Writing and not-writing diary: Day 2

At my desk with coffee at 6:15 to find that I missed the British Library event (online) I paid to attend yesterday evening because I was still battling dinosaurs. If I watch it now, I won't start proper work until late, so I'll try to remember later — but it's only available for 48 hours. It's relevant to a book I'm not writing. That is, a book I was sporadically doing bits with until lockdown #1, and which just needed a good chunk of free time to sort out its shape. But a chunk of free time in which the British Library and the Bodleian were both open and accessible. So it's a book I'm not writing, and possibly never will write...

I look at my rather ropey schedule and decide it's time to bite the bullet and do the outline I've been avoiding I was keen on this project a few weeks ago, had good ideas, sent off my concept — and then the publisher sat on it for some weeks while my enthusiasm withered and my calendar filled up. I'm pretty sure I'll be keen on it again once I get started. At this stage I only need to do presentation materials: a few spreads and an outline. They'll use this to try to secure foreign co-edition deals and if they do, the book will go ahead. I'm part way through another set of presentation materials for one of my regular publishers, too, and I've yet another set requested yesterday. These can be tricky because too much emotional investment in them leads to disappointment if they don't go ahead, and too little leads to them not going ahead because the work lacks the spark that enthusiasm gives it. I wonder if a walk in the early-morning dark would help? No, it's just displacement activity. Today had better be Outline Day. Grim. And today's opera from the Met is Falstaff, which is not the best to work to. I work to the day's opera from the Met all day, playing it on repeat until I get bored with it and go looking for another opera on the Radio 3 archive. I listened to La Bohème four times yesterday. When the pandemic ends, they will stop the daily free broadcasts and I'll have to make my own choices.

Today I need to get this outline at least started and at best finished; write a proto-spread of a book on coral reefs; answer all the emails I've been ignoring; check the final bit of artwork on the consultancy project, when it comes; and write one of the outstanding dino spreads. So — on with the outlines!

I start the most outstanding (in terms of time, not quality) outline, but then a friend asks me to post her some plant cuttings. As she's a publishing consultant, this is kind of publishing related, no? (No, I know it's not.) I stop work and do it, walking to the post office and buying croissant and raspberries for breakfast on the way back and suddenly it's nearly two hours later. And although I'd made a good start on the outline I can't get back into it and everything I write looks like rubbish, so I noodle around online, but don't happen to come across anything useful. In 20 mins I can legitimately make coffee and Zoom my dad. I catch up with emails as the writing isn't happening...

Emails done, but not exactly dusted. The new commission batted into the middle distance while I think, existing commissions picked up and replied to and then resettled to collect dust until they start wriggling. After lunch (toasted sandwich this time, it's heading downhill already) I start writing a spread on coral reefs but then glimpse Adèle Geras and Helen Craig walking down the road. True, you can't glimpse people walking down the road if you are looking at your laptop. The exciting prospect of speaking to an adult is too much to resist. I drop everything,  grab my coat and run out to join them on a short walk to the bird pond. (It's a very literary area around here.) And then I wander down to see if the vaccination clinic is running today (it's not) and past the coffee man which inspires me to make coffee when I got home, and so here it is at 3pm and hardly anything achieved. But the walk with Adele and Helen was a splinter of bright normality as sharp as broken glass that refocuses the day. Settled, I find an email from another publisher who wants me to do something and to call for a chat about projects. Projects are the last thing I need right now. Back to coral reefs and sourcing sharks that live near Florida.

Post-shark, the final chapter of the consultancy project has come in so I do that just so that a project can count as finished (at least until it comes back). The work is irritating but quickly done, so I turn back to the outline I gave up this morning. I sketch out a list of six things to cover in the chapter I'd got nothing for, which is huge progress but is also only actually six words. But then I get a message from my daughter asking me to drive her to the hospital (she works there, it's not an emergency) and sit in the car with MB for ten minutes while she picks up some stuff she needs, so I'm let off the outline again. 

 Back at my desk at 6pm to realise the whole day has gone on bits and pieces. Now what? Give up, watch the British Library thing I missed and drink gin? Or get on and do something useful? These books, sadly, won't write themselves and I've agreed to two more things and an open-ended 'let's talk about proejcts' during the course of the day, so the list is getting longer rather than shorter. Gin and dinosaurs, I think...

Achievements: outlines of an outline, 1; spreads on dinosaurs, 1; proto-spreads on coral reefs, 1; completed consultancy projects, 1 (yay!)

