A chance to volunteer on the archaelogical dig taking place at Shakespeare's last home. What do we think about that? Should I go for it?
Of course I should. As you walk along Chapel Street in Stratford at the moment, large panels prevent you from looking over the wall at New Place into the dig that's going on there (although an open-top bus tour seems to give you a good view as you go by). But to be in there, as part of it, rummaging among the foundations ...
The house only seems to have been known as New Place after Will Shakespeare bought and refurbished it in 1597. Before that it was the Great House, a 'pretty house of brick and timber' built a hundred years earlier by a local worthy and onetime Lord Mayor of London.
Royalty stayed there in 1643, in the form of Henrietta Maria, the Catholic queen-consort of King Charles I. The Queen was a guest of Will's daughter, Susanna.
In 1756, a preacher, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, was living there. Outraged at the number of visitors and passers-by who wanted to see a mulberry tree in the New Place grounds, which supposedly had been planted by Shakespeare himself, the reverend took an axe to the tree.
The very next year, a mysterious document was discovered hidden away among the rafters of the roof in the house where Will Shakespeare grew up. It proved to be a handwritten copy of a Jesuit Last Testament and Will of the Soul, signed by Will Shakespeare's father.
In the meantime, Gastrell had a few of his windows broken by people angry at his felling of the Shakespeare mulberry. Finally, in 1759, he freaked out altogether and demolished New Place brick by brick.
The town seemingly did nothing to stop him. Whether a lone preacher could destroy a three-storey house on a busy street without anybody noticing, or whether (as seems much more likely) he had a substantial mob to help him, the town bided its time and then sent him packing. He was marched out of town accompanied by booing crowds, and a local bye-law was passed forbidding anybody with the surname Gastrell from ever living in the town again.
Like so much of the Shakespeare story, we are usually expected to accept that Shakespeare's final home was simply destroyed by an angry clergyman - and that's that. Whatever you do, do not draw any conclusions from that astonishing act of vandalism, least of all that there may have been some sectarian issues hanging around the memory of Will Shakespeare.
Whatever you do, do not imagine that a Protestant preacher destroyed a part of our national heritage because of its Catholic associations with our national poet. No, no, do not think that. It's just one of those things, okay? And maybe we shouldn't have mentioned that Jesuit will. Don't want anybody getting any ideas, do we?
But as a way of getting just that little bit closer to the Bard, what could be better than sifting through the soil of his demolished house?
Of course, I'm not actually working on my Shakespeare book just now. I'm sweating away on my Arthur book. But Stratford's just a few minutes away. Shame it's not Arthur's grave I could get to in a few minutes. Heigh-ho ...
(PS: Hi, Shayne!! Great to see you! I'll get some blog links organised soon, I promise.)
Thursday, 13 May 2010
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Round the Block
All last week, I was thinking "I'll write a blog about writer's block!"
How's that for irony - meaning to write about writer's block but just never quite managing to do it.
But I was going to. Because I don't believe in it. Or, rather, I know it happens, but I don't think of it as 'writer's block' at all. Whenever it happens to me (yep - guess what last week was like) I know it's because mentally I'm trying to take a short-cut.
When you write something, you shouldn't imagine that it's set in stone. The first draft will have garlic and sapphires in it, and the second draft should restructure it and give it a better shape, and the third draft (really) should round it off with a final polish and that little extra zing.
The first draft ought to be just a determined effort at getting everything down on paper in some form or other. We can worry about how good it is, how well it's working, later.
But so-called writer's block happens (I believe) when you're working on the first draft but you want it to be as good as the third draft.
Working in TV, there'd be the occasional nightmare when a script editor would phone, just days before deadline, and ask you to change all the locations, or alter the ages of the characters, or something equally dumb. Which meant that, in just two or three days, you had completely to rewrite the script. That's when I began to learn about writer's block. There was a dreadful panic when it came to putting any word on the page - a vertiginous sense that 'This is it' and that it had to be right, first time, every time.
Great way to panic yourself into writer's paralysis, folks.
Anyway, so, having figured that out, it's easy to know how to deal with writer's block. Just write. Write whatever. And then come back later and clean it up.
Simples.
But I didn't write that last week because I'd had a couple of trips to my nearby town of Stratford, and I'd watched Shakespeare in Love, and I was wondering - why do so many actors read Shakespeare all wrong.
