Wrote more new material for the book today. Almost finished -- all going well, I should wrap it up tomorrow, then move along to a straightforward edit of the next three in the series. After that I hope to fit in a new first draft during the summer. I get itchy if I don't write a few new books a year, and I've only done one so far in 2008, so I'm eager to thrash out some fresh stories over the coming months...

Received the following email from a fan called Jamie:

I love your books. LOVE them. I've read Cirque du Freak and starting on The Demonata; they're so imaginative and creative. And they inspired me to be a writer. I already have my plot and stuff for a book I'm writing, but I'm still a bit unsure. I'm in high school now and will be graduation in 3 years. And I still have no idea what college to attend. But I don't know if I honestly do need to go to college to be a succesful writer. Do you think it's nessesary, and if so, do you have any recommendations?

In a word -- NO!!! I don't think college is essential if you want to be a writer. I think a lot of writers DO go on to third level education, and it certainly does no harm, but it's not a necessity. I also don't think it makes a huge difference what you choose to study, as you can get ideas from just about any course. When I was choosing what I wanted to study, I decided English was a must, and I think lots of other writers believe that too. Well, it isn't!!!! Oh, it's helpful, sure, and a good English course will introduce you to lots of books you otherwise would never read, and that's always a good thing. But a lot of studying for an English degree involves literary criticism, reading what critics have to say about books, incorporating their ideas, analysing texts in a dry, clinical way, and... well, I have to honestly say I think most of it's a lot of baloney!!

I've only ever been interested in what an author has to say -- I've no interest whatsoever in what academics have to say about authors. Of course, lots of people ARE, so I'm not knocking it, any more than I'd knock any area of study. It's not my personal cup of tea, but lots of people enjoy it, so if that's where your interest lies, good luck to you. But I think a lot of would-be writers make the mistake of thinking an English course will teach them how to write good books. That isn't the case. You can learn a lot that will HELP you write a good book, certainly, but as I said above, you can learn from ANY course. I also studied Sociology at uni, and I actually found that far more useful overall -- it focused my attention on social structures, on power dynamics, on how people relate to and work with one another. I've used a lot of what I learnt in Sociology over the years -- it certainly played an important part in helping me figure out the underpinnings of  my vampire culture when I came to write The Saga of Darren Shan.

All education is important. Everything you learn has value. But you become a writer by WRITING. The most important thing any writer has to do is WRITE. If you put in the time and the effort, you'll learn about writing, and about yourself, and you'll develop. As you do, you'll find yourself drawing in from everything you see, hear, read, experience. If you study English, you'll find things you can use in your books. If you study Chemistry, you'll find things you can use in your books. If you don't go to uni, but get a job in McDonalds, you'll find things you can use in your books. I think it's vital for young writers to get away from the idea that writing can be taught. Oh, it probably can be -- there are plenty of writing courses around, and I guess they couldn't keep going if they didn't produce some sort of positive results -- but I don't think it SHOULD. Writing's a learning process, something you do by yourself, a voyage of self-exploration and self-discovery. It's scary, not having someone who can show you the way and tell you everything that you should do -- but that's what makes it so much FUN!!! The best thing about working hard and developing and becoming a writer is that when you succeed, you can look back and appreciate the fact that you did most of it yourself. You get help along the way, from all sorts of people and sources, but ultimately YOU determine whether or not you realise your potential.

In short, do whatever you feel like. If you fancy uni, go for it. If you'd rather get a job, get one. If you want to travel around the world and have lots of adventures, bon voyage! No matter what you do, you'll find material you can use as a fictional springboard. The only thing you absolutely HAVE to do, the one thing you can't escape if you want to be a writer, the one essential, the one box you MUST tick if you want to succeed... you have to write.

Everything else is incidental.

