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On The RoadUpdate - September 2003 (Part Two) Welcome to my redesigned website. I know it probably doesn't look very different to you, but it's taken a fair amount of work to sort it out. I think it's a little easier to navigate now, and there is space for me to add more material, so I'm pretty pleased with it. I'm feeling reinvigorated now - maybe that's got as much to do with my new online home as with my new real-life home. To write this update, I've been through my diary from the last few months, and it's surprised me how many things I've done since the April update. Possibly the most exciting news is that I'm involved with 24-8, the East Midlands Regional Writers Tour - you can find more information on this by clicking the 'Fiction' button. Basically, though, I am working with crime writers Rod Duncan and Sally Spedding. We were asked to write new work that could be performed at events across the region. We quickly agreed that we wanted to write pieces that would work together as a seamless performance - the real problem came when we tried to find common ground between our very different thematic interests and usual settings. The answer came to us in a flash of inspiration - the places we write about are all linked by the M1 motorway. Our stories, therefore, are interwoven by journeys along the motorway, hopefully taking the audience on a journey they won't forget in a hurry. It's exciting to work in this collaborative manner. I've enjoyed doing readings with Stephan Collishaw and Jon McGregor in the past few months, but this project takes that process a stage further, allowing Rod, Sally and myself to create something that will be completely different from the usual idea of a group of novelists reading from their work. This will be much closer to theatre than to a straight reading, and I for one can't wait to 'get the show on the road', so to speak, and see how audiences react to what should be very powerful indeed. It's funny to think that a matter of months ago the idea of reading in front of an audience was enough to make me sick with nerves. The change isn't just down to familiarity with the process, although that certainly has helped - I have also realised that an audience is unlikely to be hostile, and that questions come from genuine interest rather than a desire to catch the writer out. At first, it felt a little presumptuous to think that anyone would find what I had to say interesting - but now I realise that the writer giving a talk is a product in much the same way as the book itself is. Being able to read your own work out and chat to an audience is a skill that comes slowly, and I'm not for a moment suggesting that I will never be nervous (nerves give useful adrenaline, after all) or that I could confidently march out in front of an audience of any size - but I am getting better at it, which is great. I've done a few more readings with Jon McGregor and Stephan Collishaw over the last few months, which has been wonderful - they are both excellent writers, and I feel I've really gained something from knowing them. I've also done events on my own - a scary thing, being the sole reason for an audience having shown up. If you're in a group of three and your reading goes badly, at least the other two can cover for you, in some sense - when you're all alone, that safety net is missing. The first solo reading / talk I gave also had the unfortunate extra element of being the first of my events that my parents have been able to get to. A reading at Flitwick Library, in Bedfordshire. A small audience (it was Wimbledon, and Tim Henman was playing at the same time as my reading, which is a comforting excuse) but they were friendly and interested and I made them laugh and sold a few books, which pleased me enormously. I've also been asked back to 'do' the Bedford Film and Books Festival in October, so I can't have stuffed it up too badly. While I was in Bedfordshire, I went back to my old school, Mark Rutherford Upper School in Bedford, to talk to a few of the Sixth Formers about 'being a writer'. I think the school saw it as a way to convince the Sixth Formers that exams were not the only thing going on, and having dreams beyond A-levels was A Good Thing - I saw it as an opportunity to assure them that life is better than it seems while you're at school, and horizons can and do stretch comfortably beyond the local housing estates. The Sixth Formers seemed so much younger than I remember being at their age. They were politely interested in the way that people are when they are half-compelled and have half-chosen to be somewhere. But we had a nice chat, and the teachers invited me back in October to do some writing workshops, which would be great fun. It was an odd experience, going back to the school. I didn't exactly enjoy myself at school - I didn't entirely hate it, either. I did well in exams, which made the place tolerable, and had some friends and some enemies, and liked some teachers and not others. I saw a few familiar faces in the staff room, all looking older than I remembered them - it was quite a shock to realise that I'd left the school a full twelve years earlier. I'd say those twelve years had flown by, but when I walked through the half-familiar corridors (the doors had been changed, and the furniture, and the walls were a different colour) I remembered the person I had been then, and I have to say, I was surprised at how positive I felt about the things I've achieved over those twelve years. Back then, I used to dream of living somewhere different, a big city probably. I used to dream of all the friends I'd have, the social life, the intelligent conversation. Admittedly, I'm not the cool, witty, sophisticated woman I saw in those day-dreams, but I am a writer, and I wanted to be a writer more than anything else. My final bit of news: well, I suppose I should say something about my new book. It's called Death Duty, and is due to be published in January 2004 in hardback and in April 2004 in paperback. It features a social worker who gets too involved in a case, leading her into danger as she confronts her client's situation. I'm looking forward to seeing it in print - although it does feel like I finished writing it a very long time ago! I'm making a start on my third book now, and I can't wait for the time when the world of the new book comes alive around me... |
