Learning about World War 1 poetry for GCSE had a huge influence on me, and is a great big reason why I'm a writer now. This one's just about my favourite:

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They've published the reader statistics for October over at Smokelong Quarterly and my story, Two minute silence, topped the list. I'm staggered and delighted.

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Well, I said it was a silly competition, and it is, but I thought it might be fun. All you have to do is write a limerick or haiku - your choice - including as many of the words SECRET, ALCHEMY, MATHEMATICS and LOVE as you can. The winner will receive a signed copy of A Secret Alchemy, hot off the press and dedicated to them, or to that vital aunt, or whoever else they like. A runner-up will receive a signed copy of the paperback of The Mathematics of Love.

Deadline is midnight GMT (Californians and Kiwis please note) on Sunday 16th November 2008.

Post your entry in the comments on the post on my blog, and I'll keep them under wraps until I get judging.

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... or notable things include:

1. capitals don't matter
2. lefthanded typing is possible - but slow
3. frozen shoulder should be called really painful arm, dammit
4. taxi drivers can be really kind
5. tens machines do help (thank you, rosy)
6. i love my physio - she's great
7. when the nice doctor says these pills might make you feel sick, she ain't joking ...


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How many times do you hear an editor (less often, perhaps, a reviewer) say that the all important thing which will make them take a book on is the voice? Here's the latest version I've come across, from a 4th Estate Editor on the Authonomy blog:

"The most overriding thing I look for, though, is that all-important but impossible-to-define ‘voice’. You’ll no doubt have heard that a hundred times, and will hear it another thousand, but I can’t overestimate how important it is; there is no point in worrying about character or dialogue or pace or plot if you don’t have a voice to begin with. The thing about voice, from a reader’s perspective, is that it’s unmistakeably there; there is a subtly different shift in the way you read a paragraph that makes you sit up and pay attention, and want to hear what they’ve got to say."

Which is all absolutely true - I know it from my own reading, and from doing manuscript reports - but from the point of view of the aspiring writer, it doesn't get you a lot further. We'd all say that we know a good voice when we hear it, but it's very hard to pin down, and so equally hard to explain, or teach, or help you to learn. Moreover, like any single element of craft, trying to tease it out just shows you how inseparable all the elements actually are. And what is the relationship of voice to tone and style?

Well, to start with, what is voice in in creative writing?

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I’m really shocked and sorry to hear of Michael Crichton’s death from cancer on Tuesday at the age of 66. He was quite an influence on me in my youth – far more than you’d think from the historical, un-blockbuster-y love story I ended up writing.

The first I ever heard of Michael Crichton was while I was studying for my GCSEs in 1991. We were still looking for something to fill the gap after the 1990 World Cup, and my best friend (who has since gone on to do loads of really clever stuff to do with environmental science) told me she was reading this brilliant book about dinosaurs being brought back to life...


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This has been a week of drawing lines under things. Some things just don't work and it's better to move on than to wallow. And I think as writers we're (well I'm talking about me, can't speak for anyone else) often guilty of wallowing. Of perpetual waiting. Of plodding on and hoping that whatever it is we're waiting for will happen, eventually. We've got to be, I suppose. That's how stories and novels get written, it's how we cope with waiting months for decisions from editors on our work.

But we can't be like that with everything. It isn't healthy. And carrying the weight of expectation around with us can be a bind. It can be heavy. It can be a waste of time as well.

So this week I've made decisions.

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Trouble is, the book cost £9.99 and I only had £6.50 on me. R took out his wallet to show he didn’t have any cash on him and no, I wasn’t supposed to use the card because we’d agreed, we’d only get money once a week and it wasn’t his fault I’d left my spending money at home. He’d come back later in the day, if it was so important.

But there was only one copy! What if it was sold?

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I'm feeling very benign towards the USA today, for reasons you can probably imagine. And among other things, I've been reflecting on how having a separate deal with an American publisher makes you realise how differently they present your work. (It also improves cashflow, but that's another blog post.) My two editors read my work itself in very similar ways, but how that expresses itself, for that market, in the whole package (yes, horrid word, but necessary) does vary. As you can see on the sidebar, the covers for The Mathematics of Love were very different, as were the blurbs, and it was interesting to see which of the translations followed which path, and which did their own thing. The blurbs for A Secret Alchemy are actually rather similar - it's not the easiest book to sum up in a few compelling sentences - but the covers are very different. You can see Headline Review's cover in the sidebar, but this is the Harper Perennial cover:

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Chances are you’ve had a really bad cold recently, or you’ve got one at the moment. If not, bad luck, because you’re about to come down with one in the next few days. There’s a lot of it about, don’t you know, and the moment you say “but I never get colds” is the moment you’d better start packing for an all-expenses-paid trip to Snot City.

Here is some small consolation, though – if you’re capable of sitting up long enough to read this YOU HAVE NOT GOT THE FLU, ALL RIGHT?

Of less consolation is the fact that if you’d been around in the early 20th century, your horrible cold could have been prevented, or failing that, completely cured!


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