Disachievements: Discover I've started the wrong picture book outline as the editor wants to kick off the series with a different title; agreed to one more project and a chat about other new projects (this can go in either achievements or disachievements really); a lot of skiving

Writing and not-writing diary: Day 1

I've not done very well at rebooting. Turned out I don't work well in a pandemic. All the projects I thought I'd do when I had time were really projects I might do when I had time AND wasn't stressing about a deadly pandemic. Ah well. A couple of books came out of it, not least this one. Commissioned April 2020, we did wonder whether it would all be over by the time it was published. Not even close... Even though it took an incredible 85 days to ship from printing China it's still out in good time.

Although the pandemic is not over, publishing seems to be getting back on its feet so I'm working consistently again. Having lots to do is always a spur to me to do other things so that I suddenly have too much to do. Not sure why. Hence I'm back here...

The other day I discovered this wonderful translation diary blog by Daniel Hahn. One of the most talented people in publishing (and one of the nicest) he's documenting the process of writing a translation as it goes, with all the hiccups, embarrassments and strokes of genuis involved. It's fascinating. So much of what he says really resonates — it's how I work, even though I'm not translating. So I thought I'd do something slightly similar here. It won't follow a single book as I'd need permission from a publisher to do that. Instead it will document what I do each day on different writing projects. If you are doing this job it might have some voyeuristic appeal, in the way that nosing around someone else's writing space always does. If you're not doing it but want to, it might show you what you're letting yourself in for. And for me it will be a record of how I spend my time for a week, or maybe longer if I keep it up. I'll add in what else I do occasionally, where it's not too embarrassing.  This reflects my pandemic working mode, not how I work 'normally', which involves a good deal of sitting in Cambridge University Library and going to the tea room a lot. Need-to-know: MB is my grand-daughter who I look after a lot of the time (as her parents are both keyworkers).

16 Feb, Tuesday. No MB today so it's a straight work day. Coffee at my desk at 7am, checking first-pass layouts for a dinosaur book on a tight schedule. There's a couple of pages to write from scratch, but I finish the corrections, edits and extra artwork suggestions for the rest of the chapter by 12:45, taking time out for breakfast (blueberries, Greek yoghurt and chia seeds), to feed the chickens and to do the daily Zoom call check-up on my elderly dad. There's an email from another editor with layouts to check for a project I'm acting as consultant for, but I object as I've read all the text before and commented extensively. We agree I'll just check the artwork, which I've not seen before. I do three chapters, then have lunch (Marmande tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, avocado, olives, pine nuts, olive oil, pomegranate molasses and olive ciabatta — don't worry, there will be plenty of days when it's fish finger sandwiches). 

Back to email. There's a message from an editor asking if I want to write a book for her, with publication date of 'June 22'. Instantly assume she means 22nd June before remembering it's 2022 next year, just in time not to fire off a 'You crazy?' email response. Decide to ignore it for a while as I've spent too long juggling my schedule over the last few days already. Email from another editor reminds me I'm supposed to be doing a short book for her. I've not started it. Deadline is (happily) extended from end Feb to mid March. I'm also aware of a fiction outline I've been ignoring which is now getting critical. I'm hoping it's working itself out in my subconscious but this could prove to be a vain hope. There's also a message from an editor I've just sent an outline to saying he's passing it on to the illustrator to start work. This is a series I write for a lot and I write straight into the InDesign template. The book is already laid out using the rough artwork when I get it, and this method means I can fit the text exactly to the illustrations and there's no copy-fitting faff later. It gives me some happy days messing about with InDesign, which I like. No word of when the roughs will come back so I can't schedule this one, but the outline was so full the book is virtually written. It will be a cut and paste job, essentially. 

I was going to spend today doing the outline I've been ignoring and hoping is writing itself self sub-conciously, but now it's 2 pm and I've got another three chapters or the consultancy text to check pictures in, and two new spreads to write for the dino book. I want to go for a walk but have to wait in for MB's Playmobil ambulance to be delivered. We missed the attempted delivery yesterday as we'd gone to the park to practise cycling and climbing the perilous climbing frame. I'm kicking myself for writing one new dino spread without waiting for the publisher to OK the choice of dino, as now it's been vetoed on the basis of unavailable artwork. So that was a couple of hours wasted and, more importantly, a dino I wanted in is kicked out. So consultancy or dinos or reply to emails? I decide to start this blog diary and another half hour goes. I feel like making a mermaid meme but that would not really be productive at this stage. Consultancy, then — it can be finished quickly.

