Dreaming In Text

The Undiscovered World

2012-01-18T08:58:00.001Z

Over the holiday my grandson and I were playing with a balloon left over from a Christmas party. At a certain point in the game I repeated aloud some lines from one of his favourite books.

To tell the truth, it's a book I really hate reading for a number of reasons. It's written in such sparse language that it feels as though you're scanning a shopping list rather than taking part in a narrative; the illustrations are unsophisticated and remind me of the kind of graphics you encounter in a low-end computer game; and the plot ends up with the hero realising that it had all been a dream - the kind of ending I used to give the stories I wrote in primary school.

But my grandson loves it so I'm obliged to suspend my aesthetic judgement and read it to him over and over again. He's been known to demand this book twelve times in immediate succession, by the end of which I'm practically screaming through my forced jollity.

On this particular occasion as I kicked the balloon towards the front door I quoted gleefully from the text. 'He shoots,' I cried. 'He scores! He's won the game. He gets the trophy. He holds it high. He wakes up.'

The effect on my grandson was electric. He had been running around, laughing giddily but now he stopped in his tracks, staring at me intently with a look of wonder on his face.

It was clear to me that he was experiencing a minor shift in his world view brought on by the realisation that the words he was so familiar with could have an existence outside the covers of the book in which he normally encountered them. He was, in fact, discovering one of the key features of narrative - its extendibility into real life.

I felt immediately ashamed of my cynicism as I understood that what I had dismissed as a clumsy and amateurish piece of writing was for my grandson an essential tool in his struggle to make sense of the undiscovered world that lay all around him as far as his eyes could see.

Bewilderment

2012-01-03T13:00:00.000Z

Christmas is over for another year. I spent it with my wife, my daughter, her husband and our grandson. He had a great time, but every now and again I caught him looking around with a puzzled expression. He clearly had no idea what it was all about or what was going to happen next.

Today the news is full of a story about a man who shot his wife, her sister and her niece at a New Year drinks party. People in the small town in which the shooting took place are stunned. Police are trying to make sense of the incident.

I remember a Christmas about fifteen years ago, when my mother was alive. We were talking about a friend of hers who used to pop into our house on a Saturday afternoon when I was growing up. She was a bright, lively person, full of laughter and jokes and I always enjoyed it when she made an appearance. But she never stayed for long.

The reason she invariably hurried away, my mother informed me, was her husband, a tall, menacing man who seldom spoke, but whose smouldering eyes were filled with a barely suppressed violence that even as a child I recognised though I could not explain.

'He was terribly jealous,' my mother went on. 'She always told him she was just going to the shops. If she was gone too long and he found out she'd called into our house there would have been terrible trouble.'

'But why?' I asked, naively. 'I mean Dad was out of work. Who was he jealous of?'

'He just wanted to be in control,' my mother said.

My daughter, whose grandchild I now look after two days a week, was fifteen at the time. She had been sitting in a corner half-listening to this conversation. Now she spoke. 'But why did she stay with him?'

'Well,' I said, searching for an explanation that might make sense to her, 'marriage was a different institution in those days.'

'It certainly was,' my mother said. She spoke with feeling.

My daughter shrugged. 'I would have just left him,' she said. It seemed so obvious to her.

I was pleased by her clarity but also a little daunted. The past is such a difficult thing to explain to the present.

On the mantelpiece of my sitting room there is a photo of me standing amid a group of children in somebody's back garden. I am about two years old so it must be 1956. I'm holding a ball and gazing seriously at the camera with an air of faint bewilderment. Since that time the world has changed so much I sometimes think there is nothing the child in that photograph has in common with my grand children growing up today. Nothing except bewilderment.

The Reading Experience

2011-12-30T15:14:00.002Z

I've been reading a lot of books with my grandson over the Christmas period and I can't help noticing how all the genres we are so familiar with in contemporary literature are already there right from the start of the reading experience.

Take those lift-the-flap books that infants are so fond of, with their titles like 'Where's Maisy?' or 'Who Took The Cookie From The Cookie Jar?'. These are so clearly the primitive ancestors of the crime novels that fill the best-seller lists.

There's the same motivation for the reader - the pleasure of watching a mystery unravel, and the same comforting predictability about the conclusion. The hero will always appear from behind the last flap and smilingly wrap up the story.

There are character driven books where the focus is simply on presenting an individual, or a set of characters, to the reader. In one of my grandson's current favourites called 'Let's Say Hello To The Snowy Animals', the reader is introduced to a set of animals who live in cold climates, each of whom has his or her own particular set of signature traits, and then we say goodbye to them again. End of story.

