I'm writing this to Laurie Anderson's album Big Science (those of you who were around in the early eighties may remember a weird and amazing piece called 'Superman' reaching the charts...). I know I'm not alone among writers in preferring to write to music, but one of the pleasures of blogging, surfing or getting hooked on some ridiculous online puzzle is that I can do it to music with words: Madeleine Peyroux is a current favourite, and Steely Dan an old one, while I clean the house and drive to Queen and Eric Clapton very, very loud.

Real musicians can't treat music as background in that way. Equally, I can't treat words as background to words: I have to write to instrumental music, or words I don't really understand. I can understand the Latin of a mass, but the words don't snag my ears, so that's okay. And it has to be familiar music too, so that I don't get too interested. Radio 3 is one of civilisation's great achievements, but just because of that, it's no use to me in a working morning.

There's something about the patterns in the music that makes my mind work better and more clearly...

Read Full Post

Just been watching Dragons Den on BBC 2. One of the pitchers was a fantasy author who wanted 175 grand to invest in a film production of her (lets be honest) self published novel, Dance of the Goblins. Now firstly there is no problem with being published by a small press but the hopeful pitcher was not doing a good job of convincing the panel. She had a print run of 2000 that in all truth she did not know how many were sales and how many were stock. I suspect she paid the publisher, who it was admitted, only had his book as the other title in the catalogue, and therefore got robbed in my opinion.



Read Full Post

Quite a calm start to the day – unusual for a Monday really. The boss is back too, after the birth of his second child – a daughter. Named Georgina – which is a great name. The family seem to be getting some kind of sleep too, which must surely be a miracle. Not that I like babies at all – or even children really – but it is nice when people get what they want. Such a surprise in today’s world!

Have spent this morning catching up with emails and sorting out student queries. It seems to be a bad time of year for them at the moment, poor things … Everyone is sick. Heck, I can sympathise though. I also remembered to bring in my over-the-elbow black gloves for Ruth who’s off to a fancy dress party soon and needed a pair. Good to know that I have my uses at times – and even more astonishing that I’ve worn them for real in the past. Well, my old company used to do ultra-posh dinner dances and you have to scrub up well ...

Read Full Post

Down the road from my home is a small common field, mostly used for folk walking their dogs or a shortcut for myself when I feel shagged after a run, recently in which a bonfire has been taking shape. It’s main fodder is a deforested clump of trees, alhtough I did spot a few household items and a sofa. BTW, in this part of Yorkshire building a bonfore is called “Chumping”.

However I get the feeling I am changing into Disgusted of Tubridge Wells. Readers of a certain vintage will know what I am referring to here.


Read Full Post

Just been cleaning up the house after Saturday night’s impromptu Halloween gathering. Had lots of fun and not a bobbing apple in sight (although there was a couple of pumpkins and a glowing ghost!)

Here’s a dodgy mobile phone picture of my housemate’s attempt at a Jack O’Lantern. Not bad, I thought.

Read Full Post

Rushed around attempting to do some cleaning this morning, thus earning valuable Wife Points which I can cash in later, ho ho. I also had a request from the wonderful Rhian of the It's a Crime review site, asking me to provide a book review for her Christmas crime books round-up. Great idea, Rhian! And thanks for asking. So I've done that and emailed the result off accordingly. I only hope it makes sense.

I've also been worried that I haven't written any poetry for about three weeks, so have come up with something about not being able to write (Lord, how pathetic!) ...

Read Full Post

I must say that the Glyndebourne Touring Opera production of "L'elisir d'amore" last night didn't quite have the charm, colour or general pizzazz of the Opera South (Haslemere) production we saw earlier in the year. Nor the acting skills either. But it was a nice night out with some good tunes, and the famous aria at the end was beautifully sung, so a pleasant enough experience. I am thinking of writing to Glyndebourne though to ask why they insist on doing everything in shades of grey - is the costume department trying to tell us something? Really, it's a mystery. I would have thought that something with the punch and life of "L'elisir" is just crying out for reds and oranges, purples and greens, but not last night for sure ...

Read Full Post

I was looking for something else, (which I was later told was actually in The Guardian) but came across an interview in today's Telegraph with Judith Kerr, creator of Mog the Forgetful Cat and author of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit: two of the most beloved inhabitants of my children's bookshelves. Making great picture books is extraordinarily difficult, so it's an interesting piece for any writer to read, but today a couple of things rang particular bells.

"I've always drawn from my imagination," she says, "rather than from life. I think that's why the pictures come out the way they do. Of course, when I got to art school I realised how much I was getting wrong."

Kerr' s picture book world is a delicious combination of the warmly domestic seen at odd, slightly subversive angles. A 'write about what you know' world, I'd have thought, and yet obviously it's not as simple as that...

Read Full Post

Well, tonight was just the usual humdrum. Got all dressed up, went to a bar, met some chick. It didn’t matter that I told her I was gay; it only seemed to increase her affections. She just kept going on and on about how great she thought my book was. Nice to have a fan I guess. Can’t remember her name for the life of me – M something?

Read Full Post

Yesterday in No place for the muffins I said that the scholarly endeavour is the opposite of the endeavour of fiction. It was another of those things I didn't know I thought till it appeared under my fingers, and I've been wondering since what, exactly, I meant.

Yes, it's true that in academic writing you have to show your working, make your theoretical position and reasoning clear, own up to your forerunners, credit any words/ideas/opinions that aren't your own. And no problem of punctuation in creative writing gives me as much grief as getting the commas right in the references. But that's just the housekeeping part of the job. It's actually surprisingly hard to make a watertight definition of the difference between writing history, and writing historical fiction. Both are about choosing and connecting facts into a web of imaginative narrative which helps the reader to understand and experience the past. The novelist is allowed larger imaginative leaps in connecting historical facts, but even we have to anchor our web to them. And, I realised today, with neither history nor fiction would the original characters have recognised the narrative we put them in, because you can only see the shape of a life - or an era - after it's over.

So what is the difference?

Read Full Post