A Slip of the Keyboard Read online

  I rage at the imminent loss of my friend.

  And I think, What would Terry do with this anger?

  Then I pick up my pen, and I start to write.

  New York, June 2014

  A SCRIBBLING INTRUDER

  On bookshops, dragons, fan mail, sandwiches, tools of the trade, waxing wroth, and all the business of being a Professional Writer

  THOUGHT PROGRESS

  20/20 Magazine, May 1989

  A bit of writing about writing. Careful readers will spot that Small Gods had been on my mind at the time.

  It’s a pretty accurate description of the creative process at work.…

  Get up, have breakfast, switch on word processor, stare at screen.

  Stare at screen some more.

  Carry on staring at screen, but cock ear for sounds of postman. With any luck it will be large bag of post, leading to a busy morning’s work. Last novel just gone off to publisher. Got nothing to do. Huge vacuum in centre of world.

  Post arrives. One letter on Holly Hobbie notepaper, asking for a signed photograph.

  All right, all right, let’s do some research. What we need to know for the purposes of the next Discworld plot is something about tortoises. Got vague idea that a talking tortoise is essential part of the action. Don’t know why; tortoises just surfaced from racial unconsciousness. Possibly prompted by own tortoises surfacing from hibernation and currently doing Bertrand Russell impersonations in the greenhouse.

  Find book on tortoises in box in spare room.

  Will definitely get bookcases rebuilt any day now (clever idea was to prefabricate bookcase in garage, everything neatly cut, used set squares and everything, two coats varnish, then all bits brought inside, assembled with proper dowels and glue, hundreds of books in neat array. Interesting science experiment: What happens to wood that has spent weeks in cold damp garage when suddenly brought into warm dry room? At 3 a.m., learned that every bit suddenly shrinks by one eighth of an inch).

  Interesting footnote in tortoise book reminds us that most famous tortoise in history must be the one that got dropped on the head of famous Greek philosopher … what’s the bugger’s name? Very famous man, wherever the tortoise-dropping set get together. Sudden pressing desire to explore this whole issue, including what the tortoise thought about it all. Keep thinking it was Zeno, but am sure it wasn’t.

  Finding out that it was Aeschylus occupies twenty minutes. Not philosopher, but playwright. In his hands, early drama took on a high-religious purpose, serving as a forum for resolving profound moral conflicts and expressing a grandeur of thought and language. And then a high-pitched whistling noise and good night. Look up Zeno out of interest. Ah, he was the one who said that, logically, you couldn’t catch a tortoise.

  Should have told Aeschylus.

  Also read up on prayer wheels and, for no obvious reason, William Blake. While so doing, lady phones up to ask if we’re the dentist’s.

  Definitely getting some work done now. The creative mainspring is definitely winding up.

  Bound into action and press on with some serious disk backing up. That’s the beautiful thing about word processors. In the bad old typewriter days all you had to occupy yourself with when creativity flagged was sharpening the pencils and cleaning out the e with a pin. But with the word processor there’re endless opportunities for fiddling, creative writing of macros, meticulous resetting of the real-time clock, and so forth: all good honest work.

  Sitting in front of a keyboard and a screen is work. Thousands of offices operate on this very principle.

  Stare at screen.

  Wonder why the eagle dropped the bloody thing on the playwright. It couldn’t have been to smash it open, like the book says. Eagles not daft. Greece is all rock, how come eagle with all Greece to choose from manages pinpoint precision on bald head of Aeschylus? How do you pronounce Aeschylus, anyway?

  Pronunciation dictionary in box in loft.

  Stepladder in garage.

  Car needs a wash.

  Lunch.

  Solid morning’s work, really.

  Back in front of screen.

  Stare at screen.

  Another lady phones to ask if this is Paradise. (Motel up the road apparently has a phone number one digit different from ours.) Give humorous rejoinder number three.

  Stare at screen.

