Dib Dib Dob

Tomorrow I am off to Chester on a week long course organised by The Reader Organisation in association with the Royal Literary Fund. About fifteen other Royal Literary Fund Fellows will be there and, as far as I can tell, we will be spending rather a lot of time talking about poetry.

My feelings about this course are a bit like the feelings I had before going on a camp with the cub scouts when I was about nine. I am apprehensive. I don’t like being away from home for any length of time in case I turn into a pumpkin.

I have been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow for a number of years. In return for a stipend, you get your own office in a university or Institute of Higher Education where you are available one or two days a week to anyone in the college who wants to discuss their writing.

There are those of my acquaintance who have raised an eyebrow about the fact that I agreed to be a Royal Literary Fellow in the first place since I am an avowed republican. And I must admit I did have a few qualms about accepting the queen’s shilling.

In my defence I would cite a story my mother, herself an intensely republican woman - indeed a fervent supporter of Sinn Fein - once old me.

Apparently my great grandfather, a farmer in West Cork, once faced a similar dilemma after his wife gave birth to triplets and he received a congratulatory telegram along with a postal order for ten guineas from the King. Ireland was of course still ruled by Britain at this time.

They were extremely poor people and ten guineas was a very substantial sum of money in those days. Nevertheless, my great grandfather didn’t hesitate. He sent the ten guineas straight back. He wouldn’t touch the king’s money he said.

When I asked my mother what she thought about his action she was unequivocal. ‘Wasn’t he an awful eejit!’ she said.

Anyone Got A Kalashnikov?

On the eighth of May I sent the second draft of my manuscript to my publisher. Today, Friday 20th November, my wife’s birthday and two days before I am due to go away for a week, at five to four in the afternoon I get an email from the Desk Editor telling me how much he loves the book. Oh, and by the way he’s got a list of queries. It would be great if I could get back to him by the 25th.

So let’s see. That gives them six months and 3 weeks to come up with a list of queries and me 4 days and a couple of hours to answer them. Does that sound fair to you?

What happens if I can’t make the dealine? Well the schedule might slip and it might end up not being printed on time. And if it isn’t printed on time it will be six months late because they only issue books in Spring and in Autumn.

The last book but three that I wrote, it took them longer to come up with the copy for the jacket than it did for me to write the book. That’s true, I swear it.

And they wonder why authors are 'difficult'.

There are times when I feel like going down to the office with a machine gun and taking them all out.

The Difference Between Me And Marcel Proust

I have an extremely poor sense of smell. In fact most smells do not even register with me. Oddly enough, there are one or two odours that I seem to be able to detect far more strongly than other people, chief among them being cat’s piss. Apart from this, however, I am almost entirely anosmiac (Yes, that’s the technical term).

My anosmia was the straw which broke the back of the relationship I was involved in before I met my wife. The woman in question, let’s call her Siobhan, appealed to me for a number of reasons, not the least being the fact that having an Irish name, red hair and a deep attachment to the countryside she seemed to represent a missing part of my identity.

Why she was involved with me is a little more difficult to explain. I think she began by believing I was brilliant, soon came to think that I was merely flashy and ended up convinced that I was little more than an educated savage.

Siobhan and I were sporadically living together. I was a student at Liverpool University at the time and shared a flat with two other male students. One night she shook me awake. ‘What’s that smell?’ she demanded.

‘I can’t smell anything,’ I said, sleepily. Glancing at the bedside clock, I saw that it was three in the morning. ‘Go back to sleep,’ I urged her.

But she wasn’t prepared to go back to sleep. She got out of bed and went downstairs where she discovered that one of my flatmates, having returned very late and somewhat the worse for alcohol, had decided to make himself some baked beans on toast. (He wasn’t a tremendously sophisticated individual). He’d put the beans in a saucepan to heat up and sat down to wait, only to fall into a drunken reverie. It was the smell of burning baked beans and scorched aluminium that had hauled Siobhan from the depths of sleep.

My flatmate later told me that he was awoken to find her standing over him holding the saucepan of burnt beans with a look of utter fury on her face. ‘I thought she was going to hit me with it,’ he admitted.

She didn’t hit him. Instead, she went upstairs, put her coat on over her nightdress and, without waiting even to put on shoes, left the flat, walking through the middle of Liverpool and through the Mersey Tunnel (usually reserved for cars) all the way to her own flat in Birkenhead. I don’t know exactly how far this was but it was several miles through streets that only a short time later were to be torn apart by rioting.

