fumbly, mumbly, little bit stumbly

In trying to nail a new character voice, I've realised my productive vocabulary is miniscule. But my fantasy vocabulary is thriving.

Channel 4's Shrink Rap is a 'dumbly and unpleasantly titled series', said A.A. Gill in yesterday's Times. Which is true, but apparently open to misinterpretation: pronounce the 'b' in dumbly and voila! you have a whole new word for a sort of plodding doughy ordinariness, with just a hint of a twinkly-eyed wizarding headmaster to make it forgiveable.

(I'm trying to ignore the rest of the review, where Gill declares that the most morally unsettling aspect of Pamela Connolly (nee Stephenson, of Not the Nine O'Clock News/married to Billy/qualified shrink fame) interviewing Chris Langham (of Not the Nine O'Clock News/sacked from The Muppets/imprisoned for viewing images of kiddie porn notoriety) is her haircut. There were interesting things to say here about the responsibility of documentary producers, and the nature of our confessional culture: instead we get a middle-aged man feeling affronted by a middle-aged woman daring to not look dowdy. He also seems to have some difficulty with Dawn French who is, apparently (wait for it)...fat. Heavens. However is he to survive under this onslaught of imperfect, not under-25 women, poor lamb?)

Back to words: I spent much of my childhood indulging in accidental neologisms due to not wanting to look thick before my brainy family, and thus never asking what anything meant. I'm not sure it's done me any harm, though. How much more fun is life when a terpsichore is a medieval musical instrument, or a heliotrope is a da Vinci-era prototype helicopter?


Ways to Live Forever, Sally Nicholls (YA, contemporary fiction, first novel). 11-year-old Sam is dying of leukemia, and we already know how this story ends. So far, so miserable, no? But this really is a beautiful book: wistful and filled with I-appear-to-have-something-in-my-eye moments, certainly (especially whenever Sam details, calmly and without commentary, the words of his agonised, awkward parents), but still studded with hope and wit. I met the author for a millisecond the other day (she's a Scholastic stablemate: they've been raving about her forever, now I know why), and she is scarily young and clearly lovely. Only 23 when she wrote it, says the blurb: blimey. One to watch out for, I'd reckon. Also whizzed through Penelope Lively's Ghost of Thomas Kempe. They don't make them like that no more - or rather, they don't publish them. Dated, but there's a lovely subtext about history and where one fits into it.

Correcting the galley proofs for the UK edition of Big Woo, at speed as we're on the most insane schedule. I love proofs: it's the first time you start to really feel it's a book, not a manuscript. They also allow you to pretend to be a proper writer: 'Sorry, darling, will call you back when I've finished with the proofs for my new novel' is one of those sentences you dream about saying, just a little bit.

Watching Babel (genuinely excellent, though it emphasises the fragility of our little lives too acutely for comfort); yoga class (I'm so rubbish at this time of year: ow); Buffy and Torchwood and Farscape and can you tell I'm supposed to have been writing this weekend?

lipstick cherry all over the lens

Author Photo day, hurrah! Lovely Sadie: Make Up Lady transformed my pallid old fizzog (apart from the cold-induced red nose - so festive) into something resembling a human being. Dominic the photographer skipped about with a big flappy foil kite to make natural light suffuse me with glowiness, while shouting 'Say A Sentence!' at me at intervals. (This is to keep your face muscles relaxed between glamorous-yet-intellectual authorial smiles. Either that or he was a bit bored.) And I was fed cups of tea.

Very emphatically best of all, though: on the way out I passed the next author in the photo queue, an affable-looking chap who was introduced to me as 'Philip' and kindly asked about my book. 'And what do you write?' I asked. He looked slightly crestfallen, and mumbled something about having written quite a few books, actually, at which point I thought 'Oh arse, he's someone terribly famous, have made utter fool of self and offended him, gaaaah', until his mumbling included the words 'Mortal Engines' and OH BLIMEY IT WAS ONLY PHILIP REEVE! I adore Philip Reeve (despite evidently not knowing what he looks like). I covered my huge error by flailing at him like a lunatic and telling him he's completely brilliant, and would've gone on for about half an hour if he hadn't had to go and Say Sentences at Dominic, which on reflection was probably fortunate. He seemed to find it all quite entertaining, anyway: apparently it makes a change from people thinking he's Philip Pullman. Oh, and he was wearing a brown moleskin three-piece suit, which makes me love him all the more.

