A Mixed Week

What makes a good literary agent? Picnics wouldn't normally be at the top of my list but now my priorities have most definitely changed. When my agent, Jenny Savill, organised a picnic gathering for her burgeoning list of children's authors I knew that I was with the right woman. Who doesn't want to sit beneath the trees, eating strawberries, comparing notes with other writers? On Friday we gathered in the park behind the offices of Andrew Nurnberg Associates and sat on spread blankets. Twitter, Facebook and email are all well and good, but there's nothing to beat the beaming smiles and conversation that we all shared for a sunny afternoon. Thank you so much, Jenny. This was a real treat, and one not to be forgotten. 

It only gets better. Tomorrow I travel to Charney Manor in Oxfordshire for the writers' retreat organised by the Scattered Authors Society. This will be the second time I attend this event and I am really looking forward to it. I'll know faces this time round, instead of being a nervous newbie. We have a great programme of events, and as the photo below indicates, we don't only talk about writing! French cricket and Pimms featured large last year. A summer ago I enjoyed a quiet room of my own, redrafting my manuscript prior to submitting to an agent (Hello, Jenny!), afternoon snoozes, tea and biscuits and the making of new friends. I look forward to more of the same this year.

Did any of you catch the BBC1 Imagine programme about Diana Athill? If not, I strongly recommend trying to watch it on iPlayer. Diana Athill is my editorial heroine. A down-to-earth, unassuming and eminently sensible woman, she insists that an editor should be invisible, never looking for recognition or public congratulations. I couldn't agree more. If you're looking for accolade, don't become an editor. Not because you don't deserve it, but because that's not what you should be pursuing. An editor is a facilitator, helping someone else achieve their own dream. Well, that's my humble opinion at least, and after many years of editing.

I woke on Friday, as we all did, to pavements baking and flowers blooming. Another day, another stretch of heat. I had no idea I would also be waking to the news that Beryl Bainbridge had passed away. Oh, how I have loved that woman's novels. Slim volumes of spare prose, nary a wasted word, tight exercises in simplicity that might mislead someone into believing that what she did was easy. I loved her imaginative confidence - tackling subjects as diverse and intriguing as the Titanic or the South Pole. I also regularly read her eccentric theatre reviews in The Oldie. She would report on the comfort of the seats as well as the quality of the production, not really caring whether her piece satisfied the normal journalistic demands of theatre review. Not really caring. She didn't care what the world thought, clearly didn't give a damn. I admired that.