Kindle is the Tower Block of the Digital Age

 My Kindle seems to have come over all Soviet Tower Block; uninformative, depressing, slate grey, threatening to dictate my reading. What ever happened to the colourful pile of new books on my bedside table?

Twenty-five (at least) books to read on my Kindle. What to choose next? I am presented with a list of fairly meaningless titles (almost) and authors who are unfamiliar. What I need is book covers and blurb to entice me. My Kindle home page looks like a university reading list, lacking in colour and detail, or the outline programme of a dull literary conference. Perhaps this is an argument for the iPad?

But there are some familiar titles on my Kindle list - Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Tender is the Night. I have just re-read The Great Gatsby on the Kindle, for about the tenth time in my life - one of the great novels of the Twentieth Century. I remember the cover of the Penguin Modern Classic, I remember the smell of it, I remember the first time I read it.

The new titles on the Kindle don't sing to me. Will I remember the day I first read them? Doubt it. But here's the joy of the Kindle and the contradiction; I can carry with me all those classic books I have read in the past and the memories that go with them.

What of the new?

I think I need to read great books in paper format first time round. Now here's an idea (Probably not new). All books should be published in paper and be sold with a digital download for additional £1.00. (80p going to the author).

Then I can carry the moment forever on my Kindle

The Detail's in the Devil

What makes for a good villain in children’s fiction? And there lies a paradox, because I don’t think that evil can truly be laid bare, but must be portrayed within the constructs of a safe environment. And how is that to be done?

• The villain of the piece should scary enough for the reader to think twice about turning off the light, but not so terrifying as to summon nightmares. 

• A villain must be discovered, at first not being too obvious. They may be hidden in plain sight.

• A villain is manipulative and has power over other people and can control or influence events. There will be acolytes, inherent or recently converted.

• A villain must not be too complex, nor on the other hand be based on stereotypes.

• A villain must be original, but be rooted in recognisable archetypes. 

• A villain must always be one step ahead until the very end and appear in surprising places, including daylight. 

• They must be almost invincible, but in the end be defeated, 

• Like the good they must contain the seeds of resurrection so there is the possibility of being terrified by them all over again.

What Sarah Duncan can do for you.

Persistence pays. I didn't feel like writing at all this morning. I fiddled around looking over yesterday's work, then spent a little time reading Sarah Duncan's blog - displacement activity, curiosity. She writes romantic fiction. Not my kind of stuff, but writing skills and attitudes are fairly generic. Sarah Duncan always has something sensible to say about the novelist's working life.

Her blog happened to be about writing when you are tired - a daily occurrence. The blog was just enough of a nudge to make me hit the keys.

Writing can be an isolated existence, but it doesn't have to be. There are some good supportive blogs out there. And what's more, by persisting this morning, about 500 words into my writing I had one of those great Eureka, plot changing moments. The isolation is worth it for that kind of kick.

The thrill doesn't come if you sit there doing nothing.

Creation: the story without a beginning, middle and an end.

Running up a hill into a headwind in the dark. That's what writing has been like this morning.

I have 11,500 words (11 days) to go until I finish the first draft of my current project. I am at that turning point in the story where I have to begin pulling together all the threads whilst keeping the reader in suspense.

It is so tempting to just fall down by the wayside and reveal everything in an explosion of explication. That would be easy if I knew exactly where I was going. It would certainly be unwise. Instead I am doggedly, staring at the horizon in the hope that I know where I am heading, in the hope that I have come the right way. There are no landmarks. Who knows where I'll end up?

That is the way I write a story. The first thing I have to do is tell it to myself. And contrary to what they say in school, the tale starts without a beginning, a middle, and end.

Stunning the rabbit; speed-dating the agent

Time's a tricky thing. I spent yesterday afternoon sending off four emails and attachments in various forms requested by different agents. It took me longer than to write 1000 words of my book in the morning. And of course it was a lot less enjoyable and so time passed so slowly that the morning's work seemed to be in the distant past.

And today time speeded up again. Three hours happily waiting for a glimpse of a Bittern (I saw two in the end, briefly). I think that experience is called "mindfulness", a super-awareness of what is around. This morning: sunshine, reed, water, birds calling, subtle movement, a scent of spring in the frost.

It's mindfulness which is the key to writing, coupled with putting in the hours.

This afternoon, I have returned to my desk. Ping! A nice rejection from an agent I only emailed yesterday afternnoon. She had wanted the first five pages. That's what I gave her.  Super-awareness or carelessness? Another approach to time. Efficient and painless anyway, like stunning a rabbit.