Then there are issues-based books, like the hugely successful Charlie and Lola stories, which focus on the tricky problems that cast their shadow over those early years, like a child's reluctance to try new foods, or to go to sleep, or share toys with other children.

Perhaps there is no real difference between books for children and books for adults. Perhaps there are just books and readers.

For a writer like me this is all very reassuring. Next time I get a bad review I can remind myself that all those sophisticated readers discussing the latest titles in book clubs or on campuses, on blogs or in magazines, are only grown-up babies after all.

Missing The Performance

2011-12-15T19:15:00.004Z

Today I should have been looking after my grandson but both of us are ill. I have (what feels to me) like one of the worst colds in medical history. His mother reports that he just clings to her and feels sorry for himself.

So she's stayed home from work today to look after him and I've sat on my sofa drinking Lemsip. (For those of you not familiar with Lemsip it's a fluorescent yellow cold cure that tastes a bit like low-level radioactive waste.)

I've spent the day watching old movies. Funnily enough my grandson has been doing the same thing. My daughter found a DVD that used to be my grandson's favourite until it got lost. She was really pleased when she unearthed it but she soon regretted her discovery. He's been watching it over and over again for the last half hour, she told me in a slightly desperate email. Whenever I try to interest him in anything else he cries.

It seems to me that there's an awful lot of repetition in childhood, as if it were all an extended rehearsal. The main performance, every child instinctively believes, comes when you're an adult (and they can't wait to get there). We know different, of course. We know that the performance started the moment they were born and parents, far from being the stars, are just carrying around the props or sweeping up the stage.

Grandparenthood, on the other hand, is a bit like being in the audience for this wonderful performance. Unfortunately, today I missed the show and I can't tell you how sorry I am.

Who's Teaching Who?

2011-12-03T18:27:00.002Z

When I'm looking after my grandson I like to think that I'm teaching him things as well. We spend time reading books, and looking at flashcards. But we also spend huge amounts of time playing games that are all process and absolutely no product.

For example one of his favourite games at the moment involves me building a tower from wooden blocks that he then knocks down with his tractor to the accompaniment of a shout of 'Crash!' from me and something a bit like 'Agh!' from him. This game can be repeated endlessly until he gets sick of it (and his tolerance level is pretty high right now).

This is the complete opposite of the way I work as a professional children's writer. Whenever the idea for a story pops into my head I immediately start seeing it as a completed novel and asking questions like: What age reader is this story intended for? Will my agent like it? Will my editor like it? How does it fit with the other books I've written? I can't help this. I've been writing children's books for thirty years so perhaps it's inevitable.

However, seeing how my grandson plays has made me remember how I first began writing. Naturally, I wanted to get published in those days but that wasn't why I wrote. I wrote for one simple reason: because I enjoyed it. I explored the writing process rather like my grandson explores the possibilities of wooden bricks and tractors.

I can remember reading a lot of Roald Dahl stories and understanding exactly how he achieved his twist endings. It's so precise it's almost mathematical. And that doesn't mean I'm criticising him, by the way. He's an architect of fiction and like every good architect he plans his work very carefully.

When I realised this I went away and wrote any number of twist stories, just to prove to myself that I could do it and just for the pleasure of seeing how the machinery worked.

Writing is my job. It's work and like all work it has to be taken seriously. But it's also fun. My grandson has reminded me of that. So who's teaching who?

The Sky Is Dark

2011-11-25T21:55:00.002Z

My grandson has begun to talk. Last week when I took him out to his mother's car in the evening I mentioned that the sky was dark because it was late. This evening, after he had eaten his meal he looked out the window and, pointing outside, said what sounded to me like, 'A scar, a cigar.' Then he looked at me expectantly.

'He's talking about the sky,' his mother said. 'He was doing it in the park the other day. He kept saying the same thing and pointing upwards. It was ages before we realised that he was saying the sky.'

I turned back to my grandson who repeated the same phrase and now I realised that what had sounded like 'a scar' was 'the sky' and what I had translated as a 'a cigar' was really 'is dark'. I nodded my head, eagerly. 'The sky is dark,' I said. 'That's what you're saying, isn't it?'

He was ecstatic. He repeated his little mantra over and over again, pointing towards the window and each time I confirmed what he had just said, he laughed delightedly.

I cannot imagine what an incredible time this must be for him! I remember when I got my first book published. I wanted to replay the news over and over again. But that was nothing compared to my grandson's triumph. He has begun his dialogue with the world. Who knows where it will lead?

