Ch..ch..ch..changes

I am working on the my new book for Bloomsbury. I have been calling it Ghosts in old blog posts and then changed that to The Secrets of Hawton Mere. I am wondering if that is going to be the title when it goes onto print. Titles are strange things. They are either there from the start - sometimes before the start - or they they just loom out at you one day.

I see nothing wrong with this. It would be a problem if the nature of the novel was in a state of flux and the title tinkering reflected this indecision. But a title needs to be right. And the only way you know if it is right is when you hear it.

I have spoken at length to Helen Szirtes about the various issues she has with the book and the issues I might have with those issues and so on. But surely this means I am a terrible writer. Surely I should be able to do it all on my own. Why do I need help? I am a failure etc etc. . .

Well not really. The editor/writer relationship is one of constant negotiation. Certainly a writer who gives in to every suggestion probably doesn't know what they are doing. A writer who refuses to accept any suggestion is probably insecure. And a writer who refuses to consider good suggestions - especially when they are coming from someone as intelligent and insightful as Helen - is just plain stupid.

For a lot of the time I was an illustrator I would do anything to avoid using someones suggestion. I felt like it was my job to come up with the ideas and I had failed if someone else did it. I would reject perfectly good ideas just so that I could hang on to the notion that it was all my work.

I think working in newspapers changed that. In newspapers you are usually dealing with an editor rather than a designer and they are used to talking things through with journalists - that's the way they work. Journalists tend to have an annoying desire to have every word in the article portrayed in the illustration, but at least they know what they are talking about when it comes to the article you are supposed to illustrate or the concept you are dealing with in your cartoon. At the Independent I had Matt Hoffman on the comment pages and he was no more going to let a lame cartoon of mine through, than he was a lame column. And quite right too.

I still don't take advice easily. I still want to do everything myself. But with writing I think I'm more willing to accept that what I've done might not be the only way to go. I want everything I do to be better than the last thing I did. I want everything I do to be the best it can possibly be and if someone can see a route to that better than I can, then I'm not going to deliberately walk the other way just to be bloody minded.

Philippa Milnes-Smith got in touch having read Helen's suggestions and gave me some more, just as thoughtful as Helen's. I won't be incorporating them all. In fact some of the detail will become irrelevant as I work and areas are discarded or added to and characters dropped and introduced. But Helen and Philippa's comments will help me decide what to keep and what to lose.

Isabel Ford sent the proofs of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth today. It is a general rule of thumb that publishing deadlines are drawn to each other as if by some kind of gravitational force. So I need to get this book sorted out and back to Bloomsbury and then I need to get the proofs read and sent back. It is going to be a busy few weeks.

Roadrunner once

I went running this evening after a bit of a pause. I set off far too quickly and suffered for it later in my circuit. It was good to be running again, though there was so much traffic I ended up coughing for about half an hour when I got back. Instead of a healthy glow, I felt like I'd been chain smoking.

I like running in the dark with my iPod playing. I have a play list for running. The tracks have to be the right beat to really work and there is a certain type of music that seems to work well for me. I remember recently running through moon-shadows of trees on part of my route while Tom Verlaine's Days on the Mountain was playing. It was magical. Sometimes music just fills a gap you didn't even know was there and makes something perfect.

One argument against people walking or running around with headphones on is that we are providing a soundtrack to our lives as though we are in a movie. To which I say - what's wrong with that?

Writers are probably not the most psychologically stable of people. There is probably a common habit of stepping outside of the moment and observing, recording, rewriting - editing. I have always felt as though I was to some extent an actor in a movie.

It has often been a very dull movie, I hasten to add.

And they could certainly have cast someone better looking as the leading man.

My laptop came back from the technicians today. A little like dry cleaning, there was nothing to actually show that anything had been done apart from a piece of paper attached to the lid. I suppose time will tell.

Epiphany

Christmas is officially over. The cards have come down and the wreath is in the recycling bin. In Venice Epiphany (the Christian celebration of the visit of the Magi) has the added attraction of the Bufana - a witch who leaves sweets in children's stockings (or ashes if they've been bad!). There is even, apparently, a rowing race down the Grand Canal featuring men dressed as old ladies.

