The only thing you need to write something publishable (poem, story, novel, memoir) is lots of paper, a pen, a big library (either your own or someone else's) and lots and lots of time in small or large pieces. Oh, and the seat of a chair, to which, as Wodehouse put it, you need to apply the seat of your pants for all that time. There are vast numbers of highly successful writers, and utterly brilliant writers, and writers who are both successful and brilliant, who have never taken a course and will say so publicly.

But after the festival session, over the green room glass of wine, you will discover that although they've never taken a formal course that doesn't mean they've never sought and found what you get on a course. Maybe they had a senior writer as a parent or a friend or a teacher. Maybe they studied for a literature degree and managed not to be too daunted to write their own stuff, but instead turn all that educated reading into intuitive writing. Maybe they were bold and wrote off to a writer they admired and were lucky enough to acquire them as a mentor. Maybe they found or founded a writers' circle with exactly the right combination of rigor and supportiveness, in exactly the right kinds and levels of writing. Maybe they were lucky and their promising early effort was spotted by an editor (back in the dinosaur age) or an agent (more recently) who was prepared to be patient and able to be a mentor: the risk of that is that the writer gets published, as it were, too early, and has to do their writerly growing-up in public. And if you're well-wired for learning from the printed page (and by definition a writer-in-the-making probably is) then it's possible to learn a lot about writing without talking to another human being. Maybe the non-course-doing writer turned to the how-to-write books and had the confidence to accept, adapt or ignore each piece of advice in just the right way. Maybe they were born with just the right interaction between analysis and intuition, and managed to deduce and put into practice everything they needed to know from the novels/poems/stories/memoir they read.

But all these things are hit-and-miss: you need good luck and good timing, and huge perseverance to keep going alone in between the lucky moments (not that you don't need perseverance the rest of the time too, of course). You also need confidence, and/or a handy family tree or connections, to make the most of possible help, and tact and confidence again to discard it if it's not right for you. Whereas the right course, at the right moment, can make you a better writer, faster, than you ever could on your own, because you'll be learning in a systematic, integrated way, so that it forms a virtuous circle, a positive feedback loop.

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Happy New Year! I'm late to the party, but I've been enjoying catching up with people's resolutions, all of which seem very sane and sensible. Realism is the order of the day, as I've been reading around. Who says creative people have their heads in the clouds? In fact that's probably one of the silliest myths about artists of any kind. Who gets their hands dirtier with the messy business of life than artists, of every kind? But this isn't a rant. It's a celebration. Of stamina and staying-power and sheer bloodymindedness.

Over the past few weeks and months I've come closer than I've been in ten years to giving up 'this dream of writing'. Not that it has ever felt like a dream. Ref my earlier point about mess.

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I’m often baffled by heated discussions about reading preferences. When it comes to certain books…Dan Brown’s novels, say, or the Stephanie Meyer Twilight series, it seems like battle lines get drawn and people are determined not to move into enemy territory. And as Claire Allen discussed in an entertaining and thought-provoking post on Monday, chick lit can be another of those light-the-touch-paper-and-run topics when it comes to discussions among readers.
I’ve been thinking about all this a lot and have come to the conclusion [again… sigh] that I’m a bit strange.
Let me put it like this: am I the only person who views books like food?
Okay, I know this sounds like a huge leap in logic, but stay with me here. Reading nourishes and satisfies me on a daily basis, or it can leave me feeling empty and hollow if it isn’t very good. But my point is this: just as I wouldn’t dream of eating the same meal every day for a month, am I alone in craving variety in reading matter?


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I just wanted to mention the campaign to get the poem put back into the underpass from Waterloo Station to the IMAX Cinema in London. Commissioned by the Arts Council and the British Film Institute, Sue Hubbard’s poem ‘Eurydice‘ fitted the setting perfectly. Early in October 2009, Time Out named Sue Hubbard’s poem, written when she was the Poetry Society’s Public Art Poet and commissioned by the BFI and the Arts Council, as one of the best things to look out for in London. So how come it ended up being painted over? Network Rail painted over it in bright blue paint in an attempt to ‘tidy up the tunnel’.

