The Lulu Blog Tour by Hilary McKay

The Writing Process
Is hard.

I have a little room where I do it. It used to be a garage, not really part of the house, so it is rather colder than the rest of the building. As well as my desk and some bookcases and all my daughter's art equipment, and the camping stuff that never really has a proper home, there are lots of boxed in water pipes. All around the water pipes live large dark spiders.

But I digress.

To begin the writing process I have to take myself to this cold and spidery place, clamber round the camping stuff and get to my desk. And sit down.

In front of my desk is a window with a view down the garden and across to the hills on the other side of the valley. Birds are in the garden. The bird feeder is empty.

Hurray!

Rush away from the desk to feed the birds.

Come back some time later having done a bit of pruning.

Computer on.

Emails

.

It really isn’t possible to write when there are emails waiting to be answered. It is lazy. Perhaps even rude.

So.

Then there is Twitter. I only recent discovered it but already it seems to be taking over my life.

Twitter then.

What a pity I have writer friends who twitter too. One of them is baking cakes. One of them is slightly indignant about something I could easily, with a little effort, become slightly indignant about as well. Several have petitions that need signing.

They all have enormous word counts. How do they achieve that when they spend their time tweeting?

Anyway.

It is one of the days when it is not possible to write without music and the only cd I can bear to play is scratched but perhaps polishing it will work.

Polish it.

Good.

Stare at blank screen, stare at blank screen, stare at blank screen, turn to paper instead.

Good old fashioned paper. Well, if it was good enough for Dickens... (what long books he wrote)(but he didn’t have Twitter)(or email)(I wonder if he fed the birds though?) (Should I google that?)(Yes)

Okay, now I know about Dickens and birds, I have paper, I have chosen pencil over ink and sharpened it. I have drawn a small picture of the cat in the margin of my paper...

I am off.

I have written the date.

With twirly bits round the edge.

All the best stories begin with ‘Once upon a time’

So I’ve written that too.

And here I go.

Coffee. That’s what’s the matter with me.  I forgot coffee.

And I haven’t rearranged my poetry books in alphabetical order for weeks.

Can’t even remember when I last polished a mirror.

Or put air in the car tires.

This is how I write. This is how all the writers I know write. If they are not putting air into the tires of their car they are off for a little run, cleaning under their washing machines, Googling their names, Christmas shopping or meeting each other to compare royalty statements.

The writing process is an absolute miracle. It truly is a wonder that anything ever gets written at all.


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Check out the Lulu series by Hilary McKay for the readers and animal lovers in your life! Book three, Lulu and the Cat in the Bag will debut this fall. You can follow the tour which moves on to http://www.the1stdaughter.blogspot.com/ on  Tuesday, April 02, 2013 where you can find an interview and a giveaway. Thanks to the folks at Albert Whitman & Company for providing this opportunity to be part of Ms. McKay's blog tour!