Doctors and witches

Well, it's festival time again. Once again I'm reading at the The Didsbury Arts Festival - this time from the reissued The Birth Machine (which wasn't out and available by the time of the festival last year) - and holding a discussion about the issues. I did think of talking about the difference between the two versions of the book (as discussed in the Author's Note which can be read here), but decided that, in a festival of general arts, people would be more interested in the issues the book tackles than such more literary matters, but of course I'll talk about it if it comes up and people are interested.

So I've just spent the morning distributing the above poster and leaflets. Once again it's funny to be out and about at the shops and cafes in mid-morning rather than at my desk (or, if I'm in Wales, high up a wild mountain). I saw a friend I hadn't seen for years - a fellow attendee at the old Waterstone's readings - and stood talking for about half an hour to another (the leafleting took me ages!) who told me several stories that I couldn't help finding inspiration. It really made me think about the paradox of the writers' life: of how, shut away on long projects with your writing, you are also shut away from the very things that feed it. Plus: could I have done that, spent the morning trawling from venue to venue with my publicity if I were teaching full-time? Of course not. Could I have done it if I had been immersed in a writing project or on a deadline? No way: I probably wouldn't have had the headspace, leave alone the time. As I say, the paradoxes of the writer's life...

Adrenalin is what you need

It's a funny thing, talking about your work on the radio. The first time I went on Andrew Edwards' ALL FM Artbeat programme was when I was producing my play The Processing Room for the 24:7 Theatre Festival. Rachael Carnegie, who played my celestial nurse, and I went on and read a jokey little advert for the play I'd written. It went fine - Andrew seemed to think so - though hearing it back afterwards I thought I sounded a bit too arch, and I guess that was a problem with the thing having been scripted (Rachael, the professional actor, was great: she sounded really natural). Then last autumn Andrew invited me to go and talk about Too Many Magpies which had just come out, and I think the interview went well (you can hear it here).

Both those times I had that edge of nervousness that comes from being about to be publicly on show in a situation which is basically unknown to you, especially the second time, when I didn't know what questions I'd be asked. This November, when Andrew invited me in to talk about The Birth Machine, I went along with a different attitude: by now I was familiar with the converted house on the corner in Levenshulme with its higgledy little backroom, and with the people who were just coming off the previous show. And I had met Andrew on a more social occasion in the meantime, so I felt I was beginning to know him. I relaxed.

And what happened? I opened my mouth to answer Andrew's first question, and I hesitated, just the way you often hesitate when someone asks you a question in the pub, thinking it through, weighing up the possible answers. Ridiculous, because if anything I have marshalled what I need to say about The Birth Machine better, probably, than I have done with any piece of work previously (as I've got more experienced at promotion). Realising what was happening, and how it must sound, I panicked, the adrenalin kicked in, and as a result I got into my stride. Mad, eh? Seems nervousness is what you need to sound not nervous on radio. Or maybe sounding good on radio is just a very special art, and my admiration goes out to those who do it professionally.... (The Birth Machine interview here: it starts about a third of the way into the podcast.)

How (not?) to have a London launch (if you don't even live there)

First, you will have had one already, the previous year, for a different book, which was successful. For the current book you will have already had one in Manchester which was packed out, and where you sold all of the books the bookshop ordered, and more besides. This will give you confidence - although you are very aware of the unpredictability of these things, so maybe you are not so confident after all. Gird up your loins, though. First of all, be prepared to SPEND MONEY. This may seem to you crazy, ie to wipe out any profit on the books, and far more besides, before you begin, but remember: the point of the exercise is not so much to make money - something which is nowadays pretty much beside the point unless your initials are DB, eg - but to SPREAD WORD ABOUT THE BOOK. Book your return train journey. Book a hotel. Ask the bookshop to order in wine and nibbles, which you will pay for.

Begin inviting people. Start a month beforehand, in order to give plenty of notice. Send personal invitations to the following people: your personal friends and relatives who live within travelling distance of central London (this is not many), your writer and publisher friends: the two or three you have known for years, the ones you have met more recently via blogging and Facebook or on a writing course you went on once, and the several writers you know through currently having the same publisher, as well as the one or two you once published in a short-story magazine and with whom you are still in touch - altogether a good number. Be brave enough also to ask two very well-known writers you have also had dealings with in the last year or so, and don't forget your ex- but very nice agent who sold the book (which is a reissue) the first time round, and is thus part of its publishing history. Since the subject of the book is of particular interest to women (though not exclusively), contact a long list of London women's groups, and, since it has been studied on university courses contact a slightly shorter list of relevant London-based academics. And while you're at it, although it seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel (but then the object of the exercise is spreading word about the book), contact a ginormous list of London-based reading groups. Get the event on Time Out listings.