After that there were dull things like being trapped on Oxford Street for an hour and a half (they closed the tubes due to overcrowding: strangely this did not improve the bus/traffic interface), but pfft. Philip Reeve!

Jenny Valentine's Finding Violet Park, which won the Guardian Children's First Book Prize this year. Only halfway through but it's a thoroughly deserving winner already: real laugh-out-loud-with-a-lump-in-your-throat stuff. Hearing good things about the follow-up (Broken Soup, out in January) already too.

Must come up with a neat little summary for Biscuits & Lies. People keep asking me what it's about, and 'um...biscuits?' is not the answer they're hoping for if facial expressions are to be believed.

Failing at Christmas shopping decisions (even choosing wrapping paper, for pity's sake), lusting after Lyra Belacqua's Northern wardrobe (please someone tell me where I can get a hat that looks like it has a sort of woollen plate attached to the back of it?), eating fudge immediately before bed (clearly unwise).

Points mean Prizes

Magnificent news: fellow scribbler and dear old mate Sarah Mussi has won the Glen Dimplex New Writers' Award 2007 for her children's book, The Door of No Return. I couldn't be more thrilled, not only because she's a friend, but because Door really is something special: a book aimed squarely at teens with powerful and sensitive issues at its core (financial reparations for slavery), coupled with a cracking thriller that tears you through the pages so breathlessly that you barely notice you're being educated. It's as far from an 'issues' book as you can imagine (it's hilarious, for one thing: hero Zac is a corking example of an 'unreliable' narrator) yet doesn't flinch from telling uncomfortable truths. Stuck for a Christmas present for a teenage boy, anyone?

This is the first time I've really known someone else's book from 'I've got this idea' to it being an actual object with pages and a cover and an ISBN. It's quite terrifying to imagine that every single novel you see on a bookshop shelf has gone through all those sticky moments in between: the second-guessing of the plot, the second-guessing of the very premise, all those rewrites, then the merry dance of finding agents and/or publishers, more rewrites, then the whirligig of promotion and whether you're in a 3-for-2, all observed by friends and family and enthusiastic writing groups, by which time you're on to the next one anyway because it's taken 2-3 years to get to this point (assuming if you write quite quickly)... I know all these things already, but for some reason it feels more real when it's happening to someone else. Watching the unfolding narrative of my own book-gets-published saga is participatory: I'm too much of a character, too closely involved. With someone else's I get to sit back like Hercules Poirot, observing the scene, my little grey cells all a-fizz with glee as it unfolds exactly as I would have hoped. Cheers to you, Sarah: first of many well-deserved accolades, I don't doubt.

Aaand the internet crazy just keeps on coming. Old story, newly in the mainstream media, of a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide: Making Light has an excellent round-up of the sequence of events, plus the obvious-yet-apparently-not statement of the week: What happens online is real.

Copyedits a-go-go. Sometimes WTF should be wtf. No, I don't always know why. Also: Dear Copyeditor, I'm very sorry for writing the prizewinner of Least Possible To CopyEdit 2007.

Trying that thing where you stir-fry sprouts with bacon instead of just boiling them (not half bad); being on trains and buses and feet; locking myself out of my flat bumbumbum; wondering when lazy-bastard Lovefilm are going to send me the next bit of Prison Break; almost being in Paris. This last makes me happy. When I was little I had some knickers with 'A Weekend In Paris' written on them. Clearly they were formative. :)

Greetings from Bizarro World

Dear Little Me,

You know all that time you don't spend imagining the rest of your life, because you fear it will turn out to be a bit pants and filled with gloomy window-shopping at other people's more interesting ones? Newsflash from the future:* don't worry so much, k? Because one day you will catch sight of a smiley lady wearing a lovely new green coat, skipping off a tube in London to meet her editor and talk bookishly like what writers do, and she is you.

