Reflections: On the Magic of Writing by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062219893
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Lecture Three: Why Don’t You Write Real Books?

In her third talk in Australia, Diana explores the nature of “Real Books.” The talk was based on an article she wrote for a children’s science fiction edition of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, issue number 140, published in October/November 1987. The talk took place at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney.

It’s a real pleasure to start answering this question. People have been asking me, “Why don’t you write Real Books?” ever since I had my first book published. Sometimes they ask it by implication, sometimes they ask it outright—but they never stop asking it.

The question first came from close relatives, who were ashamed to tell their neighbors what I did. My mother-in-law, indeed, clearly felt that the only excuse for my not being solely a wife and mother would have been that I wrote for adults—provided of course that I did not write what she called “popular fiction.” Because I was unable to oblige her in either of these requirements, she preferred to pretend that I did nothing but bring up her grandchildren. This could be very awkward at times. There was one occasion when she was due for a visit—arriving at teatime, for which she always required a heaped plate of sandwiches and at least two different kinds of homemade cake. I was in the middle of trying to produce these items, when my dog came in soaking wet and managed to convey to me that he was freezing and uncomfortable and needed to be dried off now. We were not in our usual house, but he nevertheless led me to the towel cupboard and opened it to show me what he wanted. And I thought, “That was clever! How does it feel to be that intelligent, but without hands or speech? Wait a moment!” And I had the idea for Dogsbody—and I had it so pressingly that I had to race away and get down at least the outline of the first chapter. The result was that when my mother-in-law arrived, there was no cake. I explained and apologized, naturally, and my mother-in-law, having made it clear to me that I had committed a major solecism, then said, “Poor Diana—the children keep you so busy that I don’t blame you for going to sleep.” It was then that I realized that my books were so unreal to her that they were assumed not to exist. The odd thing was that, whenever I had a new book out, she always insisted on having a copy, in order, as far as I could see, to put it on a special shelf in her spare bedroom, ostentatiously unread.

Well, you can live with this kind of thing. But the question also shortly came at me from every other quarter, often in insidious and indirect forms. It came in the embarrassed look from the hairdresser, if I said what I did. Or the same look from the

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