every day should be a susie day

Writers are a funny bunch. Half the time we think we’re chocolate: we have to, to believe we can fill up that big blank page,  that we have something to say, a story to tell that we can tell better than anyone else.  The other half we spend in a state of eye-poking misery, staring at the no-longer blank page full of adverbs and ‘just’ and that character we put in because nothing had happened for a few paragraphs, wondering why we ever thought we could do this.  The inner critic is a necessary beast, of course – but how do we tell whether it’s biting because it should, or just because we’re having a histrionic artiste moment?

If I were a useful sort of person, here is where I would shout TA-DA! and unveil my solution in a Paul Daniels stylee.  Unfortunately, I seem to be sorely lacking in Debbie McGees – because if I knew the answer, I probably wouldn’t be in the process of junking 40,000 words of book that didn’t work.  And before you all go Awww or Oh no! (or even Ha, she deserves such a fate for invoking Paul Daniels) , I’m utterly delighted.  Now I’m going to start writing a new flipped-about slapped-on-the-bum version of the very same idea, and I’m giddy and excited and skipping about at the prospect.  And while the 40,000 words that came before made me grin every now and then, I’m not sure they ever made me skip.

So: from now on, I’m only going to write skippable things, I think. If you see me out and about with both feet firmly on the ground, tell me to take a few days off from the manuscript. That way, I might notice when it’s not working a bit quicker.

The book formerly known around these parts as Project Poppy shall henceforth be known as Project Bluebell.  I hope it will make you skip too.

*

Since I’ve been so hopeless about updating lately, I’ve read lots of things and can’t remember what any of them are. I think this means I didn’t like them very much, so that’s probably ideal. Oh, and I read one fantastic book which made me sob repeatedly on a  train (WHY am I always on a train with the weepifying ones?) but it isn’t out till January, so I will wibble about it then when you can actually get your mitts on it. (Then cry. On a train.)  I am planning the annual bookapalooza known as ‘Going On Holiday’ soon, though, and after happily paddling in kidlit and YA for months I’ll be dipping a toe in the grown-up pool. Planned reading list: The Summer Book, Tove Jansson; One Day by David Nicholls (who for ages I thought was David Mitchell: stop having Ls in your names, people called David); and some Borges short stories. That should keep my tent contented.

Completely unrelated to the above, I’m whizzing my way towards the end of a first draft of Super Sekrit Project #93, aka, um… hang on, it’s so secret I haven’t given it a secret name…er… The Jovial Adventures of Some Herring. (It’s not about herring. Although now I sort of wish it was. Herring herring herring.)  This one is making me skip rather a lot.

Playing tour guide (ie taking lovely visiting people to the Pitt-Rivers and then out for French Onion soup); watching a very wet, very wonderful Midsummer Night’s Dream in my old office, aka the Bodleian Quad; breaking my laptop; getting pathetically overexcited about my impending holiday – Canada, bears, possible airport strikes, oh my!

Lovely blog readers, let me steal your brains!   This here shiny website is shortly to undergo a grand transformation, and (as well as exclusive extracts, noisy things on YouTube and general time-wasty shenanigans) SusieDay Towers will be getting a new coat of paint.  This makes me happy.  And confused.  I am so indecisive I have been known not to have any lunch because I can’t decide if I want cheese on toast or soup, so picking my favourite of two colour schemes is utterly beyond me.  So: halp?

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Am currently reading The Official Nancy Drew Handbook: Skills, Tips & Life Lessons From Everyone’s Favourite Girl Detective.  V handy as I bunked off Girl Detective School the day they did How To Train a Carrier Pigeon and Advanced Kidnap-Thwarting.  Alas, I am less interested in Nancy’s help in flower-arranging and, um, How To Get That Ring on Your Finger and That Man to the Altar.  Hush now, Nancy dear: I’m reading the Usborne Detective’s Handbook which has proper criminals with straggly beards in.  Now where’s my Whifflepoof?

