Guest Blog # 1

The two of us

Nik’s not well, so it’s me, the husband, writing today’s blog, in between providing cups of tea and soothing words. Given the regularity of Nik’s blog posts, I thought it was a good idea to step up and post something today before people start to wonder what’s happened.

Nik is remarkably frank in her blog posts, so you’ll know about her bi-polar disorder. She’s had one of her episodes and is feeling very low, but she’ll be back to her snarky self again soon, without a doubt.

Stepping in to provide the first guest blog ever on her site, I am reminded of the efficiency and energy she puts into blogging. This is what a proper blog looks like. I’ve had my own for seven or eight years, and it has a decent throughput, but I manage to blog at best only every few weeks (sometimes it’s even less often than that). I also blog about events and work, and virtually never stray into the realms of the personal. I am always impressed at the frequency of Nik’s blogposts, at the way she disseminates her blog through Twitter and FaceBook, and the sheer discipline of producing something on an almost daily basis. What is even more impressive is the quality of the material she produces. It’s not vacuous waffle publicising this, that or the other, it’s almost always frank, political, surprisingly insightful, controversial and far more personal than most bloggers dare to be. I presume that is why she attracts so many repeat readers. Her blog is a proper open discourse with the World; she is the person that she appears to be from her posts. I wonder how many bloggers you can say that about.

Nik has just recently posted her 400th blog, which is quite a landmark, especially given the timeframe and the sustained personal engagement of those blogs. If you’re going to talk to the World on a daily basis, you’d better have something to say or you’re just adding to the noise. I often don’t, which is why I don’t do it that regularly. I think Nik always does, which is why I felt you might miss her if she went quiet for a while. If you want proof of the range and candour of her output (and her snarkiness) here are six of my favourite posts.

A Matter of Life and Deadlines

Blog 400! and Ten Things Ever Writer Should Know

Self-Publishing

There is Nothing to Say

The Gay Gene

All Things Are Possible

The Russians are Coming part ii

I am a big fan of the blog comment. I positively encourage people to comment on my own blog, particularly when I post about issues rather than about writing, which I do fairly regularly. I have opinions, and I tend to air them.

It’s interesting to me, though, that people tend to want to enter into a dialogue, and, as a result, the most interesting comments on blogs tend to come through my Twitter and FaceBook feeds, and comments on the actual blog are often simply ripostes at best, or rants at worst.

Yesterday is a case in point. In the afternoon I had a rather interesting conversation with a couple of people over on Twitter, who had read my daily post. I had cited the Roman Catholic church in my blog about the Russian parliament passing laws discriminating against promoters of homosexuality and defending religious believers against offense. 

One of the people who talked to me on Twitter broadly agreed with me, calling the fact that, according to polls, half of Russians believe that gay people should have fewer rights than straight people ‘despicable’, which is perfectly right, of course. 

The figures don’t surprise me much, Crawl down into the lowest common denominator spaces, and remember that you’re getting answers from those people willing to respond, and those are the sorts of numbers I’d be prepared to expect just about anywhere, including little Britain and middle America, but maybe that’s just me feeling as if I’m losing a losing battle.

I was in for a surprise from this perfectly nice and well-meaning person, though, because here’s what came next:

And as a Catholic, some of the things the Catholic Church says and does leave me truly saddened.

Hmmm...

Way back in the early eighties, when I was at university, I remember one of those late night conversations when a bunch of us were all sitting around putting the World to rights... and it’s important that you remember this was the ‘80s, fifteen years before the Good Friday Agreement. 

An Irish catholic from Derry, whose brother was a seminarian named Pius, no less, was in conversation with a third generation Italian American catholic from New York. They were discussing their faith and how they practised their catholicism. The American, let’s call him Tony, saw himself as a rational man with a conscience growing up in the modern era. He wanted all the things that all young men wanted in the second half of the twentieth century and he believed that he could have them. He also believed he was a good catholic. The Irish man, let’s call him John, believed in the teachings of the Roman Catholic church and of God’s representatives on Earth. Tony advocated for safe sex in the wake of HIV and AIDS, and contraception in the face of unwanted, unplanned and teenage pregnancies. He even advocated for abortion for the most extreme cases where a mother’s life was in danger, for example, or where a rape had been committed. 

John waited patiently for Tony to finish talking while most of the rest of the group nodded wisely along, and then he asked how Tony squared those things away with the church’s teachings. Tony said that his priest, his church and his family felt that those things should be left to a man’s conscience. John sighed, and said, ‘Yep... We call you people Protestants.’