The next time I saw her she admitted, quite casually, that one of her feet was bleeding by the time she got home. She didn’t care. She’d had enough. My inability to smell the burnt beans was emblematic to her of all my other failings.

Actually, I think I know how she felt. I say this because it seems to me that there are some people who suffer from a kind of verbal anosmia. They have no idea what constitutes good writing. Wait a minute, I hear you say, everybody disagrees on what makes good writing. Actually, I don’t think that’s true. Most people disagree on what makes good writing. Some people just haven’t a clue one way or the other.

It’s not their fault. The poor things just can’t smell the words. Such people should not try to be writers, in my opinion. They’re only asking for rejection, like the contestants who appear on the X Factor (that’s a British tv talent show in case it’s not on a tv set near you) who can’t sing a note in tune but don’t understand when they’re told they’re wasting their time trying to be pop stars. And yet, because so much misplaced glamour clings to the notion of being a writer, I am always encountering verbal anosmiacs convinced that the world of publishing is wilfully and maliciously turning its back on them.

I would never have made a perfumier. To have tried would have been to have invited ridicule. Do what you’re good at, that’s my advice.

Snow, Snow, Thick Thick Snow

I am so annoyed with myself, I could kick myself all round my office. I’ve got three quarters of the way through the current draft of my next book and I’ve set it in deep winter. I’ve had great fun describing the city in which the dénouement takes place – the heaps of dirty snow piled up against the kerbstones, the skeletal trees, the wind flinging grit and sleet in the faces of the characters. Then suddenly I realised that it can’t be winter. This is because of a tiny but absolutely critical detail that is present at the climax.

How could I have allowed this to happen? Simple. It’s that business of letting the story take control. It always feels like so much fun at the time. ‘Now the narrative is really coming to life!’ you tell yourself. ‘All I have to do is let it tell itself.’

This is the way that people who aren’t writers sometimes imagine writers working – fingers flying across the keyboard in a trance-like state as inspiration takes hold of the writer and he or she becomes merely an instrument in the creative process.

And what do you end up with? Mush.

Twenty five years writing and I still haven’t learned that if you’re going to leave the story in charge of itself, you have to watch it like a hawk. Otherwise it’s like giving a toddler a can of petrol and a box of matches and saying, ‘Go and play, kid. Just don’t bother me.’

All right I know, I’m going over the top here, having a tantrum in fact. And yes, I acknowledge that it’s all a question of balance and that it’s precisely this business of letting the narrative off the leash that makes the writing enjoyable for both the writer and, ultimately, for the reader.

But right now I've got no time to be reasonable. I’ve got to go back and strip out all that stuff about people having to pull sledges along the streets or falling into huge drifts of snow and replace it with description of an altogether milder season. It will be incredibly tedious and it will take absolutely ages.

But it serves me right.

How I Got Here

In his younger days my brother Brendan was a professional dancer, and rather a good one I believe. He used to drive around London in a very enviable little sports car and he had a rather nice flat in an emerging part of the capital.

Once, when we were discussing the nature of success, he said to me, ‘When I was young I really wanted to be a dancer, to have my own flat and to drive around in a little MG. Now I’ve got that and I have keep stopping and reminding myself that I am the person I always wanted to be.’

A good point. So today as The Resurrection Fields, the final book in my fantasy trilogy, is published in the US, I am just pausing to remind myself of the same thing

Good Writing

I am half way through the First Draft of my next novel. I know this because the story already exists very clearly in my head. I’m not a writer who explores the story on paper, at least not these days. I explore the story in my head for ages before I set to work. Then I write an outline, merely to remind myself of everything I want to include, since it’s quite easy to forget great chunks.

Working in this way leaves me with the opportunity to work on the writing itself, rather than trying to devise a story and write it in the best possible way at the same time, which strikes me as a bit like cycling down the road carrying a parcel.

When I say that I want to work on the writing I mean that I want to get it as good as I can by my own standards. Everybody has different ideas about this but for me good writing should be almost invisible, like the glass in a shop window, so that the reader only sees the goods on display. I’m not interested in writing that calls attention to itself all the time like some leather clad rock star standing in the spotlight producing endless guitar solos.

As a children’s writer I naturally visit schools now and again. In more than one primary school I’ve had the experience of the teacher saying something like, ‘Now then everyone, I’m sure that Mr Keaney is going to show us how to write using lots of lovely describing words.’ That sort of attitude makes me want to scream, ‘No Mr Keaney is going to do no such thing!’ This is no way to teach our children but of course it comes from the rigidity of the National Curriculum.