By 15:45, the consultancy is finished as far as possible, in that I've now done all the chapters he's sent me. I know there's one to go, and this is annoying as I can't tick the task off. Sometimes I think the only reason I do anything is so I can tick it off. I dip into FB to chat to a friend who's trying to work out how to do something in Zoom for a school visit. Other people's problems are always more fun to think about than your own. It's now a choice between more dinos and one of the things I've been ignoring, so I walk to the garden centre. 

Bought some bulbs, backed out of buying a grape vine as it requires serious planning since it will be there for years. In going to the garden centre I completely forgot my plan to hang around outside the vaccination centre to pick up a last-minute Pfeizer jab because they give them to anyone around 5 mins before closing to avoid wasting them. Ah well. At least I have some nice flowers. So I came back and did more dinos, this time choosing replacements and writing a new spread on Ichthyosaurus and having a grumble to the lovely editor. More snacks — freshly squeezed orange juice, which was a weird colour as one of the oranges turned out to be a blood orange, and a slice of gin panettone that a highly esteemed and dearly beloved novelist friend gave me for Christmas. Finally sent in the Ichthyosaurus and associated corrected spreads and made pasta with spinach, mushrooms and feta. Enough is enough. Wine, pasta, and reading Monique Roffey's Costa-winning Mermaid of Black Conch. All the ignored projects have been successfully ignored for another day.

Achievements: Artwork checked, 100 pages; new writing, 2 pages; layouts corrected, 12 pages

Disachievements: New commissions ignored, 1; existing commissions with outstanding tasks and no progress today, at least 3; letters not sent, at least 3; VAT returns not started, 1.

 

Along for the ride — with quails

Well, that reboot plan didn't go well. My mother died in the autumn, and my daughter and her little family moved out, all in the space of two weeks. And now we're all in lockdown. It's a kind of overdose of isolation, starting in October and building to peak isolation. I'd just started to get back to work properly when the virus hit us all and most of my book projects were cancelled or suspended indefinitely. So no, no progress so far on getting the blog back up and running. But now, with all this time?

Isn't it odd how we can spend years seeking out moments to devote to pet projects and then when there is an endless of desert of time ahead, the inclination to knuckle down disappears? OK, it's probably been eaten by anxiety. But I'm going to try to drag it back. I've had three weeks inside (and in the garden — I'm lucky to have a garden). That must be long enough to wallow, drift, or go round in small circles of confusion and aimlessness. Let's say it was time needed for acclimatization. But books don't write themselves and projects don't pick themselves up off the floor. If you are happy pottering and enjoying the freedom to do nothing all day, that's brilliant. If, like me, you are frustrated at your own inactivity, let's see if we can find a way out of it. Any suggestions you have gratefully received. I'm going to start today by making a list of the things I would ideally like to achieve during lockdown. I know I won't do all of them. But it will be disgraceful if I do none of them. Some will be work. Some will be non-work.

I have already started one, yesterday. Finally despairing of the chicken-man's inability to provide any chickens after a foxing episode reduced by flock to one solitary rooster (lots of non-chicken people have decided to keep covid-chickens, apparently) I have downsized to quails. I ordered some quail eggs with my shopping and have put them in the incubator. If all goes well, that's eighteen days to quailhood. (It might well not go well; only some of the quail eggs you buy are fertile, and the rat-man — an expert on this — says try different suppliers, but Waitrose is good.)

Today's target, then: turn quail eggs three times; write up quail chart with days, turn times, temperature requirements etc; write list of things to be achieved; start working on book outline for final commissioned project. If you want to play along, but your goals in the comments and we can all revisit and check how we're doing. I think making things public makes you more likely to stick to them.

Good luck!

Recalculating....

This blog has been moribund. No, dormant; hibernating. It has slumbered through a long winter of attention-deficit. Let's see if I can prod it back to life, as I need prodding back to life. For nearly six years, I have spent a great deal of my non-earning time (virtually all, actually) dealing with a Domestic Situation which has left no time for this blog. The DS is shifting. I am allowed out. But the landscape is almost unrecognisable.