All of this will take you several mornings and afternoons glued to the computer (you will need to reply to responses, remember). You will long ago have suspended work on your novel-in-progress or given up, for the present, any idea of writing .

A fortnight before the event, set up a Facebook event. Luckily, your publisher sets one up for you as well, because he has so many more Facebook friends.

What happens? Half of your very small number of relatives say they can't make it (you don't even invite your miles-from-London relatives as they would never travel). In spite of your having invited them so early, many of your writer friends write back to say that they too are already committed that evening - mostly to teaching: it seems that most creative writing tuition takes place on Wednesday evenings! Still, some say they'll come, but, frankly, you are counting on the fingers of two people's hands, and not using all of those fingers, either.

Your old agent sends you a very nice email to say that he, too, is already committed that evening, as do your old writing friends, one of whom will be embarked that night on an American tour. Neither of the famous writers with whom you are newly acquainted replies. Squash the horrible feeling that they are laughing up their sleeves at the thought of going to your launch, and remind yourself that they are probably extremely busy. About twenty people say on your publisher's Facebook event that they'll come (hardly any say so on yours), but you know that it's just so easy to click a button to look willing, and it doesn't really guarantee that any of them will come, and one of them lives in Colombia, you notice...

By now you are panicking. Your close friends and relatives tell you that it'll be all right, people always turn up, but you are not so sure. You stop sleeping properly at night. But then, you tell yourself, there are those 15 or so people who have said they're coming. And then there are those who haven't replied: maybe they'll come in the end... Though your gut feeling is that, actually, it means the opposite.

In the days coming up to the event, you spend time Facebooking and Tweeting the event, even though you are worried about breaking the code and being just too damn self-promotional and possibly therefore counterproductive. Also you write again to those who haven't replied, just in case they have forgotten all about it because you invited them so early - squashing the worry that they will just feel hassled, which will put them right off you and your book. Some of them do write back this time, to confirm your worst fears. Then several of the people who have said they're coming write to say that now they can't. The number of definites is dwindling.

But then you get a positive response from the University of East London who will circulate details, and from representatives of three of the women's groups who say they are sure their members will be interested. And to your delight, Beverley Beech, Chair of AIMS (the Association for the Improvement of Maternity Services) writes to say she'd love to come.

You pack up your bags. Should you take some books? In Manchester the bookshop sold out, as did the bookshop at your last London launch, and on both occasions you ended up selling extra books out of your bag. It seems ridiculous this time. But then you never know: what if crowds of people off those mailing lists - and the bookshop's mailing list, and the Time Out listing - turned up? Every writer has to be prepared... So you do, you take a bag full of books as well as your other bags, and lug it on the train and the tube and up the steps of your hotel. As you are hauling it through your hotel room doorway the handle comes off, and on the way to the launch you have to buy another, and since this time you think you'd better get a stronger one, that's £50 added to the cost of the launch...

You're a little early, so you retire to Starbucks opposite the bookshop and transfer the books from your knackered bag into your new one. While you're sitting down, you look at your email. One of the writers you are expecting is not going to make it after all, as her babysitter has not turned up.

In the bookshop (Blackwell) the very nice Marcus has gone to a lot of trouble getting in the wine and nibbles and thoughtfully setting up for you in the medical section, most apt for the subject of the novel. Your heart is sinking at the thought that you will not make his efforts worthwhile.

This is what happens in the end: a few of the people who said they would come fail to do so, but a few others who said they couldn't, or didn't even reply, turn up out of the blue. Your lovely publisher comes (all the way from Cambridge in the freezing cold, her hands like ice), which makes all the difference, of course. And some of your oldest friends are there, including those who supported you all those years ago during the fraught history of the book. Although not a single other person from those mailing lists (or the events listing) is there, Beverley Beech comes, and is at the centre of intense discussions about the issues both before and after the reading. She tells you, both privately and openly during the reading, that the book is extremely current because the situation it deals with - that of the over-control of the obstetric profession - has got worse in the years since the first edition was published.

It's a small gathering, but it's a keen and involved one, and you are most surprised when at the end of the evening Marcus tells you that he is pleased with the number of books sold.

You even sell one copy out of your bag, because a dear writing friend arrives too late (and out of breath) to buy one from the shop!

And you are just arriving back at your hotel when your phone goes, and your son whose birth inspired the novel wants to know if you're all right, and you are all right, but so relieved of all the tension that you burst into tears...

(Pics here.)

*Crossposted to Fictionbitch

Lull

Well, I am utterly EXHAUSTED - and that's before I do the actual launches and readings.

