Under
normal circumstances I know what I am going to write about for the
Friday blog by Thursday evening at the latest. Indeed, in many cases
The blog itself is written on the Thursday.
Then
we have the exceptions: the days when I just have to hope that
something will come to me early on Friday. The fact remains that for
the last four years or so, I have found something to talk about in
time – but not this week. This week I am suffering from writer’s
block – that terrifying time when no matter what you do your brain
remains a stubborn blank.
I
am often asked how to cope with writer’s block (although I really
don’t know why people think I know the answer. I always say that I
am a firm believer in ‘hitting the keys’. It doesn’t matter
what you write so long as you hit the keys and the odds are that,
sooner or later, you will find that what you are writing is beginning
to generate the ideas you so desperately seek. Then you can delete
everything that doesn’t matter and away you go. Anyway, that’s
what I am doing now.
I
would like to be able to report that as a result of hitting the keys
I have come up with something really fascinating to talk about but
that simply isn’t true today so I will just tell you what little
news there is.
Marcia’s
copies of the books arrived from Transworld the day before yesterday
and so the sitting room has, once again, been turned into a temporary
warehouse. Marcia gives one each to her son and her sisters but if you
give books away locally you are undermining the book shops who are
finding survival at the moment pretty difficult. When the books are a
few years old, we give any that still have to one of hospices who
have charity shops.
Meanwhile
everyone is busy working out the logistics for the signings this
year. It all happens bang smack in the middle of the holiday season
when the roads in the south west are bursting with visitors and, more
to the point, so are the car parks. Then matters are complicated
because Marcia doesn’t want me left alone for any longer than I
must be. However, the fact remains that if you want to be able to
guarantee a parking lot in Tavistock on a summer’s Saturday
morning, you will be there before 9.45 – even though the signing
does not begin until 11 – and there is no point in arriving only to
find there is just no where to leave the car. The trouble is that you
then have to take a decision: join the queue at one the large car
parks and hope that you will find a spot in time or trawl around the
smaller ones hoping that you will be lucky and someone will pull out
at the right moment. This is not the sort of stress Marcia wants just
before a signing!
Before
I wind up this miserable blog, may I say a big thank you to all of
you who leave comments in the blog or who send in emails. Your
support has been tremendous and I am very lucky to have it. Please
don’t stop just yet.