  Start wondering, perhaps not eagle’s fault after all, it just had job to do, it had been flying too many missions, jeez, you get thrown out of eagle air force if you start worrying about the innocent philosophers you’re dropping your tortoises on. Hatch-22. No.

  Stare at screen.

  No. It was obviously tortoise’s idea all along. Had grudge against playwright, perhaps tortoises had been insulted in latest play, perhaps offended at speed-ist jokes, perhaps had seen tortoiseshell spectacles: you dirty rat, you got my brother. So hijacked eagle, hanging on to desperate bird’s legs like the tortoise in the old Friends of the Earth logo, giving directions in muffled voice, vector 19, beepbeepbeep, Geronimooooo.…

  Stare at screen.

  Wonder if eagle has anything else a desperate tortoise could hang on to.

  Look up biology of birds in encyclopedia in box on stairs. Gosh.

  Supper.

  Stare at screen. Turn ideas over and over. Tortoises, bald head, eagles. Hmm. No, can’t be playwright, what sort of person would tortoises instantly dislike?

  Midnight …

  Stare at screen. Vaguely aware right hand has hit keys to open new file. Start breathing very slowly.

  Write 1,943 words.

  Bed.

  For a day there, thought we weren’t going to make it.

  PALMTOP

  The Independent, 9 July 1993

  You think of these kind of computers as portable, but they aren’t really—you could anchor a ship with my old Olivetti. Mine probably still work—I took good care of them—and although I have no particular need of them, I can’t bring myself to throw away what is now vintage technology.

  I remember my first portable computer. It weighed fifteen pounds. The power supply was separate and in many ways resembled a small brick. The damn thing nearly killed me.

  The next one was a mere eight pounds, although there was still a (smaller) brick. I thought that was light until I had to run across an airport carrying it.

  It dawned on me what was wrong. The important thing about portable computers, the common element, the nub or crux of the whole ethos, as it were, is that you’re supposed to be able to carry them. What’s the good of a machine that won’t fit inside a briefcase along with all the other things you want to carry in there? Even eight pounds isn’t portable. Eight pounds is an item of luggage.

  It always puzzled me why the weight of portable machines wasn’t the first thing mentioned in any review. It tends to be in the small print even now, way down the page. This is because reviewers get hypnotized by shiny discs and glittery screens. Let them carry them around for a day, say I. Let them hoick them around so they can get on with their work in studio green rooms and hotels and the backs of cabs.

  I grew up reading science fiction and there were always these guys carrying pocket computers which could talk and keep track of their diary and run whole planets. They never got hernias carrying the things. I didn’t see why I should either. I was suffering from the opposite of future shock, whatever that is. Future suction? I don’t want arms reaching to my knees, but I like to have a computer around.

  I entered the palmtop world.

  Jargon crops up everywhere. Once there were big machines that sat on desks, and there were portables (more or less). Now there are ultraportables and subnotebooks and personal digital assistants and palmtops and pocketbooks. They’re all very loosely defined by size and weight and the whim of the person describing them. Basically, they’re all small and light.

  They all occupy the twilight zone between laptops (the aforesaid portables, although now the bulk of new machines do quite a lot more than the on
es I’ve had and weigh in at around six pounds plus quite a small brick) and small calculators.

  The first acquisition was the Atari Portfolio, several years ago. It weighed in at about a pound, and came with its own built-in software, including the usual “electronic Filofax” yuppie bait of simple word processor, calculator, spreadsheet, and phone book. The word processor wasn’t too bad; I typed tens of thousands of words on it, admittedly not very fast. But it wasn’t perfect.

  Rule Number One is: Weight is important. Rule Two is: What else do you need to buy?

  Sir Clive Sinclair was able to sell the first sub-£99 computer by redefining what a computer was. It didn’t need a dedicated monitor, or internal mass storage of data or a standard communications port, or a keyboard fit for steady typing—not if you were prepared to hook it into the TV, store programs on a normal tape recorder, and type very slooowly and carefully. It didn’t need more than one kilobyte of memory. So it didn’t get it.