We we young and we were shocked, and some of us were even embarrassed by that, but here’s my point... a point that I couldn’t make in a conversation on Twitter, yesterday. It’s a point that applies across the board, too, to all religious groups.

Faith is one thing. I respect it, hugely, whatever personal struggles I might have with it. Faith in a higher being has great value when it is brought to bear with love for the greater good, both of individuals and of communities, and, even of the World, if that’s possible. Faith and organised religion are not the same thing, though, are they?

Pope Francis

We align ourselves with religious groups for all sorts of reasons. My friend on Twitter yesterday called himself a catholic, and he has every right to do so, but he might be doing so for all sorts of reasons. He might be calling himself a catholic, because that’s how he was raised by his family, or his community, or because he comes from a traditionally catholic nation. He might consider himself to be catholic, culturally, as it were.

However, if he puts Roman Catholic on forms when asked to state his religion, he is endorsing something that, in his own words, leaves him truly saddened. Why, then, does he do it? The Roman Catholic church might begin to ask real questions about its direction if all disillusioned catholics, and people who call themselves catholics because it is some sort of legacy or birthright, stopped putting their religion down on forms as Roman Catholic. If they stopped going to mass, if they stopped putting their pennies in the collection plates, if they stopped buying votive candles, if they stopped propping up the church, whose teachings they, at the very least question, perhaps things would begin to change in the church itself. 

I’m not suggesting that anyone deny his faith. I’m saying, how can this man be a catholic and call himself a catholic when he fundamentally disagrees with the teachings of God’s representative or representatives on Earth. I say, if you need God to have a representative on Earth find one you agree with. If you want to belong to a church, to some sort of organised group of worshippers, at the very least find one whose politics you agree with. My presbyterian grandmother became an Anglican without too much heartache, and when my good friend saw hypocrisy in the Church of England, she found solace with the Methodists. I also know one woman so appalled by the ordination of women that she became a Roman Catholic, and she feels very at home with her choice.

Call yourself a Christian, by all means... or not. If you have faith, find a religion that suits how you feel about your God.

For that matter, as ignorant as so many of us are, we are too apt to toss all Muslims into one great, heaving pot of fundamentalist hatred. It isn’t like that, and we shouldn’t do it. It is wrong and ignorant and it demeans us. Islam is no better or worse than Christianity or Judaism, or Sikhism or Hinduism. 

Faith in a God or Gods isn’t the problem, interpretation of God’s laws is where we begin to go wrong, and that’s all about us, that’s all about men arguing over theological questions that they choose to answer to suit themselves and their times and their politics.

So, if we choose labels for ourselves, and many of us do, we should be aware of the reasons why we choose those labels, and then we should be aware that we will have to live with the consequences of carrying those labels.

My friend on Twitter calls himself a catholic and that means something to him, and it means something to me, and it will mean something to almost everyone who sees or hears that label, and I honestly think that he should be aware of that, and so should I and so should we all. 

My problem is that if the label doesn’t fit or it compromises how you feel about yourself, or if you’re excusing the label or yourself because of the label, maybe you should think about why you’re wearing the label at all. Maybe the label just doesn’t fit. Maybe you should try on a new label. Maybe, ‘I was raised catholic’ might be closer to the truth, now.

The Russians are Coming!

When I was a kid and the Cold War was on, and we all talked about what we’d do when, not if! the four minute warning went off, the Russians are coming! was a genuine threat. Well, I suppose not, strictly speaking the Russians, but the Soviets.

The capitalists and the communists didn’t get on for, oh, a hundred years, and, for thirty of those, things looked pretty grim. We thought it was all over, though, didn’t we? What with Glasnost and Perestroika, and good old Gorbachev! The ‘80s came along and everything started to look a whole lot better for the World, at least when it came to the threat of all-out nuclear war between the super powers.

Huzzah!

It’s the little things, though, isn’t it? Or, at least, the things that seem little, but which are embedded so deeply in our society and speak so thoroughly to our character, to how we identify as people, both as individuals and as communities, that really mark us out, and alter our standing on the World stage.

In April, New Zealand passed its Equal Marriage Act. This is how they celebrated in parliament. What could possibly be nicer or more moving?

I heard, this morning that the Russian parliament, yesterday, unanimously passed a law that prohibits providing information on homosexuality to anyone under eighteen. Yes, that’s right, unanimously! There was not a single dissenting voice, not a single gay member of parliament, apparently, nor one with a single gay relation, it seems.