The Half-Finished Story

2011-11-19T21:24:00.002Z

There comes a point in almost any extended piece of writing when you run out of steam. The initial burst of enthusiasm evaporates and you find yourself shrinking from the half finished story like a friend you have fallen out with whom you now wish to avoid at any cost.

As someone who has worked as a manuscript doctor as well as a regular writer, I've seen enough of these promising but uncompleted works of fiction to fill a builder's skip. The writer always want to know whether it's worth carrying on and my advice is invariably the same. Finish the bloody thing even if it kills you. It might actually turn out to be as good as you imagined in your first shining vision. Alternatively, it might turn out to be dire. Whatever the outcome, you will learn a lot.

The best things we do are very often those we are forced to continue with even when we are sick to death of them. You can't give up on your children even though it's four in the morning and they are refusing to sleep. You are obliged to soldier on because there is no alternative. In the process you grow into so much more than the person who once fondly imagined parenthood as a wonderful and entirely painless adventure.

The same rule applies to writing. You have to persevere and find a way through the barrier of creative fatigue. If you do so, at the end you may have produced something wonderful. At worst you will have something to measure yourself against. Whereas if you simply throw in the towel, stick your half completed manuscript in a drawer and forget all about it, all you will have gained is a sense of failure.

Lost In The Forest

2011-11-14T21:19:00.000Z

Before I begin to write I always have to undergo a minor transformation, a kind of alchemy in which I put aside my everyday persona and take on my writer's persona. It takes a certain amount of time and there are a number of little rituals to go through. Anyone looking at me would think I was just fiddling about, wasting time, putting off the business of getting down to work; but I'm not.

When I first started writing I was working full time as a teacher, then coming home each evening to play with my daughters and to help put them to bed. So there was very little spare time. I used to write for an hour a night and no more. Even so, a proportion of that hour had to be given over to the process of metamorphosis that reminded me who I really was and, in doing so, allowed me to write.

After many years in which I could write every day I am now looking after my grandson two days a week and working in a university two days a week. So time is once again in very short supply. Nevertheless, I can't just sit down and write whenever I find myself with a spare moment. There has to be that ritual separation from my everyday self.

I think that no-one really grows up. We pretend to do so because that's what the world expects. There are jobs to be done, rent and mortgages to pay, meals to be cooked, rooms to be tidied, responsibilities to be faced up to; but inside each of us we carry a bewildered but curious child who doesn't really understand how the world works yet is determined to keep trying until he finds out.

Oddly enough, that's the part of your self you have to get in touch with in order to write because being efficient, organised, competent and capable isn't enough. You face the blank page like a child who is lost in the forest. First you sit down and wail. Then when the wailing is done, you start to crawl.

Learning To Walk

2011-11-10T20:47:00.002Z

For the last eight months every Thursday and Friday I've been looking after my grandson, who is now about twenty months old, while his mother works. It's an extremely rewarding but also an extremely exhausting experience.

When you have your own children you are so preoccupied with the struggle for survival that you don't have the same opportunity to savour and reflect on the child's development. You're walking around half asleep, concentrating on getting through the day. But as a grandparent, you have the chance to see a process that you've already lived through once, only this time in much finer detail.

My grandson was a little reluctant to start walking. He needed a certain amount of encouragement to get up off all fours. But once he had done so, he discovered that he loved the freedom and power that walking gave him. Just a couple of months after he walked for the first time I found him walking around our house with his eyes shut, just for the hell of it. A few days later he had graduated to walking round and round in circles until he got so dizzy he fell over.

I find that wholehearted delight in learning a really beautiful thing to watch and really inspiring. It reminds me of how, when I first started writing I got really excited every time I learnt a new technique. Like the first time I came across a story written in two entirely different voices. It was The Collector by John Fowles, a story about a young woman who is kidnapped, half of which is told from the woman's point of view and half from the kidnapper's. I was so excited that I immediately had to write my own story using two narrators, each with an utterly different take on the story.

Thirty years later there are still moments like that for me, moments when you are writing just for the hell of it. Eyes shut, dizzy with delight, hardly able to believe that this is what you get paid for doing.

Who Do Your Write For?

2011-10-22T19:00:00.002+01:00

The narrator of the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, an elderly preacher writing in the year 1956, says, 'For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers…You feel that you are with someone.' That's a very accurate description of how I feel about it.

When I was a child I was a very fervent Catholic and I spent a lot of time praying. (Please note: there's a difference between being fervent and good. I make no claims to being good either then or now.) The existence of God seemed utterly obvious to me. If you'd asked me why, I would have told you that I could feel the presence of God all the time.