As you can see from my (very personalized) flow chart above and the stuff now crossed out, since 1st October I have been working flat out on the launch of The Birth Machine reissue. Crossed out and done are the giveaway, poster-making and delivering, invitation-making for two launches (designing and distributing leaflets, facebook messaging and much, much endless emailing), press releases to local papers, contacting of listings publications, visits to bookshops with advance information of the publication and liaising with the bookshops holding the launches. Meanwhile I managed to do just one other thing: read Sue Guiney's fascinating new novel A Clash of Innocents and host her blog tour. You will see from the chart that I failed to do any of my other scheduled reading (or any other reading at all): I didn't get the book read for my reading group, and I still haven't got further than the first chapter of Kate Pullinger's Mistress of Nothing, which I'm reviewing for Eco-Libris's Green Book day on 10th November - the very same day as my London launch: I hope I manage that manoeuvre; I've been so preoccupied I got the date wrong and only belatedly discovered the clash!

But on Wednesday this week I came to a point where there wasn't all that much more I could do for the moment (at least not that I'd thought of), and for the first time I relaxed. On Wednesday night I slept right through for the first time in ages, and lo and behold I woke in the morning with the start of a migraine - the usual symptom for me of relaxation after stress. Not that in fact there weren't still things to do. There was a question mark over books getting from the distributors to Waterstone's Deansgate via the 'hub' in time for the launch next Wednesday, which needed to be sorted out, though my lovely publisher Jen came to my rescue and fixed it. And then there were the trains and hotels to book for my few days' trip away - and god, doesn't that take time - and isn't it confusing: I ended up paying £20 more for one leg of a journey than I discovered later I'd have done if I'd booked in a slightly different way! That trip will be exciting, though: it will include not just my own London launch but a visit to Brighton to see my good friend and fellow Salt author Vanessa Gebbie and celebrate the publication of her wonderful-looking new collection, Storm Warning.

But you know, I don't even think it's just the work that's tiring - I know from experience that it's not, as I've done it for others. It's just so damned emotionally draining, I find, pushing your own work. But maybe that's just me. I blame the parents...

A fate to avoid

I was out on a walk on Sunday afternoon and came across this which really struck me. It's kind of what I'm hoping doesn't happen to my WIP while I'm working with my publisher on the launch of The Birth Machine!

Progress report...

Well, to be frank, I'm struggling at the moment in my bid to keep on with my WIP now that the publication of The Birth Machine is hotting up.

These are the things I'm now engaged on:

Alerting people to the launches, one in Manchester and one in London (details in sidebar). This involves designing invites and leaflets and printing them out, inviting people by post and email, making Facebook events etc. Designing posters for the Manchester launch and spending time taking them around.

Spending time visiting bookshops with advance details of the publication.

Alerting interested academics to the imminent publication.

Writing and sending out press releases about the launches, and contacting listings with the info.

Designing postcards for more general publicity about the book and deciding whether to have them professionally printed.

Oh, and meanwhile I'm running my giveaway.

Maybe it doesn't sound as much as it actually is, but for one thing the emailing is taking ages, and for another my creative focus is now badly affected. Yesterday morning, after logging on to Facebook and Twitter to remind people about my giveaway - only a few minute's work, but needless to say I ended up getting involved in other people's tweets and status updates - I sat down to work, ostensibly for three hours, on the new novel. But they weren't productive. All that other stuff was crowding my head and the greatest part of my psychic energy went into suppressing it. And the words just wouldn't flow the way they have been doing and I kept getting stuck: basically, I was just no longer in the psychic space of the novel.

On Sunday night I attended the Jonathan Franzen conversation and reading at the Whitworth Gallery, and meant to post about it yesterday on my Fictionbitch blog. It was out of the question. After lunch I spent a couple of hours on emails before taking invites to the post, calling off at the library with information about the publication, visiting the printer to cost out postcards, and then came back and carried on emailing before supper and after supper started again. I ended up emailing until gone midnight, by which time I was so hyped up I didn't sleep well.

I'm about to log off now and try and write. Wish me luck!

A cost of publicity

Flow charts, schmo charts. Today was meant to be a really good writing day according my chart - Didsbury Arts Festival reading over, no publicity work to do. Huh. When I woke up this morning the adrenalin was still flowing, and I found it impossible to settle back into the novel, and then at lunchtime I crashed and have since felt exhausted. Just one of those subtle ways in which publicity efforts disrupt the actual writing....

Going with the flow

Think the flow chart may be working after all.