Recently, a secondary school asked me to visit and I expressed a certain reluctance because on a previous visit some of the pupils had seemed to have no idea who I was or what I was doing there. I only want to come if you do some preparation for the visit, I said. The teacher sent me back a reply stating that this wasn’t really possible because the curriculum determined what was taught in English lessons and there was no time to deviate from that. What was the point in me coming then, I wondered. Because the school was having a Book Week, she said. So my visit was effectively no more than a box-ticking exercise.

You can’t measure good writing by the number of adjectives used. Nor can you pretend that you are introducing children to literature by having an annual Book Week. These are both simply examples of tokenism. I believe this sort of thing has come about because of political interference in schools. In the UK politicians seem obsessed with micro-managing the curriculum so that it produces a series of statistics. And what is the purpose of these statistics? Purportedly, it is to provide parents with choice. But really it’s just so they can use the figures as part of their own miserable campaign of self-preservation.

Where Do You Belong?

Linda Grant was on the radio the other day discussing her novel, When I Lived In Modern Times. It’s a terrific book in my opinion. Set during the early days of the state of Israel, it describes the way that identities shift and re-form as people from the most diverse backgrounds are melded together by history.

When asked about her own identity, Ms Grant said, ‘I never really feel at home wherever I am’. Later in the interview she said that American Jews don’t really consider English Jews to be properly Jewish because they speak with ‘a la-di-da accent’. I don’t know whether this is true or just Ms Grant’s paranoia but it made me smile.

When I was at school in East London we would have football matches with the Irish against the English and, of course, I was in the Irish team. At secondary school I was once publicly rebuked by a teacher for pronouncing the word this as dis, ‘like an Irish tinker’.

However, when we went to Ireland each Summer for our holidays, I was always described as the English cousin. Indeed, in the village where my father lived I was once spat at in the street and called ‘Dirty English’ by a complete stranger. So, like Linda Grant, I felt at home nowhere.

I still feel like that to a great extent but a couple of things have happened in the last few years to make me feel that perhaps I belong somewhere after all.

The first was that someone who was visiting me from the north west of England wanted to know whether his car would be safe parked outside my house. I thought at first that he was joking but I soon saw from his manner that he was genuinely very nervous about leaving it there.

Then a writer who lives in the north east of England was coming to London to talk to me. I suggested meeting at the British Library near Kings Cross station. She sent me an email saying that she had heard bad things about Kings Cross and wondered whether it would be a safe place to meet.

I was describing these reactions to a friend, who said, ‘Yes but they only seem silly to you because you’re such a Londoner.’ And I suppose she was right. I’m not scared because this is my territory.

At the end of the interview Linda Grant admitted, a little sadly, that one of the few languages her work had not been translated into was Hebrew. I immediately thought of the same friend who had confidently assured me that I was a Londoner. Though English-born, her mother had been Irish and she had spent long periods in Ireland as a child but had been living in London for many years. Recently she sent me an email in which she just had to tell me that she had been described by a newspaper as an ‘Irish writer’. I think that if she had sold the film rights to her novel she could not have been more pleased.

West Of Ireland Writing Tip Number Two

The first evening back at the family home in Leitrim I found a task awaiting me that could not be postponed. The sinks were not draining properly. Upon investigation, the problem turned out to be a blocked gully. The only way to clear it was to put my hand down into the depths of the drain and start pulling out whatever debris I found there.

The culprit turned out to be many years’ accumulation of leaves. Indeed, I found so much decayed matter that it was like encountering a miniature peat bog in the bottom of the gully. I half expected to uncover the remains of a Neolithic settlement at the bottom of it.

I was reminded of my friend Teresita who told me how once when facing the same problem, she thrust her hand into several inches of scummy water and grasped something soft and wet which felt a bit like an old glove, or perhaps a woollen hat. Chuckling to herself, she drew her hand out of the water to find that she was clutching the bloated corpse of a dead rat.

Teresita is a strong and independent woman so I’ve no doubt that she handled the situation with grit and aplomb. Whereas I would probably have yelled, hurled the rat as far as possible and rushed for the shower.

I know I’m overdoing the writing metaphors at the moment. But I’ve just been looking at a manuscript by someone that ended so weakly, after promising so much that I couldn’t help another one coming on. So here it is, Brian’s West of Ireland Writing Tip Number Two: you’ll have much more impact if you end your novel with a swollen and grisly carcass than if you leave the reader with nothing more than a handful of wet leaves.