This means, of course, that those most in need of help, advice, counsel and compassion will not receive it. Gay teenagers will be stigmatised in a modern, first World society. Teachers could be under threat of losing their jobs if they talk to their gay students about issues they might have, or answer questions relating to their sexuality, and could end up with criminal records because of it... In the first World... in the twenty-first century. 

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina
of Pussy Riot in a courtroom in Moscow

If this weren’t absurd enough, this nasty piece of legislation was passed on the same day as another law, imposing jail sentences on those who offend religious believers, reinforcing the convictions, for protesting in an orthodox cathedral, of two members of the punk band, Pussy Riot. 

It is hard to separate those two things in one’s mind, isn’t it? Where there is what is laughingly called religious conviction, where believers of all stripes are involved, hatred never seems very far away. It is not for the believer to be offended, surely? Didn’t Jesus, at least, teach us to turn the other cheek? Didn’t he preach love? 

The latest line from the Catholic church is that if one knows about the Catholic church, but one does not join her and remain in her, one cannot be saved and go to heaven when one dies.

It seems to me that there is increasing polarisation between secular and religious communities. It worries me. Polarisation of ideas always worries me. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be a little more inclusive, a little more thoughtful, a little more moderate, a little more accepting? What are we so afraid of?

Cameron and Clegg make a mess so we head to UKIP and the BNP for political solace? Why? It makes no rational sense. It’s like being in a storm and working our way out to the edges when we could try, instead, to find the calm and peace and still of the centre.

I want to be a thinker and I want to have a spiritual element in my life, and I want to respond emotionally to things. I want to feel calm and rational, and I want to respond to ideas. I can’t do that if I’m angry, and I can’t do that if I’m dogmatic and I can’t do that if I already believe that I am right about everything.

That’s what these people do, whether their convictions are political or religious; they close their hearts and their minds and they harden their souls, and every new idea and every act of love and every opportunity to change for the better bounces clean off them.

I do not know if Russia showed her true colours, yesterday. I am very sad if she did. I know that the backlash has begun. I know that the brave are already protesting for their right to be heard and to be accepted. They fought their battle for homosexuality to be decriminalised, and they won it, twenty years ago, in Russia, and now they have to fight it all over again. 

I wish them well.

Blog 400 part iii Share and Share Alike

To celebrate my 400th blog, I invited subjects of discussion. This one comes from Chris Quinn, @irlchrusty, who wants me to talk about clowns, and about how different forms of entertainment have fallen out of fashion, eg circuses, in favour of others.

Clowns! Crikey!

For so many people there was never anything so terrifying as a clown, and for anyone who’s read Stephen King...

I suggested, the other day, that for people of my generation, our childhoods more closely resembled those of our parents’ generation than they did those of our children’s, and, having made the observation, I promised myself that I’d follow it up. 

I think the same is true of entertainment. I think the manner in which we entertained ourselves and the scale on which we do it has changed dramatically, and that includes clowns.

a gorgeous old circus poster

Chris cited circuses, and, having grown-up in Great Yarmouth, I'm more than a little familiar with the concept, but let’s begin with all live entertainments. It’s only sixty years since the coronation, which is when tvs were first bought in any numbers, so most entertainments, excluding the radio, of course, were live prior to that time, and even most radio entertainments were broadcast live. The exception to the rule was film, of course, which, while it wasn’t live, was, at least, entertainment for the masses, and was enjoyed en masse.

TV and radio were the beginnings of small scale home entertainment, but, until very recently they were also very much shared. Until the 80s we all watched the same three channels and we all watched the same programs at the same times on the same days. We shared the experience of watching them, usually in family groups around the only tv in the house, and we discussed them together, often at work or in school with friends and colleagues and a wider community.

Entertainment was a community activity, from singing around a piano in the local drinking hole to standing room only at the local theatre, for hundreds of years. Until modern times, most people didn’t even eat their hot meals alone in their homes, but in local bake shops.

We still indulge in big events and special occasion entertainments, but we don’t share them in the same way we used to. We travel to our entertainments. We don’t walk to our local theatre, we travel to a big city. We don’t sit with our neighbours and friends, we sit with strangers, and when the show is over we get back in our cars or on the train, and we don’t share the experience, except with the people who might have accompanied us on the trip.

There are a few exceptions.

I haven’t been to a modern music festival, but I certainly see the appeal. I can imagine the camaraderie, the hedonistic delights of living in a field, in tents, with strangers for three or four days at a time, sharing food and music, and love and mud; making friends, possibly for life, and making plans to meet again at the next venue. 