  Since then I’ve always been wary of machines that need extra bits before they start becoming more than a useful toy. The Portfolio needed an add-on module if you wanted to increase memory to something closer to an acceptable amount. It needed a comparatively large plug-in module before it could print, and another one if you wanted a serial port. Without them, everything stayed locked in.

  The theory was these bits stayed at home. But I do a lot of typing when I’m away from home for long periods, and you get very nervous if you can’t print out or dump stuff onto another machine.

  They also caused trouble at airport security. Security men could accept the basic machine, but the box full of mysterious plastic prolapses upset them. “Show us this working,” they said. “Certainly,” I said, “please get me an electrical outlet and a laser printer.”

  I found too many small, light machines that had the word “(optional)” in their descriptions. (Optional) means you’re going to have to pay to do what you want.…

  After two years of looking, I ended up with, and indeed am typing this on, the Olivetti Quaderno. It cost me almost £600 and must have been one of the first on sale last year (pioneers are penalized; my agent bought one a few months later and they threw in a free add-on disc drive, and now there’s been a sizeable further price cut amid reports of a new souped-up model). What it is, simply, is this: it’s the desktop PC I bought in 1987, shrunk to A5 size, one inch thick and weighing a little over two pounds. I’ve never weighed the little power supply and battery charger—I’ve never really noticed it weighing anything very much. It certainly fits in my briefcase. I can lose it in my briefcase. But most importantly, it runs all my software, accumulated over years of trial and error.

  It runs memory-resident programs like Sidekick and the in-comparable Info Select. It runs WordPerfect 4.2 (the classic version). I don’t have to look at a screen like a letterbox, or be forced to use someone else’s idea of the “right” software. It’s got a twenty-megabyte hard disk, which means you can write a novel on it and have it all there, all in one go. There’s half of one on it now.

  People say: Yes, but what about the keyboard? Well, it’s better than any other similar-sized one I tried—Hewlett-Packard’s HP 95LZ, an otherwise interesting machine, practically had calculator buttons—and I can touch-type on it.

  People say: Ah, but can it run Windows? Not in any way that a committed Windows user would accept. Windows demands high-resolution screens and a 386 processor and a fair amount of RAM and a user who is on a salary so that they can pass away those lengthy office hours by fiddling with the colours or selecting super new icons. I don’t need that. And the Quad’s screen is murky—there’s no backlight, so lighting has to be reasonably good.

  But it’s real and it’s here now. It’s not a toy. I can carry around work in progress and my diary and the spreadsheet, all versions I’m familiar with and which gently move like a tide between the Quad and the office machine. The screen, apart from the touch of murk, looks like a smaller version of the one I’m familiar with. If I really had to, I could use it all the time.

  Good-bye bricks. This one is portable.

  I didn’t actually use it on Ayers Rock. But I jolly well could have done, if I’d wanted to.

  THE CHOICE WORD

  Contribution for The Word, London’s Festival of Literature, 2000

  Oh lord, who keeps track of this stuff? In the U.K., once an author has reached a certain level of availability, requests to write something “which will only take a few minutes of your time” sleet in endlessly from newspapers. They’re known in the business as “My Favourite Spoon” items, and someone somewhere thinks they are good publicity. But a light-hearted survey to find the nation’s favourite word was part of the hype for a large British literary festival a few years ago, and this was mine.*1

  I like the fortuitous onomatopoeia of words for soundless things. Gleam, glint, glitter, glisten … they all sound exactly as the light would sound if it made a noise. Glint is sharp and quick, it glints, and if an oily surface made a noise it would go glisten. And bliss sounds like a soft meringue melting on a warm plate.