I had a very productive morning's work yesterday, and then, because, according to the flow chart, I had only one small thing to do for publicity the same day (the publicity blurb for Deansgate Waterstone's who are hosting the official Manchester launch for the reissue of The Birth Machine - see sidebar), I was able to take the afternoon off with a completely free conscience, and I properly relaxed for once. Previously, I think, I'd have felt compelled to get on with some of the many other publicity tasks ahead of me, as I'd have thought of them as piling up not yet done, rather than knowing that each one has its thought-out appointed time for completion. Either that, or I'd have forced myself to take time off but would have spent it worrying about the jobs not being done and failed to relax properly.

The really great thing about a flow chart is that it makes plain that there really is free time, and that you can take it in the knowledge that there will still be time to get everything done, and as a result you can relax properly when you do.

And I slept right through last night...

It's mad, really, that I haven't done this before, especially when one of my jobs once as a teacher was helping children to plan their study schedules...

Had a slightly curtailed writing morning today, though, as I went to distribute some posters for my Didsbury Arts Festival reading. Seems daft, I know, to take up writing time doing something I could wander around doing any other time, but I'm told the Library do their notice board once a week, on a Monday morning, so I had to get in there early today if I wanted my poster to be up the full fortnight. And Monday morning's really the best time of the week to go round the shops with posters, when the shopkeepers are just sitting there waiting for the week's custom to start, and happy to have any diversion.

So yesterday I'd say it was 5 to writing, 1 to publicity, and today 2 to writing and 5 to publicity (since I'm about to go out and do some more distribution).
Working out fine so far, on average.

Trying to keep the balls in the air (and the knots out of the stomach)

Well, that's not worked out perfectly so far: last night I woke up with the realization that I'd left something off the flowchart that was meant to save me sleepless nights thinking about all I had to do for publicity and trying to remember it. And I couldn't get back to sleep...!

Sue Guiney, who has a new novel coming out this month with new independent Ward Wood, has said on my Fictionbitch blog that she is planning to take a whole year off writing in order to promote the book, A Clash of Innocents, and maybe that's the only sensible way to go. But having done no really solid and sustained writing between the publication of my story collection Balancing on the Edge of the World in October 2007 and April this year when I got down to work in earnest on my novel in progress (with the publication of Too Many Magpies in between last autumn), I've decided that I really can't afford to stop altogether for the reissue of The Birth Machine next month. For one thing, if I did, I'm sure I'd lose the thread of the current novel. If at all possible I'm going to try and keep going while simultaneously working hard on the publicity.

So how's it going, you may wonder? Well, yesterday and today I managed two solid mornings of work on the novel from nine in the morning till one-thirty, and later yesterday I fulfilled the requirements of my flowchart by designing posters for my Didsbury Arts Festival reading and talk on 27th September and creating a Facebook event for it. (Today I'll have spent a good chunk of the afternoon getting back to blogging.) Can't say, though, that yesterday was easy. Although it's true that I'm at a tricky point in the novel, where I'm juggling several threads (and trying to make it look seamless and simple), I can't help feeling that the peace of my Wales retreat, where the connections and sequences seemed just to present themselves to me, would have been more conducive, and that there I'd have had to wrestle with it all less hard. And it's a point in the novel where I'm alternating between two different time levels and different psychic states for a character (while again trying to make it seamless) so it's taking a lot of mental and emotional energy.

And then, quite honestly, after a morning of doing that, I could hardly face sitting at the computer and designing the posters, a job that in other circumstances I can really enjoy, and I really had to force myself to do it. And I'm not sure I had the proper concentration. I thought I'd finished, and, in a hurry to get the job over with, I printed them out before realizing I'd left out some vital information, and will have to print them again...

By then, 4.30, I'd really had enough of the computer and just couldn't get my head around any more publicity collation and blurb, and anyway we needed food for the evening meal, and I'd promised myself a proper break and some exercise (because in the last couple of years glued to the computer I've got so unfit), so out I went shopping and walking. When I got back, I felt refreshed and was keen to get creating my Facebook event, but by the time I'd done that (and had a stupid problem loading up the image) it was 8.00, and we still had the evening meal to prepare and eat, and I still hadn't been on Twitter properly, as I'd intended. Just as I thought I'd finished, a nice email came through from Waterstone's Deansgate about my official Manchester launch for the reissue on 27th October, asking for some publicity blurb, which I really appreciate.

Meanwhile all the time at the moment there's the great mound of washing, including bedding, which we brought back after several weeks in Wales without a washing machine, into which I have to keep trying to make inroads. As for reading, that's confined to half an hour in bed at night: in Wales I finally began reading properly Jenn Ashworth's A Kind of Intimacy, and was really enjoying it, but have had to abandon it for the moment for the book we'll discuss in the reading group next Thursday. This once-voracious reader is now getting about 10 pages read a night...

