When I was about thirteen, I remember reading Flowers in the Attic and realising pretty quickly that it was a good thing my parents didn't know what it was about. I'd been stopped from reading Judy Blume's Forever a few years ago, and had learned to be more careful about revealing my reading choices. It's ...
Two summers ago, we spent a glorious fortnight in Marina di Venezia, a campsite near Venice that's situated right on the beach. About five days into our holiday, I was lying awake in bed, cranky after a bad night's sleep, and irrationally irritated that everyone else was still snoring (including the four-year old source of my ...
They came on Saturday afternoon - my almost-last round of edits. This is the time to make final tweaks and find typos. (Typos are so hard to find, but I know they're there, lurking, grinning slyly, hoping to make the final cut.) And for me, the only way to do this is to read it out loud. All ...
It's struck me many times over the last 18 months that writing books is a little like having a baby (albeit in a non-human-creating, non-life-altering way). The writing is like the pregnancy (only it feels even longer) and the last round of edits are like the final push of childbirth. The end result is of ...
Anyone who knows me in real life will know that I'm not exactly horizontal in the chilled out stakes. I'm somewhere between about 45 and 80 degrees. And depending on the situation (organising a kid's party, organising a barbecue, trying to get out the door when we have a babysitter...) I'm really quite the opposite ...
Once upon a time, back in September, it all seemed very difficult. Not seriously difficult - just everyday stuff. Struggling with three in school for the first time. Struggling with three lunches and three lots of homework and three tired kids. Struggling with a little boy who likes to talk a lot and listen only a ...
One Friday morning last autumn, sitting in a coffee shop, I finished tweaking the first three chapters of a book, attached them to an email, and hit send before I could chicken out. It felt good. Well, for at least thirty seconds until I realised I'd sent it without checking for typos. The next big dilemma was whether or not to ...
It's 11.25pm on Thursday night and I've just spent five minutes scrolling through Facebook. Now I'm anxious because that's five minutes that I didn't spend doing something I should be doing, like editing the article that's due tomorrow or editing the book that's due next week. One part of me - a tiny voice - ...
This post could also have been called "Pass the Rescue Remedy" or "Christmas is Cancelled" or more practically "I've Signed a Book Deal". At this point I'm more focused on the Rescue Remedy than anything, and still wondering if I'm having a (rather long) dream. A couple of years ago, a very lovely person called Margaret Scott ...