I completely understand why people who meet under no other circumstances gather in fields half a dozen times a year for LARPing extravaganzas, or why they meet enthusiastically at conferences and conventions.

I worry, though about the dilution and dissolution of our entertainments. I worry about their specialism. I worry about labelling.

Take fiction. Books used to be books. When I was a kid, fiction was fiction, a good story was a good story, and I never cared what genre it happened to be; there really wasn’t anything like the snobbery there appears to be now. 

When I go into a book shop, now, everything is labelled, and heaven forfend a book doesn’t easily fit into a category. What is YA? What are Gothic Historical Romance and Alternative Steampunk Fantasy? And where, oh where, is the joy?

Every time a kid plugs his earbuds in, I cringe a little, especially when he’s got a buddy sitting next to him. Whatever happened to sharing, and why aren’t we all sharing our entertainments a little more readily.

I hope that we are, and I hope that we’ll continue to.

Shared entertainments like shared experiences of all kinds have got to be a good thing, surely?

Fighting the Wrong Battles

It’s Monday, so, today, as usual, I’m pulling something from the Sunday newspapers to talk about... OK, I lied, I’m actually pulling something from Saturday’s Guardian Review section. 

I read a fascinating article called “A Critical Gap” all about literary critics and the gender gap. There are, as it turns out, more male critics in this field, writing about more books by male writers. There are more ‘Men of Letters’ than ‘Women of Letters’, and who, I’d like to ask, is surprised by that?

Who is surprised that men have cornered this market? This is where books are sold, so of course they have. Men review men because of the old boys’ network. To review women is demeaning and to be reviewed by women is probably worse. 

I thought, in the end, the numbers probably worked out about right, though. If roughly thirty percent of reviewers are women and if roughly thirty percent of the books reviewed are by women, isn’t that about right?

Now, if you’re a woman, which I am, and if you know that half the population is made up of women, which we do, and if we suppose that half the writers in the World are women, and why wouldn’t they be? Then we might suppose that half the critics should be women and half the books reviewed should be by women. In fact, if you’re half the feminist that I am, you’re probably jumping up and down about now, screaming for justice, and, you’re probably wondering why I’m not jumping up and down.

Well, I’ll tell you why I’m not.

I’m not jumping up and down, and you shouldn’t be, yet, either, because if you’re jumping up and down already, you’re doing it too soon. Save your breath, because any minute now, you’re going to wish you had. Any minute now, if you’re anything like the feminist that I am, you’re going to be very, very angry.

Here’s what this very interesting article didn’t tell you.

I looked up this little gem on the internet, and you can find a breakdown of all the statistics in this article. The bit of information that’ll really get you raging is this: Only about thirty percent of published novels are actually written by women!

That’s what we should be jumping up and down about. That’s the first battle we need to fight!

Pond-scum

This leads me neatly on to a snippet of news that I know many of you will have been very interested in, which I saw in the actual Sunday papers. I was rather cheered by it, in fact. Apparently, the rather brilliant Rory Kinnear* has been invited to play Dr Who in his latest incarnation.

There was some speculation, in the brief hiatus between Matt Smith’s resignation and this news article, about the possibility of casting a female Dr Who.

My response to this would be, nevermind a female Doctor, let's see a few more female writers, producers and directors on the BBC’s flagship shows and prime exports, Dr Who included. 

And while we’re on the subject of Dr Who, let’s introduce some female characters who aren’t characateurs, who aren’t bossy madams or erstwhile sex workers... Yes, I’m sorry, but kissograms are still sex workers... I don’t really want my daughters to have characters like Pond-scum for role models, thank you very much.

I know it’s not a popular opinion, but it is mine. Just saying.


*Since going to press this has appeared 
I must, I fear, apologise to Mr Kinnear, who it appears, is being used as a smokescreen while auditions take place for the next Doctor. I gather he’s rather annoyed about the whole thing. I am, too, now, since I think he’d have been a great choice... too good, almost, for the show. I might even have been persuaded to begin watching it again, having become rather disillusioned by it some time ago. So, I’m terribly sorry, Mr Kinnear, if I’ve added to your annoyance. I won’t mention it again... You really would have been awfully good, though.

Blog 400 part ii

Last week, when I was approaching my 400th blog, I invited my followers on Twitter to contribute ideas for what they’d like to read in it. Some of them were pretty good, so Blog 400 will now appear as a blog in several parts over the next week. You see... I do try to give you a little bang for your buck.