My son went back to school today and I was in my office in earnest, doing all kinds of dull but important pieces of displacement activity. My laptop has been playing up and though I know that it is going to have to go back to Dell to get fixed, still I let one of their technicians attempt to fix it by remote.

While he was doing this, my agent called. Philippa was ringing to check my availability for a meeting with Bloomsbury, to talk about the latest book and to discuss what happens next.

I always slightly dread the 'what happens next' discussions. It's not that I don't have lots of things I want to do. Far from it. It's more that I get stressed trying to decide which of the many things I'd like to do is the one that has most going for it.

So cold

I went to the studio yesterday for the first time in ages. It was so cold, I just put my coat back on and left after about ten minutes.

I went again today, but it was just as cold. I did stick it out a bit longer this time, but I had lost contact with my feet by the time I left. There is a romantic idea of artists and writers freezing away in garrets, so I suppose I'm embracing the cliche.

But not with any enthusiasm.

When we were very young

I watched the excellent BBC4 programme about British picture books on i-Player last night. It was the first in a series called When We Were Very Young. Martin Salisbury was talking head and a very articulate one he was.

I have never done a picture book. It seems odd really. I was taught illustration by Tony Ross who has done more picture books than seems humanly possible and I am both a writer and an illustrator. But so far they have always eluded me. I have had a couple of goes at trying to get something published, but I just don't seem to have hit the right buttons.

I am fascinated by them though. Not just because of the opportunity they provide as an illustrator, but because though I accept that literature can be all manner of things to people, among them simply another form of entertainment, I think that it can (and maybe should) also - picture books included - help to shape us as human beings and change the way we look at the world.

This may at first glance seem rather an outlandish claim for picture books, but I don't think it is. In fact they have an even greater impact because it is through them that we learn how a book works and it has the added component of teaching us how the living, moving world can be transcribed into a two dimensional shorthand. We learn about literature and about painting all in one go.

John Burningham was featured in the programme. His books are strange and dream-like and have a kind of magic about them, both in the texts and in the images. I once told Burningham how much my son and I had enjoyed his books and he looked genuinely moved as if no one had ever said that before (though I'm sure they had).

John and Janet Ahlberg's Each Peach Pear Plum is, as Michael Rosen pointed out, possibly the perfect picture book. It is faultlessly illustrated by Janet Ahlberg, full of witty, sophisticated images. The text is very, very clever and, like all of John Ahlberg's work, incredibly satisfying to read (which makes a big difference when you have a child who wants to hear it again and again, night after night). This is a proper children's book - neither talking down to, nor over the heads of, its target audience. Both of the books above were special favourites of my son and rightly so.Brian Wildsmith was also featured. He is a bit of a genius I think. Here the introduction is to art and to visual creativity rather than to words. Not all children or adults will like his loose paintwork - though I do - but a Brian Wildsmith book is like a parrot flying into the room. The colour leaps from the page. Painterliness in illustrators can often be nothing more than 'style' and it can grow a little tedious after a while. Not so with Wildsmith. That exuberance is not contrived. He just loves chucking paint about and he is an antidote to the prissy, safe and twee artwork that is too often the lazy default for picture book illustration. He should be carried shoulder high by everyone who cares about children caring about art and by everyone who treasures the illustrated book.

Some questions and answers from my sessions in Rio

Q: Will you set a story in Rio de Janeiro?

A: Yes I will. Setting is a very important part of writing a story for me. I often think 'I would like to set a story here' without having any specific idea of what that story will be. A good setting - real or imaginary - brings a story alive. You have to believe in the location, both as reader and writer, as it is the stage on which all the action takes place. I like to set my creepy stories in places I have actually visited because it helps me to visual and therefore describe it. These places do not have to be creepy in themselves - or not in an obvious, spooky old graveyard kind of a way. Some places just inspire me to write. Rio is such a place. When you have a story to write, try setting it in a familiar location one time. You will be surprised at how easy much of the writing will be once you have the setting sorted out in your mind.