Later on I adapted my perspective on this. I still had the same feeling but I wasn't quite so adamant about how I defined it. When pressed, I would say that I could feel a wind blowing from another world.

Sometimes this sense of another reality would be much more intrusive than at other times. I remember when I was nineteen years old walking along a road in Liverpool where I was studying at university when quite suddenly everything I was looking at seemed to ripple and bend about thirty degrees to my left, as if the whole of reality were nothing more than a scene painted on a curtain disturbed by a breeze. This shocked me by its explicitness but it did not surprise me in the least.

As I have got older this sense of another, and perhaps a greater, world contingent upon this one is not quite as ever-present as it used to be. But it's still there and occasionally it will blossom into full strength again for no obvious reason, leaving me in a slightly dazed state for the next half hour or so.

My writing takes place as a kind of response to this. I'm trying to be with someone, but not just anyone. I'm trying to be with someone who can understand what the hell I'm talking about. That's who I'm writing for: someone who is as disturbed as me.

If by any chance you're out there, hi.

Life And Fate

2011-09-28T18:38:00.002+01:00

Between 18th and 25th September BBC Radio Four broadcast an adaptation in thirteen episodes of the novel Life And Fate by the Ukrainian Jewish author Vasily Grossman, a work which has been described as a modern-day War And Peace. The adaptation stars, among others, Kenneth Branagh, Greta Scacchi, Janet Suzman and David Tennant

When Life And Fate was completed in 1960, the KGB considered it so dangerous that they confiscated not just all known copies of the manuscript but also the carbon papers Grossman had used to make duplicates, his notebooks and even the typewriter ribbon - just in case. The Politburo's chief of ideology decreed that the book could not safely be published for three hundred years.

Despite the KGB's thoroughness, a few copies of the manuscript escaped their attention. One of these was put on microfilm and smuggled out of the country. It was published in the West in 1980. Sadly, Grossman did not live to see this.

Set against the backdrop of the struggle for Stalingrad during the Second World War, the novel paints an unflinching portrait of the corrosive effect of communism upon individuals and society in general. The German army is laying siege to the city, buildings are in rubble, it's freezing cold, there is hardly any food. Meanwhile the KGB are busy arresting people for chance remarks.

In the face of all this, some characters struggle heroically while others compromise miserably. One party worker, terrified because his four year old child has drawn a pair of ear-rings on a newspaper photograph of Stalin, denounces someone else in his determination to prove himself a good communist.

One of the most affecting episodes in this adaptation is a mere fourteen minutes long. It consists simply of a letter from the mother of one of the characters, written from a ghetto in the Ukraine, now occupied by the Nazis, as she waits to be deported to a death camp.

The dramas all stand alone but together they create a kaleidoscopic portrait of life in Stalin's workers' state and one of the most striking things that emerges is the similarity between communist and fascist ideology.

For the next twenty days you can download all the episodes as podcasts, listen to them at your leisure and be grateful you were born into a free society.

Here's the link.

Out Of My Depth In the Paint Store

2011-09-24T21:53:00.001+01:00

There is a painters' and decorators' supplier not far from where I live. I went there early this morning to get some white spirit and a paint brush. I needed to paint some book shelves I had just bought to accommodate my most recent acquisitions – the consequences of a book addiction that buying a kindle was supposed to cure.

It's not really the kind of store that targets the general public. Instead it caters for professionals and at that time of day it was full of tradesmen on first name terms with the guys behind the counter, putting in bulk orders and loading up their vans. But as I waited my turn to be served, two middle aged men in paint stained overalls walked past me.

'You know just before he died,' one of them was saying, 'Einstein was working on a theory of everything.'

'What does that mean, exactly?' his companion asked, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lip.

'A single equation that would reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics,' the first man said.

That was all I heard. They disappeared somewhere amid the aisles of exterior masonry paint. I went to the counter and asked for a brush.

'What size?' the man asked.

I hadn't thought of this. I held out my thumb and first finger, about a finger width apart. 'Maybe this size?' I suggested.

The man turned, took a brush from a rack behind him and handed it to me without a word.

I felt distinctly out of my depth.

The Blue-Green Demon

2011-09-13T10:02:00.003+01:00

I have the most riotous dream life. I've mentioned it in this blog before. Some of my dreams are very enjoyable. Some of them are absolutely horrendous. The night before last was one of the horrendous variety.

I woke up in the early hours unable to breathe. At the same time I felt an incredible tension in my solar plexus, as if that was where the seat of my consciousness was located rather than in my brain. Why could I not breathe? Panic flooded my system as I became convinced that I was dying. Then suddenly the sensation was over. I sat up, drawing in great lungfuls of air and feeling incredibly grateful that I had not died.

