THE STEPHEN KING THING

How does he do it? How does Stephen King manage to get to the end of his writing day, shake off the horrors he's created and go pleasantly among his friends and family? Does he laugh cheerfully as he tucks into the contents of his stewpot? Does he feel peaceful when walking beside a lake? And does he go to bed without checking inside under the bed and in every wardrobe?

How do such writers move from one horrific scene to another and still gather merrily at the fireside without severe drink taken? Or do they take the dog for long, long walks of an evening? Must go back to his great book On Writing and read for some reassurance.

Sometimes - like just now- it's stupidly hard living with and through a story you care about. The feelings that you're writing tend to stick around a bit, a looming shadow of angst, even though it's all "made up stuff". Guess it's all that drawing from the deep well.

I've recently been battling with an anguished section of Tome Two when all may be lost for my young protagonists. So yesterday, when Lad Home Here suddenly appeared in my workroom to ask a small but important question, I was almostready to leap at his throat. I think I did not speak to him at all kindly. Luckily, he understands. He says.

However, when I'd finished for the day, I still had to stay hidden, pottering with wretched admin, while my heart beat went back to normal and my adrenaline calmed. Is this a healthy state? Writing can feel like a very Jekyll & Hyde type existence.

Even Roald Dahl makes me wonder. How did he feel after writing about that disgusting beard in The Twits? Did he scoff his afternoon tea of scones with cream and jam without any single qualm in the stomach area?

MENDED . . OR NOT?

A most satisfactory morning, as I did find my writing-not-admin head once more, and managed to mend those last minute edits. Sent my corrections off before lunch, and heard this afternoon from my hard-working editor that the Boy Called Mouse manuscript has now Gone To Production. Sounds rather grand. Should I look out my mink wrap and sit on the chaise longue sipping pink champagne now?

The email problem continues though. Great Author sent back a brief email to say that a simple message without attachments had reached him. So swiflty I re-sent the original, and . . . silence! Oh dear!

Spent the afternoon happily working on with my revision of Tome Two - at least what I've done on it so far - until I reached that painful point where new plot meets old plot with a loud crunching sound. Back to a few hours of Big Thinking. Without champagne.

I'M LATE! I'M LATE!

Feeling like the White Rabbit here. So little time, so much that seems to be still undone. Have been whizzing about for the last week or so, opening a school library, going on an arts course, visiting a school miles away, having people to stay - both big and small - and doing assorted admin in between, though not enough of it.

And now this! Over the last while, I've been putting together a Book Quiz for an imminent local schools event. (No, not the KidsLitQuiz.) Today was going to be my last day on it. I gave the wording a final check, both questions and answers, which included taking out a favourite question because I wasn't totally sure the answer was in the text as well as in the film, and of course that particular book had run away and hidden itself, as they do! Yep, I checked that the grammar was as simple and clear as possible, the answers straighforward, everything nice and tidy. Ta-da!

I had actually ended up doing this final five minutes of tidying up for most of the day, so imagine my huge relief as I sent the quiz-carrying email off to the Great Author & Designated Questionmaster.

Groan! Before I had even reached for the big thick pencil to make big thick marks on my shortened To Do List, the wretched email bounced back. It seems that Great Author's email address no longer exists, not in that form. So back on my shelf the task goes, quivering and unfinished, the To Do List as smug and as full of itself as ever.

Even sadder, I have heard that A BOY CALLED MOUSE is unfinished too. My excellent editor has found that the proofs need a few last tweaks so the text sits happily on all the pages. Time to get my own editing hat on again. Hope I can work out all the answers this time.

STEPPING BACK IN TIME

Shopping malls and modern architecture just don't make my typing fingers itch. I prefer musing on old atmospheric places and about things that might have happened in the past. These plots have a special advantage in that my child characters don't have to go to school.

Last week I was in London, meeting my agent and a couple of publishers, but did some indulging in settings. I almost wore my feet out striding to the Dickens House Museum in Doughty Street on Thursday's cold wet afternoon. The small poorly-lit rooms held displays about Dickens life, manuscripts and publications among oddments of Dickensian furniture. It was not the most astonishing experience, but I did enjoy the original basement kitchen windows from which Dicken's idler servants could gaze up at the various feet passing along the pavement, even though the room is now a library. I also liked the reconstructed period washroom, and the waste-paper basket overflowing with faux crumpled drafts. Small sights that help the writing mind to do its own time-travelling. I also came away with an 1843 London map, showing the size of the city at that time, the northern fringes then edged by Regents Park Cannal.

Monday brought another step back in time when I led a Storytelling Training Day at the Workhouse you can see above, at Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Great people and great stories! But the style of the architecture - separate yards for each category of male and female inhabitant, the outdoor privies, many windows a little too high to see the world outside, painted brick and plaster walls - all reminded me of the dour four-storied school I once attended, and that you can still find in thankfully modified use today.

You see, the past lives on longer than one thinks.