Q: Where do you get you ideas from?

A: From every book I've read, movie I've seen, place I've been, dream I've had, event I've witnessed, experience I've had or heard about from other people. But though ideas are important they are often ideas for scenes or themes, rather than ideas for the story. An idea might be something like 'A boy who goes to a school where they train wizards', but the resulting story might by Harry Potter or the very different A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. Don't get too hung up on ideas. Often it is better to think about the type of story you want to write, the kind of characters you would like to write about, the location or even the theme - then ideas might start suggesting themselves. Write a story that excites you and then the chances are it will excite the reader. Bore yourself and you will bore your poor reader. If a teacher sets a story, try and pull it towards something you find exciting or interesting. It will be easier to write and it will be more fun to read.

Q: How long does it take to write a book?

A: Not surprisingly it depends on the length of the book. There may be three or four months of writing, but that might come after two or three years of kicking ideas around in my head. Some of the stories in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror have been in notebooks for nearly thirty years. Historical fiction takes longer because of the research. And after it is written, there is then the equally important editing process. You need to get into the habit of doing this yourself. School children have a reluctance to change things - but that is a vital part of writing. All writers make changes. Don't see it as correcting mistakes - see it as fine-tuning an engine to make it work better or weeding a garden to make it look more beautiful.

Q: When did you first decide you wanted to be a writer?

A: I wrote a short story called 'Journey to the Moon' when I was about 8 or 9 and entered it in a newspaper competition and won a medal (which I still have). It was then that I told my teacher that I wanted to write and illustrate my own book when I grew up. It took me another 30 years or so to actually achieve this! I did do it though. If you have a dream - to be a writer or a footballer or a ballet dancer - then try not to give up on it.

Q: How do you think of names for a character?

A: Naming characters is a tricky thing. People in real life just have the names they were given, but in a story names seem to become part of their character. Writers like Dickens exploit this by giving their characters names that seem to be descriptive - Scrooge for instance. An easy way to save time and find believable names is by grabbing the nearest telephone directory or turning to the index of a non-fiction book. You can simply use a name as it is or mix two names. The characters in my strip cartoon (Payne's Grey) are all named after small towns and villages in England - Brampton Bryan, Lownie Moor, Much Dewhurst, Gradely Green etc.

Q: I have an idea for a story but I don't seem to be able to get started. Do you have any tips?

A: Writers have different views on planning a story, but I think when you are learning to write it is a good idea to have some structure before you set off, even if you discard it as you go. The longer the piece, the more this helps. The shorter a piece, the more tightly plotted it tends to be. Ask yourself - What are the stand-out scenes in my story? How will it start? Where will it end? Who is in my cast of characters? How will the character or characters be changed by the events in my story? Does my story have a theme - is it about bullying or friendship, say - and is that going to come through? If you still can't get started, try writing something else - a different kind of story - and see if that helps. The more you write the easier it will become. Don't get too attached to ideas - maybe the reason you can't get started is because your idea is not a good one. It is better to accept that before you write your huge novel!

Q: How do you make a scary scene work?

A: The rules for making a scary scene are similar to making any scene work - the preparation has to be in place. A common technique in horror is to crank up the tension, then relax the reader, then - bang - you hit them with the scary scene. But just like a joke is not just about the punchline, but about how we get to the punchline, don't make the mistake of thinking it is enough to have a gory scene. If you haven't prepared the reader it will not work. Besides, gory can just be revolting rather than scary. Sometimes it is more scary to lead the reader into a dark room and let them hear something scuffling about, or let them see something out of the corner of their eye than to show them a headless body (though that can be scary too, of course).

Q: How do you write action?

A: To carry on with the answer from the last question, a lot about how a scene reads is in the way it is written. Fast action is going to read that way if the sentences and paragraphs are short, for instance. Think about the sound of the words too. But just as with scary scenes, a story that is all action with no rests will be exhausting. Read your story out loud. Do this whatever you write. Does it sound right? If it sounds wrong, the chances are it will read wrong. Is that sentence too long to say comfortably. Is it slowing the action down? Is the dialogue believable? Is it clear what's going on? Don't use more words than you need to, but make sure they are the right ones for the job.