I lay down again and fell back to sleep but what seemed only moments later exactly the same thing happened. This time I got out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. I washed my face and stared at myself in the mirror. I felt very disconnected from the image that gazed back at me. On my way back to the bedroom, it seemed to me that the atmosphere in my house had been altered in some way that I could not quite put my finger on.

I got back into bed and fell asleep for the third time, except that now my dream was merely a continuation of my anxiety. In the dream I picked up the torch beside my bed (perhaps I really did pick it up) and shone it on the window frame. It seemed to me that there was something not right about it. The edges had become blurred, and they shifted as I gazed at them.

Now I was certain that something was badly wrong and it came to me that I had to concentrate very hard to keep things from getting worse. I focused all my attention on the window frame, willing it to behave like a proper, solid object instead of this shifting, devious simulacrum. I felt that by doing so I was behaving like the boy who put his finger in the dyke to plug the leak and hold back the sea.

But the sea would not be thwarted. Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light and a creature leapt into the room from nowhere. It was about four feet high, looked more or less human but it was blue-green in colour and glowing with hypnagogic intensity. Its features were coarser than a human being's and they radiated malice. I had not the slightest doubt what it was doing here. It had come to kill me. Or possibly worse. Utter terror consumed me. I sat up in bed, yelling at the top of my voice.

Gradually I became aware that my wife had her arms around me. 'It's only a dream, Brian,' she was saying as I continued to stare into the corner of the room, hyperventilating, mumbling incoherently and refusing to accept that the creature had gone.

I know it sounds ludicrous - a four foot high blue-green demon. But at the time it was utterly real. More real, in fact, than anything that has happened since.

The Sky Over Leitrim

2011-09-01T21:52:00.001+01:00

I know I haven't posted for ages but I've been working all hours, seven days a week and that's the truth. Recently, however I had a week off in our family house in North Leitrim which, for those of you who don't know it, is a lovely and largely unspoilt part of Ireland.

I say a week off but in fact a great deal of my time was spent doing things like standing on the top of a ladder which was itself perched precariously on a wooden bench, clutching a bucket and spoon as I ladled out from the guttering years of sediment which had coalesced into a thick black mass with the consistency of Christmas pudding from which innumerable tiny sycamore trees were attempting to colonise our roof.

However, the evenings were a different matter. Rosie and I sat in silence gazing out at the vast dome of the sky, something that you never see in London. We watched the great cloud masses, forming, dissolving and reforming, throwing up transitory images of animals and demons, boats and chariots, warriors and great grey-bearded giants, all the while descending through a parade of colours from buff, through pink, lilac and purple to inky black. I did not care if I never wrote another word. It was enough just to sit and stare.

We also caught up on a bit of reading and among the titles I devoured was Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn. It quite took my breath away. So rarely do I read something that seems to me to be absolutely perfect but Brooklyn is such a book.

I was reminded of Jane Austen which sounds ridiculous since Austen is so quintessentially English and Tóibín is so very Irish. But both writers concern themselves with the way society, particularly through the vehicle of the family, bears down on the emotional life of the individual; both use dialogue and detail to such cunning effect; and both dissect embarrassment with such forensic precision. My only complaint was that it had to end.

The same could be said for my week away. All too soon I found myself gazing at the heavily made-up and absurdly dressed stewardess as she informed passengers that in the event of an emergency oxygen masks would be released from the panels above our heads. And then before I could even locate the nearest emergency exit I was back in London where the skyline is strictly rationed, where allowances are decreasing daily and where my computer will tolerate no idleness.

Riots In London - A View From The Barber's Shop

2011-08-09T21:37:00.003+01:00

My barber, a Turkish man in his early thirties who always insists on calling me sir, was standing outside his shop watching while the plate glass windows were boarded up. Nevertheless, he was adamant that he was still open for business. The fact that there are riots going on in London at the moment and that the previous night the baker's shop two doors down was looted did not deter him. Nor was he impressed by the advice from local police that he go home early. 'Why should I?' he demanded. 'I've got a living to earn. They are supposed to be keeping law and order.'

'This is what you get when you start cutting everything,' he told me, although he made it clear that he had no sympathy with the rioters. Criminals, that's all they were. But where was the Prime Minister while the criminals were taking over the capital? Sitting on his backside in Tuscany, that's where.

