal that particular bit of news, but as it hasn't happened yet, I can't. Hmm.
Instead I shall point you towards the link (on the left) to 'The Abbey Hours', the gentleman's quarterly I produce on a fairly irregular basis, but which is as much my life's work as my books. 'The Hours' is an affectionate poke at the village newsletter, the characters are real enough (and most of them don't mind: I've only been hit once) as are the locations. The stories, however, are completely fictitious, and do not, in any respect, reflect the reality of life in a small rural community. Well not much, anyway.
Dai of the Triffids - July 2009
'Moles' begins to turn up in the most unexpected places. In tiny bookshops on rain swept peninsulars, in hangar sized chain bookstores in the Midlands. When I see a copy I double take; the black earth and sky blue cover still surprises me, the colours are peculiar and yet, like a wet afternoon, somehow reassuring.
Meanwhile, as I track my new book's progress, wondering when, and if, someone somewhere will champion it, I am busy working on my third. When those who are interested ask, I tell them it's 'Dai of the Triffids'; an apocalyptic hillybilly grunge fairytale. I'm not sure it's the right book for the moment, but it feels important to me, as if it holds some great truth, although for the life of me, I don't know what it is.
A year or so ago I was driving over the mountains of mid Wales, some twenty miles east of Aberystwyth. I was lost, and the road through the mountains snaked back on itself, teasing me, and leading me nowhere. I came to a bridge, and had to slow down and stop when a blind, three legged dog walked out. I expected him to demand to see my papers, or whistle for his buddies to come and pull the wheels off my car. I waited, and as he sat there, snorting the air, I gazed out of the window at this little outpost in the hills. There were a few cottages, the ruins of an old arch, and, on a crag just above a rooftop, one fragile rowan tree, clinging on to a thin layer of earth. I went home, and the next day began writing. I knew I wanted the book to be about trees, about poverty and the loss of innocence. My hero, Hunter Plume, is barely big enough to push a wheelbarrow, yet finds he has to take on the world if he and his family aren't to starve. At the same time, the world begins to fight back.
Moles Publication Day - July 6th 2009
I am as certain as I can be that 'Moles' is a good book, that it holds together well, that it's entertaining, quirky and humane. While I'll be watching to see how it makes its way in the world, to a very large extent what happens now is out of my hands. So I am not apprehensive, nor anxious. I am just curious. Will it sell? Will people like it?
'Moles' didn't take long to write, but it took years to find. But that discovery wasn't mine alone. Elv Moody, my editor at the time, was looking for something she believed I could write: a warm, friendly, funny book, not the dark, moral tales, I'd been spinning after finishing "Oswald and the End of the World." One by one she cut down my first drafts of ideas as they sprouted. And then suddenly the story of 'Moles' exploded into the vacuum of my head. As with all explosions, it made a bit of a mess, but Elv was there to order the skip, and tidy things up.
Boxes of 'Moles' sit in the back of rumbling transit vans making their way along highways and byways, but I turn my attention to my third book - "The Three Misfortunes of Hunter Plume". It's been with Zoe, my editor at Scholastic, for a while now, and I think I should hear something soon. It is an apocalyptic hillbilly 'Dai, Another Day of the Triffids', a grunge fairy tale, a Norse Morse...
Heart of Hawick Children's Book Prize - May 2009
It was a five hundred mile round trip, and I didn't win, but I had a wonderful time. I'm not sure how a small town like Hawick manages to hold such an event, but I felt honoured to have reached the shortlist. Heather Marshall, the event organiser, must deserve great praise and accolades; without people like her, I thought, the world would be at the mercy of grubs, cheats, swindlers, expense-grabbers, highwaymen and three headed custard spitting monsters. Heather manages to make books news, and she was delighted to have attracted quite a number of media people to the event.
