This recession is taking a heavy toll on students as graduates search in vain for jobs. In September 2011, BBC News reported that 28% of UK graduates who left university in 2007 were still not in full-time work three and a half years later.

Worse, I sense a growing climate of blame and diminishing sympathy, as if young people are not doing enough to help themselves. Claire Rogers, writing recently in The Independent, strikes me as naive and out of touch: ‘There are several different ways a graduate can fight off the depression of being unemployed while simultaneously improving their chances of landing the right job. One thing that all disenchanted graduates should certainly do is get work experience, even if unpaid.’ So off you all go - take what’s going, don’t expect any pay, don’t complain and don’t get depressed.


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The fanfare is to welcome our new Strictly, Derek Thompson, who has manfully stepped into the shoes of our beloved Rod, who is off to poetical pastures new. We’ll miss Rod’s wit and wisdom hugely, but Derek will be bringing his own brand to the party, as a comedy writer (among other things) and occasional coach. So, on behalf of all Strictly followers, we decided to plonk the new boy down in the hot seat, direct a bright light into his eyes, and interrogate…er, that is, interview him:


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I’ve just heard that my novel, The Making of Her, will be published this Friday. Even as I write this, it’s at the printers being turned into A Real Book. I’ve never had a baby, but I guess this is the nearest I’ll come to it. So please bear with me, because I’m going to blog about its story. Not its plot, but the story of how it came into being.


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I suppose it came to me while I was walking the dogs. We have two of them, both lively and requiring a lot of exercise, so I spend a good deal of time out in the countryside around my home, in all weathers, alone with my spaniels and my thoughts. It’s actually when I’ve done a lot of my best ‘writing’ over the years, for all that I carry no notebook or pen: I’ve constructed dialogue, solved log jams in plots, and reached understandings of my characters’ motivation.


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So the first novel has come out - and another must be written while the momentum is there. Or that’s what I’ve been told.

People are full of ideas for me. They say they miss Anna, the main character in my novel, when they finish reading and so they want to read about her in other situations. Someone has suggested I work on the thrillerish element in the first book and that I should read Sara Paretsky, to learn how to write really good character driven thrillers with a female heroine and with an interesting political perspective.

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“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
Frederick Douglass

So today is International Children’s Book Day.

Ten or more years ago, and in a former life, I made educational programmes – many of them focussing on literacy – for young children. I loved writing scripts and songs and stories, and working with marvellous animators to bring picture books to life. Whilst making ‘Rat-a-tat-tat’, I immersed myself in everything from Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo to Jill Murphy’s books and to Quentin Blake’s illustrations.

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‘So,’ says the very kind photographer. ‘I can use this lens to take soft-focus pictures, or this lens to make you look thinner.’

Urgh. The reality of this book-publicising business is hitting home. My novel, The Making of Her, will be published in April. My marketing efforts have resulted in a local magazine requesting a Q & A interview and a ‘good photograph’. The interview I can manage. The photograph, not. So a friend introduced me to another friend, and here I am with Jon Leavins, a delightful man who has courageously offered to commit my image to pixels. Little does he know that photographs generally feature me with a) eyes clamped shut and mouth wide open in a ghastly chasm or b) looking stern, angst-ridden and wistful (aka very, very old indeed).



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People simply don’t understand how much work goes into being a writer, do they? They fail to comprehend the many and varied activities that fill up our diaries. If only they knew what our schedules looked like, right?

First there’s the internet work: emails, Twitter, Facebook. After all, a writer needs to engage with social networking. Next: GoodReads, writers’ forums, endless blog subscriptions on Google Reader. And of course we’ve got our own blogs to update.


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The Strictly team have invited me along to tell you about how I managed to escape the slushpile and find myself an agent.

You see, it all began with a comment I read on this very blog.


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Do you believe in magic?

I do. You may call it different things depending on your outlook – coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, chance, intuition, ‘the universe’, flow, fate or grace. Whichever, it exists for me just as surely as the material world does

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