The Man Booker and its Newest Contender

A man called Simon Holliday has submitted a bus timetable for the Man Booker Prize. Timetable in question is the First Bus Number 1 service in Bristol. And why? 'I have been using this service since August last year, ' says Mr Holliday. '....and I can personally attest to this timetable's suitability as a work of fiction, since it bears absolutely no relation to the times and frequencies of the buses' journeys. I conservatively estimate that since August I have wasted about 50 hours of my life that I won't get back, waiting for buses that never turned up.'
(As originally reported in Andrew Taylor's 'Grub Street', a regular column in The Society of Authors' magazine, The Author)

Now that is a bit of nonsense in a rather slow week, when writing has not motivated me enough...I've been lazy/tired, so I must put on a rather large boot and kick myself into action. Short stories to write!

Still, there is time and a need for dreaming too...an ethereal buffer zone that drops plots and characters into place from some sort of ether in which they exist. The great thing about writing is that I am a firm believer in directional daydreaming. This is the only job (don't try it if you a long distance lorry driver) where that is allowed..no, actually essential. I am also rereading Helen Dunmore's The Siege, a tragic, evocative and deeply poetic novel about the Siege of Leningrad.

So I am dreaming for a while. Please do not disturb.

Envy is for Wimps

One of my colleagues on The Fiction Workhouse has been shortlisted for The Kelpies Prize, for his children's book. Vanessa Gebbie talks about it in more detail on her website. I was so excited for this rather wonderful and generous writer - as well as very sure that he will win. The winner will be announced at The Edinburgh Book Festival on August 25th.

This made me think about envy - especially as a friend of mine recently asked: 'Don't you get jealous of other writers who do well?'

The answer is 'no' and I am not a liar. I am also not a saint. But publishing is a competitive business and every writer has to be at the top of their game. Mediocre does not win prizes. Most of all though, to see writers I know do well is encouraging and exciting - because they up the game for us all. If they can do it, we can do it too. Too many writers complain about rejection without analysing the whys, lots of us moan about other competitions when we don't even bother to enter. Simple logic: you cannot win a lottery if you do not buy a ticket.

Writing has never been so popular, for many reasons - some of them the wrong ones. There will always be better writers, just as some people will always be younger, more beautiful, richer. To get all twisted about it, just makes a person bitter. I improve every day and I want to do so.

I am not a saint, as I said. But I do have a generous spirit that really loves it when hard work and talent receives its just awards. The only time I get angry is when sloppy writing gets rewarded.

So good luck, D. I'm chuffed that I know this man.

Getting it Out There

An orgy of submitting to competitions and magazines can make a writer feel alive. It almost feels like being drunk. Over time this can be deflated at regular intervals by the inevitable failures. Some might be accompanied by a helpful note from an empathetic editor. Those don't feel so much like rejections, especially if they request to see more work. But the curt ones are a bugger, especially one I had recently that said: 'We will not be taking your work.' It was a standard reply but considering that this was a magazine meant to value the richness of language, they should have thought about that as a grumpy and poorly worded response.

Still, I send with optimism. Past successes at least give me confidence.

So even though emails can be dreaded - if they are rejections - I never stop loving email as a superb writer's companion. In the last few weeks I have contacted The Society of Authors to nitpick over some aspects of a contract and another legal department of a newspaper to check if I could reuse (i.e submit for publication) a previously published story that won a prize in their competition. The Society of Authors, as always, gave very good advice. The newspaper lawyers were churlish enough to say: "Well we can't stop you republishing the story." That was big of them.

Yesterday I wrote with a baby wren on my windowsill, exhausted by the new skills of flight. He was one of eight - two nests in total - who came out and chattered in the trees. It's a simple thing to watch but when the intensity of writing becomes a little tiring, just like learning to fly, it revitalises me.

So onward, to hone up a story for yet another competition.

To be hopeful, always.