@TheMeksWorkshop thought I should revisit my very first blog and talk about what’s changed and how I found my way to blog post 400. So, here goes.

First of all, if you’re interested, here’s where you can read Blog 1. 

Funny thing blog 1.

Having just read it again, probably for the first time since I wrote it on February 4th 2012, I wonder who I was writing it for. It doesn’t sound like me, and while the content is, more or less true, it’s a selective kind of truth that baffles me now.

Honestly, I wouldn’t write a blog like it 400 blogs later... I don’t write blogs remotely like it now.

It seems guarded to me. It reads like a publicity piece for a magazine.

As far as blogging goes, I think 400 blogs have taught me quite a lot about blogging and how I want to do it. I couldn’t have kept up that slightly artificial, slightly arms-length tone for very long, and, let’s face it, I didn’t keep it up.

As far as the content is concerned. Well, I think we all know what happened, don’t we? My novel, Naming Names was a runner-up for the prize. The winner and the other runner-up have both done very nicely, thank you. Brava! 

Naming Names is yet to be published.

What Naming Names might look like

It has been a bit of a rollercoaster... A rollercoaster that includes two agents and, currently, six novels. I have published some short stories and collaborations with the husband, and other things, which have not had my name on the covers.

Of everything I have ever written, Naming Names has had the most work. It is currently undergoing more rewrites. I think, right now, I’m on the third... no fourth draft. It will be a very different book from the one that did so well in the Mslexia, but it will also be a much more accessible book, and, I hope, finally, something that might be published. I still have great faith in it, and, if I can do it justice, it is still the book that I most want to see on the shelves of the big bookstores. 

In the meantime, I have just signed commissioning forms on two more collaborations with the husband, and I am sitting on ideas for at least four more of my own novels, including a follow-up, of sorts, to Naming Names, which has a working title of The Winter Lamb. 

I would say more about this book, and the others, ideas for which are constantly spinning in my head, but then what would I talk about in my next 400 blogs?

By the way, if you're a woman writer who hasn't yet published a novel, Mslexia is holding its latest novel writing competition right now. Check it out here.

Blog 400! and Ten Things Every Writer should Know

David Guymer, @WarlordGuymer, my friend and author colleague for the Black Library, who’s a bit of a fan of the Skaven, asked me how I keep coming up with ideas for so many blogs.

First of all, I thought I’d better work out just how many blogs... OK... I know... 400... D’oh! What I mean to say is, it wouldn’t be difficult to write 400 blogs in, say, ten or eleven years, which is one every ten days or so. Any self-respecting blogger could probably manage that, right? Well of course she could.

I’ve written 400 blogs in 490 days, which is one blog or, according to Dr Guymer, one idea every twenty-nine hours and twenty-four minutes. Crikey! I’ve almost impressed myself! I was aiming for a blog a day, and, of course I missed, but not by a mile. Go me!

The truth is, though, that I simply haven’t had 400 ideas. That’s not how blogs work, or, at least, that’s not how my blog works.

I suppose it rather depends on what you think of as an idea.

Yes... My blogs are full of ideas. I’m full of ideas. I’m cursed with that whole mind-never-sleeps thingy that so many of us suffer from. When you ask someone what he's thinking, and he answers, ‘nothing’... How is that even possible? It’s a question I ask often. I always feel deceived. I always feel that whoever it is simply wants to keep something from me or from himself. I always feel that, at best, he is dissembling, and at worst he is lying to me. The truth is, I suppose, that not everyone is thinking all of the time. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t, but I am... It’s as simple as that.

The other thing about the blog is that while I might concede that it is full of ideas, and that there might be as many as 400 of them in these 400 blogs, I’d bet good money that there aren’t 400 different ideas here. I’d bet that I have repeated myself a good deal over the course of the past 490 days, and, when I haven’t repeated myself, I’d bet that I’ve contradicted myself, using the same idea at least twice from two different directions. 

You see, I cheat.

Here’s another secret I’ll let you into... I don’t really set out to think about the blog, or have an actual idea to use in it. There are reasons for this to do with time and work, and having other things to do.

I love the blog, and I’m glad I’m writing it... Some, mostly the husband, would say that I’ve even become quite obsessive about it, because I do that, too, along with the never-stopping-thinking thingy. The blog has simply become the repository for the shit in my head, though. It’s a sort of public journal, a kind of contract with my readers, a collection of my ephemera, a conversation of sorts. 

