Look at how much fun this girl is having!  It’s taken me 60-odd years to discover the glow that’s in her eyes as pen meets paper (or finger meets phone).  Good for her.

And good for me.  Jetpack tells me that I’ve posted there and on Facebook for 123 days in a row.  Today will be 124.  I love what I’m doing.  My heart soars when an idea comes … and my finger leads the way in the meandering.

I’m a fan boy of Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials novels.  They are Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. 

I just had a thought: You’re blogging too much about Philip.  The man himself would be “tut tutting” at me for such words.  “If you’re drawn to it, say it.”

Here are some Pullman thoughts aimed at kids, and my responses …

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I learned to become a conduit for what came to my imagination.

I love that word!  Something is flowing through me and demanding the fresh air of the outside world.

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In one direction, the writer has complete control over his work, and in another, he’s fully accepting of the fickleness of his muse.

Who knows what thought will show up next in the story of my day?  I often have no idea.  My brain might be saying “Walk left” but my feet may have another idea.

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Write what you want to write, be the next big thing and not another iteration of a phase that will pass.

Well I don’t want to be “the next big thing”.  My thing may be large or small.  As long as someone is listening, I’m happy.

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Kid: “Why do you think it’s so important that young people read?”

For the same reason that I think it’s important that they breathe, eat, drink, sleep, run about, fool around, and have people who love and look after them.  It’s part of what makes us fully human.  Some people manage to get through life without reading.  But I know that if I’d had to do that, an enormous part of my mind, or my soul if you like, would be missing.  No one should be without the chance to let their soul grow.

Some of us stay in this world.  Some of us also explore other ones.  I meet new people on the street and on the page.

I love flesh-and-blood people in my life and characters who slip out from between the covers.

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Kid: “How do you choose your themes and storylines?”

I don’t exactly choose them so much as surrender to them.  I couldn’t write at all if I had to choose, in a sort of cold-blooded way, between this idea and that one.  If they both excite me, I’ll write about them both.

The expression I love is “Does it make my heart sing?”  Whether it’s a person or a song or a place, do I want to be close?  Writing demands contact with what is loved.

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Kid: “What advice would you give to anyone who wants to be a writer?”

Some people would say “Always write about what you know”.  I don’t think that’s good advice at all.  Nor is the advice to write what you think people will like.  I think that’s just silly.  We shouldn’t bother about other people at all when we write.  It’s none of their business what we write.

A wee bit of me wants folks to like what I write.  A huge part of me wants them to be touched, jolted … their eyes opened wide.

First of all, my eyes need to open wide.

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Kid: “I cried when I read ‘The Amber Spyglass’.  Have you ever cried while reading or writing a book?”

Oh yes.  If I write something sad, I cry.  If I write something funny, I laugh.  If I write something boring I . . . What do I do then?  I cross it out and try again.

Once in awhile I cry as I write.  Perhaps I’m being touched gently on the forehead or torn apart by a savage beast.  A person or a story can do that to me.

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Kid: “When you wrote ‘Northern Lights’ did you already know the plot of the other two books in the trilogy?”

No – at least, not in any detail.  I had a rough idea of where it was all going, and I knew a few things about some places I wanted to stop at on the way.  I knew it had to end in a garden.  I wanted to bring in the hornbeam trees along Sunderland Avenue in Oxford, where I live.  I thought I might have to go to the world of the dead.  That’s all.  I discovered most of it as I went along.

Sounds like life … “I discovered most of it as I went along.”

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I read “The Lord of the Rings” when I was 18.  I read it greedily, lapping it up, eager for more.  But I haven’t read it since then, though I’ve tried.  It doesn’t satisfy me any more, and I think that’s because Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn’t go anywhere in it.  He just sits where he is.  What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past.  And what’s more, he doesn’t allow girls or women any important part in the story at all.  Life is bigger and more interesting than “The Lord of the Rings” thinks it is.

Please, Lord, help me write about the “big”.  And often I don’t know what that means.  I just know I need to go there.

And yes … women and girls need to be centre stage.

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Work every day.  Get into the habit of it.  Work when you don’t feel like it, when you’ve just broken up with your girlfriend or boyfriend, when you’re feeling ill, when you’ve got homework to do.  Put your work first.  Habit is your greatest ally.  Get into the habit of writing when you’re young and it’ll stay with you.  Sixteen is a very good age to start.

123 and counting, Philip.  Also 75 and counting.

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Don’t listen to anyone who tells you you should study what the public wants, and give it to them.  They don’t know what they want, or they’d be writing it themselves.  It’s not their job to tell you what to write.  It’s your job to write something they could never have thought of, and then offer it to them.

I write for you, trusting that what I say has goodness in it.  But really the whole thing is a mystery.

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‘Nuff said