Gillian Philip

I need a soundtrack. I always have a soundtrack. I’ve got half a soundtrack, but it isn’t quite there yet. I need the song that will play over the movie trailer (in my dreams, that is). Past trailer-songs have included ‘Who Knew’ by Pink, ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol (everybody’s done that one! Sheesh!), and that theme tune from Gladiator (oh hang on, House of Flying Daggers used that one as well. As did, come to think of it, Gladiator). Oh yes, and for Crossing the Line there was something by Morcheeba. That worked well.

    So my latest excuse for the dragging pace of my work in progress is ‘It doesn’t have a song’. Apparently George Lucas and Steven Spielberg always built a sandcastle for each one of their movies. They blamed the failure of ‘1941’ on the fact that they forgot to build a sandcastle for it (rather than, say, on the fact it wasn’t a very good movie, but I digress). I don’t need a sandcastle; I need a theme tune.

    As I say, I have half a soundtrack. My protagonist is called Ruby, so that’s easy, then. Lots of people have been kind enough to write songs about Ruby. But none of those is the theme song. I realised out of the blue a few weeks ago that another character’s favourite song was ’24 Hours From Tulsa’ by Gene Pitney – a surprise to say the least, because this is a song that has never registered on my radar before. (But I do love it when that happens.)

    Lots of writers have soundtracks. Maybe they all do. Are they all as embarrassing as mine? Oh, I have some cheesy songs on book soundtracks. One includes both Peter Cetera singing ‘The Glory of Love’ and that Phil Collins song from the Disney Tarzan movie, ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’. Really. I have very uncool taste, but what the characters demand the characters have to get. James Blunt! Take That! Celine Dion, for crying out loud! And when I listen to the chords swell, and picture hero/heroine running in slow motion through some urban landscape with beautiful cinematography, I get a wee tear in my eye. Sad.

I was reminded of all of this because last night I was watching Bill Bailey’s Amazing Guide to the Orchestra, which was – well – amazing. He was playing the Doctor Who theme in the style of Jacques Brel. And I thought: now that’s cool. I could listen to that indefinitely, I could. Now I just need to persuade my characters that that’s their song. I don’t think I’m quite there yet.

So I dreamed I left my notes at home, arrived on the wrong day and went to the wrong place. Fortunately none of that happened despite my huge potential for reading the calendar upside down/losing emails/missing train connections. I made it to the SBT headquarters on Wednesday for the launch of Crossing the Line (with my notes) and to Turriff Academy on Friday for a Big Issue event (and I turned up at the right school). And I'm glad I did, because this week was fun.

   Edinburgh's launch was terrific - many thanks to Jasmine and Chris and everybody at the SBT. A really great audience, a beautiful day, and books plus a Jura whisky miniature for the train home... what more can a writer ask? Friday's event was similarly blessed with gorgeous weather, a lovely crowd from S3 Turriff Academy, and a photographer with limitless reserves of patience (either I shut my eyes at the wrong moment, or they simply disappear when I smile. I have a very crinkly face, like certain breeds of dog).

   I kept meeting people who came from Aberdeen, so I've had to stop pretending that the swimming scene in Crossing The Line doesn't take place on Aberdeen beach. The water temperature and the sheer idiocy of swimming naked in the North Sea at one in the morning are just too recognisable to anyone who has tottered down the Beach Boulevard in the dark to find the Inversnecky Cafe shut, and nothing better to do... foolish, but refreshing. I don't base my writing on real personal experiences. No. Well. Except for that one...

   Seriously, I loved every minute of both events. If you need an author visit, call me. I do talks, workshops, weddings, bar mitzvahs...

   ...and until my laptop battery died, I even got a lot of work done on the train. Good news, since that first draft of the new novel is now two weeks overdue...

Hands up and sackcloth all round: yes, I've been sniffy about celeb biographies. Well, I'm a convert now, and I don't even care if they're ghosted or not. I went on my Easter hols to remote Colonsay and I thought I'd take along a little light gossip, so along came Russell Brand and Jade Goody. And what do you know, I loved 'em both. It turns out that celeb memoirs work the same way for me as books of any genre - the crucial thing is the truth of it all.

   Honesty: isn't that the one thing you ask of a book? (Well, all right - likeable characters and decent spelling obviously come into it.) Russell Brand's Booky Wook is just hilariously honest (and I don't just mean 'frank enough to make your granny wince'). There was a generational divide over the Andrew Sachs affair and I was on the grumpy-old-woman side of it (on grounds of kindness rather than taste). But really, Brand is so truthful, I defy anyone not to respect his writing (even if liking him is a stretch for you). He tells you stuff about himself whether it paints him in a flattering light or not (and mostly it doesn't). He's even honest about his dishonesty.