It’s worth remembering that I live in isolation. I am a writer. I spend hours and hours and hours of every day alone. I live in a small, closed environment, I know very few people, my social circle is tiny. I might go days or even weeks actually speaking to only a handful of you. If I have a thought, a random bit of nonsense, an irritation, an observation, a snark, who do I share it with?

Most of you share these things with the people you live and work with, with the bloke you buy your coffee from, or the woman who sits next to you on the train. Most of you share these things with your partner and children, with the parents you visit or phone on a regular basis, with the siblings you have a drink with on a Friday night. I’m not like that. I share this shit with you guys.

So, to answer the question, I don’t come up with ideas for the blog. I’m all about the WYSIWYG. This is a case of what you see is what you get. I’m shooting the breeze, sharing my shit, and generally doing my thing. If you find ideas in my blogs, that’s pretty cool! Once in a while, I put them there on purpose, but mostly, it’s just me being an open book.

***

Now, because this is blog 400, and my original manifesto said something about me writing about writing, I decided to do a writerly thing and compile one writer’s list, mine, of writerly things about writing or being a writer, or about being a better writer, or whatever.

Writers do this all the time. Mostly, we talk a lot of silly shit, and, for everything on my list, you’ll find a writer somewhere who will tell you the opposite. Given my success rate in this job, you might want to go and find whoever it is that contradicts me, and follow their list, because it’s almost bound to get you a lot further than mine will get you. Having said that, I suspect mine will give you a lot more fun. 

Here goes.

Ten Things Every Writer should Know

1 - Write! Stop for nothing! He who hesitates is lost! You are not an editor, so do not tinker! You are a writer, so write, fast and urgently! If you heed no other piece of information from this list, heed this. In fact, go away, right now, and write. That’s exactly what I’m tempted to do.

2 - Read. This is a fuel-in, fuel-out game. If you do not read, you will not have words in the tank when it comes to writing. Having said that, when you are writing, do not read fiction, and if you read fiction while writing, steer clear of reading fiction in the genre, style or thematic pool that you’re writing in. Contamination by influence is an embuggerance.

3 - Be exuberant! You have a bigger budget than any film maker on the planet, so use it. Of course, if you don’t need the budget, or want it, use that to your advantage, too.

4 - If the spirit moves, move with it. If you become successful as a writer, there will come a time when you simply have to have the discipline to sit in a chair, more-or-less full-time, and write. It can be done. I do it, the husband does it, and lots of our friends and acquaintances do it. We all still have days when the spirit moves us, and we relish them. We also work for a living just like everyone else, and feel nostalgic for the days when writing was our beloved hobby. So, if writing is still your hobby and your first love, write when the spirit moves, because it’s the best feeling in the World, and one that many an aged, jaded writer regularly hankers after.

5 - Never ignore an idea. Never think you’ll remember an idea, because it was so good you couldn’t possibly forget it. You will forget it! Write it down! Do it now! I still don’t have the kind of discipline the husband has for this. He carries a notebook everywhere and uses it diligently. I do my best, but still lose about a third of the ideas I generate. Thank heavens I generate so many!

6 - Listen to the voices in your head. OK, so I have mental health issues, but this shit is still real. When a character starts talking to you, when you start to hear his voice, that’s the good stuff. Some stories write themselves, too. There’s a reason for that. It isn’t because you’re actually going mad (well, OK, for some of you it might be), it’s because you’ve put in the hours, you’ve got the experience, and you’ve relaxed into the job. Your mind and body know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it. Enjoy! It’s the kind of grown-up, real-writer equivalent of the spirit moving, and it’s heavenly.

7 - Find a way to research that doesn’t swallow up half your life. I know people who should be writers who are, in fact, researchers, and it frustrates the hell out of me. I employ rule number one, and write through, leaving blanks or keywords where I need to look something up or do more research. I research only small amounts of necessary source material, nothing anecdotal or supplementary, and I never, ever immerse myself in research. If you can’t concisely answer your question on a post-it note then you’re asking the wrong question.

8 - Write first for yourself. Write the stories that you would like to read. It doesn’t matter whether you write what you know, or whether it all comes straight out of your imagination, it should appeal to your own senses and sensibilities. If you write what you imagine an audience wants, or, worse still, what you imagine will sell by the shed-load, you’re asking for trouble.

9 - While you are writing, every word belongs to you. Once your work is published, not a single word belongs to you. Every reader is paying your mortgage; he can think whatever the hell he likes about the work that he has paid for, and all that remains for you to do is smile.

10 - Remember, always... The point of the writer is the reader!