An interesting question cropped up on the forum recently regarding editing. I found the Straub story particularly interesting: the idea that an author would publish an unedited version of his manuscript alongside (albeit with a different publisher) the edited, mainstream version of the book. I don't know Peter Straub, but it made me wonder about the relationship between Straub and his editor, and whether he views his unexpurgated version as superior to the edited version. Did he make the cuts reluctantly, and did he feel that they compromised his vision of what the novel should be? All quite fascinating.

My experience of being edited has always been overwhelmingly positive, and I don't say that simply to ensure that my editors don't drop me like a hot stone on the grounds that I'm not sufficiently fawning, although it would be nice if they didn't drop me, and I can be more fawning if that helps. Like many authors who are published on both sides of the Atlantic, I have two editors. When I finish a book, I send the manuscript to both of them on the same day, then wait for their responses. Usually, one will reply sooner than the other, but eventually I'll have the responses from both. Curiously, they're never the same. I don't mean that one may like a book while the other doesn't: that's never happened, thankfully. Instead, one will spot weaknesses, or suggest small changes, in areas that have not troubled the other editor at all, and vice versa. By and large, I think that I've only declined to follow one or two editorial suggestions over my entire career, as they tend to be eminently sensible.

I'd like to think that I help my cause by not delivering a book until it has been rewritten a number of times, a hangover from my time in journalism. Then, if a piece was handed back to you for changes, it was because you'd done something wrong, and it was a badge of shame, like getting lots of red marks on your homework. By the time the book goes to my editors, and my agent, I've usually reached the point where there are few major alterations that I feel can be made to it. Actually, this only lasts as long as it takes for the manuscript to arrive in London and New York, as by that time I've had a day or so to think about it and have already started making further alterations, on the grounds that a book is never finished. What I'm saying, I guess, is that the relationship with my editors is not adversarial in any way. Oh, I want them to have to make as few changes to my deathless prose as possible, largely on the basis of the homework analogy used earlier, but I'm quite happy to have my work improved by them, especially as it's still my name on the cover, and readers will then assume that I'm brilliant all by myself instead of, in reality, not being terribly bright but being ably supported by some very bright people.

Thinking about THE GATES, it was one of my editors who suggested that the demons should be a little more threatening at some point. In my manuscript, they were largely inept, with the exception of Mrs Abernathy, the chief villain. It was my agent and my principal foreign rights agent who suggested altering the footnotes in the main chapter so that they were integrated more fully into the main body of the text, which, visually, made a lot of sense. My agent, too, wanted more made of the relationship between Sam and Nurd, and he was right about that as well. Mind you, those suggestions come in the form of a single line. "Why don't we have more of Sam and Nurd?", my agent might say. "Brilliant", I think, followed by, "Hang on, how do I do that?" I then spend a couple of days fretting about it, dismissing it as impossible, or so difficult as to be nearly impossible, before sitting down and just getting on with it. Rarely will I ask my editors or my agent HOW something might be done. They make a suggestion, and then I figure out how to make it work. After all, it's my book, and I'm the writer. Often, what seems quite hard to achieve when first raised in an editorial letter can usually be achieved quite easily by a bit of tweaking, but despite having written twelve books now, I still get that anxiety attack when I'm asked to make a general change to the text, rather than a specific change to a line or word.

I wonder, too, if the fact that I write up, not down, is a help. By that I mean that my first draft tends to be short, the second draft a little longer, and so on until the book is ready to be sent. I write by accretion, so the chances are pretty slim of of me delivering, say, a book like THE STAND to which, some years later, I might choose to restore 200 pages of cut text. There is very little pruning done to my books. It's just not the way that they're written.

For now, though, I'm between edits. THE GATES, to which I was making changes right up until production, is done. THE WHISPERERS is on one of the early drafts, and it will be December before my editors see it. At this stage, I am my own editor, and I'd like to think that I've written enough books by now to be able to spot when something is drastically wrong, and correct it before it has to be pointed out to me.

I'd like to think that, but I suspect my editors will prove me wrong.

This week John read:

BAD BOY DRIVE by Robert Sellers

and listened to:

TAMPER by Jim O Rourke
LATE NIGHT TALES by Air
SING ALONG TO SONGS YOU DON'T KNOW by Múm

 It’s a curious thing, but when it comes to writing books I seem to have no long-term memory.  I don’t mean that I can’t remember what I wrote yesterday, or that I have trouble keeping track of what I’m working on (although if you asked me where I was at, say, 3pm last Thursday, then I might struggle to tell you.  I’m a shoo-in for having a crime pinned on me at some point, simply because I won’t be able to offer a convincing alibi unless I can hold on to all of my bus tickets, movie stubs, and coffee receipts and produce them as evidence of my movements.)