Witty Alan Bissett was MC, and despite his satorial decisions (tight leather trousers, pointy shoes, Batman belt) I quite took to him. We heard children read beautifully from the shortlisted books, then each of the three authors present said a few words. I had planned to say "porcelain, eggcup and butterscotch" but decided at the last minute this would sound facetious, so switched to the story of the boy on the Cardiff to Paddington train. I shall not tell it here, as it is one I must pocket away in case my courage deserts me at any future events such as this. The story went down well, though, and I managed to weave in a thanks to Scotland for the islands of Iona, Tiree, Colonsay, Staffa, Rum and Eigg and so on, the islands that I visited years ago and eventually became the dream islands of "Oswald and the End of the World".
Authors were presened with a cheque and a goody bag (a tartan scarf, biscuits, a bottle of Hawick beer and some Hawick balls). We signed books, had a delicious buffet, and, as I set off home, I had the warm feeling that although I hadn't won, something far better than winning had happened.
Moles - May 2009
I feel like I've waited years, but I know it's only weeks, but at last, here is the cover of 'Moles' - and even though I know he didn't read the book, Tony Ross has captured something of it's texture. Zoe, my editor, must have sent him a thought bubble, because it's absolutely right. Here it is: not a great scan, but the real thing is lovely.
The Suspension of Disbelief - April 2009
In the week I complete the proof edits for 'Moles', I finish the first draft of my second book. I'm going to call it 'The Pulse of Wood'; it has to be called something, and for the moment, that will do.
Proof editing 'Moles' involves reading through the manuscript as it will appear in book form, checking how it flows. Once it has been typeset, repaginated and all those other technical terms I throw around but don't really understand, then the story does look different, it has a new consistency, and a read through, out loud, is important. The book has been read eight or nine times by various people, and yet the new format reveals many clunky bits that were hidden before, and which need to be smoothed out.
One thing I appreciate about publishing, something I didn't fully realise until 'Oswald', is just how professional the industry is; just how much quality control goes on. Zoe, my editor, and I both read the proofs through, as does an independent, third party, and all edits are combined to make a bound 'uncorrected proof'. This is the prototype; it is the book as it will go on sale, but it does not feature the finished artwork. Here is the last chance for any mistakes, or changes, to be made.
In the most recent set of edits I've discovered repetitions of phrases - I used 'stern-faced' twice within three pages, and in one paragraph repeated the word 'premises'. I cut paragraphs, I delete sentences, I hunt down muddle. I want to make the writing smoother, and the sense of what I'm trying to say more transparent. Writing mustn't get in the way: I am telling a story, and the story must shine through. Clunky writing is like bad acting, it breaks the spell.
In two weeks I'm meeting with Scholastic to discuss my ideas for new books: having one written ready for them to look at will certainly help. I can produce, I know that, and have two or three books I've finished that I may want to develop in the future: but now I am concentrating on 'The Pulse of Wood'; it is a proposterous story, a fairy tale, a heroic quest. But it is the voice of the central character I think is the key - not the plot, not the setting, which are both batty, but the wide-eyed curiosity of my leading boy, eleven year old Hunter Plume.
Mole Skins - March 2009
As an obsessive reclusive it's easy to get things finished. Living three and half hours from civilization also helps. If I get a spare moment, I get on with something. Nick Hornby understands: in About a Boy he has his central character chopping up his day into units so he can fit everything in: two units for lunch, one unit getting ready to go out and so on. Time cannot be wasted, it is too precious. But sometimes, I think, I take this too far. This Saturday, for example, I spent something like twenty units working on my third book. I was exhausted before I started, but was determined to squeeze as much out of the day as possible. I stopped for half a unit to watch the last twenty minutes of Man Utd v Liverpool, and if time is to be spent watching football, the last few minutes of that game were particularly well chosen. But then it was straight back to the book. I'm 40,000 words in, and am on the last part, the final act. It's a weird story, but it's got character, a sense of itself. It may need several redrafts, but the core of it is done: the sense of a real place, a real time.