A Portfolio Career

A couple of years ago, I was longlisted for The Asham Award and attended one of their development courses. It ran at Sussex University over two days and included a group session with an agent (Rupert Heath) and a one-to-one detailed analysis of each writer's career. I looked at my CV and apologised for the scattered nature of the things I had achieved. I work for a Conservation Trust, I write, I push out some bread and butter journalism. I have even had my own antique shop, run a pathology practice's secretarial team, been a political activist and worked in guiding.

'Ah,' said my tutor. 'That is what's called a portfolio career.'

What a lovely spin on my scrappy past. It sounds so much more professional.

In that light, I was proud to see the cover of the Penguin anthology The Map of Me that will appear in November. This will be a very special inclusion for me because Asian Invisible is really the first time I have tackled, in writing, my mixed heritage. Then, with my conservation head on, I am very chuffed with the new copy of Wolf Print, the official magazine of The UK Wolf Conservation Trust (http://www.ukwolf.org/) I have recently been appointed Assistant Editor for the magazine and spent many hours recently reducing a forty page report on lynx and wolves in Croatia into a two page document. Note to self - do not take forty loose pages into a windy garden. Alas, the lynx had to go, but the results were still informative and technical enough to please the academics, open enough to please that great demographic: the public. I have also been impressed with the writing, photography and sculpture workshops being organised for children at The Trust. I am passionate - make that obsessed - about wolves. I have seen them have an incredibly calming influence on even the most difficult children. It must be those marble eyes. Michelle Paver is running the writing workshop - quite an incentive for children to attend.

Back to short stories, flashes and the portfolio career. At least I am never bored.

The Outlaw John Maybury

I love films about writers. On sunday I saw The Edge of Love, a film about a small part of Dylan Thomas's life, and felt an ache for Wales. After the screening, there was a satellite link up to The Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, where the director John Maybury was to host a live question and answer session. He arrived flustered and muttered about being in a 'car chase' to get there on time. He looked like Tom Hank's more subversive brother, with a gap-toothed smile that unlike the clean and sober Hanks, gave him a hint of the rascal.

Inevitably, Dylan Thomas' s drinking came up and Maybury admitted that he liked to drink, actually he liked 'a little bit of everything.' 'I have no morals,' he grinned, then went on to be deliciously indiscreet about his co-stars, Hollywood and his own wildness.

'Did you imagine twenty five years ago that you would be making this type of film?' a member of the audience asked.

'I was in a coma twenty five years ago. So no.'

I was warming to this man and smiling at his unpredictability and honesty. He was not playing a game of darlings - he thought of himself as an artist, a writer first - then a director. Cillian Murphy, his lead in The Edge of Love, was more beautiful than Keira Knightley, he said.

Silent films were his passion. But there was no market for that. Instead, he used an intense style of filmmaking where the eyes held the story, or a turn of the lip. There were not many takes and best of all, he would whisper to his actors, not shout.

'It has a subversive effect though. One actor will wonder why isn't he whispering to ME?'

He kept on smiling that smile and sipping his wine - you could see that he was still punk at heart, unafraid to say what he meant.

As for Dylan Thomas? Carol Ann Duffy was a better poet, was Maybury's judgement. But he liked to make films about dysfunctional artists, because he could relate to the life they led, a certain type of work that it produced. Especially the Dylans. His parents had been alcoholics and although they tried they still fucked....he stopped and put his hand over his mouth like a schoolboy swearing.

The interview finished, Maybury asked if the satellite had gone down.

'We're in Bath, right? Never liked that namby-pamby Pride and Prejudice town, ' he laughed. 'Those people in Bath are really up themselves.'

Of course it was a joke. A good one. This was a fascinating man - full of demons and devilment. Apparently he may be due to do a remake of Wuthering Heights.

Now that should be interesting.

The Flea

The compulsion to write can be an irritant, especially when you are simply trying to live a life. Who wants the cravings to creep up when they are trying to sleep, to talk or to love other people? Words hum in the air around me sometimes until I catch them - or that's how it feels. It can make me selfish, lonely, angry, confused, egocentric, alone. But it's a unique addiction because despite the fact that it makes me strip away at everything to the bone, be curiouser and curiouser about people and their motivations.........

It's the best.