No, it’s rather that, having written twelve books now, I’d expected the process of starting a new one to become a little easier.  I’d know that a certain pattern emerges at the beginning: a good run at the prologue, and maybe the first chapter, then a certain confusion as I try to maintain my momentum over the chapters that follow.  There would be a certain lack of confidence in the worthiness of the idea, and my ability to carry it through to a conclusion over 100,000 words or more.  Eventually, I’d have a draft done, and then I could begin revising, honing, finishing.

Having written all of that down, it may seem like I have a handle on what I’m doing, but even after expressing it in those relatively clear terms, there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe any of it. It’s as though the earlier books were flukes, somehow, works that were completed and published despite my best efforts rather than because of them.  This new book will be my undoing.  This is the book too far, the one that will expose me for the fraud that I am.

I started THE WHISPERERS earlier this year, while I was in Maine.  At the same time, I was working on a new draft of THE GATES, and one book kind of provided a breather from the other.  Perhaps, on one level, I didn’t believe anyone would want to publish THE GATES, and I thought that I’d better try to make some progress on the novel that my publishers would want.  Well, probably want.  Then, as I became more and more intent on making THE GATES as good as it could possibly be, regardless of whether or not it would be published, I had to put THE WHISPERERS aside.  This week, at last, I returned to it.

Was progress as slow in the early stages of THE LOVERS, or THE GATES?  Did I have these doubts?  I suppose so.  I can’t really recall.  It must have been the same in each case, but I forget all of those difficulties once the draft is done and it becomes clear to me that there is at least something there with which I can work.  It may be disjointed, and rough, but it has some form of beginning, middle, and end.  There is a plot, even if it may have gaps in it. There are characters, even if some are as yet little more than cyphers.  There is some good writing, even if it is outweighed by the bad.

Most of all though, the potential has become the actual: the idea has taken concrete form.  From now on, the element of craft kicks in, which may have something of the same pleasure to it as a carpenter feels when the shape of a cabinet emerges from what had previously been a collection of wood, glue and nails.  (I sometimes wonder, too, how important the original idea actually is.  This thought struck me with renewed force after reading an interview with a famous American writer who farms out his ideas for others to write.  It seems to me that there is no shortage of ideas for books; after all, I don’t know how many times each year I’m told that someone has a great idea for a book, if they can only get around to writing it.  That’s the thing of it: writers write.  The idea, if written down, might only take up a line or two, but what determines the worth of it is the act of taking that idea and expanding upon it.  It may be that there is no such thing as a bad idea for a book, just one’s inability to bring it to fruition, for whatever reason…)

   In the end, I got about 5000 words of THE WHISPERERS written this week, to add to what I managed to get done in Maine.  Yesterday was good, today not so good.  I eked out a thousand words, then left myself with a kind of cliffhanger as a character continues to tell his story.  I know what’s coming next – or I think I do, which is better than not knowing at all, I suppose - and I’m hoping that writing it will provide me with some momentum when I return to the draft.  I tell myself that it’s early days.  The book will come.  I just need to stick at it.

 I only wish that I could remember how I did it last time ...



This week John read



Who Goes There by Nick Griffiths

The English Assassin by Daniel Silva



and  listened to



Sounds of the Universe by Depeche Mode

My editors, and my agent, have now read THE GATES, and everybody seems very enthusiastic about it, which is a relief.  It's always a bit of a risk taking time out from the books that I know will sell in order to write something that no one may be particularly keen on when it's done.  It's also a matter of finding the time, or making the time, to pursue such experiments.  I've written before about the demands on a writer's time, of which the actual writing of books is only one, and of how I find writing a book a year as much as I can generally manage.
    
And yet, and yet . . .

Some years ago, probably around the time that I was touring THE KILLING KIND in the United States, I was asked what I planned to do next.  I can remember answering that I wanted to write a strange children's book about a small boy who… well, that remains to be seen, or read.  At that point, I'd been thinking about the book for a year, but the problem was that I couldn't quite figure out how to write it.  I mean, I knew what it was going to be about, but I really had no idea how I was going to make it work. 

Then, perhaps three years ago, I made a start on it.  I got three chapters in, and abandoned it, because it just wasn't right.  I still have two of those chapters, and they're on my desktop as I write.  They're entitled "The Singing Rock" and "The Lady Maresin".  Neither of them made it into the finished version of THE GATES. In fact, nothing of those original chapters remains in the book that I eventually wrote.

Part of the problem, I think, was magic.  I just didn't want to write a book about magic.  There were too many books about magic out there already, and magic gives the author an easy 'out'.  How was that done?  Well, it was magic.  Magic is like playing the joker in a card game.  It can be anything that you want it to be, but it's kind of a cheat, and it gets irritating very quickly, which is why there's only one joker in a pack of cards.

So I didn't want to use magic, and I couldn't work out how to write the book that I wanted to write, and anyway there were all of these other books to write, and maybe it wasn't an idea that was ever going to come to fruition, just something that might have been.  But it just kept nagging at me, because it was such a lovely idea, and I could almost see the boy who would be at the heart of the novel.  He was quirky, and eccentric, and he had a small dog on a leash…

And then, early last year, I had a flash of inspiration.  I don't get them very often, as I don't think my mind works in quite that way, but when it came it unlocked the book.  What's more interesting than magic?  Well, I thought, science.  Science is interesting.  No, strike that: science is fascinating and, what's more, it's real. 
   
