Oisín McGann's Blog
Wondering Aloud

One of the challenges of being self-employed is maintaining all the stuff you have to manage day-to-day, while still making time to stand back and take stock, planning for the future. I’ve been doing a lot of reacting to stuff lately, and getting pretty wound up about it, so I needed to stop and catch my breath a bit. I needed to take a look around at where I was and figure out what was coming next.

As it happened, I ended up with some time to kill in Edinburgh. I was over there for a meeting of the panel deciding the shortlist for the Scottish Children’s Book Awards; I was helping pick the contenders among the books for 12-16 year-olds. The gang at the Scottish Book Trust haven’t released the shortlists yet, so my lips are zipped for the moment. This trip did mean I missed the CBI Book Awards Ceremony, but I still (heavy, reluctant sigh) managed to enjoy my visit to Edinburgh. Big congrats to Celine Kiernan on her win, for her novel ‘Into the Grey’. It also won the Junior Jury prize, so a popular choice all round. Congrats also to Paula Leyden, Mark O’Sullivan, Oliver Jeffers (again!), and our former Laureate na nÓg, Siobhán Parkinson, for scooping the category awards.

Edinburgh is a fantastic city. It’s the third time I’ve been, although they’ve all been short visits. It was hot when I arrived on Sunday, walking through the streets in the final hours of a big marathon event. This was actually quite handy, as my back’s been a bit knackered lately, but now I wasn’t the only one in the crowd walking like I’d two wooden legs. They all had a better excuse, that’s all. And they had t-shirts with ‘Marathon’ on them to make that excuse clear. Fair play to them, it must have been some struggle in that heat.

The meeting took slightly less than two hours on Monday morning, so I had Sunday afternoon and evening and Monday afternoon to kick about town. Walking actually helped my loosen up my back, so I spent a fair bit of time on my feet. Normally, when I’m away, I’ll do a lot of work in the notebook in the downtime, or sometimes bring my laptop. Instead, I tried to take my brain out of gear for a while, and figure out where I was going next.

I’m working on a couple of new things, including a kind of online prequel for my next novel ‘Rat-Runners’. I’ve just come back to the editing on ‘Rat-Runners’ too – we’re on the copy edits now, and the cover design is well underway. I’ve started planning the next novel too. But there have been a load of other bits and pieces demanding my time lately, and I’ve found myself reacting constantly, rather than planning any particular path – and that’s no way to go about things.

I’m not great at relaxing, but you just can’t push things all the time. I spent nearly three hours on Monday sitting in a park near the railway station in Edinburgh, making the odd note in my notebook, reading a bit, but mostly just looking around and thinking, letting my thoughts wander. When it came time to make my way towards the bus for the airport, I felt my thoughts were more ordered, I was a little more focused. I’m in Listowel for a few days later this week. I haven’t done any hillwalking in a long time, what with the kids and the workload, but I think I’ll try and get one in while I’m down there. I need to clear my head of all the complicated rubbish, and get some proper ground under my feet.

If you want to get an idea of the kind of stuff that’s been occupying my mind lately, check out my guest blog for Listowel Writers’ Week. I’ve written a longer article for Inis magazine on the topic, which will be in the November issue. I also came across a couple of other interesting titbits, one an ‘infographic’ on how a book is born (cynical, but pretty accurate) and a post on the ongoing push-and-pull between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ fiction, and how those lines are blurring. Catch you later.

So, I didn’t win the Mordus du Polar Award in France (goddamnit). That honour went to Marie-Aude Murail for ‘Le Tueur a la Cravate’ – congratulations Marie-Aude.

While I’m on, there are a few things I thought worth spreading word about:

I did a recent guest post on a blog called Pivot Dublin, which is devoted to design issues of all kinds. My piece concerns my doubts about our ability to create books for kids moving from the stage where they’re confident to read, to where they might be able to read novels. I think one of the main problems here is that the publishing industry is, understandably enough, run by book-lovers. But that has led to a kind of prejudice when it comes to reading, and we’re seeing it when kids hit eight or nine. With kids increasingly reading in so many different ways, we should be able to convince increasing numbers to read books, but we’re not. I think the way we approach the design of books is one of the reasons for this.

On a different note, I’m going to be doing a couple of events down in Listowel for their Writers’ Week. The dates are yet to be finalized, but there’ll be at least two events down there.

In other news, I found an interesting piece on self-publishing versus going mainstream recently, and whether the Big Six publishers are floundering or merely changing slowly. It’s informative and well-argued. You should check it out.

Speaking of the publishers and what they’re up to, David Maybury’s recent piece on Bologna Book Fair for the Bookseller is full of enlightening notes. And while we’re there, word of looting at Bologna might make you wonder what strange breed goes to a book fair to steal books.

What was the whole point in going digital if people are going to just steal the printed versions?