Take that famous balcony speech:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
How often have you heard the first line spoken as if it read: 'O Romeo, Romeo, where are you Romeo?'
Is that what it says? No. What it says (or means) is: 'O Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo?'
It's all about his name. And at a time when the State was trying to impose a Protestant form of religion on a rather conservative country, a name like "Rome-o" would surely stand out as a declaration of tribal Catholicism.
So Juliet asks, "Why are you 'Romey-o'?" Why can't Romeo change his name (his surname, Montagu, was shared by one of the most Catholic families in England, and Shakespeare's then patron, the Earl of Southampton, was related to them: Southampton's mother had been born a Montagu) and therefore deny his faith?
Or, failing that, Juliet will renounce hers. The Protestants wore little woollen skull caps in church. Juliet is a Capulet.
So it should be read with something like the former Troubles in Northern Ireland in mind. This is a life-and-death situation.
But I didn't blog about that, either.
How's that for irony - meaning to write about writer's block but just never quite managing to do it.
But I was going to. Because I don't believe in it. Or, rather, I know it happens, but I don't think of it as 'writer's block' at all. Whenever it happens to me (yep - guess what last week was like) I know it's because mentally I'm trying to take a short-cut.
When you write something, you shouldn't imagine that it's set in stone. The first draft will have garlic and sapphires in it, and the second draft should restructure it and give it a better shape, and the third draft (really) should round it off with a final polish and that little extra zing.
The first draft ought to be just a determined effort at getting everything down on paper in some form or other. We can worry about how good it is, how well it's working, later.
But so-called writer's block happens (I believe) when you're working on the first draft but you want it to be as good as the third draft.
Working in TV, there'd be the occasional nightmare when a script editor would phone, just days before deadline, and ask you to change all the locations, or alter the ages of the characters, or something equally dumb. Which meant that, in just two or three days, you had completely to rewrite the script. That's when I began to learn about writer's block. There was a dreadful panic when it came to putting any word on the page - a vertiginous sense that 'This is it' and that it had to be right, first time, every time.
Great way to panic yourself into writer's paralysis, folks.
Anyway, so, having figured that out, it's easy to know how to deal with writer's block. Just write. Write whatever. And then come back later and clean it up.
Simples.
But I didn't write that last week because I'd had a couple of trips to my nearby town of Stratford, and I'd watched Shakespeare in Love, and I was wondering - why do so many actors read Shakespeare all wrong.
Take that famous balcony speech:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
How often have you heard the first line spoken as if it read: 'O Romeo, Romeo, where are you Romeo?'
Is that what it says? No. What it says (or means) is: 'O Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo?'
It's all about his name. And at a time when the State was trying to impose a Protestant form of religion on a rather conservative country, a name like "Rome-o" would surely stand out as a declaration of tribal Catholicism.
So Juliet asks, "Why are you 'Romey-o'?" Why can't Romeo change his name (his surname, Montagu, was shared by one of the most Catholic families in England, and Shakespeare's then patron, the Earl of Southampton, was related to them: Southampton's mother had been born a Montagu) and therefore deny his faith?
Or, failing that, Juliet will renounce hers. The Protestants wore little woollen skull caps in church. Juliet is a Capulet.
So it should be read with something like the former Troubles in Northern Ireland in mind. This is a life-and-death situation.
But I didn't blog about that, either.
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Anyone Here From Porlock?
Famously, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge woke up from a laudanum-fuelled dream with a complete poem perfectly formed in his head. He rose and instantly began writing out the inspired verse, which became known as Kubla Khan.
Coleridge had only got a few lines in when there was a knock at the door. It was an unidentified man from Porlock, a nearby village. No one knows what the man from Porlock wanted, but he kept the poet occupied for upwards of an hour. When he finally left, Coleridge had forgotten the rest of the poem.
The world is full of people from Porlock. They are the writer's nemesis. There you are, struggling to make headway. Maybe you've just built up a head of steam, struck a rich vein, and you can start to feel like you're getting somewhere, and just then ...
Knock, knock.
Or the phone rings.
Now, I'm a Piscean. Which means I'm torn. When I'm on my own I get listless and crave company. And when I'm with other people I wish I was on my own.
But, being a writer, I know that the being-on-my-own time is vital. Without it, nothing gets written. But achieving being-on-my-own time, and keeping those Porlockian interrupters at arm's length, is getting harder and harder these days.
