Dan Rhodes / Features / Untitled Books

"You know that moment when dinner arrives on the table, and it's really tasty, and everyone goes quiet as they start to eat, but nobody minds because everyone just wants to be left alone with their food? In Tagalog there's a phrase for that: galit galit muna. It means 'We are enemies for now.'"

Photograph: ©Doro Bay 5

Dan Rhodes

Dan Rhodes is the winner of many awards including the Author's Club First Novel Award and the E.M. Forster Award. In 2003 he was named by Granta magazine as one of their Twenty Best of Young British Novelists. He spent a week in limbo with his publisher, seething over the future of libraries, fretting over bills, and reading for the simple pleasure of it.

Monday 7th March 2011

I recently finished writing a novel. Book VII. I've sent it to my publisher, Canongate, and right now they'll all be huddled around an ancient oak table in a candlelit underground chamber, cackling as they try to work out ever more creative justifications for offering me a negligible fee for it. I'm allergic to the idea of writing to an advance - I prefer to finish a book, and if the publisher likes it they'll make me an offer. I don't have a literary agent, but I'm starting to wonder whether I'm getting too old for the rough and tumble of contract negotiations. It's never a fun time.

After the intense period of single-mindedness that comes with winding up a book, I'm starting to clear my head. I took the morning off and went to the local library with my three-year-old son, Arthur. This got me thinking, as I often do, about how authors are the original file sharers. Every writer I know feels very passionately that their work should be available to everybody, regardless of their income. Of course we hope that people love our stuff enough to want to buy first-hand copies for themselves and all their friends, because that's the only way we can afford to keep going, but we're all mad keen to see our books in public libraries. Right now I find it impossible to visit one without spluttering with fury about council cuts. Unlike many, ours is staying open, but its hours are shrinking. Like a reasonable amount of people I voted for the soppy old LibDems at the last election, little knowing that I was being tricked into voting for a replica of the horrible Tory government I grew up waving placards against. We leave with Arthur clutching books about a monster, a baby owl and some machines. Any society, big or small, should be able to offer at least this.

Thence to see the nurse for Arthur's pre-school jabs. As a reward for heroic conduct (his), we head to our favourite café for an early lunch - a shared plate of chips, beans and mushrooms. The rest of the day is spent at the office in a haze of Sudoku (a passable effort), tea (Yorkshire, chosen because John Shuttleworth does the ads), and writing this diary while telling myself it counts as work.

Two of my very favourite people, both singers, were born on this day - Townes van Zandt in 1944, and my son's namesake, Arthur Lee, in 1945. Neither are around any more, and I feel very privileged to have seen them both in concert. I saw Townes at a benefit for a rehab centre at a TexMex bar in London. He staggered on stage, heroically drunk, squinted out at the audience, and said, "I don't know where the hell I am - but it sure is great to be here." Beautiful.

Tuesday

Under yesterday's date on my calendar I'd written: Pay rent. Today it says: Pay rent. For tomorrow it says: Actually pay rent. Cash flow is rarely great for writers. I survive from underwhelming cheque to underwhelming cheque. Over the last twelve years, since going 'pro', I've had to supplement my income with ad hoc work in the stockroom of a bookshop, the stockroom of a soap shop and the stockroom of a whisky shop - minimum wage jobs that don't drain my brain. Often I'll meet a writer who's bagged a Creative Writing teaching post, and after a few drinks they tend to divulge their salaries. They invariably out-earn me, sometimes by miles. I often feel twinges of envy for people with regular wages coming in, but I'm glad I've not hopped on this particular gravy train. If I'd taken on a gig like that there's no way I would have just finished Book VII - I would probably still be struggling along with Book IV, if I hadn't abandoned it altogether. Teaching writing is something that should only be done by old timers with impressive bibliographies - so many writers get sucked into that world after a novel or two, and are never seen again. At this stage in my life, while I still have energy, ideas and, God help me, hope, writing my own stuff is so much more important than helping other people write theirs.

And once you've written a book, you then have to flog it, which involves much waiting around before the inevitable stand-off. I feel like a sumo wrester sitting ringside in his mawashi, waiting for his bout to begin. My editor has read it, and loves it, but it now has to be passed around the office and presented to the dreaded Canongate Computer.

Today has been a bad day for Sudoku, but a good day for pancakes.

Wednesday

It's struck me that the first two entries have been epics, so I'll keep it brisk today.

My peremptory email has elicited news from the publisher: the new book has an in-house fanbase, they want to publish it, and next week they'll be making an offer. This is great. I love being with Canongate, and hope I'll be staying there. I like the people I work with, I trust them to do their best for my books, and it feels like the aesthetically correct place for my writing to be (though I would feel this even more strongly if they would only ditch their dismal new logo. Its predecessor was great, but this one looks as though it belongs on a GCSE study guide).

Still, the stand-off continues. You know that moment when dinner arrives on the table, and it's really tasty, and everyone goes quiet as they start to eat, but nobody minds because everyone just wants to be left alone with their food? In Tagalog there's a phrase for that: galit galit muna. It means We are enemies for now. That pretty much sums up my relationship with my publisher during negotiation season. Let's just hope we make it as far as pudding.

A pretty good Sudoku day. I've actually paid the rent, and bought a lottery ticket. It's a triple rollover. I expect I'll win.

