Notebooks

Most writers keep some kind of notebook. Personally, I always carry a small Moleskine notebook wherever I go and fill it with all kinds of stuff that may or may not be of use one day. It has observations of things I want to remember, snippets of dialogue I overhear, bits of dialogue that pop into my head. I might come up with a solution to some problem in a book I am working on and I scribble it down before I forget it (which these days is about thirty seconds later). There are diary entries and jokes for my strip. There are phone numbers and titles of books and bands that friends have recommended.

I remember seeing a documentary a while back that said that Beethoven used to carry a notebook wherever he went and he made sound sketches of waterfalls or wind in the trees, using musical notation. I love that idea.

Yet still I do not use my notebook as much as I should. I tend to forget how bad my memory is. The observations are the most valuable, I think - and they are the things you are most likely to forget. I had certainly forgotten this - the entry on the first page of my last notebook: Wino in Norwich wearing huge headphones and singing 'Tragedy' by the Bee Gees in an out of tune falsetto.

On Stephen King

Stephen King came up in conversation with my agent, Philippa Milnes-Smith (as I suspect he has come up in many agent/writer conversations over the years) in a discussion about scary novels and the difficulties thereof. I read Stephen King's On Writing last year (I am a bit of a sucker for books about writers and writing) and was surprised to find that he says he is not a big fan of plot.

It may seem bizarre for such an out and out storyteller to say, 'I won't try and convince you that I've never plotted any more than I'd try to convince you that I've never told a lie, but I do both as little as possible.' But is it? I do not think so.

His point is that he begins with a situation - a situation (or a predicament if you like) into which he drops a character or three. Then he writes and sees what happens. Now I think what Stephen King is calling a 'situation', many of us would call a plot, but I think that distinction is still a good one; the idea that a plot will develop rather than be imposed dogmatically at the beginning.

And I think King's view is just as true in the plot-driven world of children's fiction. I certainly know from my experience that books work better when I wind the characters up and let them go than when I move them about like chess pieces. I have made a box for them - King's 'situation' - but hopefully it is a big box and an interesting box and they are free to bump into each other in interesting ways. That way things just happen, and they are often more real and more compelling than that brilliant idea you have had in your head for months (or maybe that is just me). Besides, plot problems are relatively easy to solve. Come up with a dull character and it is like dragging a corpse around.

More tales of covers for the Black Ship

Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury sent me a copy of the US cover for Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. They have adapted the UK design (see below), adding a stronger background colour as they did for Uncle Montague. As before, the illustration is by David Roberts.

I should have been at the private view of the students on the Cambridge School of Art MA in Children's Book Illustration this evening, but I sadly did not make it. The course is run by Martin Salisbury and judging by the invitation, the show should be great. It is at the Illustration Cupboard, 27 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AL until Saturday and then at Anglia Ruskin University's Ruskin Gallery from 21 February to 5 March.

Charles Keeping

I went to Hitchin Boy's School at the end of last year on the invitation of Thomas Pilkington, the school librarian. During our email conversations prior to my visit I was pleasantly surprised to hear Tom - an American - singing the praises of the fantastic British illustrator and printmaker, Charles Keeping. Tom was expressing his frustration that Keeping's contribution to illustration was not better acknowledged on this, the 20th anniversary of his death in 1988. Keeping won acclaim and awards when he was alive (the Kate Greenaway -twice - and the Carnegie) but he does seem a little forgotten now.

Keeping could be in a post entitled Why I Write or Why I Draw. I wanted to draw as well as he did - I still do. I wanted to produce exciting and poetic illustrations - I still do. But as well as inspiring me to draw, he also pulled me through those books by Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece that he illustrated so beautifully. I wanted to know what was happening in those pictures and I read the books to find out. A Charles Keeping spine was a sign of quality in the school library and they still call out to me whenever I look round a secondhand bookshop. Here is the title page of a Rosemary Sutcliff from 1965 I picked up yesterday.

Tuesdays are different

The routine I've described on previous posts does not apply to Tuesdays. On Tuesdays I tend not to go in to my studio. I often have to finish my weekly Payne's Grey strip for the New Statesman. I also take an after-school art club at my son's school so I have a disrupted day.