Meanwhile my publishers are deciding what to do with the cover of Moles. The initial idea didn't fill me or my agent with great enthusiasm, we felt it was aiming at too young an audience. My publishers disagreed, but bless them, they've decided to rethink. The book is heading for a July publication, so the cover must be ready soon. The cover doesn't just sell the book, it sells me, the sort of writer I want to be. And if it feels wrong, it may push my writing in a direction it doesn't want to go. I think Moles is more commercial than Oswald; Moles is more traditional, warmer, friendlier. If it is successful, I may be chained to it for a while. The cover has to be right.
My third book, which has several alternative titles: 'The Sunlit Path of Great Promise' or 'Wooden Heart' or 'Picklers' Bluff' or 'A Real Town Dandy' - has, as yet, no home. It's about a family who know nothing of the outside world, and who live like peasants. All this changes, of course, when the main character gets ideas above himself, and sets off for the big, wide world.
Molehills and Moles - Late February 2009
I think everyone who writes a blog about writing books has to be able to write this sentence at some point or other: 'Last week I had lunch with my agent.' Doesn't it sound good? As if I'm a real writer, writing real books? And I am! And it's all I ever wanted to do! (Except be an astronaut, an actor, an artist or an architect. Hey? Why is it all my ambitions begin with 'a'? Now I'm an author!)
My agent is lovely, tactful, sensible and wise. And I am absolutely certain she never ever reads this blog. She doesn't know it exists. She is not interested in me, only in my books, and that's how it should be. (I'm interested in her, actually. She has an allure that I can't place. She has class, that's for sure, although I don't know what I mean by that.) She knew I was unhappy with the proposed title of my new book: it was 'Molehill Mystery'. It doesn't suit the audience I imagine reading it, not a bit.
Lunch was good. It was productive. By the following Tuesday I was back on excellent terms with my publishers. We have a new title - it came from their marketing team, but I wouldn't mind if it had come from their tiddley wink team. And it's this: 'Moles'.
When Zoe, my new editor, told me, I laughed, and have been laughing ever since.
Molehill Style - February 2009
I'm taking a break from the final edits of Molehill Hotel. These are copy edits: punctuation and spelling, word repitition and continuity. Sarah Taylor-Fergusson, the very astute and conscientious copy editor of Molehill has spotted several of my oversights: one character gains three years, another is blinded by sunlight with his eyes closed (I suppose it could happen, but it's dubious). Room numbers change and someone already downstairs still manages to go down some stairs. Sarah has supplied me with Molehill's own style sheet - I've used style sheets when writing newspaper articles, but this was new to me. The style sheet is a glossary of style for my own book, thus ensuring internal consistency. I like this sort of thing, it creates order in the universe. So, 'realize' has a 'z'. 'Leant' is used rather than 'leaned' and 'strongroom' is one word. I thought my attention to detail was reasonably good. It isn't, I realise now. Sorry, realize now.
Further, I think my publishers want a new title. As much as I love 'Molehill Hotel' I assume they don't think it says enough. As 'Oswald and the End of the World' was originally just 'Idlegreen', I was aware that throughout the writing of Molehill that Scholastic may well ask for a title change. But could I think of one? Nope. Nothing. In my mind the book is 'Molehill Hotel' The two words never appear together in the book, however. I don't know if this was a weakness, or an original idiosyncrasy, like those songs whose titles never appear in the lyrics: 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'A Day in the Life', 'Space Oddity' etc.
Molehill Hotel - Early February 2009
After a period of intense silence from my publisher there's a sudden burst of emails and telephone calls. I have a new editor, Zoe Duncan, and my next book, 'Molehill Hotel', has a publication date. It's July 2009, which is a pretty decent month for a children's book to hit the shops. 'Molehill' is set over a long, English summer, so July is the perfect month for it. Zoe thinks I need to do a few last edits, but the artwork is almost complete, and I should be seeing it within the next two weeks.
Sarah Taylor-Fergusson has been given the job of copy editing Molehill. She has been in touch, and has said all the right things, keeping me sane, and making me believe my second book holds together. Sarah has recently acquired an agent herself, and was extremely excited the last time we spoke. I'm delighted for her.
