Today we reveal a sure-fire simple formula for success in writing. Only available at SW.

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Something solely stored in the imagination is worthless.

I’m saying goodbye to my old writing community; after three years it’ll seem strange not to click in there for a chat, but it’s time to move on, for a while. I might return at some point because it feels like home. I’m a bit like a teenager, running off to join the circus – belting out into the world to see what kind of life I can make for myself. More like what kind of trouble I can get myself into! No – I’m too old for trouble.

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Forgive me for how long it's been since my last post, but it's been a funny few days. Not, you understand, in a life-changing sort of way; in fact, my outside self is bored to tears because I've been doing almost nothing but work. My inside self, however, is feeling a bit shaky because I'm rapidly coming to the end of my life with this novel. A few weeks ago I was talking about the strangeness of the novel having become finite, though not finished, and since then I've been working my way through from the beginning, sorting out tweaks and fiddles and the snagging list and being left with smoother, shinier novel in one monster file instead of separate chapter ones, and a new and much shorter snagging list. Once I've done with that, there's only the print out, read and final tweak to go, and then it's off to my agent. Until now, not a single soul has read a word of it, but the public life of this novel will have begun.

I might not feel so shaky were it not for the fact that, because of the way I work, I haven't, until the last couple of weeks, actually read any of the novel that I've written. Once a chapter's scrawled and then knocked roughly into shape in the typing up, I move on. So it's over a year since I scrawled Chapter One. And because writing is slower than reading, even the recent chapters, which I would say I remember pretty well, seem quite different when I approach them along the path that a reader will follow with everything that's just happened fresh in my mind.

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Declared fit after being confined to barracks for three weeks by a troublesome cough, I was more than ready to join friend and Westminster guide Joanna on what she called a 'bibulous tour', in other words a pub walk, in Belgravia. I thought it might be useful to know about some backstreet inns for the times when I'm stuck in the West End wondering where to get a drink and a sit-down.

It wasn't all pubs, though. Joanna stopped from time to time and supplied her group of eight walkers with interesting historical asides (and current house prices) relevant to the mews, churches and sidestreets around Eaton Square.

We learned, for instance, about the fortuitous marriage of Sir Robert Grosvenor, Marquess of Westminster. His twelve-year-old bride was heiress to an area known as 'Five Fields' which included most of Mayfair. His statue has him with a foot placed on a milestone as reminder that his family seat was 197 miles away in Cheshire. The Talbot dogs that flank the great man appear on his family escutcheon and were familiar from the pottery versions I'd seen on sideboards. They remain as sad reminders of a breed now extinct.


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One Saturday in June, about three or maybe even four years ago, I left home to meet my friend Lorna for lunch. She lived a little further south than me, in Surrey, and we’d agreed to meet in Epsom as it was equidistant between our homes. Anyway, I’m absolutely flipping rubbish at directions, and have little-to-no spatial awareness – I literally can’t remember my way home unless I’ve done the journey about fifty times. So, even though I’d been to Epsom on many occasions, I decided to dig out Mr Sat Nav, to make sure I didn’t get lost.

I think we’d arranged to meet in a car park, but anyway, I thought the High Street was a logical address to tap into my sat nav. So I set off, and said a small prayer to whoever’s up there that the stupid machine wouldn’t try to take me the wrong way up a one-way street like it has done before (I had a bitch about my relationship with Mr Sat Nav a long time ago so won’t bore you again, but suffice to say, it’s far from harmonious).

I can’t remember exactly when I noticed something had gone wrong. The problem with me, when I’m driving, is that I go off into some kind of hypnotic state and really don’t absorb where I’m going or what I’m doing. It’s all a bit autopilot-y – which is probably why the Musician thinks I’m a terrible driver and is always so willing to sacrifice his second glass of wine in favour of driving us home. But anyway, at some point I turned off the main road and drove down a side road, as instructed, probably singing along incredibly loudly and badly to Britney, and missing the big signs warning me not to enter.


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When I started to write my first novel, I was entirely seduced. It was like being caught in a spell – seeing real words appear on the screen, the story unfolding before my eyes. And, never knowing what twists and turns the plot might happen to take – well, that only added to the thrill of creating an entirely new world of my own.

But then, perhaps I was too selfish. The Diamond was all about me, the sort of novel I wanted to read, with no thought of maintaining a consistent genre and no concept of sales and marketing teams and, despite securing an agent, my story was only published in Russia. Not that I’m ungrateful for that, and I think the cover is ‘Brilliant’ which by chance is the name in translation! But, to write a whole book and then be unable to read a word unless I do a crash course in Cyrillic – well, that’s quite a cruel irony, don’t you agree?

It was set in a sinister Victorian world of dark circles and amoral tricksters. It had a maharajah, a cursed diamond displayed in a golden cage, and...Oh, there I go again. But, it’s been so hard to let go of that book when I didn’t just write it, I lived it. I peered into every dingy room, and smelled the acrid candle smoke, and walked every gas-lit cobbled street as if I’d become my heroine: that naive crinolined narrator beset by ghosts and dissolute cads.



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We’re drinking tea and chatting, my sister and I, at the kitchen table. It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other. We’re talking about my six-year-old son, who, earlier, marched us all into his bedroom to watch his ‘Animal Olympics’. The competitors were a series of toys, including a stuffed dog, a dinosaur and a Ninja turtle who were hurled across the room or over a series of obstacles for the glory of their designated countries. [I think the dog - who has the rather prosaic name ‘Doggy’ - was Team GB]. Later, there was a lengthy award ceremony and heaven help anyone who wasn’t giving the proceedings their full attention.
So my sis was marveling at the little chap’s total focus and how absorbed he was in the minutiae of his carefully crafted game.
‘He reminds me of you when you were little,’ she said. ‘You’d play for hours with your dollies. It was like you had a whole world going on in your head that no one else could see…’


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Not to exaggerate or anything, but we've just had the Biggest Snow Storm Since the Dinosaurs.
Here are some pictures.

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Well, I think I’ve battered Chapter One into the right kind of shape. Now I can push through the next four chapters to get to the muddy bit; the bit that hadn’t been written/created before I dived into Nano. This is where I have to take myself in hand and do the Billy Connolly impression – ‘Appreciate Cunningham, appreciate!’ to which I must reply, ‘Sir. Yes sir!’

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