Bardic poets used to lie in the dark with a heavy stone on their stomachs overnight. In the morning, their latest poem had to be fully formed in their heads.
So I'm off to find myself a heavy stone. Those bards knew a thing or two. One of them being, never answer the door to a Porlock type when you're trying to get something creative done. The stone, I think, is there to remind you of that. And it gives you a very handy excuse: 'Sorry, can't come to the door just now, I've got a huge stone on top of me!'
BTW: progress on the Arthur book - I've introduced Camelot (yes, it existed) and started work on Arthur's ancestry. Woke up this morning reminding myself to mention that refugees to Armorica (Brittany, or the Lesser Britain) recalled their homeland as Leon or Leonais - the legendary Lyonesse. We know it today as Lothian.
Now, where's that stone (he says, just as the phone rings)?
Coleridge had only got a few lines in when there was a knock at the door. It was an unidentified man from Porlock, a nearby village. No one knows what the man from Porlock wanted, but he kept the poet occupied for upwards of an hour. When he finally left, Coleridge had forgotten the rest of the poem.
The world is full of people from Porlock. They are the writer's nemesis. There you are, struggling to make headway. Maybe you've just built up a head of steam, struck a rich vein, and you can start to feel like you're getting somewhere, and just then ...
Knock, knock.
Or the phone rings.
Now, I'm a Piscean. Which means I'm torn. When I'm on my own I get listless and crave company. And when I'm with other people I wish I was on my own.
But, being a writer, I know that the being-on-my-own time is vital. Without it, nothing gets written. But achieving being-on-my-own time, and keeping those Porlockian interrupters at arm's length, is getting harder and harder these days.
Bardic poets used to lie in the dark with a heavy stone on their stomachs overnight. In the morning, their latest poem had to be fully formed in their heads.
So I'm off to find myself a heavy stone. Those bards knew a thing or two. One of them being, never answer the door to a Porlock type when you're trying to get something creative done. The stone, I think, is there to remind you of that. And it gives you a very handy excuse: 'Sorry, can't come to the door just now, I've got a huge stone on top of me!'
BTW: progress on the Arthur book - I've introduced Camelot (yes, it existed) and started work on Arthur's ancestry. Woke up this morning reminding myself to mention that refugees to Armorica (Brittany, or the Lesser Britain) recalled their homeland as Leon or Leonais - the legendary Lyonesse. We know it today as Lothian.
Now, where's that stone (he says, just as the phone rings)?
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Can I be paid by the word, please?
As a screenwriter I never paid much attention to the word count. It was pages you'd be keeping your eye on, not words. But I've done a few calculations, and it seems that the sample chapters I'm doing for each of my books are longer, in word terms, than a full-length screenplay.
No wonder I struggle sometimes. I mean, yes, a large canvas can be great fun, but when even your sample is longer than the longest script you ever expected to write, then you're into a new realm, really, where everything is bigger and more complicated.
This has just occurred to me again, because yesterday I read a screenplay. One of my sidelines is reading and reporting on scripts for film and TV. It's quite a responsibility (when you've received a few crits yourself you begin to realise just how much damage can be done by an inept or callous editor). And the one I read yesterday was actually the rewrite of one I read and reported on a few months ago.
And here's the good news. This revised draft is pretty darn good. It works. A lot of the stuff I didn't like in the earlier draft has either gone or been subsumed more successfully into the story. The characters are credible, the scenario believeable, and what has emerged is a really good domestic thriller with some great surprises - the last few pages were especially tense, and the whole thing built in pace and pressure brilliantly. Overall, a terrific result.
Now, all this was a thrill because I read a lot of scripts but I seldom if ever get to see the rewrites. Each script gets a detailed report, but I very rarely get to find out how the writer received the good/bad/indifferent news, and what they did with it. Part of me dreads bumping into a budding writer one day and finding out that they bear a grudge (I'm a nice guy, really, and I only ever completely rubbished one script - it had it coming, by the way). So to see a revised script and to find (with immense joy and relief) that it's really cooking is great.
But, of course, that's a screenplay. Not quite as many words are there are in just my three sample chapters (let alone the full manuscript, if and when I get to write it all). It costs enough to get a detailed report on a TV or movie screenplay. To get as detailed a report on a full-length book MS must cost a bomb. Maybe two bombs.
This is one of the things that makes writing (when you're exploring a new field) such a trying passtime. How do you know whether what you're doing is any good or not? How do you judge the quality of the feedback you're getting? Where is the detailed advice you sometimes need so badly?
