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.

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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!

Luisa, Keris, Sarra and Simmone

What better way to celebrate 4 glorious years of Chicklish, the UK’s very first teen/YA book blog, than with a celebration of books by its founders and friends?  Luisa Plaja, Keris Stainton, Sarra Manning and Simmone Howell treated Dulwich to readings, a Q&A, and signings (thanks to the indie bookshop Tales on Moon Lane, who also kindly gave me directions to the event as I am an utter donkey who apparently likes to get to these things 30 minutes late looking like a sweaty beetroot).  The discussion ranged from sources of inspiration (the whole panel confessed to being developmentally stuck circa age 15/16: oh, how I relate), to plan or not to plan (Sarra: YES! Everyone else: NO!) and their varied routes into writing for teens.

What stuck out most of all, though, was the fondness and respect there is for Chicklish, and all the YA book bloggers who have followed here in the UK, and worldwide. Those of us who write contemporary fiction for teenage girls don’t tend to snag award nominations or broadsheet reviews: instead we’re reviewed by our readers, online, because they love books and want to share them. All hail them. And lucky us.

Cheers, ladies, for a fabulous evening! (And to the just-as-fabulous Sophia Bennett, who cooked me dinner and walked me to my train after more booky nattering.)  Can we do it all again next year?

I broke my usual ‘no non-fiction unless I get to write an essay about it later’ rule for Libby Brooks’ The Story of Childhood, profiles of 12 children and young adults living in modern Britain. I should break that rule more often: it’s well-written, thought-provoking stuff, prodding at our strange cultural doublethink of over-protective child-panic, and the demonisation of the feral teen.  Also Gayle Forman’s If I Stay, which is one of those oddities where I can tell objectively that I’m reading a ‘good’ book without really connecting with it (though it reduced me to a sniffly weepy mess several times with perfect efficiency). Now galloping through Nicola Morgan’s Wasted, which turns on such a brilliant premise that it starts to creep into your brain, and leave you standing in the Co-Op, holding carrots in one hand and crisps in the other, wondering if this decision might be about more than my dipping-things-in-houmous choices, and how I’ll never ever know…

Ahhh, writing: sometimes it’s awesome and lovely and you’ve just written the funniest cleverest most emotionally gobsmacking sentence  OF YOUR ENTIRE WRITING LIFE, and sometimes you hate everything you do.  Mostly the reality is actually a wiggly line between those two – but not always, and sometimes the ‘oh dear, this book is bobbins, argh help flail’ feeling takes root for good reasons.  Which is a long way of saying I think like I’ve got a lot of rewriting to do on Project Poppy, so you might not see it for a little while.  Have gone from quivery meep-mode to a cheering sense that this makes me a Proper Writer type – Sophia Bennett told me she wrote 32 drafts of Threads (which is brilliant, by the way: high fashion and child soldiers in Uganda, and funnyfunnyfunny) before it was done. THIRTY-TWO.  I’m such a slacker – all the way to feeling a  bit excited, as I’ve got the loveliest idea for how to rewrite it…

Skipping around the New Forest with sister and family, where ponies stand in the middle of the road looking imperiously at cars and Bournemouth beach makes me ultra-freckly (or ‘spotty’, as Small Person would have it); hanging out with old college mates in old college pubs, and feeling cheered by how people’s lives work out (mine included); loving Matt Smith’s Doctor Who (and Amy, and Rory, and everything in it at all ever) like a big ninny.

My holiday picnic spot: lighthouse at Hurst Castle

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.

Because why should snowmen get all the fun?

I know she looks a bit fierce, but I promise she’s ‘armless.

*hides*

Gloves probably dry now.  Wonder what to make next…  (Shush.  You can totally have a Snow Day even if you already work from home.)

  Thanks to a bumper festive haul, I am festooned with booky goodness.  Continuing my Bloomsbury groupie-ing with Frank Baker’s Mrs Hargreaves, which is the lovely silly tale of what happens when poor Norman’s entirely figmentary 83-year-old loony old dear suddenly turns up on his doorstep, under the impression she really exists.  Quietly philosophical and very funny (ty, S & N!).  Now lolloping through some Ngaio Marsh with great glee.

  HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ANY WRITING WHEN EXCITING WHITE STUFF HAS FALLEN OUT OF THE SKY?  Project Poppy’s plot chasm was leapt pre-Christmas, but am feeling that Januaryish sense of meh.  Also, EXCITING WHITE STUFF.  May have to bribe self into getting today’s 1000 words done with promises of hot chocolate.

  Seeing John Barrowman in panto in the company of a 3-year-old (most. fun ever.); sniffling at the very mention of Bernard Cribbins (yet being utterly gleeful at the prospect of Doctor Eleven and Ms Pond taking over TARDIS duties); wondering why it took me so long to finally see Mirrormask (which is beeyootiful, and very reminiscent of Labyrinth: no Bowie in tights, alas; just Andy Hamilton as a hedgehog).

I hear murmurings from the blogosphere that the ARC of My Invisible Boyfriend is beginning to arrive in a few US mailboxes.  For those of you who’ll have to wait till April, here’s a sneaky peek at the absurdly cute cover.

Look, pretty people!   (Don’t get too excited, European readers: this is the US edition of Girl Meets Cake, not a new book: you’ll have to wait till 2011 for one of them.  North American readers, please feel free to get as excited as is humanly possible.)

  I’ve got a copy of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go sitting next to me – yet appear to be reading Dick Francis’s Forfeit.  Eh, it’s Christmas, right?

  Project Poppy has been speeding along very happily, and has now careened into a wall and fallen down a plothole.  Grr.  Now have to decide whether to skip over the hole and fill it in later, or spend a few days with pen and paper scribbling metaphorical ladders. Hrmmm…

Listening to R4′s Shelved on how abandoned or banned episodes of Doctor Who and The Professionals reveal that people who made TV in the 1970s were, um, bonkers (a shock, I know); discovering my Christmas lights are borked; finally getting around to watching Inkheart and LOVING IT TO PIECES, OOH! – really must get round to reading the other 2 books.