Evie Wyld is Booktrust's third online writer in residence.

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  • New writer's tips up

    Posted Sunday April 19th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    Just a quick note to say that I've put up a new set of writer's tips, this time on trying not to despair (well, as little as possible anyway).

    More soon...

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  • Little red marks, thousands of 'em

    Posted Sunday April 12th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    It’s the literary equivalent of trimming your nose-hairs before a dinner party. Actually, not quite true, it’s more the literary equivalent of your mother asking if you’ve trimmed your nose-hairs.

    I’m talking, of course, about the copy-edit, where your book gets its final, final – and we do mean final – polish before walking out the door into the world. It’s your last chance to make sure you don’t have loo roll dragging from your shoe.

    Now, I’m still in the midst of a second draft, as well as the tapering days of marathon training, so the arrival of a copy-edit in the Saturday post (between Good Friday and Easter, no less) was a bit of a surprise. Not because someone made a mistake, but because I’d completely forgotten that Candlewick, my American publishers, need to have my approval for their version of The Ask and the Answer.

    Authors differ on this, but I don’t actually mind the copy-edit at all. All the hard work is done, all the big tough editing decisions discussed and put away, and instead, someone is telling you in extensive red pencil that you’ve lost track of your dependent clauses here or left out…

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  • What Haruki Murakami keeps prattling on about

    Posted Sunday April 5th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    First off, let me say how much I appreciate the feedback I’ve been getting, particularly a lovely comment like Gail Jackson’s on the last one. I’ll do my best to keep it up!

    Second, if you missed it, there’s a third set of writing tips up now. Let me know what you think. Helpful? Not helpful? Happy to hear.

    But for this blog, I thought I’d take a momentary diversion that will lead back to writing. 

    I write this on Sunday afternoon, 5 April 2009. In three weeks, all things being well, I’ll be running the London Marathon. This morning, I did the last of my long, long training runs. 20 miles, before lunch. I’ll start tapering my training soon and then just hope for good health and a favourable race day.

    I bring this up not to somehow shame whatever you did on your Sunday morning (you lazy thing), but to raise an important point for a writer. Which is: Do you have anything else important to just you in your life besides your writing?

    I’m not talking the obvious important things like family or children, I mean something for you in particular. A…

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  • The pleasures of weight loss

    Posted Friday March 27th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    Right, one of the several purposes of this blog is to let you all in a bit on the actual process of the book I'm writing at the moment. In other words, the time I spend at the very unglamorous coalface of writing.  And that means, at the moment, a second draft.

    My situation is this: My last book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, came out last May, and the year that it's had has been bewildering and wonderful and surprising and could fill a blog on its own. But it won't. What it does mean, though, is that the sequel – called The Ask and the Answer and out in the UK on 4 May (plug alert!) – has attendant responsibilities with publicity and so forth that its author will gratefully fulfil.

    But all the while, I'll be writing the much-needed third volume, and it comes out, you guessed it, just about this same time next year. Having spent a feverish six months getting a first draft written, I've been continuing work on the second draft.

    Which, for me, means cutting, cutting, cutting. 

    This could easily go in the writing tips section (and it still may), but a…

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  • On metaphysics and housekeeping

    Posted Tuesday March 17th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    Welcome back!  The writer in residency is only a week old, and already I’ve got my first question. Dogflea from Brazil (yes, truly, Dogflea from Brazil) wants to start with a biggie, so here we go:

    'What moves you to write in the first place?'

    Now, Dogflea (aka Celine), felt this question so important she put it in all caps, and I tend to agree. It’s the most important question of all, and I have a simple answer: I write because it feels like I have to. If I didn’t, the consequences for me would be too great to bear. (A brief warning that there are rough waters ahead in today’s blog, but hold on tight, we’ll make it to the shore together.)

    The authors I love, really love, are those that seem to be writing entirely to feed an irresistible compulsion. Nicola Barker, Peter Carey, Ali Smith, people whose prose burns with fire and urgency, burns with the energy of trying to appease some goddess of writing before her dogs tear you to pieces.

    Over dramatic? Possibly, but why do you write? Is it for a better reason? If it’s to make money, for example, you need to have…

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