Tom Lloyd

Well, actually been back for the best part of a week since the real honeymoon is going to happen in September, but now my lovely wife’s back at work it feels like I’ve got to accept getting back into the normal routine again. Have realised that there are very few scenes in Ragged Man left to write – not that the last one isn’t kinda long and might take more than a week, but it’s lovely to realise I’m not far from the end. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of editing still to do, but editing / rewriting isn’t as depressing as realising you’ve been writing for a year and still have more than 50,000 words left to write!

The big encouragement is that the only section anyone’s read, a long early scene, got the right feedback. It’s the grave thief doing his thing and, for me, impossible to tell whether I’ve managed to make it look right. But someone does, and agrees with my intended tweaks, so I feel a bit more relaxed about that. Actually, a second cheering point is – oddly enough – going to see Harry Potter on Monday. Which wasn’t the greatest movie in the world but perfectly decent, and reminded me that so far into a series, it’s  impossible to follow the usual progression of a story so there’d be no point trying to strongarm that sort of framework onto it. Not saying Ragged Man is incoherent at all, but we’re deep into the series and there’s a lot of history behind it so it’s got its own path.

As a final though – a friend put this on facebook – asking how you arrange your books on the shelf. It got me thinking that for the vast majority I don’t, in any way shape or form. Six bookcases in the flat, with one more required, and almost entirely no sense to where I put any books. I’ve got a small one next to my desk where I keep a few first editions and books on hell and witchcraft etc that I loosely term research books, but beyond that books get shoved on without sense. I’m starting to wonder whether I should actually arrange them, or just continue as I have. One of the fun things about a lack of order is rediscovering books you’ve not seen in a while when you’re looking for something else. I tend to lend out quite a few (also known as sending people away with a stack of books they ‘really must read’) and have one friend who’s realised he doesn’t need to buy books really, because I can keep him supplied with new ones for the next few years! It’s a vicarious pleasure, but one I think most people share – a good book’s always worth sharing.

The question is, when i do actually earn the money to have a library, or at least some sort of study with full length book shelves, will I keep to my Dirk Gently style of filing or should I impose some order? And in a Cadbury’s themed question – how do you file yours?