I had a lovely meeting with my mentor Mavis today (no she's not one of the Wurzels, that's for later).
We met in the cafe in the British Library for a change as I was in London anyway. There were at least three people reading those new-fangled ibook things, which I thought at first was a bit odd as we sat surrounded by books written on vellum, parchment and various forms of paper. But then I realised it made perfect sense, it's just another medium after all.
I used to work in the BL when it was in the British Museum and I remember feeling both comforted and overwhelmed by the tall toweredness and plump stackedness of the book shelves. I tried to imagine today how many ibook thingies you would need to store the contents of the library and then thought how boring they would look all stacked in a metallic row and how they wouldn't have that special smell or be nice to stroke, and I found myself hoping that printed books stay around long enough for my own novel to be available as one.
Because yes, I am believing in my novel now. Maybe it was the fact that Mavis mentioned the word 'publishable' three times in relation to it today and started talking about agents and whatnot. She's not an agent or a publisher but her faith in what I'm doing is a huge boost. I've got miles to go yet (still haven't finished writing the bloomin’ thing) - but I intend to send her the final instalment before our meeting in October, then there'll be the mega rewrite to take into account the fact that I've completely rethought the plot half way through, but there's definitely a speck of light ahead, and if it's the on-switch of an ibook then that's OK with me.
I felt a bit guilty when I turned up to our meeting this morning as I was nursing a tired and addled head. It was our end of series ‘party’ last night - which amounted to an excess of Becks and Rose wine and a gathering around an ipod, which amongst other things had the The Wurzels Greatest Hits on it (see above) . You can't say we don't know how to have a good time (well you can but I won't believe you).
At some point in my life I may decide that dancing and drinking (and there may have been some singing) until 4am is a bad idea but I don’t think it’s going to be anytime soon.