Let's be clear on something here: I'm no scientist.  I studied physics in school, and passed it, but not with any flying colours, and subsequently no scientific institutions were knocking on my door desperate to recruit me for their secret projects.  But the most jaw-droppingly amazing things that I've read about over the last few years have all come out of the realm of science, and the more I've read about it, the more I've come to realise that I know only a fraction of the things that I should know, and want to know, about the nature of the universe, about quantum physics, about how stuff is put together.
 
After finishing THE LOVERS, I worked flat out on THE GATES.  It was a labour of love.  I so wanted to write it, and I didn't care if it was going to be picked up or not.  Oh, it would have hurt a bit if it had been rejected by my publishers, but I wouldn't have regretted a moment of the time that I spent writing it.  I was able to let my imagination run riot, while at the same time retaining a thread of pure science.  At times, it felt like a bit of a balancing act, and I've asked the physics department of my old university to check the science to make sure I haven't mangled some very complicated stuff too much, but I hope that the enthusiasm behind it is communicated to those who read it.  We'll see.

So THE GATES is a book that combines quantum physics and, well, Satanism, I suppose.  It's littered with odd little footnotes, and the occasional drawing.  Some of the footnotes are just little nuggets of information about the universe, while others contain pieces of advice, or short essays on, say, the word "the" as it relates to historical figures.  Mostly, they're funny, although I hope that they're kind of curious and interesting as well.  The kids who've read it have really loved it but, thankfully, so too have the adults.  If THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS was a children's book for adults, then THE GATES is, in a way, an adult book for children.  It will probably appear everywhere in time for Halloween.
 
Now you know, sort of.  More to come over the next few weeks and months.  As for me, it's back to THE WHISPERERS.

This week John read

Nice To See It, To See It, Nice: The 1970s in Front of the Telly by Brian Viner
The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

and listened to
   
Fever Ray by Fever Ray (which is just stunning)

 

..



..


..

This week, we concluded filming on the documentary. It's been a pleasure, I have to say. I was probably more than a little cautious at the beginning, but the crew and the producer couldn't have been kinder - or better company - and, in the end, I appreciated the opportunity to explain myself and what I've been doing for the past ten years or so. In addition, Maine came up trumps, and everyone and everything (including the weather) smiled upon us, including the various law enforcement agencies, and the people who agreed to let us film in their bars and restaurants and houses.

Still, when I returned to Maine from Washington yesterday I was grateful to be able to resume writing. I was intent upon finishing THE GATES, the odd little book upon which I've been working since last year (and about which, in truth, I've been thinking since the second or third book), and so I sat down this morning and didn't move from my desk until the draft was done. By the time I sat back in my chair, the light had changed and I had almost 4000 words written. I still don't know if anyone will want to publish it, but I've enjoyed every minute of working on it, and it has made me smile.

As a reward, I went to see GRAN TORINO, the new Clint Eastwood movie, and, once I'd managed to get over what felt like Clint's early mugging for the cameras, I enjoyed it a lot. Nevertheless, even in the midst of the action I found myself thinking about the next book. It's something that I discussed with the documentary crew: how, at various points in a book, it becomes impossible to concentrate properly on anything other than the novel in hand.

For months, I've been trying to figure out how to start the next Charlie Parker book. I think I know what the catalyst will be, but I've been struggling to find my way into it. As I sat watching GRAN TORINO, I realised out how the novel should begin. Actually, I was working it out as I walked down to the movie theatre in Portland, but it came together as I sat in the dark, watching Clint utter racial epithets about his new Asian neighbours. What I was watching had no connection with what I intended to write, but there was something about sitting in the darkness, watching the film unfold while my mind sought to accommodate what it had been considering earlier with what it was now confronting, that brought everything together, and I knew how the next book should begin.

Actually, I've been a bit distracted of late, and not just because of the documentary. THE REAPERS came out in paperback in the UK recently. This was its first full week on sale, and I wanted it to do well. I was worried that it wouldn't make the top 10 list, mainly I was trying to finish one book and start another, and my confidence was in need of a boost. I probably made life very difficult for my beloved agent as a result, but I think he understood that it wasn't simply a matter of sales but of giving me the impetus that I needed to keep going at a moment of transition between two very different projects.

Thankfully, the book seems to be doing okay, and I can almost feel some of the tension easing from my body. After all, if it hadn't been doing well, then what business did I have working on something that might never appear in print? Shouldn't I have been trying to get my career back on track? And what would be the point, if the mysteries weren't being read? The same thing happens twice every year: the first time when the last paperback appears, and the second time when the new novel is published in hardback. Perhaps, after a decade of publishing, such matters shouldn't concern me, but they do. I want my books to do well so that I can keep writing them and, in truth, so I can buy a little leverage to pursue odd experiments like NOCTURNES, THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, and THE GATES.

