I can’t wait to see this – I also really want to read it!

One of my all time heroes, Douglas Adams, would have been 60 this weekend.

I’m writing about modern day pirates at the moment and came across this image this morning. I don’t think it applies to Somalis, but tis amusing nonetheless.

To his long standing agent, following completion of one of my all-time favourite books, ‘East of Eden’:

New York
1952

Dear Pat:

I have decided for this, my book, East of Eden, to write dedication, prologue, argument, apology, epilogue and perhaps epitaph all in one.

The dedication is to you with all the admiration and affection that have been distilled from our singularly blessed association of many years. This book is inscribed to you because you have been part of its birth and growth.

As you know, a prologue is written last but placed first to explain the book’s shortcomings and to ask the reader to be kind. But a prologue is also a note of farewell from the writer to his book. For years the writer and his book have been together—friends or bitter enemies but very close as only love and fighting can accomplish.

Then suddenly the book is done. It is a kind of death. This is the requiem.

Miguel Cervantes invented the modem novel and with his Don Quixote set a mark high and bright. In his prologue, he said best what writers feel—the gladness and the terror.

“Idling reader,” Cervantes wrote, “you may believe me when I tell you that I should have liked this book, which is the child of my brain, to be the fairest, the sprightliest and the cleverest that could be imagined, but I have not been able to contravene the law of nature which would have it that like begets like—”

And so it is with me, Pat. Although some times I have felt that I held fire in my hands and spread a page with shining—I have never lost the weight of clumsiness, of ignorance, of aching inability.

A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Well—then the book is done. It has no virtue any more. The writer wants to cry out—”Bring it back! Let me rewrite it or better—Let me burn it. Don’t let it out in the unfriendly cold in that condition.”

As you know better than most, Pat, the book does not go from writer to reader. It goes first to the lions—editors, publishers, critics, copy readers, sales department. It is kicked and slashed and gouged. And its bloodied father stands attorney.

EDITOR

The book is out of balance. The reader expects one thing and you give him something else. You have written two books and stuck them together. The reader will not understand.

WRITER

No, sir. It goes together. I have written about one family and used stories about another family as—well, as counterpoint, as rest, as contrast in pace and color.

EDITOR

The reader won’t understand. What you call counterpoint only slows the book.

WRITER

It has to be slowed—else how would you know when it goes fast?

EDITOR

You have stopped the book and gone into discussions of God knows what.

WRITER

Yes, I have. I don’t know why. Just wanted to. Perhaps I was wrong.

SALES DEPARTMENT

The book’s too long. Costs are up. We’ll have to charge five dollars for it. People won’t pay $5. They won’t buy it.

WRITER

My last book was short. You said then that people won’t buy a short book.

PROOFREADER

The chronology is full of holes. The grammar has no relation to English. On page so-and-so you have a man look in the World Almanac for steamship rates. They aren’t there. I checked. You’ve got Chinese New Year wrong. The characters aren’t consistent. You describe Liza Hamilton one way and then have her act a different way.

EDITOR

You make Cathy too black. The reader won’t believe her. You make Sam Hamilton too white. The reader won’t believe him. No Irishman ever talked like that.

WRITER

My grandfather did.

EDITOR

Who’ll believe it?

SECOND EDITOR

No children ever talked like that.

WRITER

(Losing temper as a refuge from despair)

God damn it. This is my book. I’ll make the children talk any way I want. My book is about good and evil. Maybe the theme got into the execution. Do you want to publish it or not?

EDITORS

Let’s see if we can’t fix it up. It won’t be much work. You want it to be good, don’t you? For instance the ending. The reader won’t understand it.

WRITER

Do you?

EDITOR

Yes, but the reader won’t.

PROOFREADER

My god, how you do dangle a participle. Turn to page so-and-so.

There you are, Pat. You came in with a box of glory and there you stand with an armful of damp garbage. And from this meeting a new character has emerged. He is called the Reader.

THE READER

He is so stupid you can’t trust him with an idea.
He is so clever he will catch you in the least error.
He will not buy short books.
He will not buy long books.
He is part moron, part genius and part ogre.
There is some doubt as to whether he can read.

Well, by God, Pat, he’s just like me, no stranger at all. He’ll take from my book what he can bring to it. The dull witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn’t know were there.

And just as he is like me, I hope my book is enough like him so that he may find in it interest and recognition and some beauty as one finds in a friend.

Cervantes ends his prologue with a lovely line. I want to use it, Pat, and then I will be done. He says to the reader:

“May God give you health—and may He be not unmindful of me, as well.”

John Steinbeck

I was once very accurately described as ‘a solitary creature’ and even my most loved ones find it difficult to understand how, actually, I can’t get enough time on my own. As long as there are books to read… films to watch… paintings to paint… paths to walk… beaches to breathe on. There’s plenty going on in my own mind.

This is Joseph Heller’s plan for ‘Catch 22′ – I’m working up towards the second draft of my third novel at the moment and creating all sorts of new artefacts – extended character outlines, a detailed chapter synopsis etc so this is pertinent even if a little tricky to decipher.

Tumblr and I really rather love it. It’s like a big old terribly modern scrapbook thing of loveliness. Or whatever you want it to be.

Today I have mostly been writing limericks – partly for the next Write Club and partly as a character development exercise for the WIP (that stands for Work In Progress and I think it’s rather pretentious which is why I haven’t used it before. A bit like referring to Chichester as ‘Chi’). Here’s my favourite so far:

Rachel was new to the yacht
She thought Sam a bit of a clot
But he showed her the ropes
Raised up her hopes
And taught her to tie a good knot

And here’s a favourite limerick from a famous person (HG Wells):

“Our novels get longa and longa
Their language gets stronga and stronga
There’s much to be said
For a life that is led
In illiterate places like Bonga”

Limericks are quick and easy to write – five lines, rhyming lines 1,2 and 5 and lines 3 and 4 with 8-10 syllables on each line. I wrote ten today and learned more and more about rhythm and punch lines/conclusions as I wrote them. And that there aren’t many rhymes for ‘bacon’.

Book clubs latest read and current feedback suggests it may be the all time favourite so far, hugely engaging, this literary thriller is a runaway success, out for less than a year and best-selling everywhere. We can see why. I think translation to film might be challenging, but Ridley Scott doesn’t – he snapped up the film rights last year. My biggest surprise? Discovering SJ is a man…

After a nanowrimo fail in November mainly ascribable to a long weekend in Cornwall, I am now 1850m up a French mountain working on the 17500 words of a new novel. It’s interesting writing about sailing off the east coast of Africa when you are surrounded by snow!

Pulitzer Prize winning humour columnist legend, new novel ‘Lunatics’ out in January, quoted in the first draft of my new novel and talking about the Twilight saga, the film of the fourth of which I had the misfortune to sit through yesterday…

Ah, t’interweb is a wonderful thing – I just got a Facebook friend request from an old University chum although I was ‘recommended’ as his friend via an acquaintance made at a writing conference I found out about on Twitter. He’s just had his first book published and here’s the trailer:

I’ll be nanowrimoing in November, that is writing a 50,000 word draft of my third novel and so, there won’t be much activity on here. See you in December!