We don't go out much nowadays, and I guess it's no surprise. And I'll probably forever regret confessing this, but quite frankly when there's so little time in the day, showering and washing your hair begins to seem like an expenditure of time you simply can't afford...!

The glamorous life of a writer, eh?

Well, maybe I'll get on top of it all. After all, I know I'm luckier than a lot of other writers, who have 9-5 jobs and young children or other caring responsibilities...

The real life of readings and the reality of fiction

I really enjoyed the reading at Manchester Central Library on Wednesday (pics here). Of course I had my usual panic beforehand: would enough people turn up to make it worth the time and trouble of Libby Tempest, our lovely library host? As usual she had done masses of publicity (thank you, Libby!) and of course the library had designed one of their super posters - a copy of which I got to take home with me afterwards - but you know, you always worry: are you going to be the turn that doesn't attract the punters in spite of it all? And there was a very sticky moment when, at five to six, with only five minutes to go, there was still only a handful of people there and a call came through from my fellow reader Robert Graham to say he was stuck in traffic three miles off and probably not going to make it in time. Yet somehow he managed to be in the room at five past, by which time it had miraculously filled! And thank goodness, he had the box of red wine he had promised to bring, a great relief to the two guys who had found my choice of white pretty dire (for which I do apologize!). (See, you can't just sit at a desk, you have to be an events organizer and know about ruddy wine!).

Anyway, the reading seemed to go really well. I had promised to read something I hadn't read before as well as an extract from Too Many Magpies, as I knew some people were coming who had been to previous readings. A quick scan of the audience made me plump for 'Holding Hands', a story from Balancing I've never read in Manchester before, about the power balance between two sisters growing up and then at the point when their father dies. There was a great audience, with lots of interesting questions, and playwright Debbie Freeman commented that the work that Robert and I read out seemed pretty personal. She added quickly that she wasn't saying that it was autobiographical, or asking it if was, but went on to ask how we deal with making real-life experience objective enough for fiction (a subject I address of course in my contribution to Salt's guide to the art of the short story Short Circuit), and quite a good short discussion followed about the concept of autobiographical fiction.

Well, I'm not saying anything about that particular story - my usual policy - but I will say this: when I got home I had a very strange frisson when I realized something that, preoccupied with the reading, I had forgotten: that that evening was the very anniversary of the evening my father died...

Another printing and another reading

Well, Salt have now done a second printing of Too Many Magpies, and that's a lovely feeling. It had to be done in such a rush, though, that there wasn't a chance to sort out the typos I'd found. Never mind: when I told my sister she said, 'What are you talking about?' (in her inimitable what's-she-on-about-now manner). 'What typos? I never saw any!' (As if there couldn't be any then!)

I'm having a bit of difficulty settling down again after all the rushing around and promotion, but actually feeling excited at the thought of eventually doing so, and getting back to writing. Yesterday morning I was out delivering leaflets again for the next reading, and I really liked it - it even felt exciting, being out at that time of day in Didsbury, even in the pouring rain, since normally when I'm home I make myself stay at my desk until 1.30 pm. Like being let out of school. Pathetic, I know. Maybe I should try and lead a less monotonous day-to-day life...

The reading is next Wednesday, 2nd December, and I'm reading with fellow Salt author Robert Graham (The Only Living Boy) at Manchester Central Library, 6 pm. I never had a proper Manchester launch for Magpies in the end: I've done so many readings here, it seemed excessive. But my launch in London last week made me realize that it's good to have proper celebration of a book, so we're going to take wine and make the event next Wednesday a bit of a Christmassy celebration of the publication of our books.

More marketing hiccups

Yesterday morning I had to go down to West Didsbury, and since that's where our Didsbury Arts Festival event is happening on 26th, I took more posters and managed also to get some leaflets placed. (So good for your health, this writing - all that walking!) And then what happens? I get back from trumpeting it about the place that Too Many Magpies will be 'hot off the press' at the reading, and Cath has forwarded me an email from Morten's bookshop, who are providing our bookstall, saying that they have discovered that the book won't be available after all in time for the festival!

Eek. I'm investigating, but I may have to alter my reading plans slightly...

Anyway, I'm having a nice quiet period at the desk this morning, looking at my proofs for a chapter I've contributed to Short Circuit: A Salt Guide to Writing the Short Story, edited by Vanessa Gebbie and due out soon.

Red letter day

Red letter day today.