Panic In Leitrim

I’ve been in the West of Ireland for the last few days and what a pleasure it was. The fields and the hills were dressed in so many different shades of green, yellow, orange and brown. Ragged-winged crows hung in the air, riding the wind and obviously enjoying themselves enormously; flocks of fieldfares wheeled around the house, settling in the nearby forest and chattering noisily as evening descended.

One of the things I like most about the house where my parents lived is the silence and the darkness of night; though sometimes it can be too intense. I remember once several years ago waking in the middle of the night, wanting to visit the bathroom. It was so dark that I had no idea where the light switch might be. I blundered around hopelessly, stubbing my toe, bashing my shins against unidentifiable objects until I walked painfully into the wall.

I thought that if I simply felt my way around the room by following the wall I could not go wrong. But I must have started at a point very close to the light switch and begun travelling in the wrong direction. My sightless navigation seemed to take forever and I began to panic, wondering whether I might actually be dead and that life after death might consist of an eternity spent stumbling around in the dark. Then finally to my great relief I found the curtains and drew them back to gaze out on a night sky blazing with stars.

Afterwards it seemed to me that this was a perfect metaphor for writing – rousing oneself from a comfortable torpor to answer an urgent call, setting off in the wrong direction, causing oneself real pain by blundering into obstacles, beginning to doubt that one will ever achieve one’s objective, and then finally, more by accident than design, being granted a glimpse of real beauty.

I Have Measured Out My Life In Paracetamol

Everybody wants to be a writer nowadays. Absolutely everybody. I sometimes wonder why.

Since I’m a children’s writer I often visit schools to give readings and talks. It’s generally an extremely enjoyable experience but sometimes the questions aren’t what you expect. I’ve been asked what car I drive; what football team I support; whether I’m the new supply teacher; whether I’m ‘that bloke off the telly’; whether I’ve met Charles Dickens; whether, if I could get a robot that would write my books for me, I would get one.

But perhaps the most difficult question to answer was put by a shaven-headed, gum-chewing young man who seemed entirely unimpressed with my presentation. ‘So you mean all you do all day is write?’ he said. ‘That’s not much of a life, is it?’

Today I’m inclined to agree with him because I have a terrible headache and every time I hit the keyboard a little lance of pain darts through my brain. But I refuse to give up. If I were to turn the computer off every time I got a headache I’d never get anything done.

I’ve suffered from headaches all my life. Many of them descend upon me for no obvious reason. Perhaps the god of headaches decides he needs to fill his quota for that month. But now and again I clearly deserve what I get. I throw caution to the wind and more or less get down on my knees and beg for a headache.

One such occasion was the night I proposed to my wife. I’d been wanting to ask her for ages but I was not at all certain that she would accept my offer. Finally I made up my mind that tonight would be the night. First of all we were going to a party and, conscious that what I was about to say would determine my future happiness, I decided to have a drink or two to give me courage.

I’ve never been any good at alcohol. Even a small amount goes straight to my head. Over the course of that evening I drank half a bottle of Spanish brandy that someone had brought to the party and abandoned. Nobody else was touching it. They thought it looked cheap and nasty.

So when I finally got round to popping the question Rosie simply said that she wasn’t prepared to talk about this with me in the state that I was in and that the best thing to do was go home and discuss it in the morning.

I was gutted, I can tell you. My pride was severely dented. But it was to suffer an even bigger dent when the driver of the taxi that we hailed as we left the party, took one look at me and shook his head. ‘I don’t mind taking you, love,’ he told Rosie, ‘but I’m not having him in my cab. He’s liable to be sick all over it.’

I protested bitterly at this slur upon my reputation but to no avail. Fortunately, Rosie’s charm won him over.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the night but I do remember the pain I experienced when I opened my eyes the next morning. I felt like my neck was gripped in an iron vice; there was a great big metal ball inside my skull that rolled about from side to side every time I moved; and somebody had rubbed hot sand in my eyes. It turned out to be one of the worst headaches I have ever suffered and it took me considerably more than twenty four hours to recover.

A couple of years ago my doctor referred me to a special headache clinic. The consultant, an elderly man with a bored expression, asked me all sorts of questions about my lifestyle. But when he found out that I was a writer his attitude changed completely. He suddenly became enormously enthusiastic and began asking the most detailed questions about my working methods.

He interrogated me about the level of planning I did, the number of words I turned out each day, the amount of re-writing that was necessary, the interaction between me and my editor. ‘Do you really think all this is likely to affect my headaches?’ I asked. He looked a bit sheepish. Not really, he admitted. It’s just that he was planning to write a book himself one day. On the history of the headache.