Something did put a smile on my face yesterday, though. I was browsing in the wonderful Bullmoose music store in Portland, and saw a CD by a band
named The Loups. Hmmm, I thought, that's a good name for a band, perhaps because it reminded me of the villainous wolf hybrids in THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS.

Then I saw that the band's EP was called Holding Hands with the Crooked Man, and wondered if it might possibly have anything to do with my book. Via MySpace, I sent a polite email to the band, asking just that question, and got a very lovely email back from the band's lead singer enthusing about my work. It was just a nice piece of snyergy, and now I'm the proud possessor of the EP, the first inspired, however peripherally, by something that I wrote. Even better, The Loups are a local Portland band so, with luck, I'll get to see them live before I head back to Dublin.

Now, I must finish re-reading HAWKSMOOR for the book club.

Tomorrow, I begin the new book. I think it will be called THE WHISPERERS...

This week John read

Twelve by Jasper Kent
School Days by Robert B Parker

and listened to

Temple of Low Men by Crowded House
Blood Bank by Bon Iver
The Beatles by The Beatles

    I have been very remiss about this blog lately, even by my fairly lax standards.  There are good reasons, though (he says, vainly flicking through a large book marked ‘Excuses’).

    To begin with, I’ve been filming a documentary entitled THE HONEYCOMB WORLD, which was commissioned by RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, and will be broadcast early next year.  Well, I say filming, but I largely sit around talking about myself while other people film me, so I’m not sure if I qualify for the verb ‘filming’.  Next week it all gets a bit busier, though, as the crew and I head over to Maine to do a week there.  Cue pictures of me looking thoughtful, or perhaps just trying to remember what my feet feel like, as it’s rather chilly in Maine at the moment.

    At the same time, having finished the fairly minor edits for THE LOVERS, I’ve returned to an odd book that I’ve been humming and hawing over for quite some time.  Basically, I set aside three months to get it finished, with the intention of having it done by the end of February.  It may never see the light of day but, if it does, it’s likely to appear between THE LOVERS and the next Parker novel, which is due in the middle of 2010.

    That urge to experiment, to try new things that may fail, is one that’s becoming increasingly difficult to indulge as time goes on.  The will is there, but the time simply is not.  By taking a few months to work on this book, I’ve set back the next Parker book by a similar amount of time, and I expect that I will be looking for a certain degree of indulgence from my editors when it comes to delivery dates later this year. 

    Nevertheless, it was important to me to work on this project.  There was no way that I could start work on the next Parker book immediately after finishing the last one.  I just didn’t want to, and I was finding it impossible to keep ideas for it straight in my head.  At the same time, I didn’t want to not write.  Time is too valuable, and there are all sorts of ideas that I’d dearly love to pursue.  I’d feel guilty just sitting around, waiting for some set date to approach on which I’d promised myself I’d return to Parker, so instead it seemed appropriate to start something else.

    The first result of this is that I have a clear head of sorts, and I’m about ready to start on the next mystery novel.  The second result, and the bad news, is that I’ve had a near constant headache for three months, mainly because the focus on this other book has been so intense that it’s taken a bit of a toll, I think.  Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed doing it, and even if it never appears in print the pleasure of it has been enough, but I seem always to be aware of a ticking clock somewhere in the background; or rather, a series of ticking clocks, each set to a different time, as the various demands and requests pile up. 

    There are invitations to festivals, some of them so far in the future that I’ll be able to travel to them by teleportation, or in a rocket ship, but I have to make a decision on my attendance NOW!; there are publishers looking for publicity tours, sometimes in different countries at the same time, so that along with teleportation I’m starting to take an avid interest in cloning; I promised to write an introduction for a book of short stories, and then found that the subject matter required something close to a thesis, which made my head hurt more; three requests for contributions to short story collections have come in already this year, even though I don’t really write many short stories, and anyway I’m already semi-committed to delivering a story to a collection by March, even if I haven’t written it yet; I’ve promised to write an essay for a book on Irish crime fiction, and I haven’t written that yet either; someone sends me an interview to be done by e-mail, with over 50 questions (e-mail interviews are one of the reasons that I curse the Internet, because essentially, if I agree to do one, I end up writing it myself; as a journalist, I tend to avoid them like a plague, as they’re an unfair imposition on the person being interviewed), yet he’s a nice guy, and I know I’ll end up doing up, but 50 questions is a lot;  I have three books on quantum physics that I’m trying to read (don’t ask), and quantum physics is guaranteed to make my head hurt even more than it does already because of the odd book, and the thesis-type introduction . . .

    And it’s still only January!