I returned to editing duties on the first book of my four book series today. I started re-editing it last week, but had to stop for a bit to deal with other stuff. Today I got back to it, and started to add some new material. As I said in an earlier blog a few months ago, the first book was shorter than the next three, and while I don't have any problems with short books, each time I came back to it, I felt like there was something missing. So I thought hard about it, and I realised there were a few blanks I needed to fill in, which would require the addition of 3 or 4 new chapters to the book. I launched myself into the fresh material today.

This is the part of the writing process I find the most hard to get enthusiastic about. Every writer's different. Some hate the first draft process but love editing. Some love editing but hate having to slog through a first draft. Personally I don't have any problem with doing first drafts or editing the books later. When I'm working on a first draft I "get into the zone" and patiently work my way through the story, a day at a time. When I'm editing, I fly through the books -- I love tinkering with them and teasing them into final shape.

But this sticky middle stage always annoys me. I don't have to do it very often. Normally I write more than I need in a first draft, which means from that point on I have material to work with and hone into shape. It's a mental thing -- I see the first draft stage as the "hard work" part of the process, then the editing stage as the "easier work". But when I have to add new chapters to a book while editing, I get confused. It's silly, but part of me keeps growling, "I shouldn't be doing this! This is meant to be the coast-along-on-the-wings-of-an-edit time! The hard stuff is meant to be behind me!!!" I do my best to ignore that unreasonable voice, but I can never block it out entirely. It's never stopped me from going ahead and completing the new work -- I always goad myself on -- but it has slowed me down from time to time.

I guess working on new material during an edit like this is the closest I've ever come to having the dreaded Writer's Block. To some extents I think writer's block is a myth -- I don't believe any writer is ever physically incapable of doing a good day's work. There are so many stories to tell, and so many ways to tell them, that I don't think any writer has a REAL excuse to let themselves be derailed, to claim they've run out of ideas or inspiration. What I think happens is that writers psyche themselves out. They fixate on a problem, or something they dislike, until it gets so big in their imagination that they can't see a way around it. If I'd kept putting off the writing of the new material in this book -- if I'd gone ahead and edited the next three books, and then moved on to something else, and told myself "I'll fixx it NEXT time," the problem would have magnified and I'd have found it even harder to deal with. It might have even got to the stage where I started to believe I COULDN'T do it.

A lot of writing -- indeed, most things in life worth pursuing -- is about self-belief. You can't afford to stand and stare at the things which scare you most. If you don't think you can do something, you need to crack on a launch yourself at it, to prove to yourself that you CAN. I'm not talking about attempting the impossible here -- I mean, if I wanted to run 100 metres in 10 seconds, I couldn't, no matter how hard I trained! If I wanted to be a ballet dancer, I couldn't. A professional footballer. A rock star. Etc. Etc. I'm not talking about chasing unrealistic dreams here. But each of us has unique talents, things we're good at, things we KNOW we can do. I think that most of us are aware of our talents. We know our limits, but also the places where we can stretch those limits, where we can excel. Failure in life isn't being unable to do the things you idly dream of doing -- it's failing to do the things you CAN do. It's looking at a problem you know you can solve, but not solving it because you're afraid to try.

Life's full of hurdles, and the hurdles are different for each and every one of us. But we won't ever get over those hurdles by standing and staring at them and worrying about how high they are and what's on the other side and if we have the power to clear them. To get over our hurdles, we need to take a deep breath, narrow our eyes, take a good run up at them ... and jump.