Q: Do you think of the beginning to a story first and work through?

A: Rarely. Often with creepy stories, it is the ending that comes first and the story is all about how we get there. But the start of a story is massively important. You need to grab the reader's attention and make them want to read on. The quicker you can establish your character/s and what kind of story it is, the better. Dickens' opening line in A Christmas Carol is a good example:

Marley was dead: to begin with.

He has introduced a character, set the mood and grabbed our attention - all with six words.

Q: Lots of books I read seem to get bogged down with detail. How do you stop this happening?

A: I'm not sure I always get that balance right myself. Detail is a problem when writing historical fiction. Not enough and the period you are writing about will not seem convincing; too much and you will bore the reader and make them feel you are giving them a history lesson. Clearly if a book has too much detail it will get tiring to read, but usually stories by school children do not have enough. There is a reluctance to write more than is absolutely necessary, despite the fact that it is detail that often makes a story convincing. Try not to 'tell' the reader what is happening or what a character is feeling, try to 'show' this in the story. Obviously make sure your detail is contributing to the story and not detracting from it. But don't assume that we are going to know that Mary is tall and thin, or the house has arched windows, if you don't tell us. The more important something is to the story, the more precise you have to be with the detail. The more fantastic the world you create, the more help we will need as a reader.

Ghosts

I tried to write more of the 'inspiration for the stories' stuff I had promised to give Adrian for the Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. When they are in a more coherent form I'll put them on the blog. And I've reached the end of Ghosts.

By that I don't that I have finished - I mean I've just reached the end. I have skipped a lot of stuff and simply written whatever has come most readily to me. I don't always write like this, but I am trying to get the bulk of the book roughed out before I go to Rio and so I am just writing those parts that I see most vividly. Then I will go back through and link them together.

I wanted to have the whole shape of the book there waiting for me when I got back - regardless of holes. Then it becomes about fleshing out the characters and making the thing come to life. This kind of book - mystery/suspense/thriller/chiller - is all about the release of information. The sequence of events and the speed of the narrative is crucial. Sometimes you want to hold the reader back, sometimes you want to send them hurtling down a dimly lit corridor.

Running will have to wait

My new regime continues. Cycle across town with my son and his friend. Drop them at school. Cycle from school to my studio. Laptop out of the back and plugged in. Trip to the local cafe for the 'Clear!' - boff! - defibrillator shot of caffeine. Back to the studio and back to the book.

Bang away at the keyboards until the word count gets past 1000 and keep going in the hope of 2000. Then back on the bike and cycle (invariably in the rain) back to the school to pick up the boys. Back across town. Check my emails and write a bit of my blog.

I even had time today for a kick around with my son in the local park before doing some more of the Doodled Books. I also drove all the way up to a running shoe shop on the Huntingdon Road and found that it was shut Monday's and Tuesdays.

Running will have to wait.

Shame.

And speaking of Hellboy

My daily routine has been shaken to the foundations by my son starting secondary school. Having been able to walk him round to a school that was a few hundred yards away we now have to cycle across Cambridge in what has been a week of foul weather. I am taking him and one of his school friends for a while until they are more confident.

So instead of starting the day with a cup of coffee at home I now cycle to my studio and grab a coffee in a local cafe before sitting down at my laptop. I am trying to break the back of my new book before I go to Rio at the end of the month. To do that I would ideally like to be writing 10,000 words a week (or more). So far I am reasonably on target.

The new book is called Ghosts, but that title is going to change I feel. It is a Victorian-set Gothic chiller. It has - I hope - elements of The Fall of the House of Usher and Jane Eyre: a creepy house full of dark secrets, strange noises in the night, a brooding host. I'm certainly enjoying writing it. I just hope the same goes for reading it. It should escape from the crypt at the beginning of 2010.

