Goodbye

This will be my last blog as Online Writer in Residence at Booktrust. I’m sad to go, but I feel recharged and ready to focus entirely on writing my next novel (as everyone keeps telling me 'it’s the second one that’s most important really').

Having a long term commitment to another sort of writing has been really good for that process – it has meant that on the days I just can’t tap out any more than 150 words of my novel, I could   sit down and write something totally different in a voice I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to – my own.

But now I’m really excited about having a bare diary, I feel a bit like a racing dog (an out-of-shape one) who’s been watching the stuffed hare from my box. Within a week, of course, I will start fishing about for something else to do, but right now I’ve never been so excited about writing fiction. It’s different from the first time around, I’m able to spend just two days a week working in the bookshop – I don’t have to hand out flyers advertising phone rates, or demonstrate the printers in PC World. I don’t have to drive to ASDA in Putney Vale at 6.30 am to sign a bit of paper saying yes they’ve got lots of booze here. The contrast is too wonderful.

Writing a blog (semi) regularly has been a real eye opener - it’s difficult, the voice doesn’t come naturally to me, and so I’m really pleased to have got some down, and that, I hope, I have avoided the 'I got to thinking' voice that haunts me when I sit down to write one. Actually, my tip for future bloggers is to write at the top of the page 'I got to thinking...', so that it’s out of your head and you can delete it later.

I’m very excited to pass the residency on to multi-award-winning children’s author and illustrator Polly Dunbar. Her book Penguin is a favourite: a silent penguin frustrates a little boy to the point that he throws a tantrum and gets eaten by a lion. Amazing.

When I asked a friend, illustrator Viv Schwartz what she made of Polly’s work, she described her like this: 'Oh, she’s just wonderful. She writes about the really hard stuff and makes it exciting and funny. And she has the most amazing shoes.'

I really look forward to reading Polly’s posts, and I’m excited also to see these wonderful shoes.