It's London Book Fair this week. Over the past five or six years it's been the non-fiction deals done at the LBF that have turned out to be successes. So I'm typing this with fingers crossed, which is hard work, I can tell you. But not as hard, I'd say, as writing in the dark.
No wonder I struggle sometimes. I mean, yes, a large canvas can be great fun, but when even your sample is longer than the longest script you ever expected to write, then you're into a new realm, really, where everything is bigger and more complicated.
This has just occurred to me again, because yesterday I read a screenplay. One of my sidelines is reading and reporting on scripts for film and TV. It's quite a responsibility (when you've received a few crits yourself you begin to realise just how much damage can be done by an inept or callous editor). And the one I read yesterday was actually the rewrite of one I read and reported on a few months ago.
And here's the good news. This revised draft is pretty darn good. It works. A lot of the stuff I didn't like in the earlier draft has either gone or been subsumed more successfully into the story. The characters are credible, the scenario believeable, and what has emerged is a really good domestic thriller with some great surprises - the last few pages were especially tense, and the whole thing built in pace and pressure brilliantly. Overall, a terrific result.
Now, all this was a thrill because I read a lot of scripts but I seldom if ever get to see the rewrites. Each script gets a detailed report, but I very rarely get to find out how the writer received the good/bad/indifferent news, and what they did with it. Part of me dreads bumping into a budding writer one day and finding out that they bear a grudge (I'm a nice guy, really, and I only ever completely rubbished one script - it had it coming, by the way). So to see a revised script and to find (with immense joy and relief) that it's really cooking is great.
But, of course, that's a screenplay. Not quite as many words are there are in just my three sample chapters (let alone the full manuscript, if and when I get to write it all). It costs enough to get a detailed report on a TV or movie screenplay. To get as detailed a report on a full-length book MS must cost a bomb. Maybe two bombs.
This is one of the things that makes writing (when you're exploring a new field) such a trying passtime. How do you know whether what you're doing is any good or not? How do you judge the quality of the feedback you're getting? Where is the detailed advice you sometimes need so badly?
It's London Book Fair this week. Over the past five or six years it's been the non-fiction deals done at the LBF that have turned out to be successes. So I'm typing this with fingers crossed, which is hard work, I can tell you. But not as hard, I'd say, as writing in the dark.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Keeping the Faith
I realised, after many years as a screenwriter, that writing is essentially an act of faith.
People talk about the 'magic' of cinema. When you think about it, though, there isn't a lot of real magic involved (and, with the advent of CGI, there's arguably even less). But where there is still magic - where something is made out of nothing, or where nothingness is given shape, form and life - is at the scriptwriting stage.
Anyone who can take 120 sheets of plain white A4 and turn it into a gripping and memorable story of fascinating characters in complex situations with some heartstopping moments is without doubt a magician.
And novelists - well, they just have more paper at their disposal (and don't have to worry about too many other departments wrecking their precious baby).
Magic, of course, requires various things if it is going to work. The main thing, I would argue, is faith. I mean, what's the point of setting out to achieve some magic if you don't believe it's going to work?
Which brings me to my current slough. I have started revising my opening chapters for Commanding Youth, my brilliant historical revelation of the real Arthur, who he was, where he fought and where he is buried. It's brilliant, I tell you.
Only, I haven't really worked on CY in well over a year. Back in March 2009 it squeaked into the top five on Authonomy. Two publishers had asked to see it. One of them told me back in September that a colleague of his was reading it and he'd have a firm response for me by the following week. Then, silence, and the occasional glimpse of tumbleweed.
I've spent most of my time in between working on my equally brilliant Will's Treason, the first three chapters of which went winging their way to my agent late last week. So maybe I'm a but bleeuuugghhh because I've been working so hard on that one and I'm waiting to find out whether my agent loves it or wants to get me sectioned.
Maybe it's harder to build up the necessary faith in order to work some magic if you've had a go at this trick a few too many times already. Maybe it's easier if you're tackling something fresh. But, I'll be honest, I feel like I'm struggling with putting the new Commanding Youth together. Okay, so it's early days, but how long, I wonder, before the faith returns ... The faith that this draft will be fantastic ... The faith that somebody out there is going to go nuts over it ... The faith that, one day, it'll be out there in paperback ... ?