And speaking of the weird and creepy, I was talking about going to see Hellboy 2 a few posts back and I've mentioned the Hellboy comics before. I am a big, big fan of Mike Mignola. His drawings are superb and the way he uses a page is a masterclass in narrative illustration. So when I picked up a copy of B.P.R.D some years ago, I bought it for Mike Mignola's cover design alone. Imagine my disappointment when I then discovered the inside drawings were not by him at all, but by somebody I'd never heard of called, Guy Davis.

But the thing is, once I got used to the idea that Guy Davis wasn't Mike Mignola, and certainly wasn't trying to be, I began to realise that he was actually pretty good himself. He is one of those amazing graphic artists who appear to be able to draw anything. His work is stylised of course, but with a softer edge to it than Mignola's and so he is able to carry a story in a more conventional, almost filmic, way. Look at his website and see just how much work is going into these books.

The amazing this is, both Mignola and Davis are inked by Dave Stewart (whom I'm assuming is not the bearded half of Eurythmics). His inking of Mignola is all about restraint and mainly flat colour. His inking of Davis shows his ability with a larger palette and a wonderful use of texture and subtle modelling. He uses light sources incredibly well.

Inkers are an underappreciated quantity here in the UK - which is why so many British graphic novels look like. . .Well, they don't look very good.

Still a bit tense

Philippa, my agent, phoned today to tell me how much she had enjoyed Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. And it is always good to hear that!

I saw John Clark the day before yesterday and he asked me if I'd sent the book off yet and I said I had. He was puzzled by my lack of enthusiasm. Was that not a huge relief? he asked. And I said it was in a way, but until you hear something back it is always a bit tense.

The UKLA Children's Book Award - for which Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror was shortlisted - was supposed to be announced last weekend, but there is no news. I'm guessing I haven't won as Bloomsbury have not heard anything, but on a Google search I discovered instead that Uncle Monty has been longlisted for the Lincolnshire Young People's Book Award, which was a nice surprise, and is also on a list of suggested titles for Staffordshire's Young Teen Fiction Award.

Laptop

My new laptop arrived today. Or am I supposed to call it a notebook? Anyway - it arrived and I looked at it and was basically too nervous - having never had one before - to actually even plug it in.

The idea is that I will become a bit more mobile in terms of where I can write. I may even write at my studio sometimes. It is actually pretty quiet there. The second-hand furniture trade occupying much of the yard is not exactly booming.

I do have a kind of perfect writing environment in my head - a lovely office, lined with book and a view out onto. . .Well, I'm less sure of that. Unfortunately you tend to get the writing space you deserve - in that it inevitably becomes a reflection of your personality and creative process.

Mine is a mess.

Stop fiddling about

I finally sent Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth off to Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury today. It is always a nervous moment because the fact is you can always fiddle about a bit more - and a bit more - and a bit more. . .

But at some point you have to let it go.

I sent it to Sarah because Helen Szirtes, my editor on the two previous books, has left Bloomsbury to enter the perilous world of freelancing. I'm hoping she might edit Tunnel's Mouth on a freelance basis, but these things are out of my control.

I also sent the book to my agent, Philippa Milnes-Smith at LAW Ltd.

Now I just have to wait and see what they all think. . .

The first of the first drafts

The whole family was down with sore throats and colds today. I was desperately trying to resolve a few final things with Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth so that I can send it off on Monday.

My books go through several stages once they have been assembled into a book-like entity. The very first stage is something that is in a constant state of flux, widening and contracting, bubbling up in one section and buttoning down in another. This is a kind of plate-spinning exercise - trying to keep all the component parts up and working and looking like a single creation.

This stage results in the first draft. Actually it is more like the pre-first draft, because it is a draft that will never leave my writing room. This draft is for me - a draft for me to see just how many problems I have shied away from resolving over the preceding months. It is a way of making those problems more tangible and that makes them easier to solve somehow.