Speed-dating. Time to move to the next table.

The sweet irony of envelopes

Twelve A4 envelopes (with gussets), newly obtained. 12 - another magic number.  Aren't all numbers imbued with meaning until you go beyond four digits? But then of course there's always the Jackpot, the BIG ONE?

Twelve envelopes, fresh with hope (it's in their nature). There are exceptions - redundancy notices, utility bills, condolences. Envelopes are scented with the optimistic fragrance of the stationery shop. When did that optimism first arrive? Probably in childhood with birthday cards and expectation of Postal Orders and crisp Ten Shilling notes.

I have a new ream of paper. Chapters to print; letters to write to agents. It's all about hope and potential.

Twelve disciples.

Twelve bullets for two six guns. Enough to defend the Alamo.

The Puritan and the Pencil Sharpener

Strange how things turn themselves on their head. I have been writing my book this week, less because I have to, but more because I am enjoying it. This has been the situation for a while. Back in the 1990's when I was first published, I found getting down to writing very difficult, and would do almost anything to avoid it.

This week I have found myself doing it easily and have realised that I"d much rather be working on the book than writing tedious letters to agents. Creativity has suddenly become a displacement activity as well as a process in itself.

Well that's good isn't it? Better than pencil sharpening or cleaning one's keyboard. But the other work has to be done. I must resurrect the Local Government Officer in me and start pushing some paper. Tomorrow.

But the puritan in me also wonders, whether pain is a guarantor of success and all this enjoyment might just be a hindrance?At the end of the day, I shall have to whip the finished article into shape.

Like a cheap room at the Savoy

Back at the end of August 2011, I wrote "each ping of the email makes me jump." I had just begun my search for an agent. Now that it is the beginning of 2012, thirteen rejections later, the ping goes unnoticed. (The most recent  was today)

Is this growing cynicism or a burgeoning professionalism? I think it is the latter. I have learned a lot more about the publishing business in the past six months than I ever did when I started out 25 years ago. No one owes me a living. New writing projects are taking up my time; I have the confidence to complete them. And I am enjoying the challenge of each and every one.

So what is a ping to me now? It's like making an online hotel booking. A tad frustrating. If one hotel is full, you just look for another one.

The trouble is, an agent is still rarer than a cheap room at the Savoy.

Return to writing: wrestling a small boat in a high wind.

Ever tried climbing into a sailing dinghy on a blustery and unforgiving winter's morning? Today I have had one foot on a slithery floor and the other on the jetty, one hand on the mast and the other trying to grab hold of the boom before it flattens me. It barely feels like the same boat I sailed so smoothly before the Christmas break. Such is trying to get back into writing the novel.

Looking at this small boat, I can see that the sails are tattered, the rudder is askew, the varnish needs attention, the sheets are a little frayed in places, but it is not shipping too much water.

It still looks like a boat and it floats, albeit with a slight list. The rudder is easily mended.

If the weather calms down enough tomorrow, it should be relatively plain sailing.

A price to be paid for ebooks?

What price ebooks? How much are you prepared to pay? It depends what you really mean by an ebook. My own purchasing habits as a reader have given me pause for thought.

Previously, I have compared ebooks for the Kindle as being like well-thumbed library books: text but not necessarily a sensory experience.

I have been buying quite a lot of books for the Kindle during December, prompted by the free classics,  The Kindle Daily Deal, and the Twelve Days of Kindle  Christmas promotion.

I have purchased 20 books and have paid no more than £1.57 per book. Most have been for £0.99. At a fair reading rate for me that's about £25.00 for six months' reading. A sobering thought for an author trying to make a living.

It seems that price is dictating what I read, and it's all interesting quality stuff. It turns out that £1.99 is about the maximum, I am prepared to pay for a Kindle ebook. That means for the author to have any chance of making a living, their royalty needs to be at least 50%. That should be ok, considering lower production costs and no expensive warehouse and shipping.

So what am I prepared to pay more for?

Well, I might pay £3.99 for a new novel, which would normally come out as a hardback, if I thought it was a must-read. It would have to be pretty special. I would pay a premium for an ebook on the iPad if it was illustrated or was an app like T S Eliot's The Wasteland or Jack Kerouac's On the Road, or a reference book like The Elements or anything that DK produces. Illustrated children's books I would pay for too, even if they didn't have multi-media features.

As a reader, do I feel guilty? No. Should I as an author be concerned? Yes.

We are fortunate as readers that authors will always write, because they have to, even if there's not living to be had from it.