Finished editing the page proofs of Wolf Island this afternoon -- which means this baby is DONE!!! I started the book way back in 2005, so it's been almost three years in the making -- which is about average for most of my books. For those who are curious how work on it broke down over the years, I did seven edits in total after the first draft, two in 2006, two in 2007, and three this year. Again, that's about normal for me. If I'd done all those edits back-to-back, and only worked on that book until it was finished, I guess I could have done it all in ... oh ... in ten or twelve weeks, I suppose. But I like spreading the process out. I find, which I leave a long gap between edits, I can be more objective about the book. Also, I enjoy it more. My last three edits of the book all came within less than 3 months (one in April, one in June, and the final one this month), and while I wouldn't say I was sick of the book by now, I can't deny that the last edit or two were more work than pleasure. Essential work -- by doing the edits so close together, I really got into the story, and was able to spot and eliminate tiny flaws which I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise -- but work nonetheless. Spreading the process out, and jumping about from one book to another, keeps the writing process more fun as far as I'm concerned, and it's important to me to HAVE fun when I'm writing. I like to get a buzz out of my books. I take my job VERY seriously, and put a lot of hard work into ensuring the stories are as strong as they can be by the time I present them to you guys, but I like to enjoy it too. I try to find a balance whereby we can all get a kick out of the books -- me as well as you. I don't think many writers work the way I do, but, heh heh, if they saw how much fun I was having doing the books like this, I bet a lot of them would!!!!

I think it all looks VERY cool!! Predictably, not every fan shares my opinion -- as soon as the picture came to light, some fans were moaning on the message boards about how that's not how THEY thought Mr Crepsley should look! Well, tough!!! I'm afraid I've no sympathy for those who bitch and gripe about everything the movie folk do. Like the rest of you, I've no idea how the film's going to turn out. I read the script, so I know (and have said here quite a few times) that it's going to be radically different to the books. Maybe it will turn out good, maybe bad, maybe somewhere in between. But I'm going to give it a fair shot. I'm keeping an open mind, and I suggest you guys should too. EVERYONE who read the books has their own idea of how Mr Crepsley looks. There's no one definitive version of him -- you all have your own thoughts on how he looks and talks and moves, on what accent he has, etc. NO actor could be the "real" Mr Crepsley for EVERY fan, since no fan thinks of him in quite the same way! In the books, Mr Crepsley can look whatever way YOU want him to look. In the movie, he's going to look the way he does in this picture, and I for one think he looks pretty dang spiffy!!!

Forgot to say in my last Blog that the Neil Young concert was quite good, nothing spectacular. He played a nice selection of songs, some old favourites and newer tracks. For an old guy, he's still fairly lively on stage, and for the most part it was a rocking gig. But towards the end he played two LONG songs back to back -- one was 20 minutes, the other 25 minutes!!! For some fans those were the highlights of the set -- there are some people who love nothing better than watching a guy pick at a guitar for 20 minutes. But I'm not one of them. I think a song needs to have a damn good reason to go any longer than 5 minutes, and those 45 minutes were a drag from my viewpoint and somewhat spoilt the gig for me. Then again, you know that's what you're probably going to get when you go to a Neil Young concert, so I'm not complaining. I just wish he'd cut those songs by a fifth, which would have let him play another 7 or 8 classics...

Yesterday I went up to Dublin to film a piece for a show called Eye 2 Eye. There were two other authors on the show with me, John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) and Ruth Gilligan (Forget, a novel she published when she was just 18). A couple of dozen lucky fans had been chosen to come to the studio and question us, and after reading a short extract from one of our books, we spent the rest of the show answering whatever questions the fans wanted to throw at us. It was lots of fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing it when it airs. I don't know when that's going to be (apart from it'll be some time in the autumn) but I'll give you all a heads-up when I hear more.

Today I started editing the page proofs of Wolf Island. This is the last bit of work I'll be doing on the book, my final chance to change anything. There's not much that I actually want to change -- by this stage, I've got the book almost exactly where I want it. I'm more concerned with finding typos and errors. Of course, typos can creep in once the book goes to print (as a few did with Demon Apocalypse), but that's something NO writer can control. You just have to do the very best you can at the proofs stage, then keep your fingers crossed after that!!!

Oh -- and a very happy 4th of July to all my American fans!!!!