Nobody in London can talk about anything else. Western power is draining down the economic plughole but that's too large a concept for people to really come to terms with. But a bunch of thugs in hoodies kicking in shop fronts and helping themselves to phones and watches - that's something that everyone has an opinion about. Some think the police are doing a bad job, some maintain it's the government's fault, others insist that it's down to smoking too much skunk.

While the metropolis watches in horrified fascination as it engages in a bout of spontaneous self-harm, I'm busy trying to finish a novel. Getting my hair cut was a ritual act of preparation for the last big push. From now on there can be no more hair cuts until it's finished, proof-read and emailed to my agent.

That's the thing about fiction. It's not like journalism. At least, not for me. It's not about what is happening around you right now. It's about what happened, or didn't happen, or might have happened in the past, or what could happen, or fail to happen in the future. It's about parallel worlds not the real world, about rearranging reality not reporting it, about characters not politicians or celebrities or even criminals.

Which is why I had no opinion whatsoever to offer my barber on the subject of the riots. But that was okay. He had enough for both of us and there were plenty of people waiting in line who were ready to pitch in with their particular angle.

He held up the mirror to show me the back of my head and I told him it was great. He brushed me down, handed my bag and I gave him his money. He thanked me for my custom and I went on my way. It had been an interesting diversion but I was glad to be leaving reality behind.

The Magical Language

2011-07-24T16:04:00.002+01:00

The idea for my latest book, The Magical Detectives and the Forbidden Spell first began when I read a passage by the writer Thomas De Quincey. He's one of my favourite authors, not because he's a great writer. He can be pretty turgid a lot of the time but every now and again he has these little flashes of brilliance that make all the rest worth while.

For anyone who doesn't know it, De Quincey was a nineteenth century writer, a friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, as he relates in his best-seller The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, a reformed drug-addict.

In his Autobiographical Sketches , which I much prefer to the Confessions, he describes the impact that hearing the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp had upon him when he was a child. But the story as De Quincey repeats it, is slightly different to the standard version. I've tried to track his version down but as far as I can see there is no evidence that it ever existed, except perhaps in his mind.

In De Quincey's Aladdin a magician living in Africa becomes aware by his secret art of an enchanted lamp locked away in a subterranean chamber from which it can only be released by the hands of an innocent child. But not just any child. The child who can bring the lamp back into the world must have a special horoscope written in the stars, entitling him to take possession of it. But where should such a child be found?

This is the point where De Quincey's version diverges from the regular version. In De Quincey's story the magician puts his ear to the ground and listens to the innumerable sounds of footsteps from every corner of the world and amongst them, at a distance of six thousand miles, playing in the streets of Baghdad he distinguishes the particular steps of Aladdin.

De Quincey was thrilled and obsessed by this image. He talked it over eagerly with his sister, Elizabeth, whom he looked up to greatly. Together they speculated about how the magician could tell from the sound of footsteps on the other side of the world, that this was the very boy he sought. And this was De Quincey's conclusion.

'It had seemed to me that the pulses of the heart, the motions of the will, the very phantoms of the brain must repeat themselves in secret hieroglyphics uttered by those flying footsteps and when I expressed this idea to Elizabeth, she nodded eagerly and told me how she firmly believed that all the inarticulate and brutal sound of the globe must represent a secret language, that somewhere there must be a key to that language and that the man or woman who could find that key would know all that there was to be known.'

When I read this passage I, too, felt thrilled because deep in some dark chamber of my mind I caught the glitter of a new story, a tale about a magical language of such incredible power that its use was forbidden and all knowledge of it hidden away from the world until a twist of fate that would bring a fragment of that language to the light of day.

The Magical Detectives and the Forbidden Spell

2011-07-07T08:29:00.002+01:00

My latest book, The Magical Detectives and the Forbidden Spell is published today.

The Creative Bit

2011-06-29T08:50:00.001+01:00

I taught a class in Writing For Children the other day, filling in for a friend of mine who was on holiday. I was trying to talk to the group about structure, something in which they seemed genuinely interested, all except for one woman who announced that she wasn't concerned about 'the mechanics' of writing. As she said the word mechanics she did that thing with her fingers that people do to suggest they are putting the word in quotation marks. I'm not sure exactly why but I suspect it was a polite way of sneering. She was only interested in 'the creative bit', she went on.

What I wanted to say to her was, 'Madam, you are a complete ass!' But I bit my tongue. It was my friend's class, after all. Instead I gently suggested that every aspect of fiction writing was creative, that there was nothing to be gained by concentrating on what you were already good at and that the secret might be to learn to love the bits you didn't naturally like. I could see she wasn't impressed but you can only try.

