A friend has just had feedback from a publisher who wants to buy her book. The main plot is great, but one of the subplots needs to go, and the other doesn't work, so it's a case of cutting one, replacing the other, and knitting the whole book back up together again. Much discussion ensued, because the issue is partly about getting the new stuff right in itself, partly about weaving it into the existing stuff, and partly about making sure she's fished the bones of the old subplot out completely, so that readers don't choke on them. Coloured highlighters were mentioned, also ways of making sure the baby didn't get thrown out with the unwanted half of the bathwater, and so on.

I mentioned the way that I plan my novels, because it's also a way you can re-plan them when revisions get structural. And before I knew where I was, three people had asked me for the spreadsheet file I use. Now of course there are as many ways to help you plan a novel as there are writers, so for once in a post I'm not trying to encompass all the possible processes. This, in other words, is how I do it, for you to ignore, adapt or accept, as seems right for you. And at the end of this post, there's a link to a generic version of the grid that I use, pulling it about for each novel, for you to help yourself.

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The play’s big success is Anthony Ward’s design, with its multimedia, multi-level impact and the superbly orchestrated lighting effects by Mark Henderson. Brisk scene run-ons under Rupert Goold’s direction and some clever choreography combine with fantastic escapades where characters scuttle about in giant animal heads. Office clones with laptops are drilled to deliver numbers with a precision that echoes Busby Berkeley musicals or Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 film, ‘Metropolis’, about workers dehumanised by capitalism, all down to the troupe’s choreographer Ewan Wardrop.


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I was chatting on a writing forum recently about Catherine Storr’s classic children’s book: Marieanne Dreams. It’s a wonderful, frightening, psychological novel about a girl who’s ill in bed. To entertain herself, she draws. She draws a house and then thinks she can see someone looking at her out of the window. This scares her so much she scribbles over the windows. But when she dreams that night, she finds herself in front of the house. The house is real, and the lines she drew across the window have turned into cold, hard bars.The story starts there...

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I'm thinking about doors.

Every news bulletin recently seems to be featuring the front door at 10 Downing Street. The door to Power. The door to Opportunity. The door, as David Cameron and Nick Clegg tell us, to Change.

Doors are thresholds. They represent the moment of transition from one place to another. I'm house-sitting right now, living behind someone else's front door. Locking up at night is like being the caretaker at Fort Knox. The snib lock. The chubb lock. The two bolts. The chain. (When the doorbell rings, it's really cool. A short, melodic phrase of saxaphonic jazz meanders through the house, a gentle way of announcing the electricity meter man.) But I digress.

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What’s it like ghosting as another writer?

It’s like being an actor playing a real person; you have to understand what people find interesting about them. Then you develop a voice and perceptions that will please their readers.

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One of the things that you have to learn, as part of learning to write, is what to do about feedback. As I've said in various places, including the post in Resources on the pros and cons of writing courses, it's basically a choice of accepting, adapting, or ignoring what you're told. That's true whether the feedback is about work in progress or work that's published, and it's true regardless of who's giving the feedback, although who that is will affect your choice. In fact, I sometimes think that the most comforting thing to remember, when criticism stings or even winds you completely for a while, is that this piece of work is still your kingdom. You don't have to do anything to it; you are master of your world, and no one else can have a say in running it except with your permission. Actually, you don't have to write at all: no one's holding a gun to your head, are they?

Of course, there are people who think that you don't exist and your kingdom has no ruler; there are some die-hard Theorists still knocking about in the literary-critical field who think that the author is dead, and plenty more who think that discussing authorial intention in literature is like discussing Vatican doctrine in terms of how the Pope's piles were that day: not just irrelevant but also somewhat Too Much Information, and definitely slightly nauseating.

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'Yes, but I didn't drive all the way out here to eat sandwiches in the car then linger in the tea-rooms- I came to see the house.' My husband gave me a 'Why do I have to be always have to be rushed?' look and laid aside his bridge book.

There was only half an hour left to see Knole so all we could manage was the Great Hall and the picture gallery that I remembered from previous visits. The Brown gallery is 88 feet long, with a vaulted ceiling and walls lined with Elizabethan portraits of aristos, churchmen and royalty who'd met with tragic ends; perfect for ghostly sightings. The threadbare chairs ranked along the walls and dim lighting were bonuses. Was that the Slighted Maid of Micklesham Manor, flitting in outline in front of the mullioned window, about where two volunteer guides were standing?

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Ah, the joys of a good podcast...
There’s nothing I like better when doing mindless tasks, like cleaning the kitchen or walking the dog, than listening to something absorbing on my iPod. If you only use your MP3 or iPod for music, I’m going to go all evangelical now and tell you that discovering podcasts is positively life changing. It is. Honestly.
Being of a nerdish disposition, I’ve been hunting around for a while now for podcasts that relate to books and writing and am starting to build up a nice little collection. I thought I’d share my top five with you, lovely Strictly readers.


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'Hair' at the Gieldgud Theatre.

‘I can’t understand the words’, said my companion, halfway through a frenetic matinee at The Gielgud Theatre last week. The programme described the show as 'an ecstatic rock musical'. We were enjoying an interval respite from the noise and eating frozen yogurt in Berwick Street.

‘It’s not Andrew Lloyd Webber. The words don’t matter.’


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I'm very happy to have won the Dead of Night Award 2009 for Best Author, courtesy of Screaming Dreams.

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