Thursday

I didn't win. And I woke to find a baffling letter from the letting agency, demanding the rent. I'd gone in and paid on rent day - you'd have thought they'd have waited until the rent was palpably late before sending a brusque letter. It's yet another reminder that I don't really live in my own home. Renting has its perks (particularly when the boiler breaks down and someone else picks up the tab), but I've had enough of it. I want to live in a place where I can paint the walls whichever colour I want (or, to be realistic, whichever colour my wife wants), and where I can screw bookshelves into the wall, and that doesn't have thick carpet in the bathroom. (Carpet! In the bathroom! In 2011!) Our last place didn't even have a bathroom, it just had a kind of cupboard with a shower in it, but I truly believe a carpeted bathroom is a step down from no bathroom at all. Please help me achieve my goal by buying first-hand copies of my books for yourself and all your friends.

In other news, this is a momentous day. I'm coming off a long stretch of antibiotics after a minor ailment, which means - that's right - I can drink again. There aren't many ways in which I can be considered Christ-like, but if Jesus had ever been in my position, I'm sure he too would have headed straight down to the Co-op for a £3.99 bottle of Côtes du Rhône. The paperback of Little Hands Clapping came out a week ago, and I wasn't even able to raise a glass to it. Paperback publication days are strange things - all anti-climax and nothing much to do - but I still think they're significant enough to mark with a small celebration. Mine will happen tonight, a week overdue.

I've had the Society of Authors contract department look over my last deal with Canongate, to see if there's anything that could be improved on for the next one, if it happens. It's a fantastic service - this alone is worth the subs. Things are more or less in order, which is a relief, but they've advised that I consider making a couple of minor tweaks here and there. The rest of the working day is spent going over their findings with a microscope. In the afternoon, Arthur visits for a paper-shredding session. A fiver is saved with moments to spare. A tolerable Sudoku day.

Friday

The £3.99 Côtes du Rhône went down like nectar.

I try to cycle at least a marathon every week, but because of weather, minor ailments and buckled wheels I'd not been out for a while. I spotted a break in the clouds and managed 27 miles this morning. I almost expired, even though I was on the relatively forgiving High Peak Trail (in its previous life as a train line it was home to the sharpest bend on the British railway network, fact fans). I blame the wind. The Peak District landscape is magnificent. I love living here.

In his running memoir, Haruki Murakami reveals what he likes to listen to while he's out jogging, and I'm going to follow his lead: my favourite cycling music is Thin Lizzy, Steely Dan, Trumans Water and TLC. So there you are. Not much of my favourite music works on two wheels. Incidentally, the last couple of times I've been to Morrison's for the weekly shop, they've been playing Steely Dan's Do It Again - not an edited version, the whole thing, sitar solo and all. Hats off to the Morrisons' DJ. Also incidentally, I got the feeling that Murakami (a writer capable of splendid work) deliberately structured his book in a way that would mirror the experience of running a marathon. It starts out offering the possibility of a pleasurable, worthwhile experience, but by the end it's become a joyless, interminable slog. When the final page is turned, the reader (this reader, anyway) feels a sense of elation that it's finally over. He's a clever boy - I wouldn't put it past him.

Today is the day of the Japanese earthquake. The Philippines is on high tsunami alert. We have family and friends there. It's not a place that has much luck at the best of times. We follow the news, and are relieved to see that the country has come out of it more or less untroubled.

No contact with the publisher today.

We're re-watching the Bond films, in order. So far we're only on From Russia With Love, so there's a mountain to climb. Connery's OK, but I'm impatient to get to the real Bond - Roger Moore. I got married in the building that explodes at the end of A View To A Kill. Beat that.

I forget to buy a Euromillions rollover ticket, and only manage one Sudoku all day. At least I get it right.

Saturday

I've now been thirty-nine for two weeks, which means I only have fifty weeks left in which I'll be considered a Young Writer. One of the few benefits of writing fiction for a living is that until the day you turn forty you're regarded as fresh-faced. I don't know why this is, but I'm not about to dispute it. It's all a load of bollocks, of course. It doesn't matter if you're eighteen or eighty - all that matters is whether or not your book's any good.

I'm glad to be back to fairly normal reading habits. In the thick of writing, my reading is piecemeal. Mozipedia by Simon Goddard - the encyclopaedia of Morrissey, an insane and wonderful undertaking - was perfect for that. As was the Biggest Ever Tim Vine Joke Book, my trusty collection of Viz annuals and my short-story shelf. But now I can plough through a bunch of books I've had piled up for a long while. I have a low-level addiction to biographies of demented authors. My number one recommendation right now is The Man Who Went Into The West, Byron Rogers' biography of R.S. Thomas. It doesn't matter if you've never heard of R.S. Thomas, this is a wonderful read. There's no reason on earth why you should trust me, but please do.

As you can see, my life is so humdrum that even if I were ever to have hit books, nobody would ever bother writing my biography. It would be a disastrously dull read, and I'm glad about that. Who would want to be a V.S. Naipaul, or a B.S. Johnson, or any of an apparently endless stream of subjects of fascinating biographies?

I only manage one Sudoku all day. I mess it up.

Sunday

They've only given me a week. If they'd given me a fortnight, this diary might have had a full story arc, but I'm having to end on a cliffhanger.

I'm hoping Canongate come in with a workable offer. It's my wife's birthday on Wednesday, and I don't want to spend it gnashing my teeth. We're off to Bakewell to see the freakishly large ducks (seriously - these ducks are immense), and I would so much rather do this in the knowledge that my publisher digs my book, and the entire Dan Rhodes Project, enough to keep me trading. It's not as if I'm greedy. I couldn't care less about owning a yacht, or driving a red Audi, or sending Arthur to Eton. I just want stay one step ahead of the bills, and maybe one day have lino in the bathroom.

One Sudoku. Unfinished. Will I ever get the hang of it?

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Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes is published by Canongate.

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Thursday, 24 March, 2011