First, I have a lovely review of Balancing on the Edge of the World from Jim Murdoch on his 'Truth About Lies' blog. It's a really long, detailed review, considering seriously his own reactions to the book and the individual stories - why he remembered some better than others, for instance - and looking in depth at the literary and thematic issues, yet written in a lovely unaffected, personal style. Jim takes the trouble, too, to relate all this to my own comments about the stories in my virtual book tour, Around the Edges of the World, and other web interviews. This is the kind of review that really touches me: serious yet very personal. You know your book has been given proper literary attention, and yet also there is that true sense of how readers are responding to your work which you often don't get from a so-called professional review.

Perhaps his most quotable sentence is this: 'This is storytelling for the 21^st century' (and of course I will quote it), but he's also picked out a passage from the erotic story 'Into the Night' which for some reason most reviewers have glossed over (and I must say reading the passage he quotes made even me go a little red, if metaphorically!). This is what he says about it:

an absolute tour-de-force: this woman can write. Just take note of how much she packs into this little block of text... This is tight, effective writing that manages to be erotic and poetic and yet it reveals more than two anonymous, writhing, naked forms. This was written by someone who knows how to squeeze meanings out of words till they squeal.

(Actually this story was the one my mum didn't like: it embarrassed her totally, which is rich, as she's always telling me to put more sex in my writing if I want it to sell!)

The second nice thing is that my Salt page for Too Many Magpies has gone up, and you can go there to read an extract from the beginning of the book.

The third nice thing is that I went out this morning to try and distribute posters for our Didsbury Festival reading, and every shop I went into agreed to take one - even a couple who don't normally put posters up. Everyone seems quite excited about the festival, and it does look as though it's going to be great...

Best in colour

Well, I bought myself a colour printer. Not that I needed to, on this occasion: turned out Carl's partner Madeleine could print the posters and leaflets for our reading on hers, so I walked the half-mile to collect them (and stopped and had a glass of wine and a writers' chinwag with Carl, who had just got back from his week's teaching at Derby), and then walked another three-quarters of a mile to Cath's to deliver her batch. A lovely walk, a lovely evening seeing people (and I ended up in the pub, which I had to pass to get home!) - none of which would have happened if I'd had my own colour printer. But then, the idea had been planted, hadn't it, and I began to really want one... And I was out of paper, and in Staples yesterday afternoon they were offering a colour printer for half price, less than thirty quid, if you bought the box of paper I was intending to buy anyway...

(Notice the colourful and elegant Festival logo, which Madeleine added and which I had quite forgotten!)

How I feel about publicity

I have another nice Amazon Review titled High Wire Storytelling. You know, I'm amazed I'm telling you that, and how much my attitude to publicity has changed since Balancing was published. See, I was brought up NEVER to blow my own trumpet, and when I became adult, on an intellectual level I always agreed with the idea. It was always clear to me that those who did blow their own trumpets did pretty OK in this world - it's amazing how people believe what boasters and the self-satisfied say about themselves (which has been a great source of comedy for radio plays for me!), but even when I felt proud of myself, I reckoned the true litmus test was other people, their judgment of my behaviour or, more specifically with regard to writing, my work. And how could I know what that judgment truly was if I'd gone and influenced it?

When I wrote for radio this worked beautifully. I wrote the plays and then sat back as a national broadcasting company, the BBC, deployed a host of personnel to create advance publicity, and broadcast the plays to millions as a matter of easy course. It was in writing novels published by independent presses that I could see the flaws in my approach - most especially when the publisher of my second novel was bought up halfway through the production process, putting paid to most publicity possibilities for my novel. What I learnt then is that NO ONE CAN JUDGE YOUR WORK IF THEY DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT, and what I have learnt since is that small publishers with tiny resources need authors to help with that job of putting the knowledge out there, and indeed with marketing, which means telling people why they might like your book, which in turn involves telling them about the nice things others have said...

It's not me, after all, it's my book. (Though even boasting about my own children seems too much like boasting about myself to me!)

Promotional hat half-on, half-off

I'm sure I'm not the only writer to have a bit of a split personality when it comes to the business of promotion, which increasingly nowadays it is necessary for writers to do for themselves. Maybe it's because I published a couple of novels in the days when there was a clause in the contract requiring the author to leave all publicity to the publisher and not to interfere (a situation which could often work out really badly for the author, actually, if the publisher wasn't totally committed to your book above all others - and which indeed could make you think you'd rather do it yourself). Maybe it's because I had a fairly lengthy career as a radio playwright, a situation in which all you need to do is sit back and write the plays while a mighty national corporation, as par for the course, gets your work out to millions. Perhaps it's to do with the fact that I was brought up not to blow my own trumpet. In any case, promoting my own work sometimes makes me squirm and paradoxically fills me with doubt about the work itself: more than anything, how can I know that it's any good, if the attention it receives isn't purely for its merit, but because I've been cheerleading it on?