I asked poet Sue Hubbard what she thought the poem brought to the area: “a poem in such an unattractive place where people had to walk long way gave them a sense of time for private contemplation, and a sense of companionship.“

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Well it's been a little while since I last interviewed someone here. All that changes today as I welcome international best selling author (of children's and adult's books) Kate Forsyth to the blog, to talk about her latest novel, The Puzzle Ring and curses, amongst other things...
Welcome to the blog, Kate. So, to start us off, your new book, The Puzzle Ring – who’s it for and what’s it about?

‘The Puzzle Ring’ is an historical fantasy for children aged 10+. It tells the story of a girl who discovers that her family was cursed long ago, and the only way to break the curse is to find and fix a broken puzzle ring. To do this, she must travel back in time to the last tumultuous days of Mary, Queen of Scots … a time when witches were burnt and queens were betrayed and the dark forces of wild magic still stalked the land … Essentially its a time travel adventure, with lots of fascinating stuff about Scottish history and fairy lore and curses in it. It was huge fun to write!


You spent a month in Scotland, I hear, to research myths and lore – what was that like?

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I’d longed to go to Scotland all of my life, having been brought up on the stories of my grandmother and great-aunts, who had been brought up on the stories of their grandmother, Ellen Mackenzie, who left Scotland in 1840 at the age of 14. Her story is as tragic and romantic as any old family story, and basically the story of Hannah – who finds herself heir to a mysterious old castle in Scotland – grew directly out of that family history.

My husband says I set ‘The Puzzle Ring’ in Scotland just so I could finally go there – and there’s some truth in that

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Last year I kept a mundane diary and I’m glad it’s done; it was pretty boring, except for a few exciting bits, like my granddaughter rushed to hospital with Meningitis and a grandson kidnapped by his useless father and taken to live in Birmingham.

So, when my daughter gave me another diary for Christmas I nearly had a fit. It’s okay, it’s not full page days. I’ve taken on the task of filling this book with a poem for each day (or just a scribble in poetic form)…and without further ado, I present to you, the first few days of 2010:

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'Aarghh! Not Agatha Christie!' was R's reaction, when I told him I'd been offered tickets for a new play at the Trafalgar Studios, 'A Daughter's a Daughter'. It seemed to me a perfect Christmas Eve treat, especially since it had such good reviews.


I know what he objected to about Christie's work, because he's told me before - the upper-class milieu, cardboard characters and stilted dialogue. I couldn't drag him to 'The Mousetrap' when my sister visited from Australia.


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I went to see this exhibition yesterday, slightly apprehensively. The exhibition presented various artists of the last twenty years or so who have created themselves as ‘brands’, something I am slightly dubious about anyway (I guess I think more like Richard Wright, winner of 2009’s Turner Prize, who liked the idea that his work would not survive his death, the ultimate anti-brand if you like). The exhibition started with some celebrity screenprints of Andy Warhol, along with television clips, magazine covers and newspapers of Brand Warhol. Other artists who featured were Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin Gavin Turk, Keith Haring, Murakami and Jeff Koons.

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Happy New Year, one and all! Hope Christmas was everything you wished it to be. Was mine? Let's see:
1) Ate too much - tick.
2) Drank too much - tick.
3) Built snowmen - tick.
Yep, not bad, I have to say - apart from the usual seasonal traumas. Firstly, our boiler broke down, during the freeze. Several guests decamped to the nearest hotel whilst I braved it out, regaling my kids with stories of how people never used to have central heating, anyway. Secondly, I almost slipped a disc boxing my husband and son via the new Wii. Thirdly, my daughter and I nearly came to blows when she refused (the cheek of it) to let me hang her New Moon calendar (me? Robsessed? Never!) in my kitchen. Oh, and yes, there was another minor trauma. Anyone remember Wendy Craig in the series Butterflies, and her dreadful cooking?

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