I wake up with a start and the doctor and Cheryl are sitting either side of my bed, watching me without concern.

“How are the McCanns doing?” I blurt out.

Cheryl sighs. The doctor is taken aback. “Err…Very well, I think.”

“They did it, you know.”

“Did what?”

“They did it.”

“I’d be careful what you say,” the doctor warned me.

“They did it. They cleared their name.”

“Oh. I thought you were going to say that they murdered little Maddy.”

“No, of course not. Of course not.”

“No. Although I think that they..."

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Sitting by myself, wearing white leggings and big T-shirt; bare feet up on the opposite seat, boots under the table, and a pile of library books. I’m watching a man with dark hairy arms. He has a pinky ring on his left hand, and a sturdy beard buried in The Scotsman. Long hairs seep out of the neck of his cotton shirt. I wonder about his hands, how the long fingers would feel on my neck, tangled in my hair. Men like women with long hair. The glint of gold on his collar bone brings me to my senses; I can’t bear a man in chains. A child is grizzling further up the carriage; please let them get off at Berwick.

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The proofs of A Secret Alchemy have arrived but, come hell or high water, Thursday is PhD day so I haven't looked at them properly yet. It will be interesting to go through them, because it must be a couple of months since I've looked at the actual text, which is probably the longest gap since I started writing it. For the commentary on it that I'm writing for my PhD, I'm in the odd position of noticing things as a student of literature that I never noticed when I was writing it. But for proof checking I need a completely different mindset:a cold, uninvolved eye that notices typos (increasingly rare thanks to spell-checkers), but also a mind making slightly more sense of it all, so that I see literals (not rare at all because spell-checkers are blind to homophones and textual idiocies) and slips of typography - the italics that bleed on even when the quoted letter is done, the missing squiggle between two voices - that only I will recognise. Now that teaching and marking at Goldsmiths is done with, it's all less panic-stricken, but I still found myself noticing with slightly wary interest just how many different elements make up a week of the writing life:

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Delighted to find that the lovely Rosy Barnes at Vulpes Libris has just uploaded my article on self-publishing (see full post for links) and that already it has inspired a lot of really interesting and thought-provoking comments. Including one from the great G P Taylor himself. Well, gosh. I always wanted to include myself in the same paragraph as a New York Times bestselling author, and now I have! My work here is done, Carruthers. Thank you and goodnight. Seriously though, do have a read and let me know what you think. My feeling is the times are most definitely a-changing and self-publishing is long overdue for a serious rebranding in the minds of the publishing world. Long long overdue. After all, readers don't have a problem with self-published books, so why the hell should the book world?? Food for thought anyway, I hope ...

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Following on from yesterday's post, I'm thinking about the rubbish that is written about Writing and Writers. In particular, I am struck by what a load of old bollocks it is to be told "Write What You Know". Why? I don't read what I know. The opposite, in fact. I read to experience the widest possible range of emotions and to learn, to broaden my horizons. Why, then, shouldn't I write for the same reason, with the same objective?


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I really don't get it. How come I have to have a major clear-out every few months just so I can get into my study and write? I filled a huge black sack with unwanted rubbish a couple of evenings ago and produced a bin and a half full of shredded letters, receipts, circulars - all of which had mysteriously accumilated in my little sanctuary of creation without my knowledge. Having made it a safe and clear space again, my intention last night was to go in and write, write, write. So why did I spend the evening watching Tom Hanks in Castaway on BBC 3? Okay - so it just happens to be one of my favorite films and he just happens to be (in my humble opinion) one of the world's most talented and enduring character actors (and a personal favorite of mine I have to admit). But I have the DVD sitting up on the shelf, so why watch it on TV?. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice

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I've posted about this in a writing forum because it's intriguing me. I'm finding I can learn more about the value of emotional tension - and balance - from an hour spent with my seven year old than I can from any amount of reading or writing.

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Ooooh, the scene I've been pondering these last few weeks suddenly fell out of my head last night at work. I had to get this bad character out of his flat after a row with his mother, and thanks to a prompt from my Flash 2 group it all came together; I often use their challenges with on-going projects. So, I was very happy to discover this character tearing the pages out of a bible and throwing them out of a window.

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My mother's sole remaining cat has gone missing. We suspect she went away to die, the way old cats do. She wasn't ill or anything, but she demanded to be let out of the house at 2am and there's been no sign of her since. My mother says she never left the garden, and she's not there. None of the neighbours have seen her. The cat would have been eighteen next week, so she was a good age, as they say. Her brothers died recently, one last year and the other the year before. I guess it was her time.

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Last night I had dinner with my American editor, who's over for the London Book Fair. In the last two years or more we've spoken on the phone and done lots of emailing, but I've never actually met her in person before. We had a really meaty conversation about A Secret Alchemy and all sorts of other writing things, as well as life and the world in general. I only hope I'm that compos mentis when I'm that jetlagged. And then today a friend said that their agent had suggested they meet up for a drink to discuss the new novel, although it's a bit of a trek for her to get to the agency offices. Was it worth it, my friend was wondering; could it not be sorted out by email or on the phone?

It's true that if what's being exchanged is notes for revision or a list of copy-editorial points, email is great: you can print it off and work through it methodically. And if there are certain, fairly self-contained things that need discussing, then the phone is fine, though satellite delay doesn't help and nor do time differences: my US editor's brisk mid-afternoon is my nearly-bedtime. But when you meet face-to-face there's something more going on, and I think it's related to another conversation I had recently, about how characters evolve.

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