    Then there’s the small matter of starting the next Parker book, which I’d rather like to do.  For the first time, I’m very much inclined to take a year away from all of the ancillary stuff, and just write.  After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be, isn’t it?  A writer.  And writers write.  If there comes a point when the extraneous, associated things are taking too much of a toll on writing time, then that’s probably the point at which the writer needs to sit down and figure out some alternative arrangements.  But the business of being a published writer has changed so much in the past decade that, increasingly, writing is only part of the job description, and the challenge is to find a way to keep all of these sometimes conflicting demands in, if not a perfect balance, then an imperfect balance that constantly threatens to fall apart around your ears but somehow does not.

    Oh well.  Even in the midst of all of this, I still occasionally take a moment and think, well, there’s nothing else that you’ve ever wanted to do more than be a writer, and you’re very fortunate to be doing it at all.  And so, given the day that is in it as I write, with Barack Obama trying on various ties in order to pick just the right one for the occasion, it’s worth recalling, once again, James Thurber’s wonderful observation:
    
    "There is, of course, a certain amount of drudgery in newspaper work, just as there is in teaching classes, tunnelling into a bank, or being President of the United States. I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on."

    Now, it’s back to work for me . . .

This week John read

A Death In Vienna by Daniel Silva
The Damned United by David Peace
All The Dead Voices by Declan Hughes

and listened to

 To Lose My Life by White Lies
Rocking Horse by Kelli Ali
Laughing Stock by Talk Talk

The new book, THE LOVERS, has finally gone to my editors, and my agent, and it was only three days late which, under the circumstances (lost early sections; last minute rewrite; the insertion by hand, using gum and scissors, of sections of the Enochian alphabet), I consider to be quite an achievement.

Printing off the book always tends to be the most stressful part of the process, for a number of reasons. To begin with, as I've mentioned here before, I never print off the book until I'm ready to send it to my editors. Printing it off is, for me, an admission that, for now, I have done all I can with it True, I could continue to rewrite until hell froze over, or until my publishers sent some big guys around to reclaim the furniture that I purchased with their advances, but the changes that I might make would become increasingly minor until, in the end, even I might cease to notice them, or to remember why it was so important to make those changes to begin with. When I begin to print off the book, it becomes a manuscript, rather than a potential manuscript, or a work-in-progress. True, depending upon the responses of my editors, and my beloved agent, I may make further changes before the novel is sent to the printer, but these will be changes brought about by the actions of others. My feeling, at this point, is that I've probably done, if not everything possible to improve it, then nearly everything, and the best solution for everyone is probably just to let the book go and see what happens.

But that day of printing . . .

It began at 11.30 A.M., shortly after I'd returned from a pair of dental appointments, and concluded shortly after 1.30 A.M. the following morning, with one break to eat, and watch a little of the Ireland V Poland match. I suppose that I could have spread the process of printing the book off over a number of days, but for some reason I never manage to do that. It may be a hangover from journalism, and that urge to keep writing and changing right up until the deadline, in the hope that a burst of inspiration on the home straight might result in dramatic improvements to the text.

On a more practical level, though, it's also the first - and last - time, that I will ever go through the book, chapter by chapter, over the course of a single day. The intensity of that process, although exhausting, means that I'm a little more aware of the need to catch inconsistencies, and I'm more likely to spot them if I'm reading the last chapter hours, rather than days, since I've read the first. In addition, the knowledge that the manuscript will be read by others for the first time occasionally spurs me on to solve minor problems that have nagged at me for a while, or simply recognize the existence of flaws that had, perhaps, eluded me before.

While printing off the middle section of THE LOVERS, I discovered one small detail that I suspected didn't quite gel with something I wrote in the first book, EVERY DEAD THING, more than a decade ago. I think that I'd been putting off returning to that first book simply because I find it difficult to go back over work that I have written years before. It's a bit like exposing oneself to one's youthful indiscretions, and the critic in me fears that I won't be able to forgive myself for failings, either real or imagined, in those books that I wrote when I was younger. Nevertheless, knowing that the manuscript would be sent off to my editors the following morning, I overcame those doubts, found (with some difficulty) the relevant section, and realized that changes would have to be made in light of it. Better to deal with them now rather than later, when the manuscript has been typeset, or, worse, to dismiss those concerns as unfounded and find, when the book has been published, that the whole delicate balance of the series has been undone by my lack of care.

I suspect that I also felt it was particularly important to get these details right for THE LOVERS, which delves so deeply into Parker's past, and which, if I've managed to do what I intended to do, sets up the series for what is to come later. It's a novel that pretty much puts its hands in the air and says, Look, these are not simply independent novels, but are coming together to form part of a larger whole, and some of the hard spadework for that attempt at unifying them is being done here. Meanwhile, the last chapter hints at a possible direction for the final book, and a character from one of the non-series novels makes a reappearance. All of that had to be done while permitting new readers to begin with THE LOVERS, if they chose, without alienating them entirely by giving them the uncomfortable sensation that they had arrived late to a party that had been going on for some time.