Meanwhile I've been writing book three, which is also book four, as I'm attempting a magnum opus. I'd written over seventy thousand words, but have since decided to streamline, cut out the fat, and it's now down to just under forty thousand. It's set in a bleak, cold place, in the middle of nowhere, where nothing grows, and where no one goes. Yes, you've guessed, it's just like home.
Carla Maia de Almeida (whose book review I attempted to quote below) has been in touch, and was extremely pleasant (which is generous of her, considering the fun I had with Babelfishing her review.) She has, however, reassured me that the Portuguese translation of Oswald is a very fine one, and that it was obviously in safe hands. Carla is a published author of children's books, and on looking at her web site I couldn't help but notice the Tim Burtonesque similarity between the covers of Oswald and her own book.
Inhaling Wales - January 2009
What follows is an extract from a review of the Portuguese translation of ''Oswald and the End of the World'. The review appears in the blog of a Portuguese journalist, Carla Maia de Almeida.
Unfortunately I can't read Portuguese, so I Babelfished it. The result is a gentle, whimsical portrait of me and my book.
"It is not common to see parental figures portraied in almost implacable way, but this is only one of the originalidades of Oswald and End of the World. Another one, is the scenes of Idlegreen, probably inhaled for the experiences of the author, who says to inhabit you are welcome “in the way”, in the Country of Wales. Hesitante hero, Oswald resists the daily pay-apocalyptic paper of messias, in a history that is after all a social parabola on the confrontation of the human spirit with the belief and the fear."
In Bed with the Bard - December 2008
The year splutters to a stop. I'm a pretty active person, I can't watch TV, I find it hard to sit still for long enough. It may be nerves, or anxiety, or angst, or whatever, but I like to keep moving around. I read standing up, or walking up and down the stairs. I can only watch dvds when I'm on my rowing machine, and then only in thiry minute bursts. So, when a nasty bug gets the better of me, and I'm in bed for a week, and, utterly incapacitated, I drag the portable dvd player with me and look forward to doing something I find almost impossible - watching something from beginning to end.
I watch Shakespeare: first the BBC productions from the early eighties, all of them excellent: Leonard Rossiter as King John, John Cleese as Petruchio in 'Taming of the Shrew'; Anthony Hopkins as a raging Othello, then 'Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Julius Caesar', and they keep coming: 'Twelfth Night', 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'The Tempest'. Next some of the more contemporary stuff: Peter Greenaway's 'Prospero's Books', Branagh's 'Much Ado About Nothing' and the RSC's lovely 'Winter's Tale' with the excellent Anthony Sher.
I am addicted, or obsessed, and can't stop. I've ordered more, and will keep watching into the new year. I've always loved Shakespeare, but I'm seeing the plays afresh somehow, and they have greater clarity. What I appreciate now, and maybe what I didn't before, and I apologise if this is obvious to you - is how all the plays are driven by a character's view of events, real or imagined. For Brutus, it is his very clear appreciation of Caesar's faults, but his misjudgement of Anthony's ability to drive public opinion. For Othello, it is Iago's lies that overwhelm and distort his perceptions. Perhaps I used to love their grandeur, their scope, their mythology: now I love their simple humanity.
After a week and a half of feeling sorry for myself I wake this beautiful, sunny Sunday morning after Christmas, and I want to start writing again. My third book, 42,000 words in, is about to take a mauling. I hope I've learnt something from my immersion in the bard: to forget sweeping panoramas and great subterfuge and to concentrate on more matter, and less art.
Something Out of Something Else - November 2008
For the last year or so I've been planning a trilogy. Yes, I know, how dull. I hate the word 'trilogy'. It sounds like trilobite, or trilby. Something that is heavy, and sits on the head.
I have been planning a three part story. A story in three books. I did write 'planning' there and not actually writing, however. Writing is another thing. I have some lovely notebooks stuffed with clever ideas. I have delicious, inky jottings outlining the families, the geography, and history of the world I want to create. There is a bizarre plot, one that belongs in a different sort of novel, and a theme that, although I've told only very few people, seems like the greatest idea anyone ever had.