I don't usually talk about dreams, but I'll share the dream I had last night as it is a fine example of the subconscious speaking loudly and clearly:

I had an interview for a job; the first part consisted of playing chess in a well organised room on a neatly laid out board. I won the games easily. For the second stage, I went into a room with junk piled high and the chess sets were already half-played games. They were those travel sets where you have to push the pieces into peg holes. I tried to reset some, but it was a lot of aggro. I had to play against a disembodied voice. I told it I couldn’t be arsed with this and we could play without a set and spoke my first move. The voice was clearly disturbed by this change. It took a long time to make a move; it took longer and longer as the game progressed, and after a few moves I said I couldn’t be bothered — I didn’t want the job that much and I was leaving. The voice called, ‘Wait — you have the job.’ My response was ‘Why? And why would I want it if this is how you plan to run things? If it’s just gong to be a mindfuck, I don’t want the job.’ 

The second room is when things became complicated in my domestic life. The final question is now. Do I want this job? Being a writer has become a harder and harder way to make a living. But it's what I do. It's all I want to do, but I need to find ways to make it work better. I think that's something a lot of us in this job feel. I'll be poking around among my writer friends to find new strategies. One or two have shared their experiences already, in private, of how they added a self-publishing stream to their work which became very lucrative. I will be thinking about that. And thinking about other ways that give me more of the reward from my work. 

The next few posts will be musings rather than advice. There are fewer certainties in publishing than there were when I started this blog. The landscape has changed. The sat nav needs resetting. You can come along for the ride, or come back in a few months when I might know how it works. I will share the good roads, the back roads, the dead ends and the crashes here as I know a lot of other writers are in the same boat (whoops, mixed metaphor: if the boat is on the road, no wonder we're in trouble!)  

On giving up and giving in

Hard at work with Zola and coffee

Yesterday, at the tea after a memorial service for a talented woman who had packed much into too short a life, I mentioned to an acquaintance that I had gone away to write for a week and during the first few days had given up on a book I'd been working on for a few years and decided to write something different. My co-conversationalist considered this a very brave and decisive action, which surprised me rather as it seemed to me to be an entirely pragmatic and sensible one. There is also the knowledge that giving up on a book is far from irreversible. Unless I were actually to delete all the files and throw away all the books and notes, I can go back to it later.  Leaving a book project is not like leaving a partner or a house. No one else will move into my space while I'm gone, even if I leave it for a few years (as I have done in the past with this particular project).

Spot the fish: some things take
time to identify

It is, of course, hard to give up on something you have been working on for a long time, especially if you still think it is basically a good idea. And to be honest I have not given up hope of one day wanting to get back to it - but it will be a day when I can devote the time to it that it needs, in unbroken chunks, rather than a few hours here and there separated by weeks or months of more urgent work and domestic responsibilities. The week in Sardinia I thought would be enough only showed me one thing - I was restless, less excited by it than I had remembered being, and found it hard to get into. Now, I could throw good time after bad, or cut my losses. If I had been at home, I might have done the first but with only one week to write on something uncommissioned that would have been rash. Being unwilling to write off a substantial investment is one of the worst things we do to ourselves in all areas of life. I remember bemoaning to a wise writer friend (Louise Berridge) that a remark she had made led me to feel that I had wasted ten years of my life on something, and she said that it was better to have wasted the last ten years than the next forty. Which is entirely true.

Finding things in rockpools,
including books and sea urchins

But giving up is not giving in - it is moving on. I'm not going to sit moping about the half-formed novel. Indeed, there is a certain irony that this particular book might never come into being as it's about things that don't come into being. I did not set it aside because I don't like it any more, though I have lived with it for too long. Nor, I think, because it's hard - though perhaps because it's too hard for current circumstances. I set it aside because I realised it's not what I should be doing right now.

This is an exciting time in publishing, particularly in the world children's non-fiction which is my original territory. There will always be fiction publishing. It makes no difference to the world whether I write that novel this year, next year, in 2025 or never. It's not as though the world is short of children's fiction. But there are projects I want to do whose time is ripe. I will regret it if I let that time pass while fiddling with a book that's not going right. Better to have wasted the last three years on a book than the next ten.

Back to work

As soon as I decided I wasn't going to work on it that week, a weight lifted from my shoulders. I found a new pattern to the days - working franctically in the morning on the book I did want to write, then spending the afternoon lying reading in the sun and poking around in rockpools on the beach. And that spawned another book idea. I know what I'm doing now. I have lots of ideas, and I can even prioritise them. All I had to do was give up.