By 11 P.M ., I was sitting on the floor of my office, painstakingly cutting out small rectangular boxes, each containing symbols relevant to the book, and pasting them into the manuscript, since my word processing program steadfastly refused to allow me to transfer them directly on the screen. I did that for three separate manuscripts - one each for my American and British editors, and one for my agent - before I realized that it might have been more sensible just to do all of those pages once, and then photocopy them three times before reinserting them into the printed manuscript, since I now fear that the symbols may come off when the manuscript is being photocopied and gum up my publishers' expensive photocopiers. (I'm not sure if my agent has an expensive photocopier. He doesn't seem like the sort. Anyway, I've never been to my agent's office, an admission that tends to surprise some people. It's not that he hasn't invited me; it's just that it's always seemed more civilized for us to meet over lunch, or a glass of wine. Anyway, I'm now superstitious about the whole matter. I'm afraid that, if I do visit, the building will fall down, or my career as a writer will come to a sudden end with everyone confessing that it was all a big mistake, and they'd meant to publish someone else with my name but had been too embarrassed to admit to their error until now . . .)

By midnight, my head was hurting, and I was struggling to keep on top of what I was doing. I was trying to paginate, and forgetting what page the last chapter had ended on. I had discovered that changes made to two early chapters had not been saved, for some reason, so I needed to go through them again while trying to remember what I had altered earlier in the week. The paper holder from my copier fell off and ended up behind my desk, which is against a wall and sits almost flush with the side walls, meaning that I had to shift it from side to side until I could lie on top of it and, with the aid of a ruler and a plastic folder, haul the paper holder up the side of my desk until I was able to reach it.

That took a while.

Then, when all the chapters were laid out on my office floor, I put the manuscripts together, making sure that I hadn't forgotten to print a chapter off, and that the pages all appeared to match. Finally, I went to bed, but as I was about to go to sleep I thought of three things that should be checked or changed, so I had to turn the light on again, find a pen and a piece of paper, and write a note to myself reminding me of what those things were when I woke up.

After that, I couldn't go to sleep.

But is was worth it, in the end, and not just because the manuscripts were printed off and handed over to Peter at Postnet to be entrusted to the courier later that afternoon. It meant that I had one glorious, guilt-free day to myself: one day when I felt that I could breathe and do something frivolous, and not feel guilty about not working on the book; one day during which the book existed in a state of suspension, not being worked upon but not yet being judged, a secret thing that might be wonderful or might be awful, one that had not yet entered the next stage of its existence and become part of the editing and publishing process; one day spent wandering around bookstores, drinking coffee, reading a book for the sheer pleasure of it without the nagging feeling that this was time stolen from my own book; one day between the completion of one novel, and the commencement of another.

That's how long that state of bliss lasts: one day. It's the same with every book that I write. I get one day, and after that I start worrying, and feeling guilty again.

But that one day is a great one . . .


This week John read

Bleed a River Dry (uncorrected proof) by Brian McGilloway
Mad Dogs by James Grady

and listened to

Belle & Sebastian: The BBC Sessions
Ladyhawke by Ladyhawke
God Is An Astronaut by God Is An Astronaut
Car Alarm by The Sea and Cake

It strikes me that, as time goes on, the gap between these 'weekly' columns grows longer and longer. It's not deliberate, I hasten to add; instead, it's simply the case that I find I have less and less to say that I haven't said already, and the time in which I have to say it grows shorter and shorter. There are books and stories to write (and books and stories to read), and I realize that some of those who glance at these occasional pieces might well feel the same way. I don't want to waste their time with thoughts jotted down simply for the sake of it...

I'm writing this in an Italian restaurant in Portland, Maine. I've retreated to the city to finish revising THE LOVERS, as there are few distractions here, and I find it easier to slip into a routine in which writing and rewriting take up the bulk of my day. But, prior to arriving here, I spent a week doing a number of literary festivals in Canada, and it was an enlightening, if sometimes frustrating, experience.

For the most part, mystery writers tend to spend most of their time with other mystery writers. There are dedicated mystery conventions during which we can consort with like-minded souls, and even when we do venture into the more rarified atmosphere of literary festivals, we tend to be corralled with our own kind, which is unfortunate and reflects a tendency among festival organizers to assume that a) mystery fiction is of no interest to anyone other than hardcore devotees; and b) that mystery authors have nothing to add to larger discussions of literature and writing, due to general ignorance of anything beyond mystery fiction, and a lack of interest in anything other than who was murdered, and how.

Thus, the Canadian experience, although very pleasant in many ways (almost without exception, everyone involved in organizing these Candian festivals was unfailingly kind, polite and well-read, and I have rarely been treated better anywhere as a writer), also proved to be remarkably disheartening in others, if revealing of an attitude towards mystery writers and mystery fiction that some of us had hoped was largely a thing of the past.

