Never mind choosing your words, choose your partner...

My friend Colette sent me this Elmore Leonard link, and you’ll go a long way before you find better advice to writers. But I have a bit of advice too. I can’t remember who said that ‘a man at his desk is a man at work, a woman at her desk is available to everyone else in the house’ - but it still applies to an awful lot of people. I speak from experience: I was married for many years to an artist – a very good painter, and when it came to his work, he was entirely single-minded: nothing else mattered. His whole family could have been abducted by aliens and he wouldn’t have noticed. Professor Gloom, to whom I am currently married, is an astronomer. Astronomers are a pretty single-minded lot too. When you tell them the drain is blocked, or their beard is on fire, they just go “Mmm…’ because their minds are on higher things. They also come out at night, like bats, which makes them compatible partners for the sort of writer who prefers to work after midnight. What I’m trying to say is that your choice of partner is vital, because struggling to write while holding down a job, looking after children or parents, and doing all the dreary domestic stuff is tough. So my advice is, read Elmore Leonard if you want to know how to write, but choose your partner with care if you want time to write. Chefs are good (you won’t have to cook) and if you have or want children, try to fall in love with a child-minder, or teacher. Or just stick to dogs and cats. Even Clementina Gloom (the most evil-minded, over-indulged rescue cat in County Down - see below) is a doddle compared with a toddler. For one thing, you can shove her out the door without anyone ringing the NSPCC.

And a last word about the Women Aloud event which so happily surprised me: one of the participants came up to me afterwards and asked if I remembered her. She had been at school with my son twenty years ago - and when I tell you we lived in a sleepy rural area of Zimbabwe (a bit like Cullybackey, but without regular electricity) you will understand how amazed and delighted I was to find her in No Alibis in Belfast. So another vote of thanks to everyone who helped to organise the evening.

Good Advice

I’m worried about writers struggling to get their work published who might read this blog in the hope of being encouraged – because I wouldn’t want to put anyone off, but unless you’re made of stern stuff, the best advice I can give you is that next time you get the urge to write, you should lie down, put a cold compress on your head and wait for the madness to pass. Tidy your underwear drawer. Or take up something useful, like knitting – or, as previously recommended, plumbing.

But if you persevere, and finally give birth to your precious manuscript (written over ten years, in tea-breaks, on the bus, or locked in the bathroom) you need to know that composing a covering letter and synopsis that will catch the eye of some jaded publisher or agent will give you almost as much grief as the original work. And even if you’re very lucky and someone eventually responds (after 276 submissions and several crates of gin) don’t be fooled by the initial overtures, because, as night follows day, this is what will happen…

AGENT  I really love this book…

WRITER  Incoherent grateful weeping noises..

AGENT  But I do think it needs a few small changes…

WRITER  Yes, yes, of course! What do you suggest?

AGENT  Well, I think it could work so much better if you cut the first four chapters, and changed the setting from Portadown to somewhere a little more edgy – Pyongyang? – and have you thought about making the kindly old doctor a vampire?

WRITER  Faint choking sounds…

AGENT  Also, I’m not sure about the historic background…and the love story between Judith and Gerald - why not make that Judith and Geraldine? Or maybe Gerald could be Trans?...Hello? Hello? Are you still there...?

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Women Aloud

A long time ago, when I was living in the middle of Africa, I had a children’s book published. It was called The Animal Bus, and like a lot of buses, it led an uneventful life, trundling along and earning the sort of royalties that wouldn’t keep you in ballpoint pens. 19 years later, living in Northern Ireland, I finally had a second book published: The Traveller’s Guide to Love (Blackstaff Press, 2015). In between I did a lot of travelling, writing, and bookshop-running, but I avoided other writers, on the grounds that they were nearly always mad, self-absorbed, bitter and twisted (understandable – it’s a hard, lonely, badly-paid job) and/or drunk. And I won’t even tell you what I thought about poets…So why am I writing this? Because I have an apology to make.

A few nights ago, at the wonderful No Alibis bookshop in Belfast, I attended the Women Aloud event organised by Jane Talbot for International Women’s Day. When I was asked if I would read - and got the first blast of the Talbot energy - I decided she was mad, but against my better judgment, I agreed. Then I heard there would be 27 women reading in 2 hours (she’s a lunatic) and that the final minute would have us all reading together (oh god why did I agree to do this?) And what do you know, it ran like clockwork, the writers were funny, thoughtful, dramatic, unassuming, welcoming, reasonably sober, and NICE to each other!

So I take back everything I said. Well, maybe not quite everything…there are still writers out there who, I’m sorry to tell you, will go into Waterstones and hide your book behind theirs - or worse, move yours to Plumbing.

(Actually, plumbing would be a much more sensible career choice: well-paid, regular hours, and people are always glad to see you. Take up plumbing.)

Anyway, thank you Jane Talbot and everyone who took part – I’m glad I went.

NB My own book, The Traveller’s Guide to Love, is Fiction, even if someone in Waterstones keeps putting it in Travel. If not there, try Plumbing.