Last year I went to an induction day at the Open University for new Associate Lecturers in Creative Writing. And the moment which raised the biggest laugh was when someone said, "How do we get the students to say anything more about each others' work than 'This flows really well'?" Not only did we laugh, but it became the running joke of the day, because we'd all seen and heard it so often.

Okay, perhaps that's a less than warm and empathetic attitude towards neophyte writers but, dammit, if we're going to engage with them and their writing warmly and empathetically in class - which we must, to do our job properly - we have to let off steam somewhere. Good doctors don't make jokes to patients, they save their gallows humour for the canteen, and good teachers save it for the staffroom. And "It flows" really doesn't tell you a lot, does it? Specially since they usually go on to suggest a few moved commas, spot a typo, say that they really like the characters and want to read more, and that's that.

Of course, anyone who's ever been on a training course for trainers will be familiar with the 'praise sandwich' principle, although it's always more effective if even the first slice of bread has a bit more substance than "it flows". But even in places which are avowedly (and sometimes expensively) set up to make your writing better, beginner writers seem to find it very difficult to talk detail about either good or bad stuff, and I'm sure what can come over as a culture of bland niceness is really just blandness.

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Today is the festival of the Befana, when by tradition the Befana, who is a good witch, is supposed to come to all children and leave them sweets if they are good and coal (really a hard candy coloured black) if they are not. There are various legends about the origins of the Befana, generally attached to the story of the birth of Christ: she is supposed to have missed giving him gifts along with the Wise Men and now searches all over for him, leaving gifts as she goes, like a sort of a cross between the Wandering Jew and Father Christmas (who is Babbo Natale in Italian!). In another legend she was a mother who was driven mad by the death of her child and went to see the newborn Jesus in the belief that he was her child, she gave him presents and Jesus promised that as a reward she should be the mother of every child in the world (the cynical might call this a mixed blessing).

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Mayhem on this scale requires skilled direction and spit-second timing, here marvellously achieved by Richard Eyres and his team. It was a disappointment that Tom Hollander was unwell on the night we attended, but Greg Baldock was convincing in the demanding roles of Chandebise and Poche. As in Shakepeare's identical twins comedies, much of the humour not only depends on mistaken identity but in this case one character following almost on the heels of the other. Over-the-top playing by beautifully coordinated Freddie Fox made the most of the thankless role of a young man with a speech impediment and William Findley was funny as the fiery pistol-waving Spaniard, although comic foreigners and disability as comedy date the play to some extent.

The costumes were well-designed considering the number of quick changes and rapid movements required. The brothel entrance hall and stairway was a masterpiece of mock Art-Nouveau, all elongated trunks and tendrils, suggestive of a gilded swamp. The programme was excellent, including a history of the Belle Epoque era and a pocket biography of Feydeau and farce as well as an article on sorely-missed John Mortimer, whose translation of the play was presented in the National Theatre in 1966.


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Isn't it always the way that suddenly, when you're least expecting it, an idea will strike you - almost knock you dead - and bring to life that other, older idea that has been festering away at the back of the dark closet of your mind for months, if not years?

That's just what happened to me this morning. I don't even know what I was thinking of at the time. But suddenly the closet door creaked open, and out came that earlier concept, shaking off the mothballs, blinking against the light and... Wham!... It caught sight of the new idea. Fireworks... Champagne corks... The perfect union was formed (if there is such a thing!).

This is how inspiration takes me. I always find that, to get a novel or script idea to take off, there has to be a second idea to ignite the first. It was the same with my film script. I had one idea, but it took a chance discovery when renovating an old house to really provide the skeleton on which to hang the flesh.

That time, I knew where the idea came from, and they were two pretty disparate concepts that just seemed to sing together.


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I did laugh when Michael Caine recently agreed in a radio interview that he's "an instinctive actor", and promptly went into a HIGHLY technical description of how if you're talking to another actor in a scene, you should look into their left eye with your right eye, which gives you the perfect angle for the camera to pick up your expression, without it appearing that you're looking at the camera at all. No other combination of gazes will do... Oh, and don't blink, not ever, unless you want to show weakness... Instinctive? I don't think so. Caine's art, it seems to me, is the sort which conceals art, which is perhaps what makes the "instinctive" tag seem right even though he puts enormous thought and technical control into what he does.

It's a funny old business this, isn't it: the assumption is that there's a binary opposition of conscious technical understanding, versus instinctive creativity; actors talk about having technique "to fall back on", and "technical" is so often used as a synonym for dry and dehumanised. And then on a WriteWords thread crime writer Helen Black talked in detail about how she builds the opening of her novels, and then said,

I've never done this consciously, however. But that's something I often notice here on WriteWords. Someone far more knowledgeable than me will explain in a writerly way why certain things in writing work well. These things often, it transpires, even have a proper name. And I often sit here thinking, 'I do that', though I couldn't tell you how or why I do it.