I go through this draft making notes and then refer back to the copy on my hard drive and make another version. This draft is the real first draft, because it is the first I am willing to let anyone else see. This draft is read by my wife who is hopefully going to tell me if there is something that simply does not make sense and whilst she would feel awkward telling me something I had written was rubbish - she tells me a lot by what she chooses to pick out for praise. She is also very good at spotting spelling mistakes.

I then use these observations to go back and produce another draft - the first draft to leave the house. It is this draft - a draft that is hopefully true to the sense of what I want the book to be and as free from mistakes as I can make it - that will go to my publisher and agent. This draft is really the true start of the book as a book and not as a file on my computer.

Bats in the attic

I read an interview with the TV writer Paul Abbot today which, as well as telling me about his extraordinary early life and extended family, also mentioned visiting a hypnotist to get him to stop coming up with ideas. I don't know whether he was joking or not, but I think there is something underpinning it that I relate to.

It is seen as such an objectively good thing to come up with lots of ideas - particularly by those who find it difficult - that no one really talks about the problems. And there are problems.

There is no point to have loads of ideas you are not in a position to act upon. Ideas can be incredibly distracting. I have loads racing round my head at any given time and a lot of the discipline of writing (or illustration or cartooning or painting) is to shut the extraneous ideas out.

Part of why I started writing was in order to fix some of the ideas I had buzzing round in my head. Why was I plotting stories and inventing characters and coming up with dialogue on the train and as I fell asleep at night? It was all a bit crazy. Calling myself a writer seemed to validate this behaviour.

The trick to working - and knowing this does not in any way mean that I have perfected the practice - is to grab every good idea and use it then and there. Only then do you find out whether it really was so good after all. If you don't they flap around in your head like bats in the attic.

I need answers

A busy Saturday today. I took my son to tennis this morning, then worked whilst he went to the school's summer fete. It is my deadline on Monday and I'm not going to hit it. I have killed one of the stories off - or rather I have put it into suspended animation. It needs time to make it really work, so it will end up in another book, another time. Sometimes writing is more about letting go of something than it is about the work itself. You can't afford to be precious.


I dropped in to the school later just to see how it was all getting on and have a chat to John and Judith among others. In the afternoon I cycled with my son to have a piano lesson at his teacher's house on the Trumpington Road and then back for Doctor Who.

Dr Who is regenerating after being hit by a Dalek after an hilarious slow motion romantic running sequence involving him and Rose. Regenerating! It can't really mean that David Tennant is leaving can it? Why can't Catherine Tate regenerate? And what has happened to Billy Piper's voice since she's been in the parallel world? I can hardly understand what she's saying. She seems to have twice as many teeth. I need answers and I need them now.


Off to Coventry cathedral tomorrow for Clive Hogger's ordination.

Missing planks

I continue to nibble away at Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. My deadline is next week and I am still not entirely happy. This stage of a book always takes longer than I think it will.

Once a book is up and running, you can coast fairly easily. The words come thick and fast and you have the freedom of knowing that if there is a problem you can always come back to it at a later stage.

This is that later stage. All the unresolved passages and glitches are now massively important. They are missing planks in a bridge. They are holes in a picture. They have to be sorted out.

I actually enjoy, in a semi-perverse way, the mechanics of making something work, whether it be a strip, a story, an illustration or a painting. There is the satisfaction of solving a puzzle or climbing a hill wedded to the sheer excitement of adding that final detail or turn of phrase that brings something to life.

Or at least that's the hope.

Do

I went to the studio this morning and saw John briefly. He was working on one of his drawings on his laptop and in the space of about five minutes explained how to use part of Photoshop that is going to really help me I think. I have never been trained in Photoshop and I just about get by. I may be picking John's brains again.

I did quite a bit of work this morning. I have been a little intimidated by my paintings lately - frightened of spoiling the good things about them and not replacing them with anything better - but today I just decided to get some more paint on the canvas. Sometimes you just have to do something. I once saw a great piece of graffiti. It just said 'Do'. That was all. Do. If I was going to have a motto, that would be a good one.

