Okay, so, as promised I'm coming back to this topic.

You may recall that I mentioned in a previous post that I'd watched "Bridge to Terabithia" and then (about three quarters of the way through), wished I hadn't. I thought I ought to elaborate on this rather harsh, but totally honest, statement. After all, to read it, you might think my opinion of Katherine Paterson as a writer wasn't up to much.

I don't usually comment on films - I've lost track of the amount of films I've watched of books I've read that have left me feeling utterly disappointed, not to mention embarrassed. Howl's Moving Castle was the worst of these, I'm extremely sorry to say. Having taken Paul with me to see it, I had high hopes of impressing him with my wonderful taste in books. Ooooh dear.

When I said at the end, "I was quite tempted to leave halfway through," he looked at me, stricken, and whispered, "Why didn't you say so?"

Even I had a job keeping track of it, and I must have read it at least twenty times.

The film of "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper was a similar case in point. I always know when I'm not going to enjoy one of these film adaptations, when I find myself some where near the beginning clutching my own head, and howling "No... no... no...!"

How Dare Howl's castle walk around on legs? How VERY DARE Will turn into an American (sorry, you overponders out there - I know Susan Cooper's one of yours by adoption, but really...)?

A million treasured internal images were shattered when I watched those films. I weep still.

"Bridge to Terabithia", on the other hand, suffered no such disadvantages. I'd never read it. I'd meant to when the film came out, but had not yet got around to it when it appeared on UK TV last week. It had a good write up, and with the amount of books I'm planning to re-read in the near future for my book blog, It didn't look like happening any time soon, so we switched on, in fairly eager anticipation...


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Happy New Year to all our Strictly Readers!


It's a time for resolutions and developing good new writing habits, and in a recent post I mentioned that I planned to note down all the fiction-related ideas that flit half-formed around the periphery of my mind throughout the day.


Well, I went one step further than that and, after several minutes of doing no research whatsoever, I invented the Brain Backup. It's a tiny device that plugs into the side of your head – so small that if people notice it at all they think it's just some new-fangled headphone or hearing aid. But the Brain Backup is nothing ordinary. This invention can instantly save the brilliant thought that just sprang into being.


Thoughts are fickle things. Within seconds of its glorious arrival, an idea can escape from your mind's warm embrace and skip off into the ether, leaving only an imprint that says it was there once, and it was amazing.


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Well, here we are again. Two - sorry, three now - days into 2011, and I'm only just managing a post. I did manage to send Happy New Year tweets to my tweeps, but in case anyone was feeling left out, "Happy New Year!" and here we go...

I have recovered from the excitements of New Year. Not as deadly as those of two days before, but still another four-in-the-morning fiesta (you probably won't be surprised to hear, by now).

I've managed to laze about and consume two huge roast dinners since then, first berating myself for my lack of productivity, and then reminding myself that I'm probably producing quite well - if only in the fat department.

Such thoughts inevitably turn the mind to plans for the year ahead.

As soon as the Christmas tree's down, it'll be out with the running machine. And about time.

And I've already mentioned on Twitter that I plan to finish my WIP by the end of the year. I should think so too. I wrote the first 10,000 words in about a week. Don't know what I'm playing at, really. The whole thing is planned out, I wouldn't mind, and I've already rewritten the start at least twice (could have been three times, actually), due to my firing off in the usual seat-of-pants way at the beginning.

Which makes me wonder whether it's better just to go for it, with only the vaguest notion of where you're heading, or to plan pretty thoroughly way ahead of the game.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to each side of the argument.

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We didn't have to scratch our heads for long to choose something for a transport-loving pal who lives on the Sussex coast. I don't mean he's like me and just enjoys riding about on buses and trains, though he does that, too. I mean he's interested in the history of transportation, particularly steam engines and anything associated with old trains.

The shop attached to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden exceeded expectations. On two floors, the range of good is huge, from aprons printed with tube maps and sound recordings of trains arriving at mainline stations to pouffes upholstered in the multicoloured moquettes sported by seats in commuter trains. I must say, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to be reminded of that, though.



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I cannot believe that I have actually managed to wriggle out of writing anything at all for almost a month. Even for me, this is bad. I am ashamed - but only a little.