This then, was the magnum opus. I sat down, and with nothing more than a fine cup of coffee and a mouth full of fruit cake, I started to write. The first few chapters rolled along, I didn't even know I was writing it, the cursor was flying across the screen all on its own.
A month or so on, and five or six thousand words in, a friend contacts me and suggests that someone else may be writing a book like mine. This other book, by a writer whose books seem to feature quite prominently in a number of bookshops, will eat mine. Everyone will say my book is like hers, not hers like mine.
At this point, you may imagine, I go into the garage and shoot myself. But no! I am jubilant. It was a stupid idea anyway! Almost immediately I sit down and begin rewriting, cutting out the central theme, and therefore removing all comparison.
The new book, with its clever central theme extricated, its skeleton gone, shouldn't be able to stand up on its own. It should collapse into a heap of quivering fat.
It doesn't. It comes alive. It is recharged. And the reason, I think, is this: instead of building the book around an idea, the characters must do the work.
This happened with 'Oswald and the End of the World'. Kirsty Skidmore, then senior editor at Scholastic, liked my writing, but not my book. It was then called "Idlegreen" and had all sorts of sci-fi elements that Kirsty insisted were killed off. The book was initially twice as long, and half as sensible.
My confidence is unshaken. My trilogy was built on firm foundations. I planned it all, remember? But the core of what I've planned has been removed. My characters are alive, now, and when I open up the word document to get on with it, I don't see black text on a white background, I see the world of my trilogy, smell the air. It feels like a real world, and not just a brilliant, madcap idea. I'm twenty thousand words in, and it's still going.
I think it's going to be good.
Book Awards - October 2008
The very nice publicity executive at Scholastic has just sent me an email to say that 'Oswald and the End of the World' has been shortlisted for the 'Heart of Hawick Award' 2009. There are many such awards across the UK, and I was lucky enough to be longlisted for several in 2007, and shortlisted for a few. One of those, the 'Stockton Award', held in March 2008, was a big event. I didn't win, but I did receive a lovely runners up gift - a crystal goblet. There was a meal at a wonderful family run Greek restaurant the evening before the event, and I managed to empty one or two jugs of retsina, most into me, but some over one or two of the other shortlisted authors. The next day, after giving a three talks to schoolchildren, I attended the prize ceremony, where I had to meet the mayor of Stockton and other dignitaries. I really didn't mind not winning; "The Robe of Skulls" took that accolade, and as the author, Vivan French, has written over sixty books, and never won even a sticker, I felt no envy - just the slight throb of sore head.
Molehill Hotel - September 2008
'Molehill Hotel' edges towards publication. I have a few last adjustments to make - a dab of powder here, a blob of glue there, and it should be able to stand up all on its own. My editor's last notes to me have a delightful buzz about them. She is enjoying herself, and some of her comments are so off the wall, I have to laugh. I'd like to think she was simply overjoyed that together we have produced such a fine book. But I sense her exuberant lightness of touch is because she is very excited about the prospect of her new job.
But her mood is infectious, and, without delay, I set to work on book three. I have the plot, the characters, the setting, all mapped out. I've been working on it, in note form, for a year or so, and now it's up and running, it's writing itself. I have a first sentence that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, wiggle and dance. Can't tell you what it is though. Won't. Shan't.
But book three has no publisher. I have to place this in front of my lovely agent, Catherine Clarke, and hope, with my eyes closed tight, that she likes it.
Because without another deal, I'll be bereft. Becalmed. Beside myself.
On Blocks - September 2008
I've just had an 'author moment'. I didn't know that's what it was until someone pointed it out to me. I must have been smiling, or giving off a particularly pleasant odour.
In today's Independent (Sept 12th) there's a feature on 'Writer's Block'. Not news, I grant you. Just the usual sort of end of week guff; but interesting, nevertheless. Will Self's contribution is easily the most interesting: "writing is a muscular action and, like any other, all you need to do is exercise the muscles. I don't think of it as writing - it's typing." I agree. He's right. I find it hard to think my ideas through in too much detail. But when I type... whoosh, like now, strange things happen.