CUT CUT SNIPPETY TYPE CUT SLASH HACK ARGH! SLURP.  Or: I am editing Project Poppy.  So far this mostly involves deleting entire chapters and drinking a lot of tea while trying to think of things that are funny.  Dairylea triangles = funny.  Explaining how time travel works = not funny.  Oh, but guess what I’ve got?  The brand new not-out-till-March-1st North American paperback of serafina67 *urgently requires life*!  Still as pink and gorgeous as ever, and now with a sneaky peeky at My Invisible Boyfriend tucked away at the back too.  Woo, etc.

cooking tagine in my new tagine (eee! even if I need to learn to actually read a recipe on occasion); wondering who thought BSG’s Razor was a good idea; giggling at the sheer lolarity of the new Doctor Who trailer; throwing things in skips; eating lotus flowers while harassed by a dragon for Chinese New Year.

The Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Challenge: Sci-Fi Edition continues, boldly going where goldfish roes are nibbling at your toes…

Yep, that’s Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat of the good ship Red Dwarf, as created by the magnificent revision-avoiding hands of Nicky, James and Tom.  I do love how, even in gingerbread form, Rimmer is losing his hair.  (I’ve only seen the first episode of the reunion special thingy, but so far it falls into ‘not at all bad and surprisingly non-cheapo-looking given that they allegedly made it for ninepence’ category: phew.  Weird having no laughter track, though.)

Keep them coming, people!  I think the Bake-A-Boy gallery is going to need a Gingerbread Spock before long…

  I’ve been a bit hopelessly distracted, so nothing new on the bookish front (though I am itching to get my mitts on Sally Nicholls’ Season of Secrets, because Ways To Live Forever was great; Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Ashby, because ZOMBIES; and The Teashop Girls by Laura Schaefer, because in places it sounds spookily like Girl Meets Cake…). In the meantime, here’s Tanya Gold’s brilliant Guardian piece on YouTube ‘starlet’ Susan Boyle.

  I seem to be doing more unwriting than writing at the moment.  File The Becky Book under ‘You’ll Read It One Day, Probably’, because now I’m writing… something else.  Watch this space.  (Not literally, or your eyes will go funny.  At least get yourself a cup of tea or something: I might be a while.)  In the meantime, I’m at the final copyedit stage of My Invisible Boyfriend (ie the US version of Girl Meets Cake) – just as soon as I can get OpenOffice to play nicely with Word, sigh  – and they’ve been taking pretty pictures of pretty people for the cover!  It’s going to look so very gorgeous.

Getting sunburnt in Wales in April (???); having deep and meaningful discussions about the hobbies of mermaids with Small Person (“on weekends, they like to go to the garden centre”); melting into a very happy puddle in a turkish steam room (followed by a MINTY SHOWER, oh bliss); wondering why there’s still water dripping through the kitchen ceiling when my flat has been full of plumbers all week; feeling happyhappyhappy.

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.

Oliver Postgate has died.  Like every Brit of a certain age, his was the voice of my childhood.  Smallfilms (Postgate, animator Peter Firmin, and various handy people who were good at knitting) made telly out of bits of string in a shed at the bottom of the garden, with such obvious love and care that I feel teary just thinking about it.  His imagination contributed every bit as much of my kidly fondness for stories as Blyton and Kipling and Dahl.

So, for your nostalgic viewing pleasure, here are the singing mice from Bagpuss,  the Welshest episode of Ivor the Engine ever, soup (and the soup dragon) with The Clangers (spillage at 6.40!), a glimpse of Nogbad from Noggin the Nog, and some magnificently scary-looking pictures from Tottie (which we used to mock mercilessly, but secretly I adored it).  Oh, I am a tiny person all over again, just listening to him…  Farewell, Post, you’ll not be forgot.

  I’ve mostly been reading unpublished things, which is fun except you can’t talk about them.   Am now on Andrea Levy’s Small Island, though, which is masterful.

  Proof-correction time for Girl Meets Cake!  I love this bit: it’s so nearly a book, and those final little tweaks and checks are amusing.  Though I’m dithering over a section where my girls greet each other with the always-friendly catalogue of insults (tart, whore, that kind of thing).  I know why I wrote it like that: there are legitimate, meaningful, textual reasons for those words to be there.  But Tina Fey’s character in Mean Girls bellows ‘Y’all have to stop calling each other sluts and whores, because it just makes it OK for guys to call you sluts and whores‘, and she has a point.  Decisions, decisions…

Visiting Narnia (well, nearly: sooo pretty), nearly killing myself with undercooked chicken (I knew there was a reason I used to be veggie), continuing my helpless obsession with Gilmore Girls, despite it being all twee and goofy.