Write it all down

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My three 1980 notebooks

I am a great fan of notebooks. I have always kept what I call an Everything Book: just one journal that I carry everywhere with me in which I put everything: notes taken at meetings; ideas for stories;  word or line sketches of things that take my fancy; eavesdroppings; doodles (rather too many doodles, if truth be told).

Why an Everything Book? Well, I am an alphabetiser, an organiser, a categoriser. By recording everything in just one place, I save a lot of energy that would otherwise be wasted by deciding where to put it.… read more

Knickers off!

People have been reading proof copies of CUCKOO. People I don’t know, as well as people I do know.

In both instances it feels like taking my knickers off in public.

One of the most disconcerting readers is BigSon, who has been sitting beside me on planes etc these holidays with it glued to his face, stopping every now and then to tell me that he likes a passage. He seems to be steaming through it faster than he does most books (it took him about three months to read FREEDOM, and he still hasn’t finished it).… read more