Surefire way to avoid the post-Christmas blues: go on holiday. OK, so the part where it was -7°C wasn't entirely part of the plan, but Paris in the snow turns out to be absurdly lovely. And it gives one an excellent excuse to drink the utterly decadent hot chocolate at Angelina while thawing...

  Georgette Heyer, wheeee! And Russell T. Davies' A Writer's Tale, which (being about both writing and Doctor Who) was clearly cooked up in the 'things which exist purely to please Susie' cauldron. TARDISes aside, Davies has been responsible for some of the most cheerfully thought-provoking telly of the last 10 years – and he's every bit as entertaining and insightful on the page as you'd hope. I'm finding his reluctant commitment to prevarication until utter terror forces him to start working deeply reassuring, though he's emphatically wary about assuming any writer's method as a template. Always have an ending in mind! Only write in the mornings! In pencil, on the backs of envelopes, while drinking nothing but squid ink! He's right: we all want to have our hands held, to believe there's a secret trick to it, but sometimes the best advice really is to ignore whatever anyone tells you and just get on with it. Though of course you'll have to take my word for that...

  Next Book* is at the vertiginous decision-making stage. There are so many ways to write this story: whether it works depends entirely on me picking the right one. Actually, that's rubbish. No decisions are final: sometimes you have to write it 'wrong' before you can see how to write it 'right'. (If you're me, anyway.) It does help if you can spot the 'right' early on, though: Girl Meets Cake got to 55,000 words of Mostly Wrong, which was a bit wearing to sort out. Speaking of which: look! OK, so you still can't have it until April – but magnificent cover, no?

* Next Book (ie not the Next Book for you lot, the one I haven't written yet but hopefully might come out in 2010) needs a 'Biscuits & Lies'-style working title.  It's got a working working title, but that tells you the whole plot in one go, so we can't have that.  Hmm...bear with me?

  Drinking gallons of tea from my Christmas Blake's 7 mug; seeing in the New Year with Spaniards and grapes (twelve of 'em); pondering the many ways in which The Other Boleyn Girl is terrible; plotting a Prisoner marathon in honour of the *sniffles* late, great McGoohan.

  Moomins!  Blissful, lovely, mental Moomins.  Finn Family Moomintroll actually made me cry, it was so full of nostalgic small-me familiarity.  (And also mock my brain’s ability to reproduce things without ever consciously realising the source: arch ‘in which the following things happen‘ chapter introductions! an obsessive collector who is distraught to realise his life’s work is complete! a completely haphazard approach to linear narrative in favour of Oh Look Here’s A New Thing!  I’d never write anything like that…)  I think I loved this book for the same reasons I loved Arthur Ransome, even if he tended to include fewer Hobgoblins, bald men in skirts and Outlandish Words with legs crawling up the walls: there’s masses of that nervous emotional childhood stuff going on (being worried that people don’t like you, that you might not fit in, that you’re being left behind), but the telling of it is just so gloriously understated and economical.  Heavenly.  Next up, Comet in Moominland: yay!

  IT’S DONE!  Girl Meets Cake, aka Biscuits & Lies, aka my next book is finished!  Again!  Well, the new draft is: I’m already thinking of extra ways I can twiddle it about to make it even shinier in the (hopefully) final edit – with the assistance of my Beloved Editors, who are already entirely responsible for the good bits.  It’s been a real beastie to wrestle into shape: I think initially I was trying so hard to make sure Heidi was nothing like Serafina that she ended up being Holden Caulfield-level annoying instead.  Also, I continue to be Quite Bad at plot structure.  But it’s gone from being That Book That Was A Good Idea Until This Half-Wit Started Writing It to That Book That I Feel Dorkily Attached To And Makes Me Smile, so, you know, progress, achievement, gold star for me.  And I’ve got this awesome idea for the next one… although there’s also this other idea…*rubs hands together evilly*

  Tragic lack of rocrastination opportunities lately, but I have plans to reacquaint myself with the outside world (October = long walks through shuffly leaves followed by hot chocolate: it’s the law), and the non-imaginary people that dwell there.  Plus maybe some sleep?

Burning Mercury Thiocyanide will amaze you!

  I’m not allowed to read books at the moment, what with being a bit busy trying to write one. But I’m dangling, like a carrot before a donkey, the prospect of Moomins when I finish. I can’t even remember which ones I’ve read, but I plan to devour them all (along with a supper of pine-needles, to keep me going through the long winter months).  I’ve reread most of the books I adored as a kid, even the elusive King of the Copper Mountains by Paul Biegel – which turned out to be even weirder than I remembered, but still wonderful – but I haven’t laid eyes on the Hemulen, Too-Ticky et al since I was about ten.  Something tells me they won’t have got less odd over time…

  No, I haven’t finished revising Girl Meets Cake yet.   The deadlinefish continues to nibble at my toes nightly: I continue to stare at the sizeable chunk I still have to rewrite.  I met up with MG Harris (for lunch! I’m allowed to eat lunch!) and she shared her ‘completion anxiety‘ over finishing #3 of The Joshua Files (while simultaneously editing #2, the show-off).  I’ve got  ‘incompletion anxiety’, I reckon.  I wrote some jokes this morning, though.  I think they were funny. It’s getting hard to tell.  However, none of this will matter, as I’ve seen the cover for the UK edition, and it’s so enticingly fabulous that it probably won’t matter what’s inside.  (I didn’t say that.  Don’t quote me.  It’ll be brilliant, honest.  With jokes in it and everything.  Some of which may be funny.  What do you want, blood?)

  Inconveniently rekindling my desire to watch The Professionals all day (damn you, ITV4), failing to reply to blog comments (sorry, am rubbish), becoming obsessed with baked potatoes (Marfona, people: it’s the only way).

SAVAGE HAIRY DEADLINE EATING ME ALIVE STOP

COMMENTS ALL MOST AMUSING PLEASE DON’T STOP STOP

In any case, Girl Meets Cake has graduated from Floaty Amorphous Headstuffs to Actual Legible Existence, which as any writer will tell you is a rather important stage of the process, so woo, yay, etc.  It’s still rather a long way from what will actually appear on a shelf next year, but definitely closer than it was before I’d written any of it.  Well, hopefully.  Now to find out if my epic mountain of notes on Bits That Desperately Need Rewriting And/Or Throwing Away Completely matches up with my editors’.  It’s a bit like waiting for your exam results to arrive, while knowing in advance that you’ll have to resit.  If they were voluntary exams which you got paid to sit, and the questions mostly asked you to write jokes, and you were positively encouraged to cheat and look the answers up on the internet.  Erm.  Still, anything above a C is a passing grade, right?

  Mr Big by Ed Vere, in which a nice but huge gorilla discovers music may be the way to acceptance.  Lovely artwork, and it prompted Small Person (aged 2 and a half) to ask the eternal question ‘Where is the jazz?’, which made me laugh for about a day.  (Rarg, any suggestions?)  Also finally finished Douglas Coupland’s JPod, which is even less plot-driven than Microserfs, but still larky fun.  You’ll never look at Ronald McDonald the same way again (and I’m guessing the way you were looking at him before wasn’t exactly replete with the cosy warmth reserved for puppies, Stephen Fry, etc).

  A book!  A whole book!

  Post-deadline celebration has included acquainting myself with Smallest Person (babies! they’re so brilliant), building sandcastles on Barry Island beach, watching Starsky & Hutch, and having whole conversations with people who are a) not fictional and b) don’t work at Co-Op.  Oh, and I made some really good pea soup earlier.  Never let it be said I don’t know how to let my hair down.