Hard to work magic when your faith's not quite up to the challenge, don't you find?
People talk about the 'magic' of cinema. When you think about it, though, there isn't a lot of real magic involved (and, with the advent of CGI, there's arguably even less). But where there is still magic - where something is made out of nothing, or where nothingness is given shape, form and life - is at the scriptwriting stage.
Anyone who can take 120 sheets of plain white A4 and turn it into a gripping and memorable story of fascinating characters in complex situations with some heartstopping moments is without doubt a magician.
And novelists - well, they just have more paper at their disposal (and don't have to worry about too many other departments wrecking their precious baby).
Magic, of course, requires various things if it is going to work. The main thing, I would argue, is faith. I mean, what's the point of setting out to achieve some magic if you don't believe it's going to work?
Which brings me to my current slough. I have started revising my opening chapters for Commanding Youth, my brilliant historical revelation of the real Arthur, who he was, where he fought and where he is buried. It's brilliant, I tell you.
Only, I haven't really worked on CY in well over a year. Back in March 2009 it squeaked into the top five on Authonomy. Two publishers had asked to see it. One of them told me back in September that a colleague of his was reading it and he'd have a firm response for me by the following week. Then, silence, and the occasional glimpse of tumbleweed.
I've spent most of my time in between working on my equally brilliant Will's Treason, the first three chapters of which went winging their way to my agent late last week. So maybe I'm a but bleeuuugghhh because I've been working so hard on that one and I'm waiting to find out whether my agent loves it or wants to get me sectioned.
Maybe it's harder to build up the necessary faith in order to work some magic if you've had a go at this trick a few too many times already. Maybe it's easier if you're tackling something fresh. But, I'll be honest, I feel like I'm struggling with putting the new Commanding Youth together. Okay, so it's early days, but how long, I wonder, before the faith returns ... The faith that this draft will be fantastic ... The faith that somebody out there is going to go nuts over it ... The faith that, one day, it'll be out there in paperback ... ?
Hard to work magic when your faith's not quite up to the challenge, don't you find?
Friday, 9 April 2010
And ... relax
Okay, the deed is done. Yesterday afternoon I had one of my moments and pressed 'Send'.
Actually, it wasn't quite as random as that. Two months it's taken me to revise three opening chapters to Will's Treason (subtitle: 'Shakespeare and the Gunpowder Plot'), although the last week or so of that was mostly devoted to the 'proposal'.
What's a 'proposal', apart from something you do on bended knee? Well, it's like a sales pitch, or a business plan, for a TV treatment, or any of those things which really aren't all that important but people like to pretend they are. The worst is probably TV treatments (although I'm sure a lot of business plans ultimately caused the recent recession), because nobody reads them, they're a waste of time, they're not what we're good at and they end up crippling the writer's freedom and imagination.
And ... relax.
Anyway, after many a long dark night of the soul the three chapters, plus pitch, info, chapter outlines, tra-la-la, were done. Finished. Revised. Pored over. Checked.
So I asked people on Facebook whether I should send the 103-page project straight off to my agent. Some replied along the lines of, 'NO! God, no! By no means! Keep checking it!' Others were more like, 'YES! Send the damned thing NOW!' A few bets were hedged, i.e., 'Check it. Then send it. Or send it. Then check it. I dunno.'
I sent it. And I feel about a hundred pounds lighter. The sun is shining. A fine weekend is promised.
Only I've now got to start on the opening chapters and proposal for Commanding Youth (subtitle - I'm not sure, yet; currently it's something like 'Arthur and the Fall of Britain'. Suggestions on a postcard, please, to: stirlingsa@hotmail.co.uk) So the whole process starts again. And instead of trying to live my life in 16th century England for two months, I'll be heading back to the Dark Ages.
Forgive me if I only blog occasionally, for a while, at least, or until there's some news. Only we didn't have blogs in Manau Gododdin.
(Curses - forgot to mention a fantastic meeting of the Screenwriters' Forum in Birmingham last week. Great to meet up again with Natasha, Dan, Catherine, Simon ...)
Actually, it wasn't quite as random as that. Two months it's taken me to revise three opening chapters to Will's Treason (subtitle: 'Shakespeare and the Gunpowder Plot'), although the last week or so of that was mostly devoted to the 'proposal'.