1) At a literary salon – I know, I know, but I'd agreed to attend, and I am, if nothing else, a man of my word, most of the time - I listen as a young Canadian writer expresses the view that mystery fiction has no business being nominated for literary prizes on the grounds that, well, it just sells too many copies, and therefore mystery writers have no need of the acclaim and the (often modest) financial rewards that accompany such prizes. When I point out to him that such an argument would also exclude, say, Salman Rusdie from consideration for the Booker Prize, he smirks and responds: "But Rusdie wasn't nominated for the Booker Prize this year…"

And everyone in the room laughs.

2) A fellow Irish author enquires how I go about constructing a mystery narrative, given that it requires the farming out of information at certain intervals. I reply that I don't plan it at all, and instead the revelations in question occur in part both naturally in the course of the initial draft and are also subject to revision during the process of rewriting as the heart of the narrative gradually reveals itself. I make the point that it is no different from the way in which a literary author approaches a book, and note the fact that his own most recent novel depends upon a series of revelations about an act of startling violence that has occurred many years in the past, so the difference between our texts is hardly as significant as he might believe. He doesn't even answer, but simply turns around and walks away, as if appalled that I might suggest any degree of commonality between us.

3) A British novelist, a first-time author, admits that he has never, until recently, read a mystery novel, but having read one he now understands the appeal of the genre. It's like being on a rollercoaster, he suggests. It's about excitement, and nothing more. He doesn't tell the audience which particular mystery novel he has read, or why he considers it representative of a
genre of which, by his own admission, he knows nothing.

4) A young American novelist, one whom I can only hope was drunk at the time, commences a spectacularly ignorant attack on genre fiction. Even allowing for any possible intake of alcohol, she is quite stunningly rude. Her basic argument, if I understand it correctly, is that mystery fiction works according to a basic template: in her immortal words, "something happens ..."

Once I have managed to lock my jaw back into place, I try to follow her argument to its logical conclusion. If the criticism of mystery fiction is that something happens, then the defence of her particular brand of literary fiction must be that nothing happens. I try to recall the last time I enjoyed a narrative in which nothing happened, and, eventually, admit failure. Even Beckett's Waiting for Godot (a play of which it was famously remarked that nothing happens – twice) is full of incident, and that is as close as I can get to an apparently uneventful narrative that works.

Before I can raise this point, an individual involved at the highest level with the organization of the festival in question intervenes. He is someone whom I rather like, but as I listen to what he has to say I have to make a conscious effort to separate the individual from his words. He posits that mystery fiction is inferior to literary fiction because literary writers "hone" their work. They fret about it, reworking it time and time again, whereas genre writers simply churn out novels. With each book, literary writers are forced to reinvent the wheel, discarding all that went before in favor of an entirely new construct. They are original, while genre writers are essentially imitative.

Eventually, I just give up and go to bed. Life, I feel, is far too short, and I've heard so much of this before. The tension between literary and genre fiction, however spurious those labels may be, will continue not only long after I go to bed on such occasions, but probably long after I'm dead, too.

Which brings us back to Maine, and an Italian restaurant. Today, I have spent seven hours working on the draft of THE LOVERS. I will do the same tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. To give myself a break, I have begun writing something else, but my concentration upon this second book is not complete. Even when I am not working on THE LOVERS, it seems to occupy the bulk of my time. I am now on my sixth start-to-finish draft of the book. Before it reaches my publishers, I anticipate that I will have gone through it twice more. Even after it reaches them, I will act upon the suggestions of both my British and American editors (two more drafts); I will read the copy edited manuscript, and make changes there (one draft); and I will make the final changes to the typeset work, even if I have to pay for the resetting of the alterations myself, when it is eventually presented to me (the final draft).

I make that twelve drafts. By any stretch of the imagination, I think that counts as honing my work, and I will do so beset by all of the doubts about its worth that, I assume, trouble my literary colleagues. I manage to fit all of these drafts into one year (the original starting point for that unfortunate discussion about the value of genre v literary fiction) because, quite frankly, I work hard. I come from a journalistic background, and I believe that art and craft are not mutually exclusive. One works at one's craft, and one hopes that, along the way, art may possibly emerge. Even if it does not, one can still take pride in the fact that one has done one's best.

So to hell with all of the rest. When THE LOVERS eventually appears, I will know that I have done my best, despite its inevitable flaws. And I will learn from those mistakes, and I will apply what I have learned to what I do next. I know that I value what I do as much as any literary writers, and I put my heart and soul into it, just as much as they do.

And besides, I'll probably sell more copies than most of those writers will anyway, even if it does render me ineligible for prizes in the new world order being planned by Canadians . . .

This week John read

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

and listened to

Still Crooked by Crooked Still
Shrink by The Notwist
Cardinology by Ryan Adams

Every month, the English novelist Nick Hornby produces a very wonderful column entitled "Stuff I've Been Reading" for The Believer magazine. (The columns have been collected in an anthology entitled The Polysyllabic Spree, and it really is worth seeking out if you have any fondness at all for books and reading.) Anyway, Hornby routinely starts his column with a list of books bought and books read each month, with the former always exceeding the latter by some degree.