And one of the strangest is that I can be sitting here for hours, and not notice the time hurtle by, and then, look! I have a whole chapter.
And then, if I reread what I've just written, and it seems reasonably good, then I wonder how that happened. I begin to question my ability to judge. So, I never get writer's block, just judgement block.
So, when I receive a message from someone who matters that my book is good too, I begin to question their judgement. As an insecure writer I am suspicious of praise. But it doesn't matter, because, regardless of whether judgement is sound or not (and I happen to agree with the person who matters, of course, I would) it means that the book is moving, gradually, at glacial speed, towards publication. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a good feeling. It is that 'author moment'.
Portrait with Hen - September 2008
A very old friend of mine, a professional photographer, came to stay for the weekend. He brought along his camera (worth more than his car) and promised to take some portraits of me.
When I first signed for Scholastic I was asked to supply some suitable photographs of myself. I sent a few along, but the people in publicity weren't too impressed. I was rescued, however, by the photographer for the Times Educational Supplement, who generously sent me all of thirty or so shots he took of me to accompany an interview I did back in October of last year.
These photos, shot outside on a glorious autumn afternoon, began to pop up everywhere. At the Stockton Book Festival one very cropped portrait was blown up to the size of a farm gate. The very same photo appears on my Portuguese publishers web pages. It is spreading, mutating, it has become the official picture of me. And, frankly, it isn't very good. It isn't the photographer's fault. His photo showed me sitting on my coat in a field on a hilltop a sunlit the valley beyond. This photo, however, has become cloned and cropped until all that remains of it is my face. My eyes are in such dark shadow that they may as well not be there at all.
This is the photo as it appeared in the TES.
Now look it cropped on my Portuguse publishers site.
So when my friend Phil offered to take some portraits of me I was keen. Until we began. If these photos are going to filter across the internet, just as the TES one has, shouldn't we make sure they say something? But what? We didn't have long, the weekend was wet. We just got on with it.
The first set we took in the ruins of an old abbey. I thought we might capture the atmosphere of the eerie site, deep in a remote Welsh valley. The second sequence involved Mabel, a hen. I like hens, they are odd creatures. More dinosuar than bird. More intelligent than you'd think. And Mabel is a lovely old bird, even if her claws are very, very sharp.
I leave you to judge.
Rain - September 2008
Like everyone else in north-western Europe I'm trying hard to keep my imaginary world as dry as possible, covering it with a waterproof sheet when I'm not writing, and using an umbrella indoors (risky, I know) when I am working. The rain. It raineth every day. I find it hard to concentrate when the window is being battered by raindrops the size of eggs. Speaking of which I've just bought some hens. For research purposes (one of book 3's themes is egg production) so I'll have to ensure I get the invoice off to my accountant. Actually the hens were free, a gift from one of the many 'egg farms' in the area. I learn that hens are redundant after eighteen months, and are then shipped off to 'other places'. I intercepted one shipment, holding it up in my Dick Turpin mask. I kidnapped three hens and brought them home. No one seemed to mind, least of all Doris, Mabel and Henrietta, as they have been named.
Agatha Fawlty - August 2008
My redraft of 'Molehill Hotel' is finished and has been pinged to Scholastic for their consideration. One of the benefits of being a proper author, as opposed to the pretend one I was for twenty years or more, is the serene joy of sending a manuscript via email. No more journeys to the post office with the package bouncing around on the passenger seat of the car. Last time I sent one off it cost me the best part of ten quid, so I save money too. 'Molehill Hotel' is Agatha Christie writing Fawlty Towers - there's no Basil, no Sybil, and certainly no Manuel, but there is a booming Major type chappie and several infuriated guests. The main protagonists are children, of course, and the teetering chaos of a provincial hotel is the setting for a ghost-heist-earthquake caper. And there's a flying monk in there too.