What's a 'proposal', apart from something you do on bended knee? Well, it's like a sales pitch, or a business plan, for a TV treatment, or any of those things which really aren't all that important but people like to pretend they are. The worst is probably TV treatments (although I'm sure a lot of business plans ultimately caused the recent recession), because nobody reads them, they're a waste of time, they're not what we're good at and they end up crippling the writer's freedom and imagination.
And ... relax.
Anyway, after many a long dark night of the soul the three chapters, plus pitch, info, chapter outlines, tra-la-la, were done. Finished. Revised. Pored over. Checked.
So I asked people on Facebook whether I should send the 103-page project straight off to my agent. Some replied along the lines of, 'NO! God, no! By no means! Keep checking it!' Others were more like, 'YES! Send the damned thing NOW!' A few bets were hedged, i.e., 'Check it. Then send it. Or send it. Then check it. I dunno.'
I sent it. And I feel about a hundred pounds lighter. The sun is shining. A fine weekend is promised.
Only I've now got to start on the opening chapters and proposal for Commanding Youth (subtitle - I'm not sure, yet; currently it's something like 'Arthur and the Fall of Britain'. Suggestions on a postcard, please, to: stirlingsa@hotmail.co.uk) So the whole process starts again. And instead of trying to live my life in 16th century England for two months, I'll be heading back to the Dark Ages.
Forgive me if I only blog occasionally, for a while, at least, or until there's some news. Only we didn't have blogs in Manau Gododdin.
(Curses - forgot to mention a fantastic meeting of the Screenwriters' Forum in Birmingham last week. Great to meet up again with Natasha, Dan, Catherine, Simon ...)
Friday, 2 April 2010
The Night Shift
I'm working nights.
People often used to ask me, when I was a younger writer, 'Do you find working at night is more creative?' And I'd think, is there a sensible answer to that question?
Writing at night isn't more creative - how can it be, unless the Moon somehow influences us? (I believe the jury's still out on that one). It's just quieter.
How often does the phone ring at night? Or someone knock at the door? How often does a member of the family come home early, or start talking to you, in the middle of the night? How many heavy vehicles suddenly discover that they can't get up the lane in the wee small hours?
You can hardly make a sound yourself. The curtains are drawn (so you can pace up and down the room without looking to the outside world like some institutionalised animal or trainee serial killer), the TV is off (or, at least, the sound's turned right down). Everyone else has buggered off to bed. It's just you, your laptop, and your demons. Oh, and buckets of coffee.
I worked nights all last week and managed to revise my sample chapters. I haven't worked this hard on a project since some scripts I did for the BBC back in the late '90s. I wrote those at night, too.
Of course, you become strangely anti-social, divorced from the day-to-day world and a little too familiar with silence. We went en famille to the CSI exhibition in Birmingham's Bull Ring shopping centre today - a Good Friday treat - and I found walking into a busy city centre shopping mall a little like entering Dante's Inferno.
But hey, I've nearly finished the revisions to the Will's Treason proposal I began almost 2 months ago - phew!!! Getting a bit stressed out by the horrors of modern consumer culture is a small price to pay, innit?
People often used to ask me, when I was a younger writer, 'Do you find working at night is more creative?' And I'd think, is there a sensible answer to that question?
Writing at night isn't more creative - how can it be, unless the Moon somehow influences us? (I believe the jury's still out on that one). It's just quieter.
How often does the phone ring at night? Or someone knock at the door? How often does a member of the family come home early, or start talking to you, in the middle of the night? How many heavy vehicles suddenly discover that they can't get up the lane in the wee small hours?
You can hardly make a sound yourself. The curtains are drawn (so you can pace up and down the room without looking to the outside world like some institutionalised animal or trainee serial killer), the TV is off (or, at least, the sound's turned right down). Everyone else has buggered off to bed. It's just you, your laptop, and your demons. Oh, and buckets of coffee.
I worked nights all last week and managed to revise my sample chapters. I haven't worked this hard on a project since some scripts I did for the BBC back in the late '90s. I wrote those at night, too.
Of course, you become strangely anti-social, divorced from the day-to-day world and a little too familiar with silence. We went en famille to the CSI exhibition in Birmingham's Bull Ring shopping centre today - a Good Friday treat - and I found walking into a busy city centre shopping mall a little like entering Dante's Inferno.
But hey, I've nearly finished the revisions to the Will's Treason proposal I began almost 2 months ago - phew!!! Getting a bit stressed out by the horrors of modern consumer culture is a small price to pay, innit?
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