This idea that some parts of the writing process are intrinsically more creative and therefore superior to other parts has its roots in our educational system. I frequently come across teachers in primary schools encouraging pupils to write sentences with lots of adjectives in them, as if adjectives were somehow good in themselves and, therefore, the more of them you use, the better your writing; whereas what actually matters is how well the writing serves the purpose of the story.

The woman in the writing class reminded me of someone I knew at university. Let's call him Sam. Sam believed he could play the guitar. He would sit in the corner and repeat the same pathetic scraps of lead guitar work, night after night, grimacing soulfully all the time. These little riffs, as he called them, were incompetently rendered, devoid of any notion of time, and utterly meaningless without a bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drum kit behind them. But Sam thought he was great and that was all that mattered to him.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?

2011-06-22T15:27:00.003+01:00

I met a fellow children's author in the café of the National Gallery the other day. After our lunch he told me he was going to sit in front of a particular painting by Van Gogh for a long time. He said it helped him get ideas for his writing.

That's something I do, too, though Van Gogh doesn't work for me. I don't mean that I don't like his paintings. I love them. I just mean that they don't give me any ideas for stories. For me it's religious art that does the trick. It's all that imagery.

Last summer when I was in Italy I kept coming across representations of St Bartholomew. Every church I stepped into, there he was on the wall holding his own skin in one hand. Apparently, this is how he is always represented because he was martyred by being flayed alive.

When I got back to England I knew it would start to work its way into my writing and it did. I didn't write a story about someone being flayed alive. But I did write one about someone who goes through the psychological equivalent.

According to the internet St Bartholomew is the patron saint of tanners which seems like a fairly ironic occupation for him to end up with. I think there's a good case for appointing him to the position of patron saint of writers looking for ideas.

Advice To Aspiring Children's Authors 4 - The Two Novels

2011-06-13T15:30:00.001+01:00

There are always two novels: the written one and the one in the writer's head. Unfortunately, the reader only ever gets to see the written one.

Knowing this truth intellectually doesn't always help. When you read your work back to yourself your mind plays a trick on you, filling in the blanks so that the picture you have created seems clear and vivid; even when it's full of holes. That's why it's important to get someone else's opinion on your work. Preferably someone who isn't emotionally involved with you. Or, if they are emotionally involved, someone who you can rely upon to be absolutely honest.

What you want that someone to do is to bridge the gap between your vision and the words you have used to describe that vision. Because it is the words that matters. Without them the vision has no existence outside your imagination.

The fact that you, the writer, know all about the characters and the setting is worth nothing if it is not there in those words. No matter how much you feel they should, the reader will not be able to intuit it. They will just think, 'Who the hell are all these people and where is this story supposed to be taking place?'

Then they will put the manuscript down and do something more interesting.

Pass Me The Scalpel

2011-05-11T09:26:00.001+01:00

I have been writing a novel without working out the whole story first. This is something I always strongly warn people against doing and in the Brian Keaney catechism it's the number one sin. But I wanted to change my method of working because I was looking for an entirely new voice and an entirely new approach.

Until recently it was working beautifully. I was racing along, delighted with everything I wrote until I got to three quarters of the way through when I hit a problem with the plot. It was like slamming into a brick wall at considerable speed. I felt wounded and dazed. For days I just couldn't see my way around the problem.

Finally, this morning the solution came to me after discussing it with my daughter. Unfortunately, it means I have to go back and rewrite chapters I had already put to bed and kissed goodnight. There will have to be some very delicate keyhole surgery performed and it will not be easy.

That's the problem with making it up as you go along and that's exactly why I tell people not to do it. All the same, I don't regret it. I couldn't find the story any other way. I had to put the words down on paper and let the characters create themselves before I could begin to see who these people were and what they wanted.

So now it's on with the gown and mask and off to the operating theatre. I just hope there isn't too much blood.

Royal Hopscotch

2011-05-08T13:26:00.002+01:00

Every now and again a wave of hysterical patriotism sweeps over a country, leaving those who do not wholeheartedly embrace the flood, stranded on their own rooftops, surveying a watery wilderness.

In Britain patriotism has been confused with monarchism for centuries, as is evidenced by our national anthem: God Save Our Queen. Other countries' national anthems are about the country or state but our national anthem is about the monarch. Consequently being patriotic in the UK invariably involves a contest to see who can be the most sycophantic about the queen.

