every day should be a susie day

Like most Brits, I’ve been filling in my census form this week. (What is your job title? WRITER. Briefly describe what you do (did) in your main job. WRITING.)  I dithered more over the ‘how many hours a week do you work in this employment?’ question. In the last two weeks, I’ve written barely 500 words of Project Bluebell.

I’m not slacking. (Apart from that day Leverage Season 2 arrived and I ate a lot of Revels.) I’m brewing, mulling, cooking a new take on an old idea. And cooking needs fuel.

REVELS ARE DEFINITELY FUEL, K? Even if they are rubbish now they don't have peanuts in.

But the brain needs feeding as well, so I’m stuffing myself with artistic nutrition. Last week I saw Frankenstein at the Olivier in London. The run is sold out (though you might yet snare a ticket for an NTLive cinema showing – on Thursday in the UK, varying dates internationally – which will be the exact production I saw: I’m going, can’t wait to see how it translates onscreen). I went for purely intellectual reasons, of course, and in no way to stare at Benedict ‘Sherlock’ Cumberbatch in a series of extremely well-tailored coats – but I left incoherent with adulation, at a familiar story told afresh with the perfect mix of respect and inspiration. Hard not to walk away with a piqued curiosity about what makes us alive, human, worthy, and a perked sense of love for storytelling.

I’ve watched Cabaret again (can anyone get through Tomorrow Belongs To Me without sobbing?); I’ve been part of the giddy crowd led by skiffle kings The Severed Limb in a Drunken Sailor singalong. I feel surrounded by slightly skewiff people, pursuing the thing they love to do whether it makes sense to the rest of the world or not.  Granted, it didn’t work out all that well for Victor Frankenstein – but I think writing a book, you’re more Creature than Mad Scientist: stumbling from rejection to rejection, fumbling for language, striving towards some comforting apprehension of your place in the universe (and very possibly discovering you don’t have one).

So why do we keep doing it? In refuelling mode, everything resonates. I watched Serenity for the millionth time this weekend too, and this might just nail it.

Shiny.

*

Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Another phenomenal, important YA read from the author of Speak, this time tackling anorexia.  Outstanding stuff, beautifully written – but I urge you, especially if you’re a teen reader or have any ED history:  Take care of yourself while you read this book. Be kind to yourself. Talk about it afterwards.

Not a whole stack of tangible wordage from me, then – but oh my golly, it’s been an exciting week. I’m thrilled to say that Authors For Japan raised just shy of £11,000 for the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal, and thanks to her generosity I will now have the privilege of mentoring aspiring children’s writer Michelle Newell for the next 6 months. (Do read AL Kennedy’s brilliant piece on the exact sort of handholding I’m hoping to provide.) Thank you so much to everyone who made a bid! And if you missed out, it’s not too late: do check out Kidlit for Japan and Genre for Japan, which are still open with many amazing items on offer.

Failing to quell my inexplicable desire to eat gyoza for every meal; hanging with marvellous old mates who know how to put fish to sleep and how to wake them up again and much more besides (it’s all in the clove oil, apparently); deciding that all things considered, I am not meant to have a fringe.

Not as much fun as adventures with CSS, I’d reckon.

Or indeed the Go! Team, who I saw this week and are still so. much. fun live. It’s like being in an unusually kawaii school assembly run by Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem: all splitting the crowd down the middle for a singalong and prescribing the appropriate timing of one’s pogo. Gig was much enhanced by the doorman asking me for ID (and being hilariously floored when I told him my age), a bloke on the way out telling me I had ‘the best hair I’ve seen in ages. Well, six months’, and a random after-gig club with a playlist from Grandmaster Flash to the theme from Neighbours. Anyway, here’s Ladyflash for the uninitiated.

An interesting piece in the Times about how internet nerds are all girls these days, except in the world of programming. I’m depressed by the 12-year-old who thinks that girls only like the communicative fun bits and should leave the techie business to the boys (especially the day after International Women’s Day): maybe our schools need to be wallpapered again with the IT equivalent of those cheerfully grimy girls in boiler suits waving spanners to encourage us to become mechanics. (And let’s ignore the fact that I’ve been living up to my gender stereotype all weekend, harassing WordPress templates into minimal degrees of submission and wishing it was all laid out a bit more visually.) Then again, is content really a lesser species than code? Web 2.0 isn’t just about the back end being Open Source so we can fiddle with it: it’s about simple elegant interfaces which let you get on with writing. Bet that 12-year-old grows up to be a journalist…

Not a lot of B&L writing due to the aforementioned WordPress harassment (more on that soon, once there’s anything worth looking at), and scribbling some Big Woo promotional material. Imminent publication: it’s like having a proper job or something.

Watching Wales v Ireland and actually getting a bit teary (I am so proud of the boys, bless them, and now I’ve heard about the gouging I feel less cross about us earning 2 sin bins); finding out that someone very lovely is getting married, hurrah; eating pearl barley; moaning about Ashes to Ashes Alex Drake’s bra strap.