Of course, the truth is that without a promotional campaign, people don't get to find out about the work in the first place, leave alone judge it, and promotional campaigns cost money and time: with a smaller publisher especially it's absolutely necessary for the author to do much of the legwork.

So when I opened The Guardian this morning and saw an article about the call for a magpie cull by the Songbird Survival Trust, I immediately thought, 'Wow, that chimes with the title of my (forthcoming) novel (Too Many Magpies)!' and then, with a simultaneous lift and a slightly sinking heart: 'Oh, so maybe I should blog about it!'

Well, here I am blogging about it. The reason for the suggested cull is that magpies prey on the nests of smaller songbirds whose existence is threatened. The author, Chris Packham, who is strongly against the whole notion, puts it all down to a traditional prejudice against the magpie as a sinister bird, and claims that in areas where there are more magpies, there are typically more smaller species too, creating a balance. It's an interesting argument - and a counterintuitive one, I'd say: you should hear the screams of the blackbirds round here all day long as they try to head the magpies away from their nests - and the emptied-out eggshells on the paths! Maybe it's really unfair of me, but it's that traditional intuition I make use of in the novel: magpies pop up in the novel, lone and sinister or in strangely large gangs, too large to be encompassed by the traditional rhyme, 'One for sorrow etc'...

But of course the novel's not really about magpies, but about a woman's fears for her children in an unpredictably changing world, and the charismatic stranger who seems to have special powers...

(How does that sound, and can you believe it, since I've got my promotional hat on?)

Reading out and reading in

Hm, I'm not sure that the Manchester Festival Hub at the Northern pub had quite taken off by yesterday evening. Maybe the problem is that the festival venues are spread out so far across the city, and it's only when a festival is concentrated on a small area that a drop-in/hang-out centre works. And I wonder how many people are aware of it? It's included only in the back of the brochure, as if as an afterthought.

It's a great shame, because there should have been far more people to hear Belinda Webb read from her punchy, linguistically inventive novel of a Moss-Side teenage rebel, A Clockwork Apple. And there were no copies of the books for sale: someone had failed to get them to Belinda in time.

Sometimes you can't help getting weary of the whole book-tour, festival scene: so much physical effort and expense for so little effect sometimes. I've been doing a fair bit of reading lately (I mean private reading of other people's books), and this, along with the fact that my writing is taking off at the moment, is such a richly personal experience that public readings by authors seem not just beside the point but to deflect from the real point. Among my most recent reading has been the utterly wonderful The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, two clever novels by Tobias Hill, including the proof of his forthcoming The Hidden which I was privileged to receive, William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault (for my reading group, and the prose of which I'm shocked to discover is over-abstract and woolly), and a whole host of short story collections, including two impressive collections from Salt, The White Road by Tania Hershman and The Scent of Cinnamon by Charles Lambert.

Indeed, the last two are about to take part in virtual book tours, the latest addition by web-savvy Salt to their publishing model - a brilliant way to bypass the drawbacks of real-life, expensive and ephemeral book tours. This will be one of the blogs hosting Charles Lambert with The Scent of Cinnamon (dates TBA), and I am very much looking forward to my/our conversation with the author.

Even so, I urge any of you who are able to come along to the Northern on Tib Street at 5.30 this afternoon, to hear two more quite brilliant Salt authors, short-story writer Carys Davies and poet Mike Barlow.

Going out once more

I had to laugh last week when I read an article by Linda Grant about the shoddiness of some so-called designer clothes - laugh at myself, that is.

She begins the article by saying that she'd had to bin two Zara little black dresses which hadn't lasted two years, too shabby now even for a charity shop. I thought: Two LBDs from Zara?!!! When would a writer like me buy even one LBD from Zara, let alone two? When would a writer like me ever wear an LBD? Once in a blue moon maybe for a prizegiving - and other people's rather than my own, because at my own I'd rather be taken seriously as a writer, not a fashion victim (but there I am, see, obsessed with image anyway) - so when it comes to LBDs (along with most kinds of clothes, I have to admit) it's charity-shop jobs for me. (Which is why, perhaps, when I went as a guest of winner Carl Tighe to the Authors' Club first book award, an amazingly beautiful ice queen in an absolutely up-to-the-minute LBD didn't half give me the snooty once-over in the loo.)

But maybe my reaction to Grant's article was coloured by the fact that I've spent January more or less in my pyjamas, lost in the new series of short stories I've just embarked on and hardly going out - though I seem to be making up for this last at the moment.

