On a forum the other day, on one of those threads which starts off with a post about the kind of small technical thing that we all go blind to sometimes, and ends up (all too often) as a general letting off steam about Annoying Things Ignorant People Write, someone said that "I thought to myself" is a tautology, and must be avoided. But of course my contrarian reflex made me start thinking about whether that's really true.

Jane thought Ian was nice is clearly the basic statement about Jane's view of and/or feelings about Ian (and grammatically Jane thought Ian nice is legitimate though not so common these days.) Jane thought that Ian was nice is an option, but the extra stuff in Jane thought to herself that Ian was nice seems to say nothing more. Whereas "Jane said to herself" is different from "Jane said to Anne" thoughts are by default, "to oneself". Indeed, if we're firmly in Jane's point of view and working with free indirect style so that Jane's voice and thoughts are allowed infect the narrative, you could argue that we don't need "Jane thought" at all: "Ian was nice" is enough, because we read it as Jane's thought reported. But with the short version there's nothing (lacking the context, obviously) to make it clear the status of Jane's perception about Ian. Are we to believe it?

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At 1.45 this morning I made a decision with regard to the future of The Monochrome Landscape. In order to finish it I've decided to take part in a NaNo-like challenge which starts on 1st May and lasts for eighty days, and the goal is to write 80000 words - 1000 words per day should be do-able, even if I have to kick myself frequently to keep going with the story.

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Writers need words. Obviously.

And sometimes pictures are useful too.

I'd like to sing the praises of the collage as a handy tool for writers - and everyone else.

The collage above measures just four inches by two. I've recently completed one that's more like two feet square. Size doesn't matter. Intention does.

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You’re cold. You’re scared. You’re lost. You’re just where the killer wants you.

When I first picked up this book I thought that it was going to be a bit of a horror. A group of friends are stranded in the frozen wintery conditions, their car is stuck in a snowy ditch miles from anywhere populated. As luck would have it they stumble upon a small deserted village with only a handful of basic houses, the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming. As things get more and more desperate Maura Isles gets completely removed from her life as a pathologist and her survival is constantly in question. She is continual threatened by the weather, the severe conditions and the unwelcome visitors that for mysterious reasons don’t want her to find her way home. Meanwhile her colleague and friend Detective Jane Rizzoli is desperately trying to find out what happened to Maura and why things aren’t quite what they seem with some of the local people.

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This weekend, I'm off to London to go to a huge Comic Book convention. I've never made a secret of my geekiness and my love of comic books, but something I've only recently come to realise is how interested I am in actually writing them.

This isn't, however, something I would tell to a writing or critique group. Why not? Why is is that writing comic books is seen as such an insignificant for of literature?

The skills needed to write a comic book are different to a novel or a short story, but that doesn't make them any less legitimate. The biggest challenge seems to be that you have to try and tell your story almost in two separate ways - one to give instructions to your artist, and one to entertain your audience. Show, not tell is still a fundamental part of this storytelling process, but it seems to take on another layer when you're working in such a visual medium.



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As a teacher, there are few rewards greater than getting back after a workshop and finding an email from a student, saying that they started writing/re-writing/planning on the train home. And certainly the varied reactions to the York Festival of Writing suggest that for many the lightbulb moment in a workshop (or an agent's comment or a fellow-writer's response) was only a pilot light, which then shed a flood of light on the work-in-progress... even if the light showed that it ought, immediately, to become a work-under-the-bed.

But I suspect that for every writer at York who was radically re-structuring their novel before they even got to the station, there's another who left York feeling decidedly boggled. It's such a lot of stuff to take on board: about the industry, about your work, about how your writing relates to other people's, about how different writers are from each other, about how you feel about your work. Then there's feedback about what you sent in, about what you didn't send in but do talk about, all the tips and tricks and facts and counter-facts that get bandied about over food and coffee and drink and more drink... And just when you think you're getting somewhere, another workshop/agent/editor/author says the complete opposite. And you go home baffled: should you re-write, abandon, submit, change tack, set up a blog, change genre, eliminate the vampires or give them more teeth...? If being driven mad by all this stuff meant you wrote a better book, then of course it wouldn't matter, but the chances are it doesn't mean you write better, it just paralyses you.

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The show is well-curated, starting in a low-key style and leading up to the more complex pieces. The captions and displayed introductions are clear and helpful. Entertainingly bizarre items encouraged laughter, as in a tangle of bicycles, welded together and upended, photos of paired yellow scooters and tins of cat-food perched on water melons, the cut-in-half car and the displaced lift. I loved the chessboard and the quirky obituary headlines, also the interactive billiard table, although I sympathized with gallery staff’s anxiety about possible injury from a red billiard ball suspended on a wire.


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I saw a novelist and self-proclaimed 'New Radical' do a reading the other day. Apparently he even has a film being made of one of his books. When he finished and was offering to sign his books, I went straight to the gents (and yes, I did wash my hands), came out again, gave my regards to the host and walked off to the tube station. To my surprise, New Radical was already there on the platform, cutting a forlorn figure with his carrier bag full of unsold books. What a life.

Still, I hated his novel. Am I allowed to say that?

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Thanks for you comments on my last blog entry, Sarah, Tara and C. It's always nice to know that other people feel as strongly about their favourite authors as I do!

Anyway, for today, some useful links.

I have a bunch of websites bookmarked that I regularly return to, not just for research purposes, but for inspiration and instruction. So I thought maybe I should link to some of them here. If you have any especially wonderful sites that you love, please let me know!

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This is going to be a rather fragmentary post because, frankly, I'm feeling rather fragmented. Part of me is still back in York, part is enjoying being home, part is eyeing my desk and a very long list of What Needs Doing, and part of me - okay, most of me - is wondering if the only way to glue them all back together is to go and buy cake. Certainly cake, not drink, not after that Gala Dinner. So here are some fragments that I can hold on to, of what the 2011 York Festival of Writing made me think, feel, understand...

Being reminded how nice writers are, even when they're fiercely driven: one writer with a long career in another industry saying how astonished she was at how genuinely supportive writers are of each other: even though in some senses we're in competition, in most ways we're more like colleagues.

At least half the light bulb moments that I heard about were about Psychic Distance. Why does no one seem to talk about this except me? And Debi Alper. And anyone we've ever mentioned it to. Which, hopefully, by now, includes at least half the attendees at York.

Discovering a new use for the Resources section on This Itch of Writing. Although I'm always astonished at how much you can actually discuss in a Book Doctor session, it is only ten minutes. But so much of what I wanted to say involved things which I've explored in more detail here and it was great to be able to send the writers here.

Having my hand kissed

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