Since my last post was about my hitting my head on a doorstep, you could be forgiven for wondering whether I had incurred rather more serious injuries than I'd at first thought. Happily, though, I suffered no more than a sore head for a week or so afterwards.

So what has prevented me from writing - or, rather, facilitated my wriggling out of it?



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A notably relaxed Christmas must be making my mind even flakier and easily knocked off-course than usual: when I turned on the radio and heard about crisis talks in Northern Ireland that awful, sick fear came over me as it does over anyone over a certain age: "Oh God! What now?" So when it turned out that the crisis was an acute water shortage, I started to laugh. Yes, it's clearly no joke at all for those suffering from it, but hey! not so long ago a headline like that would have heradled some new horror in what we once thought the most intractably, murderously divided society in Europe. My default fear was understandable, but unfounded.

Then I found Susannah Rickard's splendid post over on Strictly Writing, where she's thinking laterally about the Christmas story as an example of ruthlessly effective plot building. Whatever your individual beliefs it's not often that we step back and read such stories as narrative, but it's not just fun: it gets you thinking about how any story can - must - be built to keep us reading.

And today here's Saul Bellow, quoted in the TLS. From the little of him I know, Bellow tickles all my prejudices about a certain kind of writer, but oh, I do so agree with this, especially the bit I've emboldened:

Are most novels poor today? Undoubtedly. But that is like saying mutilation exists, a broken world exists. More mutilated and broken than before? That's perhaps the world's own secret. Really, things are now what they always were and to be disappointed in them is extremely shallow. We may not be strong enough to live in the present. But to be disappointed in it! To identify oneself with a better past! No, no!

At last I have proper words for the angry boredom I feel as pubs, forum threads and letters-to-the-editor chunter that It's All Getting Worse, and The Barbarians are At The Gate.

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The three men in my life were playing football and I was walking the dog through one of north London’s loveliest parks, enjoying the crump crump of my boots through the brittle snow. I’m usually either plugged into my iPod or refeering some random violence and bloodshed between my children, so it was a nice change just to walk and think...

And I decided to think about the books I’ve enjoyed the most in 2010.
If you can indulge me, I wanted to share this list with you, dear Strictly readers. I’d love to know if any of you agree... or even better, hotly disagree. The list is divided into five adult books and five children’s/YA. Here goes:



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Ryan Molloy as Frankie received an Olivier nomination for Best Actor and won the 'What's on Stage' People's Choice Award for Best Actor in a Musical. So good are the supports, it's a wonder he's not overshadowed. Bob Gaudio as the composer bowled over by Frankie's voice brings a quiet confidence to the role of a man who has found the perfect medium to deliver his talent.Jon Boydon as Tommy de Vito impresses as a swaggering quick-decision man-in-charge. My personal favourite is Nick Massi, the oddball fall-guy of group, played by Eugene McCoy in a performance that reminded me of 'Trigger' in Only Fools and Horses. A welcome comic cameo, deferential among the divas, was provided by Jye Frasca as Joe Pesci, the man responsible for introducing the early group to Bob Claudio.

I'd recommend this if, like me, you'll recognise the musical background to your teenage years or if you want to learn more about a time and place that produced such an amazing amount of musical talent. Or if you just enjoy a good musical.

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I went away to not-write. One of the things they don't tell you at Hogwriter's College is that once a large part of your mental and financial self is involved with writing, no writing you do can quite escape a price tag of its likely value in terms of time, career, craft-training or hard cash. And so the pressure to keeping going with your writerly work can be as relentless as the pressure once was to put it away, and go to office parties or wipe toddlers' noses.

But for the first time in a very long time, I had neither a novel of my own to plan or write or re-write, nor a novel of someone else's to report on. My Open University students had done some lovely pieces, but the tutorial was drawing to a close. There's a short story I want to write even though I suspect it's really a novel, but it's a big, structurally complex beast that can perfectly well wait. I'm not even riding on that great WriteWords institution, the Lifeboar, who was once a Lifeboat: the place where everyone with work out on submission huddles together for warmth, and waits for signals from beyond the horizon.

So I emailed the wonderful Deborah Dooley, a journalist who also runs Retreats for You in her home in the indecently pretty North Devon village of Sheepwash; and I just got there before the snow cut them off again from Exeter.

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