AND SCURRYING AND . . . COLLAPSING!

Grrr! Just when you think you're on top of it all, along comes the spanner and drops straight into the works. Thursday night brought some horrid, shivery, fluey two-hot-water bottle bug that suddenly reminded me that you can still have malaria after getting back from India. (India? You can read about it on the "Awfully Big Blog Adventure"and more beside. Even though I have so much to do just now, it was a case of aching fingers quadruply-crossed under the duvet as I slowly recovered.

Only got up late today, but I have started re-reading Solutions for Novelists: Secrets of A Master Editor by Sol Stein. An excellent book - if such books help you with your work - that speaks about the secrets behind "readable" writing. Candy Gourlay, an exciting new children's writer, has even got Solutions as one of her blog sponsors - how,I ask?

Because if there's one thing I want, it is that my books will be easy to read. That's not easy as in boring reading schemes but as in books where the story is told in a clear, interesting, rhythmic and pacey way, with occasional words and phrases that surprise or delight or intrigue a young reader. A story that can't help but be un-put-downable.

Is that too much to ask? Maybe the fever's still got me . . .

LOPING AND SCURRYING

This morning I definitely feel true Gemini mode. I should be, and want to be, wrangling the plot of Tome Two into shape. There's something in it that keeps niggling me, and I can't work out what the problem is.

For that I need to have deep reflective energies - a slow but determined loping along, watching out for the ideas that come to me.

Instead - and annoyingly - I'm in scurrying mode. As I'm going down to London for some of next week, I'm trying to sort out train timetables, and arrange meetings, and work out how much time it takes to get from A to B. It has to be done now, because many publishing people aren't in their offices on Fridays, and next Monday is too late for any sensible planning.

I'll be scurrying for real next week, but my imagination is scurrying now: what to take, what to say, will I fit in the Dickens Museum in Doughty Street this time or not, who will I know at the Watts & Wayland Hay's Galleria party? None of this helps today's main thing. Get back to the basic plot wrangling, girl. Slow down, slow down. Start loping.

TIME WITH PATRICK & PETER

It's Saturday already. This Year Of Mouse blog's been sitting rather shamefully silent for almost a week. Where did the days go?

Part of the week was taken up with an initial meeting of an Active Learning Written and Spoken Word project at Morley Library where - despite the icy morning - teachers, librarians and a variety of writers spent a day together,

This first training day was brilliant. It was led by lecturer and storyteller Patrick Ryan, who I'd first heard years ago as one of the Company of Storytellers, and it was as good as I'd hoped. He mixed tales, riddles and story activities with theories of learning and the universality of narrative.

I was paired with a very nice young primary teacher, and we enjoyed chatting about what might work for the project's classroom visits. I feel much more excited - happily! - than I thought I'd be about this initiative and it was great to be working with other people again. As a "Book Week Visitor" I'm often out there in the school hall working alone. Good to mix with the other writers too. I'll tel you more as it happens.

So it wasn't until yesterday I had time to muse on the Mouse illustrations. They were drawn by Peter Bailey, and were just wonderful and dramatic, with the first image and the final image cleverly "bookending" one aspect of the plot.

I'd already seen Peter Bailey's work in the poet Tony Mitton's "Plum" anthology and in Philip Pullman's "I was a Rat" and welcomed the hint of Ardizzone in the dramatically "lit" black and white pen drawings. I spent a special afternoon looming through the nine pictures, and my responses are now waiting in an editorial in-box.

Spent today working on two short texts - one new, one a revision - for early reader books, hoping that the series editor and consultant will like one or other. Why not both? Because they rarely take two stories by the same author in one of the sets.

Meanwhile, it's back to working on Tome Two, struggling to get the storyline straightened out. . . Hope you're having a productive weekend too.

LOOKING BUT NOT LOOKING.

Today, in a pile of snow-belated post, came copies of the art work for Mouse: a group of black & white drawings that will go into the finished book.