It's the book lover's dilemma in a nutshell, really: there are so many books, and so many new ones being published each week, yet there is only so much time in which to read them. Recently, one of my friends vowed that he was going to stop buying books entirely until he had read all of the ones on his shelves, an ambition at once both entirely logical yet also rather sad, as well as being rather impractical if one is a true reader with enough money in one's pocket to be able to afford the odd book. I can't even walk past a bookstore without browsing, a particular curse for me as walking, or even catching the bus, from my gym to home requires me to pass at least four bookstores along the way. This week alone I've bought four books, or one for every bookstore. I've managed to read one that was already on my shelves (Death By Leisure by Chris Ayres, a kind of prequel to War Reporting for Cowards, but not really as good and, less forgivably, bedevilled by so many typos that one wonders if anyone bothered to read the book at all after it had been typeset, or if the job was simply delegated to the nearest passing child. Actually, I suspect that a passing child would have done a better job, or would at least have been more conscientious about doing it.) and have now started on a second, J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, which won the Booker in 1973 and, according to many critics and commentators, might well be worthier of the recent 'Best of Booker' title than the actual winner, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. I'm halfway through Farrell's novel, and it is very good indeed.

What you will notice about both of these books is that neither is a mystery. In addition, I bought them with my own money, which is something that occasionally elicits an expression of surprise from the booksellers who recognise me as I pay for stuff and, indeed, from my own publishers, who are always offering to send me things. The problem is that I'm less inclined to read something that I haven't bought, or chosen, for myself. It's almost as if, by spending money on the book, I've already begun the process of reading it. I've made a financial commitment to the book, which will be followed by a similar commitment of time and concentration. Free books just don't do it for me in the same way. Don't get me wrong: it's lovely to receive them, and occasionally I'll be sent an advance copy of a book that I've really been looking forward to reading, but it's still not quite the same as choosing a book from the shelf of a store, bringing it to the counter, and then paying for it. Even purchasing books online doesn't match that satisfaction.

Which brings us to a related issue. While I bought four books this week (not counting two research books for The Lovers, which has reached the stage where I'm filling in little historical details that require me to read huge historical tomes, an imbalance that I've never quite been able to work out) I also received three more in the mail. All of them were novels seeking approving quotes, or 'blurbs', for their covers. One of them was unsolicited and came from a publisher, and the other two were manuscripts, only one of which I could remember agreeing to read. Over the last month I've blurbed two books, I think, although it might be three, and I've been asked to consider two more. The more books that one blurbs, the more one is perceived as someone who blurbs books, and therefore the more books one will receive looking for blurbs. It's a vicious circle. Eventually, if one isn't careful, one gets the reputation of being a 'blurb whore', which is less financially rewarding than being a real whore and starts to appear a little self-serving, as though having one's name on one's own books isn't enough and one now needs to have them on other people's too.

In addition, I only ever seem to be asked to blurb mysteries. It's not surprising, really, given that's what I'm best known for writing. Occasionally, someone will send me something that isn't a mystery, and it's like manna from heaven, but those books are comparatively rare. As far as publishers and other authors are concerned, it's mysteries all the way for me.

But mysteries aren't the only books that I read. In fact, horror of horrors, mysteries are the exception rather than the rule for me now. Oh, there are mystery writers whose books I love, and I'll seek those out as soon as they're published, but I like to read non-fiction too, and, for want of a better term, literary fiction, and most of my reading is comprised of books from those categories. I've also just spent two weeks reading only mysteries, as I was interviewing two mystery authors and reviewing a new book by a third. I'm mysteried out. Hand me a mystery now and my eyes will glaze over. My toes will turn up. I don't want to read any more for a while. I can't do it.

It's a stupid complaint, right? After all, being asked to read books is no great burden. And yet, when reading becomes a chore, something is terribly wrong. I've come to realise that, if I allow it to be the case, I might spend most of my time reading nothing but new or forthcoming mysteries, and all of those other fascinating books on my shelves, both old and recent, will start to move out of reach. It's just the nature of things: I'm more likely to read new books, the ones that are fresh in my memory, than the ones I bought a year ago or, worse, a decade ago. But I want to read those older books too. I chose them. I wanted them on my shelves, and I wanted them to be read. I made that commitment to them and, in a strange way, I don't want to renege upon it.

And so, for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to treat myself a little. I'm going to read only my books, the books that I chose and for which I paid, and nothing else. I'm going to read obscure film books, and a couple of Penguin Classics, and Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, which I should have read in college but never did. And I'm going to finish The Siege of Krishnapur, but not too quickly, because I'm enjoying it and I want to make it last for a while.

It's a luxury, I know, but a small one.

And it's the small luxuries that make life liveable.

This week John read

Doors Open by Ian Rankin
Death by Leisure by Chris Ayres
and will finish The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

and listened to

The Hawk is Howling by Mogwai
Dear Science by TV On The Radio
Way to Normal by Ben Folds