I had my 36th birthday today. Hard to believe I'm that old -- I still feel like a teenager in many ways!!! Oh well, ageing is something none of us can avoid, so we might as well just accept it and do out best not to let the passing years depress us TOO much!!!! I didn't do much to celebrate my birthday. Bas gave me some presents in the morning, and I got a few cards, and we treated ourselves to a Chinese takeaway later, which we shared with my Granny. Apart from that I scanned and uploaded lots of new book covers to my web site, went to Limerick to get my hair cut, and published the July issue of the Shanville Monthly. If I'm at home, I like to keep busy on birthdays -- I'm not one for sitting around doing nothing -- I get bored too easily!!!

Thanks again to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, whether my email, MySpace comments, blog entries, or whatever!! As I said the other day, I'd love to reply to each and every greeting, but there are just too many of them! The perils of being popular!!!! But I really have been touched by each and every one of them, as corny as that sounds -- so, once again, THANKS!!!! And I mean that sincerely.

Right, I'm off to watch a bit of crap TV, then I'm going to try and get an early night -- I'm travelling up to Dublin tomorrow to record my interview with Eye 2 Eye. If I get back in time, I'll blog to let you know how it went, though it's more likely I won't get a chance to do that until Friday...

Many thanks for all the early birthday greetings, people!!! I replied to the first few people who emailed me, and meant to reply to everyone, but there have been so many of you, it just isn't possible!!! So I'm afraid you'll all have to settle for a collective THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH!!!!!!! For those who don't know, the big day is on Wednesday, and I'll be 36. I won't be doing a lot for it -- working in the morning, then going to get my hair cut, then treating myself to a Chinese meal in the evening. I don't normally do much for birthday, except for milestones -- e.g. I did a parachute jump when I turned 30!! I'm not sure what I'll do when I hit 40 in a few years (assuming the gods of the vampires don't come looking for my soul before that!). Maybe I'll run a poll among you guys closer the time, and let you plan my celebrations for me!!!!!

My internet service was running slowly all weekend, which is why I didn't post a blog before this. It's still out of whack, but luckily I'm in a hotel in Cork at the moment (ahead of a Neil Young gig which I'm going to later tonight), so I'm able to post from Bas's laptop. I spent Saturday and Sunday editing the first book of my four book series, then went out on Sunday night with my friend Kenny to watch the final of Euro 2008. Spain deservedly won 1-0. I really enjoyed this year's tournament, but it's going to be a long wait now until the next big one, the World Cup in 2010. I just hope Ireland are involved next time...

I got an email from one of Neil Gaiman's publicists today, asking if I'd read an advance copy of his forthcoming children's book and give them a quote if I like it. As a HUGE Neil Gaiman fan, I was tickled pink to be asked! I never thought, back in the days when I was religiously reading Sandman every month, that I'd one day be asked to give a quote for a Neil Gaiman book!!! It's quite surreal. But NICE surreal!!!! I get asked to give quotes for quite a lot of books, usually by authors just starting out. I normally have to say no to such requests, even though I always feel really mean-spirited when I do -- I know how hard it is to get published, and how hard it is to get people to take a chance on your work even when you do, and I know J K Rowling made the time to read CDF before it was printed, and ... well, I'd love to read EVERY book or manuscript that gets sent to me. The trouble is time. I just don't have enough of it.

My reading habits have dipped severely since my early 20s. At my peak I used to read 100 books a year, or thereabouts. These days I sometimes read less than 20. It has to do with the amount of writing and editing that I commit to -- when I spend most of my day looking at words on a computer screen, I find it hard to work up the enthusiasm to deal with even more words at night by reading a book. I SHOULD do, I know, and I'm always trying to motivate myself to read more, but I've been fighting a losing battle on that front for the last several years. Because I read so little, the books on my shelves have grown and grown. There's so much that I want to read, that I have lying in wait. And since reading time is at a premium, when it's a choice between trying a book by an author I love, or trying one by a newcomer I know nothing about, I almost always go with what I know I'm going to like. I do make occasional exceptions (I read Scream Street by Tommy Donbavand a few weeks ago, and gave him a quote for it -- it's fun horror book for younger readers), but not as many as I'd like. In this instance, though, there was no conflict of interest -- as a Gaiman fan I'd buy and read the book anyway once it was released, so when I was asked if I wanted to read a copy early, for free ... well, what do YOU think I said?!?!?