I am quietly but wildly excited and have glimpsed the pictures. Though the editor had mentioned the book might have illustrations, I wasn't totally sure this would happen. I half expected to see the new version of the cover, but it wasn't. It was a set of seven full page illustrations.

Now the next bit may sound a bit odd and masochistic. Having previously opened up envelopes full of illustrated versions of my mostly early reader stories, I have developed a useful rule: do not on any account hurry to send off your comments. Take your time. At least a day or two. Get to know them.

So, once I've slipped the sheets out of their envelope, I look quickly through the images, noting that some I already love, and that some are not exactly as I saw the character or scene. Yet.

It takes time to become used to viewing ideas that have been in your head and heart for months suddenly re-interpreted by someone else. It's rather like the jolt I felt when I saw actors working on a script of mine, because they took the words and characters and re-made them as they saw them. Don't rush, Penny. Don't jump.

So the set of precious images is resting on top of my filing cabinet, like a kind of clever secret. I will certainly sneak in and look at them a couple more times tonight. Get to know them and wagt they are saying. Tomorrow I should be able to think calmly about them, and that's when it's time to think about replying.

Slowly.

USEFUL WORDS

The list is getting longer. Read all those articles about improving your website. Read that book about voice work. Prepare that storytelling workshop. Reply to those 25 lovely letters from two schools in Wales . . .

Ruffling through cuttings & cards from my last year's diary (the almost obsolete deskfax format)I came across a useful reminder for me, for writers everywhere, and maybe for other people too.

Here it is THE MAIN THING IS TO KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING.

In other words, whatever you do, make sure your writing time comes first. Just wish I'd noted down who said it.

Just off to join an online celebration. Here's wishing a Happy First Birthday to HELP! I NEED A PUBLISHER!, Nicola Morgan's great writing blog. Go search and have fun.

Then back to at least thirty minutes on the main thing.

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

Pitter, patter! Yes, here it comes, a little late and out of breath, making tiny prints in the snow. The Year of Mouse has arrived.

Hello! I'm a children's writer and this blog will be my story of the year of Mouse. Apart from facing the writing page daily, there are three things a writer needs. Determination, cussedness and patience. Especially patience.

Rather more than a year ago an editor fell in love - as she kindly said - with my manuscript. A Boy Called Mouse. (Actually more than one editor did, so that was a complicated time. Thank heaven for agents!)

Now if my life had been a fairy tale, or I was a celeb with a ghost writer at my elbow, my book might have been thrust into little fingers everywhere within three months. That's not how it happens.

That's when I learned that books fit seasons of the year. Think of those blue-sea-and-sky covers calling out to summer readers. Now Mouse isn't a bright and cheerful tale. It is dark and dramatic and slightly Dickensian. So no summer-time Mouse. On the other hand, the Mouse plot doesn't have much snow. Or Father Christmases. QED, Mouse must be an autumn book. 2009? I mumbled.

Er, no. Too tight a fit for all the pre-publication work, and the publishing schedule was already full. Plus there was a certain general slowing of world finance. And they wanted to make the book really special. So, sensibly, Mouse was moved to autumn. 2010! It seemed ages away back then. See what I mean about patience?

But now 2010 has come. How do I deal with it? How am I supposed to manage this year? How do I do this? Do I have to become some kind of Mouse publicity person, or sit gladly in authorial seclusion, eating chocolates, while my helpful publishers do it all for me? Annd how will I fit in all things Mouse-ish with my usual line of work: early readers, oddments for anthologies, school & library visits and so on. How does one actually start to tell other people about one's wonderful new novel? "I can't help noticing that you've also got Weetabix in your trolley. By the way, If you are looking for a terrific new book for your kids . . ." etc etc.

Even worse, how do I keep my mind on the draft of my next novel, known as Tome Two, which is scaring me no end (and not in a good way) when my mind goes into a flutter whenever I think of the Mouse book actually arriving at some future date?

Follow this blog and discover what it's really like being a children's author. Just you and me, okay? And Mouse. Pitter, patter, pitter, patter.