You've got to work on your publicity, right? And on Friday I went into town through the wind and snow - my god, it's cold out there in the big wide world! - to Manchester Digital Development Agency, where Art of Fiction blogger Adrian Slatcher was putting into practice an idea he found in that bottle of red wine we had at our post-Christmas drink, and which included filming a 'Meet the Author' type clip of me. I'll put it up on this blog if I turn out not to be too absolutely dreadful - see, there I am again, on about image; or maybe I'm just being sensible: a dreadful image is not going sell any books, or so they say. (How do you know, for instance, that there aren't fangs and carbuncles Photoshopped out of my profile photo?)

And then yesterday I spent the whole day in town at the initial sifting of scripts for the 24:7 Theatre Festival (snow on the ground!). I couldn't imagine how Amanda (Hennessey) and David (Slack) were going to organize it, but it worked like a dream and involved us reading aloud a substantial portion of each play, which, since most of the readers were actors as well as writers and/or directors, ensured that the readings justified the plays as far as possible (you know actors, they have an inbuilt instinct to try and realize characters as well as possible). What a marathon, though! We were so hoarse by the end of it! But it was so enjoyable, and I have to say I was stunned by the general high standard and inventiveness of some of the plays I saw - which means it's going to be a cracking festival come July.

And tomorrow I'm off to London for the day, and in the evening I'll be going to the Salt poetry reading at the Troubadour Cafe, 265 Old Brompton Road, 8.00pm - 10pm. Ten Salt poets reading: I'm really looking forward to it - those Salt poets are fantastic, and the Salt readings are great.

Time for dreaming

See this publicity and promotion stuff? It really gets in the way of writing...

As I have been moaning, I haven't written much for ages. I do actually enjoy the book publicity and the drama production work - it's so much easier in many ways, and you get to meet people and, as I've said before, use some of your other skills besides that one of being able to sit still at a desk for four hours at a stretch. Oh, and wear some of your clothes beside your jamas! And I do love acting, which I've done some of this summer. But oh, that not-writing state: there's that big hole inside you, and a kind of flatness inside your head, which you don't notice while you're busy, but as soon as you stop...

I stopped a week or so ago and found NOTHING INSIDE MY HEAD. Not a single idea, not even that sense of relish in the world around you, which soon gives rise to images and connections which turn into stories...

Would I ever write again, I wondered. (And I won't tell you quite how depressed and bad-tempered I was!)

But then of course, my empty head started working, and guess what? I remembered this: in June I went away for a weekend and something happened which made me desperately want to write a story. I got off the plane, I rushed home in the taxi, able to think of nothing else - which is how it needs to be for me to write - and all ready to begin work on it next day. But waiting on my computer were several emails about my play production, and consequently publicity jobs to get on with, and the next day there was a rehearsal, and hey presto, I was overwhelmed and there was no time to write.

And the story went right out of my head, until now...

See? Of course you need stimulation to write. But you also need the time and space to keep dreaming...

Publicity - blessing or curse?

Those who know me well know that Elizabeth Baines is a pen-name - though it isn't really, either, it's more like my other name, as I answer to it now, don't even notice when people use it, and forget to tell new acquaintances that it isn't my real name (it kind of is now). It's lost that function it once had, which was to separate off my writing head from my 'real-life' head, allowing me to write free of any expectations people might have had of me, and allowing the writing to exist for itself, and people to read it free of the preconceptions that my person might give them.

I really did have some romantic notion of being separate from my work, launching it off into the world to exist in its own right, while I went about gleefully thinking to myself, 'Little do they guess, those people who know me.' A notion of the power of words in themselves which of course I still hold to and go on championing on my other blog. Little chance, of course, of effecting such a situation in this age of publicity, and the fact that I'm writing this blog shows how far I've capitulated.

It's obligatory now for an author to work on publicity, and recently a press release for my short story collection prompted the local newspaper syndicate to pose me a quiz, my answers to which then appeared alongside my publicity photo. Yesterday I was in the charity shop (one of my habitual haunts, as you will know if you read this blog often,) and the manager, who usually greets me with a jolly hello, seemed shyer than usual, and then asked, after hesitating a moment: 'Do you mind if I ask you? Are you a writer? Didn't I see you in the local paper recently?'

See? It changes everything. And I have complicated feelings about it. I'm pleased that word about my book is getting out there. But is it word about the book? The woman couldn't actually remember what it was I had written, it was me she remembered, my picture which she'd immediately recognized as that woman who comes in from time to time... And I'm not in this context anonymous any longer, which any writer with their ear to the ground for a story most desires to be.