But it’s real and it’s here now. It’s not a toy. I can carry around work in progress and my diary and the spreadsheet, all versions I’m familiar with and which gently move like a tide between the Quad and the office machine. The screen, apart from the touch of murk, looks like a smaller version of the one I’m familiar with. If I really had to, I could use it all the time.
Good-bye bricks. This one is portable.
I didn’t actually use it on Ayers Rock. But I jolly well could have done, if I’d wanted to.
THE CHOICE WORD
Contribution for The Word, London’s Festival of Literature, 2000
Oh lord, who keeps track of this stuff? In the U.K., once an author has reached a certain level of availability, requests to write something “which will only take a few minutes of your time” sleet in endlessly from newspapers. They’re known in the business as “My Favourite Spoon” items, and someone somewhere thinks they are good publicity. But a light-hearted survey to find the nation’s favourite word was part of the hype for a large British literary festival a few years ago, and this was mine.*1
I like the fortuitous onomatopoeia of words for soundless things. Gleam, glint, glitter, glisten … they all sound exactly as the light would sound if it made a noise. Glint is sharp and quick, it glints, and if an oily surface made a noise it would go glisten. And bliss sounds like a soft meringue melting on a warm plate.
But I’ll plump for:
SUSURRATION
… from the Latin susurrus, “whisper” or “rustling,” which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a hushed noise. But it hints of plots and secrets and people turning to one another in surprise. It’s the noise, in fact, made just after the sword is withdrawn from the stone and just before the cheering starts.
*1 I managed to get it on the first page of The Wee Free Men, too. I can’t remember what the nation’s favourite word turned out to be. It was probably Beckham.
HOW TO BE A PROFESSIONAL BOXER
Foreword to the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2006 (2005)
I bought my first copy of the W&AYB (secondhand) when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Sorry. But I’d just spent ten shillings on a very good secondhand copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which was a big bite out of available funds. In some dimly understood way, I felt it was one of the things you had to have in order to be a writer, and that somehow professionalism would leak from it and be painlessly absorbed by me.
I read it solemnly.
Was it useful? Well, yes—but I have to say that some of the basics had already entered my life via science fiction fandom. Most writers in the field were fans once; many fans aspire to be writers one day. And so, at a major science fiction convention (and long before literary festivals became the new rock ’n’ roll) you’d find established authors, there at their own expense, explaining the basics to a hall full of hopefuls. The process is known as “paying forward.”
I took notes. I’ve never had occasion to use one magnificent tip from a well-known author, but I pass it on anyway: “Keep an eye on the trade press. When an editor moves on, immediately send your precious MS to his or her office, with a covering letter addressed to said departed editor. Say, in the tones of one engaged in a cooperative effort, something like this: ‘Dear X, I was very pleased to receive your encouraging letter indicating your interest in my book, and I have made all the changes you asked for.…’ Of course they won’t find the letter. Publishers can never find anything. But at least someone might panic enough to read the MS.”
Having read and listened to all the good advice, I then handed over the MS of my first novel to a local small press publisher, just because I met him one day and he seemed a decent type. He liked it. I was totally unknown and he’d never published fiction before, so it didn’t make much money. Nor did the next two. The fourth title was the first book in the Discworld series. It didn’t exactly walk out of the shops, but it crawled quite briskly and with every sign that it was determined to make it to its feet. Transworld hesitated, and then published it in paperback. A few years later, I hired my former publisher as my agent, and life became rather crowded.
I was lucky. Incredibly so, when I think of all the ways things could have gone. But when the floppy-eared Spaniel of Luck sniffs at your cuffs it helps if you have a collar and piece of string in your pocket. In my case, it was a sequel.
I get asked all the time, in letters and e-mails and questions from the floor: “Can you give me a few tips about being a writer?” And you sense that gleam in the eye, that hope that somehow, this time, you’ll drop your guard and hand over the map to the Holy Grail or, preferably, its URL. I detect, now, a slightly worrying edge to all this, a hint of indignation that grammar, spelling, and punctuation have a part to play (“Don’t publishers have people to do all that?” was one response) and that the universe is remiss in not making allowance for the fact that you don’t have the time.
So, instead, I give tips on how to be a professional boxer. A good diet is essential, of course, as is a daily regime of exercise. Pay attention to your footwork, it will often get you out of trouble. Go down to the gym every day—every day of your life that finds you waking up capable of standing. Take every opportunity to watch a good professional fight. In fact watch as many bouts as you can, because you can even learn something from the fighters who get it wrong. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do. And don’t forget the diet and the exercise and the roadwork.
Got it? Well, becoming a writer is basically exactly the same thing, except that it isn’t about boxing.
It’s as simple as that.
BREWER’S BOY
Foreword to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Millennium Edition, 1999
I guess we all have our measures of success. Being asked to write this was one of mine. It somehow completed a circle. I now have shelves of editions of Brewer’s, new and old, that have been acquired since that first one.
The Revd. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer wanted to tell people things; among his other works were A Guide to Knowledge, a dictionary of miracles and The Reader’s Handbook of Allusions, References, Plots and Stories. But it’s the Phrase and Fable dictionary that has made him immortal. The book is—well, see below.
I’ve checked. My copy is still right next to the dictionary. Now read on.
I was a Brewer’s boy. I first grasped the spine of my secondhand copy when I was twelve. It’s still in amazing condition, considering the work I’ve made it do.