Every week follows the same pattern. I set off to the art club muttering to myself that I will try not to be so grumpy or shouty; that they are just children - lovely, gifted, bright, delightful children, mostly. But like a horse knows you can not ride as soon as your foot is in the stirrup, children know you are not a real teacher. They smell the fear.

At the beginning of each class I try to inject as much enthusiasm into the new project as I possibly can, but within seconds I am growling and as jaded as Jack Black in School of Rock before he discovers the kids can play instruments.

Then I see what they are drawing. Suddenly I am transformed into Jack Black after he discovers the kids can play. Life seems full of possibilities - one of them being that I have the ability to enthuse and to pass on practical skills. This lasts about two minutes before I am once again threatening to throw various children (including my son) out of the class.

I nag my son all the way home, because he is the only one I can get at. This makes me feel small and spiteful. In art club I was just a bad teacher; now I am a bad father. It is all I can do to stop myself going back to bed with all my clothes on. I am tortured by my inadequacies as a teacher, as a father - as a human being.

Then I show my wife some of the drawings and we marvel at the ability of some of those children and I wonder if I did not, after all, play some small roll in the making of those drawings; that maybe I had encouraged them to do more than they might have done had I not been there. Maybe art club is not a total waste of time after all.

I'll do one more week, I think. And see how it goes.

As of today I have a new agent. I am now represented by Philippa Milnes-Smith of LAW Ltd and I am very excited about it. Philippa is great and she has promised (in a charmingly non-committal, not-in-so-many-words kind of way) to make me rich and famous. And frankly I'd be more than happy with rich, so it should be a piece of cake.

Where I draw

Having glimpsed the messy bedroom office in which I write, come with me now as I cycle across Cambridge to my studio (you can sit on the handlebars - watch out for the bell!). I try to take this journey at a reasonable speed as it is now almost the only excercise I take, although if it's a nice day and I have my camera with me, I may stop and take photographs on the way (see foot of page).

My studio is in the upper floor of a little community of buildings and sheds, housing all kinds of enterprises, from second-hand furniture to web design. My space is quite small. The light is not bad but the ceiling is very low and there is no water (except for the stand pipe outside and the leak in the roof). I have a desk, a plan chest, an easel, assorted boxes full of paints and brushes and so on, some books, ink, pens, rulers and pencils. It is considerably tidier than my office, but that is not saying much.

I share this space with John Clark who works in computer games but is also (really) a painter. He is doing a series of oil paintings featuring big men with no clothes on. I may show one or two on this blog over the next weeks if he lets me. On the other side of a partition wall are Andrew and Lynette who are both graphic designers. Paint on one side of the wall, Apple Macs on the other.

As for me, I am filling a sketchbook with all kinds of things, including the drawings of skateboarders below. I have also just purchased twenty small canvases and yesterday began to paint on two of them. I have not painted in years. It felt great; like remembering how good mangos taste after not eating one for ages.

And I work until five or so and then cycle back - in the dark at the moment - and remind myself again how I really must buy a helmet and stop listening to Peter Bjorn and John on my iPod instead of listening for killer cars. Sometimes I stop off in the centre of Cambridge to buy food or art supplies or turn my books face out in Watersones or stand with the other comic book geeks in Borders. Mainly I do it so I can cycle past Kings College Chapel and think how lucky I am to be able to see that building any time I want.

The joy of sketchbooks

My bed/sofa/cistern-side book at the moment is Chris Ware's facsimile sketchbook, notebook and journal published as The Acme Novelty Library Diary 1996-2000 by Drawn & Quarterly. I am not sure I could have a meaningful relationship with anyone who did not think Chris Ware was just a bit brilliant. If you do not own any of his books, go and buy one now.

I thought that maybe I might start posting the odd page from my sketchbook just to give another angle on what I do and how I go about things. My sketchbook is not as funny as Chris Ware's and I do not go in for his 'notes to self' - like 'I SUCK!' and 'Jesus CHRIST I need to learn how to DRAW!' - even though those thoughts do pop into my head occasionally (or perhaps that should be often).



For reasons I can not completely explain, I have been doing drawings of skateboarders (without their boards).