I've been teaching myself to draw. It seemed a nice way to spend my convalescence (nothing scary, don't worry), sitting in bed with the sun and the birdsong coming in through the open window and Quentin Blake and John Cassidy's Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered on my duveted lap. The book's very funny, very encouraging, very clever about how it gives you rock-bottom basic technique, and gets to the heart of the matter. And it's also being extremely salutary, because for the first time in a long time I'm trying to do something at which I'm a total beginner. Indeed, by almost all the measures you care to apply, I am Very Bad at drawing. I don't lack visual skills in the broader sense (my proudest qualification is my A Grade in A Level Photography, and I also have one in Art History), and I'm a good observer, and a better one since I started wanting to write what I see in my mind's or my bodily eye so that others can see it too. So why am I completely incapable of putting non-verbal marks on a page so they do the same? What neural channels are so blocked that my ducks don't just look wonky, they look like scribbles? Why does eye-mind-hand work about as well in me as I contemplate a teacup or imagine a tree, as it does in my two-year-old nephew?

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Anyway, for the last two or three years I've been commuting twice a week to Soho, climbing stairs to the top floor of a ramshackle stack of classrooms opposite Ronnie Scott's, between a stagedoor and a tattoo parlour.



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Like Alien vs Predator (though with slightly less gore and rather more swearing), the saga of Emma vs Technology continues.

I may have mentioned this before but, in the present circumstances, I feel it bears repeating: Technology Hates Me. It truly does. From the computer I still think of as 'new' that now insists on blue-screening with increasing regularity, to the mobile broadband that only lives up to half of its name (Mobile? Well, yes. Broadband? Not so much), the technological trappings of the modern world seem to be conspiring against me.

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Yesterday on Strictly Writing, Fionnuala Kearney uploaded a hilarious video called Crimes Against Fiction. She made it using Xtranormal, an incredibly clever website which I’d never heard of before but I’ve been having great fun trying it out. It’s free to have a basic account, or $40 a year for a premium account, which gives you more settings and choices of characters. This is my first attempt at a video!

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When we write, we create pictures in our heads. Which of us has not felt that a character’s face is as familiar to us as that of one of our own family, or “seen” a particularly dramatic scene as if it were unfolding inches away from us? This kind of creative visualisation is key to what we do – in a sense we’re not simply writers, but painters too, and without even having to pick up a brush. These mental pictures may be vivid to us, but they are also very personal. No matter how skilfully we describe a scene, or seek to capture the exact colour of a character’s hair in words, the chances are that we will never truly replicate what we see in our mind’s eye. Readers have their own pictures, and what they see in our writing may be a world away from what we ourselves believe to be truly there.

Of course, most of the time, the very privacy of these pictures in our heads prevents them from becoming an issue. What does it matter if one reader sees our MC as slight and brunette, another as curvy and blonde? – the chances are that we will never know. But there is one exception - one occasion when imaginary images become concrete – the moment when a book is given a cover. Cover designers have a daunting (and considering that most writers have strong views on their own work, an unenviable) task. They must effectively sum up a book in a single image. They must find the perfect picture to symbolise the conflicts, passions, themes and nuances that make up the complex tapestry of a novel. And because they have not written the book, they must interpret it through impartial eyes.


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This week I'd been thinking of writing a story which involved a woolly mammoth. I wrote it today (hurrah) and while I was doing my research I happened upon this, which, I reckon, is very, very cool so I thought I'd share.

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They are put here for a purpose. We English are, to borrow from Poo Bah in The Mikado, ‘born sneering’. Especially members of our Establishment. They can burn the paint off a door with a haughty look. I once saw an English DSS Inspector halt a furious, out of control complainee in Bromley dole office with a withering, raised eyebrow.

I have worked with lots of Aussies. Newspaper offices are full of them. Have you ever tried English pomposity with an Australian? Just as your high horse is pawing the sky on hind legs, reaching its zenith they laugh. Or worse, blow a raspberry or fart Waltzing Matilda.

Most deflating.

Their purpose here is to be a drag anchor when the English get all hoity toity. (I love that. Always wanted to use it. I mean..where on earth did it come from? Hoity toity?)

This role of English pomp pricking should be for Americans. The original 'money alone is status' race. But Yanks are so in awe of our class system. They can’t do it.

So we have Australians. And not just Rupert Murdoch, the Aussie ubermeister of them all. I mean the line Aussies you meet in a pub. When you start in with your top line, “of course, my aunt Emilia knew Queen Victoria,” little marsupial flaps come down over their ears. They drift off-message with chants about Ricky Ponting, whoever he is.

(I know who he is..I’m trying to be pompous.)

Except when it comes to cricket.

One mention of the ashes and they turn all English. Have you noticed? They actually get pompous. They are so sure of themselves they lord it over us like English aristocrats.

And that’s the problem. When it comes to cricket they ARE aristocrats.

Ps. You think you can swim until you swim with an Australian. They are like dolphins.

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This Lilly is a long-boned woman with legs like skewers and empty breasts lying on the furrows of ribs. Her smile comes from an old heart, strong beyond reason. She smiles at laughing visitors who kiss, kiss, kiss, planting babies in her lap and presents on the bed. She tells them that she’s had lunch, but the menu escapes her; food appears like magic - chicken is fish, porridge is soup and everything is beautiful.

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a few pics...

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All in all, I am feeling a whole lot better about a whole lot of things. The second book is almost ready, the local interest book is coming together and the poetry is slowly but surely making a come-back.

Amazing the effect a bit of decent weather has on one's libido. 10CC were right when they sang about Mr Blue Sky - Hey there, Mr Blue, we're so pleased to be with you, look around see what you do, everybody smiles at you.


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