Much love (and sympathetic looks at those awful specs you appear to be wearing),
Old Crumbly Me xx

The reality involves a handful more panic-infused deadlines and tax forms than the fantasy permits, but still: I do appear to be starring in the fake movie of my life where only nice things happen. I do hope the next scene involves me having a haircut. And that Angel isn't tied up in the basement having visions. (Not having a telly is not noticeably altering the way my brain works, nor the number of TV shows I'm watching. I really am living in The Future, whee! These bacofoil knickers do chafe, mind.)

* Where they all listen to Goldfrapp, if Heroes is to be believed (about which I would say more, except I am watching it in naughtyvision and must not spoilerise nice sisterly types).

This devastating Guardian article about the abortion laws in Nicaragua. Coupled with the latest from the US, maybe my generation has some bra-burning to do after all.

Fun With Editing. Also, Fun With Writers: my meeting managed to coincide with David Levithan, Very Important Scholastic, Inc blokey and deeply brilliant YA writer himself - if you haven't read Boy Meets Boy then you have something unique and spectacularly warm and witty to look forward to. Then I bumped into Jacqueline Wilson at Baker Street. (See? Bizarro World.) Having already fangirled one novelist that day, I didn't say 'hello, we met once about 6 years ago and I quite love you.' But I'm sure I conveyed it by my general demeanour. I bet people convey things to famous novelists through their general demeanour all the time, or they'd never have time to write.

Making pea, prawn and spinach balti, aka whatsinthefreezer?curry. Surprisingly edible.

Dining with Dinosaurs

Most of the time, being a writer involves coming up with rubbish excuses to avoid doing any actual writing. Making tea. Making some more tea. Attempting to excavate peanut butter from inside one's laptop after an ill-advised toast/facebook interface. Going to Co-Op to buy more tea, even though you already have tea, and then making tea with it. It's a rollercoaster ride.

Occasionally, the distractions are a bit more jolly.

Yes, that is a dinosaur's bottom, and those are the beautiful people of the book trade. The Bookseller Retail Awards took place in the Natural History Museum, which turns out to be a rather smashing place for a party - not least because you half expect a burly security guard to flick on the lights and yell 'What the bloody hell are you lot doing in here?'

In the absence of Scooby-Doo-esque shenanigans, we concentrated on looking enthusiastic about learning who had won Supply Chain Initiative of the Year, and not talking about the McCann case. I met the completely lovely M.G. Harris, a fellow children's writer whose Joshua Files will be out in February (a sort of 13-year-old Indiana Jones, blogging and not-quite-snogging his way to Mayan gold: sounds like larks), and who not only lives about ten minutes from my house, but is also gloriously nerdy about Blake's 7 (anyone who will namecheck Chris Boucher in casual conversation is all right by me). As for the resident slebs, it turns out that Antony Horowitz is surprisingly orange, Tony Parsons is unsurprisingly oleaginous, and Dara O'Briain is unflappable as well as very funny, compering away despite the twin distractions of a malfunctioning microphone and Tiny there in the middle of his audience.

As befitted the location, it was an educational experience too: apparently one never leaves a publishing do empty-handed. I'm not sure whether eating a free chocolate bar declaring that Cathy Kelly's new novel is like 'Chocolate Therapy' will make me read it: it definitely makes me wonder if people will not read mine (or, more to the point, booksellers won't put it on shelves) if they aren't bombarded with gratis confectionary first. Perhaps I should ensconce myself outside the nearest Waterstone's on publication day, and thrust Jaffa Cakes at unsuspecting passers-by...

In any case, the food was great, the company greater, and 'I was eating some fishcakes with a bronotosaurus' is the best excuse for not having written anything all day I've yet come up with. Can I do it again next week, please?


the three Rs:

Margaret Mahy's The Changeover. Again.

Synonyms for 'Joey Deacon'. God, children were horrible in the 80s.

Laundry, Toblerone, reversing the hinge on my new fridge door.