And as soon as I've hit the send button I begin drafting book three, which is the first of a (zzz) trilogy. But it will be a trilogy with a difference (of course) - the characters will overlap, and each book will be standalone. I want these stories to be swaddled in fog and edged with the call of crows. The trilogy begins and ends in the mountains, travelling out to sea on the river that springs where the first book begins.
Elv Moody - August 2008
Half way through the redraft of 'Molehill Hotel'. Elv Moody, my editor at Scholastic, has excelled herself. I don't know how long it takes her to read, then edit, then compile her very detailed notes. Not a word gets through; Elv has the astonishing ability to be able to attend to detail and to the big picture. She has an intuitive feel for structure, something I do not possess.
Her edits are not compulsory - they are, and she always stresses this, just suggestions. But they are ruthless. Ten thousand words chopped (this is roughly a fifth of the total), scenes rearranged, characters wiped out.
But when I take in what she's suggesting, I see that she's right. She was right with Oswald, and she's spot on here. She makes the story roll along; it tends to judder a bit when I'm at the wheel all on my own. The engine stalls here and there and I take diversions that end up making the journey much longer than it needs to be.
But rewriting is enormous fun. Imagine a life where you get to meet old friends, and revisit special moments but are allowed to change things if you don't like what happened first time around. That's what redrafting a book is like.
I work non-stop, eight hours a day, full throttle. I want this book to have a good, old fashioned plot, one that culminates in the knotting of all loose ends; and if anyone can steer it towards that end it is Elv.
Therefore I was utterly distraught to hear that in October she's leaving Scholastic to join Puffin. My contract with Scholastic comes to end after 'Molehill Hotel' anyway; nevertheless I don't think I'll ever get to work with anyone quite as brilliant as her again.
July 2008
I'm about to launch into a redraft of my second book, "Molehill Hotel." It's called that this week, it may be different next week. It's about... no, I won't say anything now.
I've been to hundreds of literary events recently. Simply hundreds. No, actually I've been to one. The agency summer party, celebrating Felicity Bryan's twentieth year in the business.
I won't name drop, just to say that I met my namesake, Sir Roy Strong. He told me there weren't many of us left. I replied that I had two children, so I've done my bit. Then we talked about dogs.
I'm trying to keep this blog strictly about my life as a writer. I also have a myspace page... search me out under the name Oswald. I write all sorts of nonsense there. Here, I'll stick to the business of books. And writing. I'll just write about books. Instead of writing books, that is.
Silly really, to write about writing books. Probably a waste of time. I mean, are you interested? Perhaps you are if you've read this far. Or perhaps you're expecting something interesting to pop up. It won't, I'm sorry.
June 2008
Almost a year since the publication of Oswald and I'm getting around to posting a blog. I've been blogging on MySpace for a year, but it's time I grew up and behaved like an adult.
So I'm going to try and keep this blog (as opposed to Oswald's blog on MySpace) strictly about writing. It might be tough, making it interesting. Writing is fun, but you know, if you were standing in the same room watching me, I don't think you'd be squealing with excitement. Unless you had a thing about people who mutter to themselves.
The Turkish rights to "Oswald and the End of the World" sold recently - I had an email from my agent, Catherine Clarke. She just mentioned it, in passing. I was delighted, of course. The Portuguese rights sold a few months ago: Scholastic told me about that one. In the same letter it also stated that the BBC had bought audio rights. I can't wait to find out who'll be the voice of Oswald. If it happens. Which I very much doubt. Because I am a bit of an Eeyore.
I'm waiting for multi-talented and inscrutable Elv Moody, fiction director at Scholastic, and editor of Oswald, to get back me on the progress of the next book "Molehill Hotel". Meanwhile I've started the next one. It might be a two parter.
I began the third book in note form, deliberately avoiding any sense of structure, style, even putting off deciding from which perspective it would be written. First person, single narrator, or first person, shared narration? Third person, several perspective. Or God. Shall I be God and be everywhere? And no title yet, either, although "The Sunlit Path of Great Promise" sprang to mind, as these things do.