13 October 2003
Late
The time is 7 o'clock in the evening on Monday 13 October 2003. This home page diary is late and that is ridiculous.
I was at my computer at 4 o'clock this morning. The previous two mornings were 4.30 and 5 o'clock. The trend is for earlier and earlier mornings. If this continues, I'll become completely nocturnal, but from the wrong end of the day … if you see what I mean. I won't be up all night, going to bed later and later. I'll be stretching the morning back towards midnight.
(Incidentally, I published a new Advice to writers page the other day. It isn't about getting up early ... It's about imagery in film and prose.)
I'm choosing to get up early because my head is full of stuff I want to get down while it's fresh. I'm not behind schedule – I promise! (You can pass that on to my publisher …)
On the subject of lateness, I spent a week in Carcassonne last month. While I was there I had a chat with an agent friend. She told me that one of her best clients was cloistered in a hotel somewhere not far from the Mediterranean, making that big final push to get her typescript finished.
This conjured for me an image of solitary authors, cut off from their families and friends, living on a diet of continental breakfasts and misanthropic restaurant lunches and dinners. No books but their own.
It brought to mind a quotation someone once told me from a writer who was asked how he got his work finished. This author – what was his name? – replied:
'A locked room, and lots of champagne!'
In any case – and like I said – this page is late and it has nothing to do with me not getting down to it. Put simply, I couldn't break off from the writing I was doing for the novel at my usual diary time – about the relatively civilised hour of 6.30 on each Monday.
Even the designer can become too involved in the Labyrinth.
