Under great white northern lights

I went with my son to see The White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights, the documentary about their tour of Canada. There were maybe eight other people in the entire cinema, which seemed a shame. It certainly deserved more viewers than that. It captured the excitement of live performance well, but it was the strange little gigs they did in schools and day centres that were most fascinating. It also showed what a facilitator music is when it comes to breaking down barriers.

There was a particularly interesting bit about creativity which I thought I'd share with those of you who haven't seen it. The concert footage is interspersed with clips from an interview with Jack and Meg (although amusingly Meg has to be sub-titled, she is so quiet - 'No one can hear a goddamn word your saying!' ). In reality it is an interview with Jack White.

Talking about recording the album, he said that basically the attitude was to turn up and do something - regardless of whether they were in the mood or particularity inspired. He likened it to when he was an upholsterer and had a more realistic work ethic whereby you did the best you could on any given day and accepted that.

I read something by Jeanette Winterson recently where she said she wasn't writing anything at the moment because 'you can't force it' or words to that effect. Well, a lot of us are not in a position where we can sit around and wait for the muse to turn up. We are contracted to publishers (if we are lucky) and we have mouths to feed and bills to pay. And in any case I'm not sure that the book is 'out there' and I'm waiting for it to arrive. The book is in me and I have to come up with strategies to get it out. That sounds more medical than I'd intended.

I agree with Jack White - there is a lot of nonsense spoken about creativity. Anyone who is any good at anything has worked hard to get there. A lot of what is involved in any art form is just plain hard graft. Sometimes you just have to put the hours in. That's not to say that sometimes writing doesn't feel effortless and easy, because it does (sometimes) and when it does you need to get as many words written as possible - because it ain't going to last.

But I think that attitude of just getting the stuff out there, however imperfect, is absolutely the right one.

Taking a lion for a walk

I may have said this before. When you get to my age it can feel like you have said most things before. I keep promising myself never to tell another anecdote because I always have the nagging doubt that the person I'm telling it to has already heard it and is just being too polite to say. And there is nothing worse than hearing an anecdote - honed by many tellings - for the second or even third time. Once you miss that opening to say 'Sorry - you've told me that already,' you have to listen to the whole thing. If it's funny you have to laugh. Groan.

The good thing about repeating an anecdote by blog is that in cyberspace no one can hear you yawn. So here goes. . .

When I was a kid - I think I was probably about eight - we were doing art and the teacher introduced the thing we were about to do by talking about Paul Klee and saying that she wanted us to put our pencils on the paper and just take the line wherever we wanted. She described this as 'Taking a line for a walk'.

Except what I heard was 'Taking a lion for a walk'.

I imagined that my pencil was somehow a lion and that I had him on a leash. I can't remember if the line that I drew was any different than those of the other pupils in my class, but I do know that the phrase 'taking a lion for a walk' never quite left me and it seemed to say something about what I wanted from my drawings as I got older. It still does.

And now that I write for a living, it seems to say something about writing too. There are so many ways a story can go, so many possible lives for any character a writer creates. There is always a tension between control and the need to adapt to the new possibilities that open up as you write.

As I'm sure I've said before, it does sound horribly pretentious when a writer says that a character develops a life of their own, but they do - or they certainly should. And I suppose that is one of the reasons that 'taking a lion for a walk' rings true to me. I feel that when I'm working well I am not fully in control of the outcome - that occasionally I'm being pulled in another direction.

When you are producing work for money and to a deadline, safety can always seem like a justifiable option. But safety is deadening. There has to be an element of uncertainty - of danger.

Otherwise you're taking a poodle for a walk.

Shiny new jacket

I received some very exciting post today - a set of covers for The Dead of Winter from Kate Clarke of Bloomsbury Children's Books design department. I had seen versions of this before, but not the finished thing. I have taken a photograph rather than scanned it in so that you can see that it has a foil effect to accentuate the frosty feel.

Covers are a source of frequent complaint by authors and I've spoken about this before. Everyone understands how important a cover is and obviously authors want something that does justice to their book. Often they can feel a little powerless to intervene in the process. It can be soul-destroying to put so much effort into the writing of a book and then see it go out into the world with a lackluster jacket.

My take on covers has always been that - without misrepresenting the book - they should stand on their own as a piece of design whose function is not to illustrate the story (though it can do that as well) but to sell the book - to make the book desirable. Increasingly that means producing something powerful enough that it will catch a potential reader's eye at the size of an Amazon thumbnail. I am clearly biased as I did the image, but I think this is a very strong cover.

Of course, none of this will matter if the book does not capture the reader's imagination. But getting someone to choose your book from the myriad of others out there is half - maybe more than half - of the battle.

The Dead of Winter is out in October.

Happy St George's Day!

Here's a poem in celebration of the fact that as well as England being the land of bonnets and brollies, it is also home to a great radical tradition. This is To the Men of England by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.

Sow seed, -but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!

Uncorrected proofs

Two copies of the uncorrected proofs of The Dead of Winter arrived today. It is very exciting to see it in book form for the first time.

Le terrificante storie di zio Montague

Uli Rushby-Smith from Bloomsbury Rights Department got in touch yesterday saying she had a busy time at the Bologna Children's Book Fair (which is always nice to hear) and that interest in my books was brisk (which is even nicer to hear). She passed on details of my Italian publisher, Newton Compton, and that encouraged me to have a look at their website and see if they had anything about my books.

Not only did I find the cover of the Italian edition of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, but also this great promo they've put up on YouTube. . .

Grantchester meadows

My brother-in-law came up for the day yesterday and we took a stroll along the Cam at Grantchester Meadows. The afternoon had been mainly overcast but had cleared and the low sun was making everything glow with the trippy hyper-reality of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. The photos don't really do it justice.