Helen is a writer who wrote a novel for fun and got it published, and she's worked out her very demanding genre from first principles: she's followed her own instinctive decisions about "Like this? No, like that. And a bit of The Other. Only the other way round..." to the point where she has clear principles of storytelling without ever having been near a course or a textbook. Is she very technical, or very intuitive? The answer is, of course, is that she's turned her intuition into technique, even if she has no technical terms.

There are so many ways to discuss the same piece of writing.

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Okay, so, as promised I'm coming back to this topic.

You may recall that I mentioned in a previous post that I'd watched "Bridge to Terabithia" and then (about three quarters of the way through), wished I hadn't. I thought I ought to elaborate on this rather harsh, but totally honest, statement. After all, to read it, you might think my opinion of Katherine Paterson as a writer wasn't up to much.

I don't usually comment on films - I've lost track of the amount of films I've watched of books I've read that have left me feeling utterly disappointed, not to mention embarrassed. Howl's Moving Castle was the worst of these, I'm extremely sorry to say. Having taken Paul with me to see it, I had high hopes of impressing him with my wonderful taste in books. Ooooh dear.

When I said at the end, "I was quite tempted to leave halfway through," he looked at me, stricken, and whispered, "Why didn't you say so?"

Even I had a job keeping track of it, and I must have read it at least twenty times.

The film of "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper was a similar case in point. I always know when I'm not going to enjoy one of these film adaptations, when I find myself some where near the beginning clutching my own head, and howling "No... no... no...!"

How Dare Howl's castle walk around on legs? How VERY DARE Will turn into an American (sorry, you overponders out there - I know Susan Cooper's one of yours by adoption, but really...)?

A million treasured internal images were shattered when I watched those films. I weep still.

"Bridge to Terabithia", on the other hand, suffered no such disadvantages. I'd never read it. I'd meant to when the film came out, but had not yet got around to it when it appeared on UK TV last week. It had a good write up, and with the amount of books I'm planning to re-read in the near future for my book blog, It didn't look like happening any time soon, so we switched on, in fairly eager anticipation...


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Happy New Year to all our Strictly Readers!


It's a time for resolutions and developing good new writing habits, and in a recent post I mentioned that I planned to note down all the fiction-related ideas that flit half-formed around the periphery of my mind throughout the day.


Well, I went one step further than that and, after several minutes of doing no research whatsoever, I invented the Brain Backup. It's a tiny device that plugs into the side of your head – so small that if people notice it at all they think it's just some new-fangled headphone or hearing aid. But the Brain Backup is nothing ordinary. This invention can instantly save the brilliant thought that just sprang into being.


Thoughts are fickle things. Within seconds of its glorious arrival, an idea can escape from your mind's warm embrace and skip off into the ether, leaving only an imprint that says it was there once, and it was amazing.


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Well, here we are again. Two - sorry, three now - days into 2011, and I'm only just managing a post. I did manage to send Happy New Year tweets to my tweeps, but in case anyone was feeling left out, "Happy New Year!" and here we go...

I have recovered from the excitements of New Year. Not as deadly as those of two days before, but still another four-in-the-morning fiesta (you probably won't be surprised to hear, by now).

I've managed to laze about and consume two huge roast dinners since then, first berating myself for my lack of productivity, and then reminding myself that I'm probably producing quite well - if only in the fat department.

Such thoughts inevitably turn the mind to plans for the year ahead.

As soon as the Christmas tree's down, it'll be out with the running machine. And about time.

And I've already mentioned on Twitter that I plan to finish my WIP by the end of the year. I should think so too. I wrote the first 10,000 words in about a week. Don't know what I'm playing at, really. The whole thing is planned out, I wouldn't mind, and I've already rewritten the start at least twice (could have been three times, actually), due to my firing off in the usual seat-of-pants way at the beginning.

Which makes me wonder whether it's better just to go for it, with only the vaguest notion of where you're heading, or to plan pretty thoroughly way ahead of the game.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to each side of the argument.

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We didn't have to scratch our heads for long to choose something for a transport-loving pal who lives on the Sussex coast. I don't mean he's like me and just enjoys riding about on buses and trains, though he does that, too. I mean he's interested in the history of transportation, particularly steam engines and anything associated with old trains.

The shop attached to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden exceeded expectations. On two floors, the range of good is huge, from aprons printed with tube maps and sound recordings of trains arriving at mainline stations to pouffes upholstered in the multicoloured moquettes sported by seats in commuter trains. I must say, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to be reminded of that, though.



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I cannot believe that I have actually managed to wriggle out of writing anything at all for almost a month. Even for me, this is bad. I am ashamed - but only a little.

Since my last post was about my hitting my head on a doorstep, you could be forgiven for wondering whether I had incurred rather more serious injuries than I'd at first thought. Happily, though, I suffered no more than a sore head for a week or so afterwards.

So what has prevented me from writing - or, rather, facilitated my wriggling out of it?



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