Tuesday 9 June 2009

Loose Lips Sink Ships Catherine Johnson

The weather's gone all shivery cold, my generally lovely country folk have elected two BNP MEPs, but the one sunny ray of good news is that Anthony Browne is the new Children's Laureate and maybe he'll get us all out taking lines for a walk to many new and fascinating places. He has to be one of the masters of illustration and here's to hoping he'll get young readers sticking with picture books a little longer.

And if you're looking for an interesting, but wordy picture book, can I recommend The Lying Carpet by David Lucas? There, I have.

If this blog seems a little unfocussed it's because I am dying to shout about my new 'thing'. I cannot say how many ways this would be a disaster. My new character is dancing around in front of me and promising all sorts of enticements to get me to leave my almost finished first draft on the computer desktop and go off with her back to the early nineteenth century to high waisted frocks sprigged, no doubt, with muslin.

But I have to leave her a while and finish what the publishers (I hope) are waiting for.

In the meantime I am terrified the book I want to write is out there, being written right now by someone else. This has happened to me before, I have perfectly serviceable ideas only to find some other - usually better- author has beaten me to it. So - for now- my lips are very tightly zipped.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I can sympathise about the wish to talk about a new novel. But you are wise, the less you say the better. Not just for the sake of the idea but for the sake of the writing. I find the less I speak about my characters the more of them I get onto the paper (or the screen). So my lips are sealed too.

Gillian Philip said...

Oh yes, I know that feeling. The urge to blab must be resisted or the characters leak away. But I also know that feeling about somebody else writing your idea before you get round to it! That has happened to me several times and you just feel like screaming. Nick Green convinced me (eventually) that it doesn't really matter, and you don't have to give up the idea. It's your characters and your setting that make it original, and concepts are never that original anyway...
I like that anyway!

Nick Green said...

Absolutely (re. Gillian's point). In fact I've now swung so far the other way on the 'original idea' scale, that I now hope each day that some big-name author will write almost exactly the same book as my work-in-progress, so that I can neatly hop onto the bandwagon.

Joanne Rowling, if you're reading this: write a book with dolphins in it. Please.