‘I was wondering who inspired you to write?’ asks Josh, from one of the schools I visited last week.

Great question. Thanks, Josh! There are a few different possible sides to it – and more than few possible answers.

In my case (as I suspect it is with most writers) the drive to write comes from all sorts of different directions. If you’re talking about people who pushed me to chase my dream of being a published author, I’d have to include – for instance – my friend Mary. Her sudden and utterly unexpected death in a car accident when I was 18 (and she 16) was a timely reminder that life is short, it can stop at any time, and if you have an ambition then, well, you’d better get on with going after it. If, by contrast, you’re talking about writers whose work has inspired me – positively or negatively – then the list is very long indeed, and growing all the time (check my LibraryThing profile for some of the positive ones!)

But I guess there is one person I can point to who had a big effect on my choice to do what I do. He’s also a large part of the reason I’m always looking for opportunities to do my stuff at schools, by the way! I’ve mentioned him on this blog before (though THE IRON MAN is by no means his most representative piece of writing). His name was Ted Hughes – and I GOT TO SEE HIM IN PERSON.

He came to my school. If you haven’t heard his name before then it’s hard to explain what a big deal that was: his writing is still loved and admired today, but at that point he was arguably the most famous living poet in the world – and (to repeat) HE CAME TO MY SCHOOL!

He’d been asked to read some poems of his that we students were supposed to be studying for our exams. To my absolute glee he refused, reading instead from what is still one of my favourite books of his, namely CROW. And as if all of that wasn’t wonderful enough, it was a magical performance: his craggy face and deep, slow reading voice were utterly hypnotic, and are etched on my memory forever.

But something else is etched there, too. I was sitting in the front row of the school auditorium, and pardon me if this sounds a little weird, but as he read I realised I was close enough to him to smell that he’d just drunk a cup of coffee.

You see: he wasn’t a wizard, or an alien, or a myth. His writing may have been phenomenal and his life was dramatic – but he was a person. He was a human being, who got up in the morning, who drank coffee. This was a revelation to me, because until that point, while I’d written stories at school, becoming ‘a writer’ myself was something I’d never even considered. Writers were different (I thought). Writers were special – bizarre, mythical creatures separated from the rest of humankind. As far as I could see, becoming ‘a writer’ was as likely as getting superpowers – being able to shoot laser beams from my eyes, say. But there he was, Ted Hughes, this writer I admired. And I could smell his breath! 😉

Writers are people – just like (for instance) brain surgeons, or particle physicists, or polar explorers, or Olympic javelin-throwers are all people. Writing is a job: it’s done by people who sit in rooms and put words together – it’s as simple, and as difficult, as that. And passing along what Ted Hughes passed to me that day as I sat in the audience – namely that if you want to do it, and if you’re prepared to work hard enough, you can do, not ‘just’ writing, but whatever you want – is a big part of the reason why I love doing school visits so much. Seeing (or, heh, smelling-!) that he was a real person made the idea of being a writer suddenly seem real too. That was hugely inspiring to me. And if I and my stories even come close to having that effect on someone else, I’ll be very happy! 🙂

Saturday’s event at Waterstone’s Guildford with Mark Robson was tremendous. For those who don’t know, the traditional drill with bookshop appearances is for authors to sit at a table somewhere, waiting for people to come and ask them to sign their books. Well, let me tell you, that’s not Mark’s style at all. Hee hee hee!

When I arrived he’d set up a low table with some stacks of our books – but it was at the front of the shop, about three paces in from the door. And from there, from about 10 am until 4pm, he and I stood there and approached almost everyone who came in. We engaged them in conversation, we put our books in their hands and (as often as not…!) we convinced them to buy ’em!

I found the business of hand-selling our stuff to be very satisfying. I guess it helped that I’d been a bookseller myself for ten years: I was used to the idea of recommending books to people. It helped, too (of course!) that Mark and I enjoy each other’s work: his IMPERIAL series, for instance, is TERRIFIC! But having to convince someone of the merits of my own stories, enough to part with their cash and give a book of mine a go, was a great experience – humbling, sure, but empowering, too. The day passed in a flash and we had a lot of fun, and I’m delighted to say that Mark has indicated that he might be up for us ‘double-heading it’ again sometime soon. Watch this space! 🙂

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