  But I’ll plump for:

  SUSURRATION

  … from the Latin susurrus, “whisper” or “rustling,” which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a hushed noise. But it hints of plots and secrets and people turning to one another in surprise. It’s the noise, in fact, made just after the sword is withdrawn from the stone and just before the cheering starts.

  *1 I managed to get it on the first page of The Wee Free Men, too. I can’t remember what the nation’s favourite word turned out to be. It was probably Beckham.

  HOW TO BE A PROFESSIONAL BOXER

  Foreword to the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2006 (2005)

  I bought my first copy of the W&AYB (secondhand) when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Sorry. But I’d just spent ten shillings on a very good secondhand copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which was a big bite out of available funds. In some dimly understood way, I felt it was one of the things you had to have in order to be a writer, and that somehow professionalism would leak from it and be painlessly absorbed by me.

  I read it solemnly.

  Was it useful? Well, yes—but I have to say that some of the basics had already entered my life via science fiction fandom. Most writers in the field were fans once; many fans aspire to be writers one day. And so, at a major science fiction convention (and long before literary festivals became the new rock ’n’ roll) you’d find established authors, there at their own expense, explaining the basics to a hall full of hopefuls. The process is known as “paying forward.”

  I took notes. I’ve never had occasion to use one magnificent tip from a well-known author, but I pass it on anyway: “Keep an eye on the trade press. When an editor moves on, immediately send your precious MS to his or her office, with a covering letter addressed to said departed editor. Say, in the tones of one engaged in a cooperative effort, something like this: ‘Dear X, I was very pleased to receive your encouraging letter indicating your interest in my book, and I have made all the changes you asked for.…’ Of course they won’t find the letter. Publishers can never find anything. But at least someone might panic enough to read the MS.”

  Having read and listened to all the good advice, I then handed over the MS of my first novel to a local small press publisher, just because I met him one day and he seemed a decent type. He liked it. I was totally unknown and he’d never published fiction before, so it didn’t make much money. Nor did the next two. The fourth title was the first book in the Discworld series. It didn’t exactly walk out of the shops, but it crawled quite briskly and with every sign that it was determined to make it to its feet. Transworld hesitated, and then published it in paperback. A few years later, I hired my former publisher as my agent, and life became rather crowded.

  I was lucky. Incredibly so, when I think of all the ways things could have gone. But when the floppy-eared Spaniel of Luck sniffs at your cuffs it helps if you
have a collar and piece of string in your pocket. In my case, it was a sequel.

  I get asked all the time, in letters and e-mails and questions from the floor: “Can you give me a few tips about being a writer?” And you sense that gleam in the eye, that hope that somehow, this time, you’ll drop your guard and hand over the map to the Holy Grail or, preferably, its URL. I detect, now, a slightly worrying edge to all this, a hint of indignation that grammar, spelling, and punctuation have a part to play (“Don’t publishers have people to do all that?” was one response) and that the universe is remiss in not making allowance for the fact that you don’t have the time.

  So, instead, I give tips on how to be a professional boxer. A good diet is essential, of course, as is a daily regime of exercise. Pay attention to your footwork, it will often get you out of trouble. Go down to the gym every day—every day of your life that finds you waking up capable of standing. Take every opportunity to watch a good professional fight. In fact watch as many bouts as you can, because you can even learn something from the fighters who get it wrong. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do. And don’t forget the diet and the exercise and the roadwork.

  Got it? Well, becoming a writer is basically exactly the same thing, except that it isn’t about boxing.

  It’s as simple as that.

  BREWER’S BOY

  Foreword to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Millennium Edition, 1999

  I guess we all have our measures of success. Being asked to write this was one of mine. It somehow completed a circle. I now have shelves of editions of Brewer’s, new and old, that have been acquired since that first one.

  The Revd. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer wanted to tell people things; among his other works were A Guide to Knowledge, a dictionary of miracles and The Reader’s Handbook of Allusions, References, Plots and Stories. But it’s the Phrase and Fable dictionary that has made him immortal. The book is—well, see below.