In the afternoon I was working on Tales from the Tunnel's Mouth. I am going through the whole book sharpening the writing. I think I need to get a draft printed off and actually read it through out loud. Tweaking on the computer can become a bit of a black hole. I think it adds to the feeling that everything is still in flux - which I like up to a point. But eventually I need to see it on paper. That's when it starts to feel like it's out in the real world and not still in my head.

What am I reading?

A big part of writing is reading - if you see what I mean. I have to say, however, that I read a lot less than I used to. Partly this is due to my no longer travelling anywhere on public transport. When I lived in Norfolk and commuted into London two or three times a week, I got lots of reading done. I don't miss the travelling, but I do miss the excuse to read.

I have lost the habit of carrying a book round with me as I used to do when I was younger. Instead of the paperback I always used to have on me, I have a notebook and when I have a coffee or whatever, I tend to write instead of read. I suppose I also do not have the genuinely 'free' time I had then. I also watch too much TV. And far too much bad TV. Television is a curse for both writer and reader.

That said, I always have a few books on the go. I have been reading a book about Hereward the Wake - Hereward by Victor Head - as research for a book I am writing about the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings. I am reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins as an aid to getting into character for my new book of Victorian(ish)creepy stories and because my son bought it for me as a present. And because it is a really fantastic book. And because I have a bit of a thing about epistolatory novels.

I have also been dipping into Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Datebook 1986-1995. This is a companion volume to the one I have mentioned in an earlier blog - the Acme Novelty Datebook 1995-2002 (though I notice I mistakenly called it the Acme Novelty DIARY in that posting). It has a sticker on it saying 'Not Suitable For Younger Readers'. This must me one of the great understatements of all time!

I am also reading My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell to my son as a bedtime story. I loved this book when I was young but I was older than my son when I first read it. I had forgotten how grown up some of the passages are. I thought my son would love the nature observations because he is a nature-lover himself, but it is the family scenes he most enjoys and finds so amusing - particularly those featuring the extraordinary Larry Durrell. But we are back to the silliness of age-banding again.

Speaking of which, Philip Pullman wrote a piece in the Guardian last Saturday on this very subject. Follow the link and have a read - then sign up if you feel moved to do so.

Writing is strange

A bit of a disrupted day, one way and another. I haven't been to my studio for over a week now, so I am looking forward to doing that this week. Maybe my paintings are better than I remember them being. It's always possible.


My new book is all there now, but it has a few thin bits and a few holes. Writing is a strange process. A book grows bit by bit - word by word - page by page - chapter by chapter. But if it is going to be anything more than that, there comes a point where it needs to become a whole. This is a mysterious process, a little like painting (or at least it seems so to me).


There comes a point where it just feels right - it feels finished.

The dotted line

My new Bloomsbury contracts arrived yesterday. It is always a satisfying moment, signing a new contract - not least because then actually receive some money.


For those not familiar with the arcane process of payment in publishing, the writer receives a wedge of money on signing the contract for a book, another wedge on delivery of the manuscript and another wedge on publication (and possibly another on publication of paperback if there is to be a hardback/paperback publication).


These payments are an advance from the publisher set against royalties on sales of the book. The better the book sells, the quicker your royalties will pay off that advance. The more generous the advance, the harder it is to pay it off.


But that is infinitely better than having a measly advance and still not selling. Royalties are pie in the sky - better to have a decent advance (unless you are J K Rowling - and then you get both anyway). Sales of a book are not a judgement on the quality of your book (or at least not always). Really bad books sell well and very, very good ones disappear without trace. It is a bit of a lottery.


In any case - a decent advance is a show of commitment from the publisher, and that means they are more likely to give your book a publicity budget. Anyone can promote authors who are already famous. It takes a bit more work to develop the careers of the rest of us. The work of the sales, marketing and publicity people is vital. There is a big difference between printing a book and publishing it. Anyone can print a book. I have to say Bloomsbury have been excellent publishers for me.


That said, a writer needs to justify an advance. It is always good to work off that advance - and that means helping to promote the books in any way that helps: doing author visits and talks, doing festivals, doing interviews. . .


And maybe running a blog.