This morning's response to my "surprise and delight me" request was the new issue of online literary magazine Elimae. Yes, I knew it was coming, but I had forgotten it was today - so it is possible to be surprised and delighted by something that you knew about, if your memory is a little faulty! I want to take a moment to appreciate Coop Renner, Elimae's editor. There is often much grumbling between us writer-bloggers about the slothfulness of magazines' responses to our submissions. Grumbling turns into gnashing of teeth when months or even a year has passed with no response at all. Why can't they just send out an email? we wail. Just to let us know if... maybe... or a direct no. How hard can it be?...


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As a deeply immature, incredibly provincial teenager, I’d imagine myself as a ‘serious’ writer. It would involve me sitting in a café wearing a polo neck and smoking Gauloises, staring into middle distance wracked with ennui and occasionally scribbling furious thoughts, possessed by the need to say something important.

Happily, the smoking ban and a modicum of self-respect have stopped me from pursuing this image, though I do own a couple of quite nifty polo necks. And of course, as it turned out, writing was nothing like this. It was both more mundane and much, much harder work than my silly, pretentious teenage notions would have had me believe.

There is one thing I got right, though, was that part about saying something. We don’t like to admit it because, in all honesty, it sounds laughably pompous. But there are already so many words, so many stories out there. Why would any of us bother if we didn’t think we had something to say?



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The majority of literary criticism doesn't seem to me to be any use to a writer at all, and in my grumpier moments I even think that writers shouldn't read it, for fear of their fiction becoming an exploration of literary theory, which really is putting the cart before the horse. I certainly know several people who, being determined to become writers, read English at University, and were then too daunted to put creative pen to paper for a decade. Equally, at the other end of the spectrum, I find many how-to-write books too prescriptive of a single way to write, and a single kind of good writing to aim at. But in between are what I call the how-to-read books. There are really rather few of them, but they're more useful, I'd suggest, than a whole library full of the others. By talking about how novels actually work for an attentive general reader, they offer the best possible pair of glasses for a writer, for a writer is always, actually, a writer-reader: we are our own first reader, and it's our readerly response to our words which trains and refines our writerly process. And the other important thing about these books is that, although ostensibly works of criticism, they're all written by practising novelists.

The granddaddy of them all is E M Forster's Aspects of the Novel. As he says, you could take six novels which everyone agrees to be really good, and yet find they have almost nothing in common: therefore no conclusions can be drawn or rules promulgated about what makes a 'good' novel. What we can do is talk about how good novels work.

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For we have book.

And it looks stunning. These pictures really don't do it justice.

I'm aiming to get those already paid for (thank you, speedy folks!) in the post tomorrow. And if anyone else would like to get their mits on one they can do so by clicking here.

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Monsters examines the almost unthinkable killing of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 by a pair of ten-year-old truants, who found him wandering in a shopping mall.



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Becky Stradwick joined Darley Anderson Agency in November 2008. She is the Agent for Children’s Books. Most recently she was head of Children’s books at Borders UK and has worked in children’s books for 11 years.


Which 3 authors, dead or alive, would you invite to dinner?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Roald Dahl and Michael Rosen.

Rowling or Pullman?
It would have to be Pullman. His Dark Materials books are among the most extraordinary ever published. But of course I have huge affection for Rowling’s books and everything they have done to boost the Children’s book market.

When I was a child I read…
Everything I could get my hands on, from cereal packets to children’s books to Readers Digest magazines. I loved old fashioned classics like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables but was also a big fan of my brother’s comics like 2000AD and Eagle.

Favourite desktop snack?
Pickled Onion monster munch. Two packets minimum…




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I was given a Kreativ Blogger award by not one but two incredibly good writers yesterday, namelyTania Hershman and Sarah Hilary.

So now I have to tell you 7 things I love and then pass the award on to 7 blogs I love.

Things I love:

1. Aimee Bender (all right, all right, and her stories).
2. Pelikan fountain pens.
3. Cherry keyboards.
4. Good friends, both writing and non.
5. Autumn.
6. Birds.
7. Being able to do what I do.

And the awards go to:

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I wave a gallant hand and head off to hospital tomorrow for my knee operation. I daren't confess I am scared brainless - not even to myself! It isn't helped when someone says "Oh yes - I know someone who had that done - to both knees. It took him almost a year to recover!" (thank you Colleague Who Shall Remain Nameless). It isn't the op itself I am worried about - just the fact I will likely as not feel battered and bruised for a few days and be hobbling around on crutches. Ah well - as Mary Poppins said - if I must, I must! It needs doing; end of story.


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It’s difficult to comprehend that there are approximately 20000 to 25000 genes in human DNA, made up of three billion chemical base pairs. I do feel I have to tag the word ‘allegedly’ here as this information comes courtesy of a well known search engine and I am no scientist. What I am however, is a writer. And I blame at least one of those three billion thingys. It’s not my fault. Some day, in some far off land and time, some learned being will discover the creative section in the DNA strand, perhaps a single chemical synapse doo dah that is responsible for my urge to write.

My standard response to this inate urge used to be to stick my fingers in my ears and chant, ‘La La La La.’ I told myself not to listen to it because I had a living to earn and a family to raise. Eventually, I strangled the urge and it became nothing more than an intermittent nag in the furthest folds of my brain. Still there…but definitely muted.


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