under another sun

Little paper pieces A new technique inspired by something in the Guardian at the weekend. Write all your tasks and worries on tiny pieces of torn paper, select today's ones to be dealt with, and bin the rest. Not sure if it made any difference, but I did all the ones I hadn't thrown away. This meant more Skelton manuscripts off to agents -- I am persisting in this but am beginning to think that traditional routes to market are futile. Many agents are not considering new clients at this time, and just to be one of many envelopes slewing through their portals is not the right way to go about things, even if what they contain is wonderfully written and presented. Also have been reading articles by at least one agent who talks about how traditional publishing is dead in the water. I have some good ideas now about alternative approaches to readers. And on this note I am going into a local school next month to do a show and tell about Skelton, which will prove educational for me, and...

No place like it Home today: sadly the place looked like a bomb had hit it. Oh the constantly depressing absence of servants. Calliope thoughtfully woke me at 6:30, so had an early start, tidying up, laundry, shopping, paying bills (prompted a text from Southern Water on my mobile phone about taking further action) paying my glamorous accountant etc. Calliope content having been given frozen prawns, which seems to be the only food she actually likes. Met Klaudia and Oskar's Godmother Anna while zooming about. Anton says that makes her my Godwife but surely this is wrong. Her little daughter India looks really cute. Anna's mum had been taken ill last week, but seems to be recovering excellently, and she was going home to Bristol see her tonight. Anna said that after she heard the news she stuttered for four days. Bought a new kettle. My expensive kettle simply stopped working. But at least it didn't suffer the same fate as its electric predecessor: being melted on the hob...

Not such a pain Up to London to work at my old agency. My adage of ending well, standing me in good stead here. And I find myself doing some concepting work on neuropathic pain, which is pain without an obvious cause. Working with a freelance art director called Sean who lives in Birmingham. Quite a bit of snickering over concepts, and we got on pretty well. A pleasant enough day. Bumped briefly into Matty boy, worked through lunch with Sean. Feeling excited about the prospect of my poems being set to music by Matt the composer. Be fascinated to see how this new project pans out. Couldn't wait to get home, however. Listening to Robert Graves Goodbye to all that on the train, about his experiences in the trenches: a first hand account of how unbelievably stupid and badly organised the whole business was. Home to a clingy Calliope who after much purring and so on, went into bad behavior mode, crawling into all the bad places such as the cupboard under the aquarium, and doing all...

Friday fun At last a decent and uniterrupted day of work on Skeleton Yawngrave. After a week or so I had finally got to the end of sorting out a horribly thorny chapter (chapter thirteen, funnily enough, which is called unlucky for some). Listening to Sol Stein Stein on Writing on my iPod. Interesting, no nonsense advice from a very famous US editor. Good to hear his advice and many examples on good openings of novels. As I remembered it, the opening to Skelton Yawngrave seems to meets his criteria, but I will have to check again though. Up to London this evening for Barry's retirement drink. He was an ex-colleague who'd worked in my old agency. For me the evening was a who's who of past agency colleagues, many of whom it was excellent to see. First Matie and Matty were there, Marcella, Imogen, Fraser and Jez and his wife Anna, Yuk and Diane - who got married six weeks ago - Bob Nash, Maria, Mick Egg, Pete Blake, Theo Pike, Robbie and Bee to name but a few. There was also...

Short fuse Another day in my old agency - speeding about working on scraps of urgent stuff, with two art directors I'd never been partnered with before: Bee and Lana. Feeling slightly out of control with lots to do. Lots of stress about the place - but I managed to maintain a reasonably good equilibrium. Train draggy and late getting home. Home to rejections for my pamphlet project: one company has restricted its list to books of quotations, and the other already has a publication lined up specifically for Valentine's day. Good to get fast feedback though, and can send them off again as soon as I get a minute. The evening, however, much better. I met up with new literary pal Alison and went to a short story event in the Komedia appropriately called (considering the day I'd had) Short Fuse. Six stories, and all but one read by the writer. A high standard and a wide variety of material. Enjoying the unusual ideas that popped up, such as reading Homer to your cat. And a brilli...