Good question.  We had a baby daughter two months ago, so things are a little chaotic.  Wonderful, but chaotic.  Or just chaotic round the edges.

Am managing to get to the office four days a week (am usually up at the Science Museum on Wednesdays).  But the days can start early (our son tends to get up about 6-ish) and I don’t seem to be watching too many of my Lovefilm dvds in the evenings, as I’m trying to catch up with everything else.  Much like how every other parent of young kids lives their lives.

But, honestly, I’m not complaining.  There’s lots of work around at the moment – most of it as a result of some pitches I did at the start of the year.  The Junior Science stories are about to be broadcast (I’m writing this on 11/11/11) on R4, I’ve just completed a long-ish piece and submitted it to a quarterly magazine, the website is more or less up-to-date and I can get on with the next thing.

The next thing currently consists of – a treatment for the adaptation of one of my novels.  Basically, two producers have just optioned my last novel and we (they) are about to try and raise some development money.  In principle, that will be enough cash to pay a writer (hopefully, me) to write sufficient drafts to make it work.  Then they’d take that script out to try and raise interest in the project proper.

Then it’s back to my novel, which really does need a bit of a push.  As it is, I’ll have to go right back to the start and plough my way through it, if only to remind myself where the hell I am with it.  Which, knowing me, will involve about 3,000 teeny edits.  Which will take me about a week to type up.

I have enough work to keep me busy well into next year.  And the next novel (ie novel number 5) is already researched and developed to some degreee.  But I can’t help but want to spend the odd day on that hare-brained animation project.  Or that peculiar book that my artist-pal, Anne and I keep talking about.  I’m much better than I was at time-management – at least the concept of it.  I tell myself ‘This is what you’re going to be doing for the next four / six/eight weeks … etc’.  I’m pretty good at focussing on what’s in front of me.  The problem is, things always slide.  As in by an extra week.  Or two.  Or the revisions which you thought you’d finished come back, and you’ve got an extra day or two’s work to squeeze in.  So you end up getting to the next thing two weeks late.  Which, I suppose, is kind of the opposite of how Time Management is meant to work.

Anyway, I’ve got to start Tweeting.  1. Because people keep telling me to.  2. Because it’s the obvious way of publicising the residency at the Science Museum.  I’m not much of a Woody Allen fan but there’s a great scene in Bullets over Broadway when John Cussack who plays a writer sticks his head out of the window and shouts, ‘I’m a whore!’ into the night sky.  I have moments like that myself.  But I could just sit here in my office on the south coast and wait for the world to disover my particular genius, or I could cut out all that false modesty and get myself out and about.

Other than that, I seem to be endlessly pitching ideas at the moment.  There are three or four ideas for screenplays, which again have been developed to some degree or other and there seem to be no shortage of meetings (with production companies / tv channels / directors / etc) where they’re discussed.  But I’m not in a position where I can do any sustained work on a screenplay without being properly remunerated.  So, again, it’ll become clearer as the year goes on if any of these people / organisations are willing to stump up.  I consider myself very lucky in having a publisher who wants another novel out of me and that is most definitely my priority.  But if someone comes along and offers to pay for a first draft of one of the screenplays then that would be just dandy and I would essentially do what I’ve been doing for the last two or three years and alternate between fiction (two-thirds of the time) and scripts (the rest).

Other than that, I’ll try and write something for one or two of the daily papers to coincide with the publication of The Widow’s Tale in April.  Having spent a couple of years working on a book you suddenly become quite desperate to publicise it, mainly out of a fear that if you don’t it’s simply going to sink without a trace.  Faber have always been very good at drumming up reviews for my books – even the more obscure ones, such as Ten Sorry Tales and Bears of England.  But the longer I’ve been around the more I appreciate that good reviews, or even readings (of which I shall be doing quite a few from April onwards) will only generate so much interest.  Whereas having the story read on Radio Four, or a review on one of the arts programmes will reach out to a great many more people.  It doesn’t mean that the people who hear about the book are going to dash out and buy it, of course, but there’s no doubt that visibility plays a major part.  My philosophy has always been that as a punter you need to have heard about a book (or band or film, etc) from at least three or four different sources – a sort of cumulative process, heading towards some critical point – before you actually consider parting with your cash.  Probably the most important element is having someone personally recommend something to you … which in some ways always gives you hope.