The recent royal wedding was the spur for a positive tsunami of such sycophancy. Normally intelligent and rational journalists, who might ridicule the posters and statues of despots in autocratic regimes across the globe were nevertheless reduced to describing the floral arrangement for the wedding or interviewing loyal subjects who had got up at four a.m. to get a good place in the crowd outside the abbey. In Libya and in Syria people were being shot on the streets but on the BBC the main news was the details of who was on or off the guest list.

Even little children were affected. While I was pushing my grandchild around the park in an attempt to get him to go to sleep I came across an area where children had chalked out numbered squares for a hopscotch game. What caught my eye, however, was the union jack that had been drawn beside the hopscotch frame. Beneath the union jack the child artist had written the slightly ambiguous slogan: 'Go Queen!'

Punchier and less dreary than our national anthem but the message is still the same.

Full Circle

2011-04-18T19:05:00.002+01:00

I haven't written anything on my blog for ages. The reason is that I've been totally preoccupied. My younger daughter, Kathleen, her husband, Alex, and their one year old son, Theo, have been staying with us while they have work done on the new house they've just bought. So, I'm spending a lot of time with Theo, doing stuff like playing with building blocks, reading picture books, singing along to The Wheels On The Bus and visiting the park.

In addition, my other daughter, Emily, has just had a baby. It happened this morning at about twenty past five. I've just been to see him. Parking was a nightmare; the maternity ward was so hot I could hardly stay awake; and Emily looked desperately tired - it was a difficult labour with a few complications. But Noah knows nothing about any of that. He has red hair and clear blue eyes out of which he gazes solemnly and appraisingly at me.

Surprisingly enough, I'm managing to get a decent quota of writing done. In the last seven weeks I've written forty two thousand words which isn't bad at all considering that I have to work when Theo is asleep, or when someone else has taken him to the park. But I find my productivity has increased hugely. Whenever I do get a bit of time I write frantically, the words just pouring out of me without pause for thought as if I am transmitting something that someone else has already thought through.

It reminds me of what life was like when I wrote my first novel nearly thirty years ago. Then Emily was three years old and Kathleen one and I was working as a school teacher. I wrote in the evenings when they were both asleep and dreamed of a time when I could do nothing but write all day long. That time has come and gone, it seems.

Ysgol Jacob - First Welsh Talking Book

2011-03-24T17:26:00.003Z

On Monday 28th March on the Glanfa Stage at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff the Welsh branch of the Royal National Institute for the Blind will launch the first ever Welsh language talking book. I'm happy to say that the title chosen is Ysgol Jacob, a translation of my novel Jacob’s Ladder.

I'm always pleased when a book of mine is translated into another language but I was delighted when Jacob's Ladder was rendered into Welsh because like the Welsh language movement itself, this is a book that concerns itself with identity and that's one of the main themes of my work.

As someone who grew up in London with Irish parents determined to maintain their ethnic identity and to pass on their pride in their heritage to their children I feel real solidarity with those people who are determined to see the Welsh language given the place in contemporary culture that it deserves.

Literature is something to which everyone should have access. That's why the cuts to library services that are taking place in parts of Britain at the moment make me feel so depressed. However, I'm cheered up greatly, and proud too, that through my book I am able to play a part in RNIB Cymru's initiative to increase access to those Welsh speakers who are visually impaired.

The Neo-Platonist And The Flour

2011-02-25T23:48:00.002Z

The other night I dreamt I was in some sort of official building with a friend whom I cannot subsequently identify. I strongly suspect that I have never seen him before yet I feel as if I have always known him.

We had not been there for very long before we were challenged by some minor official who demanded to know our business.

‘My friend,’ I told the official, ‘is a Neo-Platonist.’ For some reason I seemed to think that this would satisfy him.

The official looked entirely unimpressed. ‘And what precisely does that mean?’ he asked.

From somewhere about his person my friend produced a paper bag of flour such as you might buy in any store or supermarket. He opened it and, with a rather theatrical gesture, emptied it onto the floor. Then he stooped down and ran the fingers of both hands through the little pile of flour. Suddenly there seemed to be at least twice as much flour.

‘Where did all that flour come from?’ asked the bewildered official.

By way of answer, my friend once again ran his fingers through the flour. This time the pile of flour became many, many times larger. He looked up, smiled and teasingly repeated the official’s own question. ‘Where did all that flour come from?’

The official frowned. ‘Enough of this!’ he cried and began looking around urgently for assistance.

Unperturbed, my friend ran his fingers through the flour once more and this time the heap of flour grew so large that the official was buried beneath it.

Standing up, my friend turned to me and raised one eyebrow. ‘Where did all that flour come from?’ he asked.

Before I could consider what answer I ought to make, I awoke.

(I have no idea what it means either.)