Once More With Footnotes by Terry Pratchett Page A

it leapt a tall hedge and ran across the fields, a cat larger than an Elephant. It had a blue bow about its neck. What monsters have been let into the world?
     
                  And on my desk I see my reflection in the shining, tinselly shard that the coachman had clutched in his hands. Who would cover the snow with this to make it g litter, and what fearful reason could there be?
     
                  I open the curtains, and look out upon the busy street. The local coach has come up from Bath and is outside the inn, and all is bustle and Christmas cheer, a world away from the sad ravings and pleadings o f the man downstairs. It is a picture of hope, a reminder of reality, and perhaps he is, after all, no more than a man mazed by exposure, and the tales of giant Beagles and flying sledges are no more than strange jests. Except for the shard of tinsel ...
     
     
    "The tinsel on the straw! Amen! Wishing you all the best,
    Mum and Dad!"
     
     
                  And I see the falling snow, how it glitters ...
                  And I hear the creaking.
                  God help us, every one.
     

Maybe it's the influence of the Net, but people talk about writing in terms of "getting. " Where do you get your ideas/your characters/the time? The unspoken words are: show me the co-ordinates of the Holy Grail.
     
    And, at best, you throw up a barrage of cliché s, which have become cliché s because ... well, they're true, and they wo rk. I've heard lots of authors talk on the subject and we all, in our various ways, come out with the same half a dozen or so cliché s. And you get the sense that this isn't exactly what's wanted, but people go on asking, in the hope that one day you'll for get and pass on the real secret.
     
    Still, this newspaper paid. That's one of the tips, by the way.
     
     
     
     
     
P aperback W riter
     
                  When I was thirteen, I went to my first science fiction convention. How long ago was that? So long ago that everyone wore sports ja ckets, except for Mike Moorcock.
     
                  Most science fiction writers were once fans. There's a habit they have, not of paying back, but of paying forward; I know of no other branch of literature where the established "names" so keenly encourage wannabe writers to become their competitors.
     
                  I came back from that event determined to be a writer. After all, I'd shaken hands with Arthur C. Clarke, so now it was just a matter of hard work ...
     
                  The first thing I do when I finish a new book is start a new one. This w as a course of action suggested, I believe, by the late Douglas Adams, although regrettably he famously failed to follow his own advice.
     
                  The last few months of a book are taxing. E-mails zip back and forth, the overtones of the English word "cacky" are e xplained to the US editor who soberly agrees that "poop" is no substitute, the author stares at text they've read so often that they've lost all grasp of it as a narrative, and rewrites and tinkers and then hits Send —
     
                  — and it's gone, in these modern time s, without even the therapy of printing it out. One minute you're a writer, next minute you have written. And that's the time, just at that point when the warm rosy glow of having finished a book is about to give way to the black pit of post-natal despair at having finished a book, that you start again. It also means you have an excuse for not tidying away your reference books, a consideration not to be lightly cast aside in this office, where books are used as bookmarks for other books.
     
                  The next title is not a book yet. It's a possible intro, a possible name, maybe some sketches that could become scenes, a conversation, some newspaper clippings, a few bookmarks in an old history book, perhaps even ten