Had a lovely facial and back massage at Clarins today. Charlotte says my shoulders are less stiff than they've ever been - a minor miracle surely as I've never really known how to relax them. Perhaps my attempt at lying on the floor and meditating for twenty minutes every day (a fairly recent and not always achieved development ...) is working? Who can tell. Though I am also trying to relax whenever I think about it (if that isn't a contradiction in terms), but it's hard to change a lifetime of social defence mechanisms all in a night. As it were. Mind you, I was much cheered by the fact that Charlotte's mother is reading Pink Champagne and Apple Juice and loving it apparently, especially the naughty bits. As well as wondering why she hasn't heard of me before. Ah, well, Mrs Charlotte, it's a mystery indeed. My Z-list authordom comes with its own special invisibility cloak. But so glad you're enjoying the read. Uncle John raises his glass of pink fizz to you. Chilled ...

Read Full Post

Actually, there is more than one wow today.

Wow #1.

Alicia Silverstone is, according to here, going to play the lead in a US adaption of best selling author and lovely person, Kate Long's The Bad Mother's Handbook. I loved the ITV one which aired last year (Catherine Tate played the lead in that one - pics here). Fantastic news. You can see the interview I did with Kate a couple of months ago here.

Read Full Post

Teen Book Review is running a series of guest posts by YA writers.

So far, you can read some thoughts by Melissa Walker, author of Violet on the Runway and Violet by Design, as she blogs about using her real life hometown in fiction.

And Luisa Plaja, author of Split by a Kiss, blogs about pants, trousers and knickers - well, teen fiction titles that feature them.


Read Full Post

Just as we got used to the sun, the rain has returned in all its glory. It’s so dark outside the office window that it might as well be the middle of the night. Perhaps we’re all on Australian time now? We may even be having their winter. Anyway, I’ve rung Mother who’s just got back from her first post-op holiday and it’s all gone very well, hurrah. So she might feel confident enough to go abroad next year, or even later on in this year, depending on how things go. That’s good news then ...

Read Full Post

I'm suffering from insomnia right now, for the last few days I have been falling asleep around 3am, 5am, that kind of thing. It's no fun. It happens every now and then, seemingly unrelated to coffee intake or stress or anything I can put my finger on. Maybe I should enjoy the night hours and use the time for writing, but I'm not really awake enough, although not asleep enough either. Annoying. I hope it will pass, because it is causing me to miss my writing group meeting early tomorrow morning... I figured that there is little chance of my sleeping returning to normal tonight so that I can get up at 7.30 am (very unusual for me, if you know me well!) to make it to Tel Aviv by 10am. Shame. I was so looking forward to it. This is the small, intimate group of four of us, and the other three all had babies in the last 18 months so we haven't managed many get-togethers. And, with all their night-time feeding disruptions, it's me that ends up cancelling! Ironic, eh?

Anyhow, on a more positive note, I am continuing to be inspired by reading other people's stories and watching how they influence my own writing in terms of somehow giving me "permission" to do things in a different way....

Read Full Post

1996 (snatches from my journal)

I still haven’t got the lovely wee car back yet; they’ve broken something else while they were fiddling with the exhaust and are searching Scotland for a new part. God knows when I’ll get it back, I’m demented waiting on these bloody buses or forking out for taxis; I must’ve spent £30 last week on them alone…and in the time I’ve spent on the buses I’ve read four little Penguin 60s and a half of William Golding’s The Inheritors. Brilliant.

She came home from hospital today and the torrent of abuse began the first time I refused her extra painkillers. I think she expected to be in charge of her pills and could take them whenever she wanted. She hadn’t been in the house five minutes when she attacked Amazon…in fact the ambulances were still outside! I stuffed Amazon outside with busfare to the shopping centre and when I returned to the living room THE MOTHER had begun to throw money around the room; there were at least nine pound coins, all heading for my head.

Read Full Post

My goodness, I’ve had quite an interesting day today. Managed to finish off the minutes I took yesterday and send the first draft to the boss for checking. We also had a really good meeting throwing round some radical ideas for the update to the Personal Tutors’ Handbook and getting started on sorting out the team away day over the summer. I even felt quite inspired – gosh, how astonishing!...

Read Full Post

You may remember a while ago that I posted a piece, Messes, Clones and Plots like a W, about why I think it's so important to understand technical things about how writing works, to work hard on how you understand them and how you put them into practice, but not to allow them to become rules to be 'kept' or 'broken'. In writing there are no rules, except possibly the one about starting at the top left-hand corner of the page, but only different ways to write different things, some of which work better than others. To refuse the concept of rules doesn't mean abandoning all judgement or discussion of good and bad writing, just making it much more nuanced, and so much more useful.

When she's not writing about politics (More Than Love Letters) and campuses (Hearts and Minds), with a warm heart and a satirical pen, Rosy Thornton is a law lecturer. She posted this in the private members' section of WriteWords, and I think it's the most interesting thing I've read in ages about the whole thorny question of 'the rules'


Read Full Post

... into my new work and I'm struck by the thought that it's a lot easier to read a book than write one.

You can see by looking at the post below that it was - let's see, when was it? - exactly a week ago that I was boasting about starting the bloody thing. 500 words in one week. Works out at about seventy words a day. Not a great rate. I will certainly have to pick up the pace if I hope to finish it anywhere near the agreed deadline (June 1st 2009).

To tell the truth, I have made progress, even if it hasn't resulted in a great flood of words. I realised that I didn't have the opening right. Or to put it another way, I'd got it wrong. But at least I could see it. And now I think I've sorted it. I have a crucial aspect of the opening pinned. I know where my character is, and what he can see, and how he feels. I also know, more or less, what's going to happen to him. And I think I know why. Hey, all I have to do is write the thing.

Read Full Post