   Jade Goody's swiftly revamped autobiography - I liked that too. The funny thing is, she confesses to being economical with the truth in the first version. She seems to have got that sorted, because Version Two rings touching and true. Maybe it's skewed in perspective, who knows? But it's honest in her own terms.

   You can tell. Or I'm pretty sure you can. I had a low tolerance for Holden Caulfield when I was younger ('get a life, young man!'). Now that I'm getting old and crabbit, ironically, I can see where he's coming from with the 'phoney' thing. They say fiction writers tell lies for a living, but there's true lies as well as the other kind.

   I have this ongoing argument with my husband, who hates fantasy fiction (even mine! I ask you!), because 'it isn't real.' To my last breath I'll argue that fantasy fiction can be as real or unreal as any other kind. All a writer has to do is tell the truth - whether it's the truth about your holiday in Barcelona or your Journey of Self-Discovery with Chickens. It doesn't matter if it's the truth about ancient Romans, the Battle of Britain, hobbits, dragons or mermaids. So long as it's the truth, it's real, and for a writer it's an obligation. Anyway, readers can tell.

   There are writers who have told the truth about Hungry Caterpillars, stuffed cats, boy wizards, and dragons called Smaug or Shona. You can tell it comes straight from the marrowbone of the soul. And some writers can take real life, and real people, and fake it. I'll never convince my husband of that, but I'll keep trying.

   Anyway, Russell Brand's book has a very funny dedication. Honestly, have a look.

Okay, when I was my children's age we had Father Ted-style Advent Calendars - those ones where you open a wee cardboard door to find a blurred watercolour print of the shepherds, and ask (as did Father Dougal): 'What's that got to do with Christmas then?' 
   Generation Twin has Playmobil calendars (it was this, or chocolate ones resulting in massive morning sugar highs) - Pirate Island for the boy twin, Santa Feeding the Forest Creatures for the girl. These calendars produce a new, very loseable toy every day, building to an attractive Christmas scene. Which was all very nice (apart from the occasional tantrums when the loseable toy got lost), until Christmas Eve's shocker.
   I never thought the Pirates were terribly Christmassy, but I assumed they'd end up in a joyful scene over the festive treasure chest. On the 24th, I slouched blearily through to the kitchen to find Christmas Pirate, little plastic sword raised to behead his little plastic pal (who'd been quietly sleeping in his hammock for 23 days).
   'He's wishing him Happy Christmas,' says son. 'And then he's killing him.'
   It has to be a gender thing. I never found Mrs Fox of the Forest trying to devour Baby Raccoon behind Santa's back. Reading a newspaper article on the Internet today, I found a posted comment insisting that 'Gender is a Mental Attitude'. Uh-huh. Huh huh huh hoo hoo hoo.
   I digress. I was going to talk about small plastic toys. The Advent Calendars are long forgotten, of course, and since Christmas I've been helping create the hugest Mars Mission in the known galaxy. Now, I quite like building these things the first time around, but when something large and heavy falls on the space station, as it inevitably does - splitting it into sub-atomic Lego particles - you can't help praying that something large and heavy will fall on Mr Lego and his fiendish designers.
   Still, I am fond of those teeny fierce Lego men (despite their politically dodgy attitude to green aliens, which they suck up in plastic orange tubes into cryogenic suspension, presumably for some kind of sinister vivisection). I have a soft spot, too, for those unshaven Playmobil pirates. It has to be a plastic thing. Perhaps it's a leftover from my crush on the sinister Captain Black - and he wasn't even CGI in those days, but a somewhat unconvincing puppet. And going by my son's X-Box, Darth Vader as a Lego character is just adorable.
   Or maybe I'm indulging in plastic displacement activity. Who said that word? Who said that word deadline?
   I fear I'm going to miss one. Or, erm, two...

Labradors: what are they like. Cluny got through ten stolen eggs yesterday, shells and all (and we thought they were out of reach).  And it seems like yesterday when he was barely any bigger than ten eggs himself... Well, this has done wonders for his coat, but (stop me if this is too much information), not a lot for the hygiene of my kitchen floor.

All of which is yet another reason to be not writing. And even when it's cleaned up, it's such a gorgeous blue frosty day, and there's Christmas shopping to do, and kids to take ice skating (if I can detach them from the XBox controllers). I've always thought one of the best things about writing is that you can do it anywhere, while doing anything else, since you can do quite a lot of it in your head. However, I'm getting to the point with a few deadlines - Darke Academy 2 included - where it's high time I stopped writing it in my head and got some more words onto the laptop screen.

I read an interview with Terry Pratchett recently in the Independent. He's talking about his latest work in progress, and reaching what he calls the 'Delta Star'. "It's a physics term and I can't remember what it relates to," he says. "But suddenly, there's a point ... You've got your characters working and you know how a book's supposed to go...