Quick Fire Questions with.... ME!

Which 3 writers, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?

Enid Blyton (I’d love to know if she were really THAT bad)
Stephen Fry (well… he writes, doesn’t he?)
Keris Stainton (‘cos we’d have such a laugh with Stephen – and he might even bring David Mitchell if we asked nicely. No, not the writer, the comedian. So? Who’s question is this anyway?)

Favourite writing snack?

None. Bits get in between the keys and then it irritates me when I can’t get them out and I end up getting a row of uuuuuuuuuuuuu’s across the screen and…well, it’s just too messy.

Background music?

Tried it a few times. I’m sure I SHOULD have some Mantovani or Vivaldi (or even Paulo Nutini) weaving its way through my creative core but it’s just another distraction. Oh, the ice cream van playing ‘Captain Pugwash’ just went past – does that count?

Longhand or computer?

D-er!

The best thing about being published is...
D-er!

And the worst thing…

D-er!

Win the Booker prize or land a Hollywood film deal?

Oh god, I should be so lucky!

A writer should never...

Slag off Agents on-line. Of this I’m sure. And they should write. Loads – apparently. At least that’s what they all say when they’re asked this question. The proper ones, I mean.

X Factor, Strictly CD or I’m a Celebrity?

Strictly, but only by a whisker and more because it’s on the Beeb and hasn’t got annoying adverts every seven minutes. I know, I get irritated very easily, don’t I?

My best ideas come…

When I’m in the shower. I don’t know what it is… think it’s the boredom and the half-asleep-having just woken up thing – I like to play dreams over too whilst I’m waking up under the blast (if I remember them) and I also do a whole lot of ‘I wonder if…’s and ‘what would happen if….’s. And strangely enough, it’s the only room I actually LOCK myself in. In. So maybe there’s the freedom of thought without distractions.

Independent bookshop or Amazon?

Love the indies and wish our Waterstone’s in town had a coffee/seating area. I went to a bookshop once that had both once and I felt like a child in a sweet shop. If I could have, I’d have moved in. Forever.
But I’m an Amazon-addict and spend all my pocket money there. After I’ve read extracts on the LoveReading.com site first, to make sure I’m going to like it.

You really must read...

‘Bet Me’ by Jenny Crusie. Not just because it starts with “Once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after” but because the bit in between is just Ssssooo delicious!
And Lisa Jewell's 'Vince and Joy' which is just perfect too.

Left on a cliff-hanger or told all?

I get (yawn, yawn) irritated by cliff-hangers. I go a little bit Tony Hancock with his “missing last page” sketch (Lady Don’t Fall Backwards). Such a laugh – and so true. I’d end up wrapping myself up in knots and stalking the author to FORCE them to finish it properly!

My biggest Writing tip is…

Join a Group. I don’t mean AA or Girls Aloud. A writing group. Where you can talk words. People you work with will listen and nod, but they’ll never really ‘get’ it like another writer does.

Which fictional character would it be great to be?

Oh, definitely Minerva Dobbs in ‘Bet Me’. She’s so sassy, wickedly funny, loves her food and gets her man.

My journey to publication was...

“Is….” Ongoing. I hope.

Favourite book from childhood…

‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ by Enid Blyton. I had a bit of a crush on Moonface, I have to admit.

Oh! Is that IT? And I was having such fun...

Dick finds a hole

We watched the Enid Blyton dramatisation last night.  I was desperate to watch it for two reasons.  1. My fondest childhood memories were spent with the Famous Five, the Find-Outers, the Folk of the Faraway Tree and Pip and 2. I remembered reading somewhere that this writer of children's books was a thoroughly Not Nice person and I didn't want to believe it.

Talks about hopes being dashed.  I'm not sure whose memories were used for the scripting of Enid's life story but I'm pretty sure it wasn't from anyone who liked her very much.  So probably one of her children then.  Or one of her husbands.  Or any number of her Nannys/House-staff.  Because it portrayed this beloved writer of countless books (or should that be 'writer of countless beloved books'? for she certainly did not seem to be "beloved" by anyone) as a cold-hearted, egocentric, misanthropical bitch of the highest order.

If the sources supporting this dramatisation are to be relied upon, then Enid Blyton was all icing and no cake.  She managed to retain her much-adored public persona by having the occasional 'teatime treat', inviting some of her fans to literally picnic on her drawing room carpet and appeared to them as the most wonderful, warm human being who made their reading books come alive.  And they clearly worshipped the ground she deigned to tread.

These, and the limited amount of press coverage - where in front of the camera she would demand her girls 'look like you're interested and happy for gods sake' -kept her beloved image alive.

Her own two daughters saw more of their Nanny and their Nursery than they did of their mother and quite apart from banishing them from being present at her 'teatime gatherings' of fans and allowing them an hour of her time a day, she also sent them both off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity.

I tried.  I really did, to conjure up some sympathy for this woman who had given me such treats as a child. Okay, so her father abandoned her, her 2 younger brothers and her neurotic mother when she was 12 or so.  Maybe this had led to her wanting to live in a made up world where everyone and everyone's family was happy and laughing and having adventures all the time and only the Baddies got hurt.  But surely for her to quite literally drown out any of the 'real' noise going on around her for the safety and seclusion of her fictional paradise, and to the detriment of her own babies - that was the part I couldn't quite forgive.

Today she'd have been treated for these schizopherenic tendencies, I'm sure, and her daughters would have had the benefit of learning more about their damaged mother.  But would she have emerged as brilliantly fantastical with her ideas and writing if she'd been 'made better' by our society? 

In fact some of the scenes had me cringeing slightly at the way in which my own brain screams "can't you just leave me alone whilst I'm living in my world of make-believe?!" because it does feel almost painful to be wrenched from a particularly engrossing chapter with a "Mum can I borrow a fiver?" or "Honey have you seen my socks?".  I mean - per-lease!  Can't they see I'm away with my very own fairies right now?!