Started another edit of my four book series today. Didn't get a full day's work done on it, because I had to take a couple of hourse off in the morning to help install a new statue in my garden -- if you're ever flying in to or out of Shannon airport, and you pass over a field and spot a large naked man standing on a railway track, give me a wave, because you'll be flying over chez Shan!!!! This series is one I'm VERY excited about, and I think lots of you guys will be too when it's officially announced (I read out an extract from it at some of my public events, so some of you know about it already -- but Sssshhhhh!!!!). I'm very pleased with the fantasy book, and I hope it gets published and does well and finds an appreciate audience (I think it will), but I imagine these four books are going to be my HOT little babies over the next few years...

I started to plough through my collection of The Punisher comics last night. While I'm not a big fan of the original series (although I did read some of it an enjoy it), I started following it avidly when Garth Ennis took over writing duties. I'm a BIG Ennis fan, going back to the work he did in the UK before making the move into the Marvel and DC universes, and I buy pretty much everything that he writes. I knew I'd fallen a bit behind, but it was only when I dragged out a towering stack of comics last night and saw November 2003 on the oldest of them that I realised just HOW far behind I'd fallen!!! But the great thing about Ennis comics is that they flow nice and smoothly, so I'm making good time catching up. While this isn't as much racuous fun as Preacher or Hitman (both of which I loved), being a good shade darker, it still has its laugh-out-loud moments. Top-notch stuff, albeit for somewhat older comics fans -- it gets fairly vile and crude in places, especially when they "Maxed" it up in 2004 and allowed him to use swear words!!!

Finished editing the fantasy book yesterday. I'm very happy with how it's shaping up -- I've trimmed it down a LOT (having already trimmed it substantially when I edited it earlier this year) and it moves much smoother now. I'm sure there's still plenty of work to be done on it, but I think it's in much better shape now than it was at the start of the year.

I went out with my friend Kenny in the evening, to watch the first of the Euro 2008 semi-finals. Germany beat Turkey 3-2, in what was a surprisingly enjoyable game. I felt a bit sorry for Turkey -- they were massive underdogs at the start of the tournament, but played out of their skins and probably deserved to win last night. But Germany are clinical when it comes to winning football matches, and their extra touch of class shone through in the end.

After the match we went to see a band playing in a pub called Baker Place. I can't remember the name of the band, but they were pretty good!! I used to go to Baker Place a lot when I was younger, mainly to see The Hitchers, who played there quite a bit. But I hadn't been in a LONG time. It was nice to pop back in and check it out. When I went to the toilet, I saw that the walls and ceiling had been decorated with flyers of bands who had played in Baker Place. It was a nice display, but as I looked around at the different flyers, I realised I didn't recognise the names of ANY of the bands!!! It reminded me of how rare success is, and how many people set out in life with big dreams which never come true. I'm sure most of the people in those bands would have loved to be playing in stadiums to crowds of tens of thousands of people, but instead they've faded into obscurity, their only mark a flyer stuck to the wall of downstairs toilet, which will probably be removed or papered over in the not too distant future. I felt a bit sad for those whose dreams never amounted to much, but at the same time I felt oddly proud of them too. At least they pursued the dream, and went for it, and gave it a real shot. I don't think success is as important as many people believe. True satisfaction comes from knowing you've made the most of your life, that you've followed your own path and done the things which give you pleasure. If you do that, you can go to your grave content, knowing you lived life by your own rules. Real success in life is being true to yourself and going after the dreams that matter to you. The only people in life who truly fail are those who don't have the courage to try. Your only visible reward might be a flyer stuck to a wall over a toilet -- but there's much more to us all than just what other people see, and each of us should judge our lives, our failures and successes, by what we feel, not what others see and think.

Anyway, that's enough preaching! I'm off to watch the second semi-final now. I hope it's as entertaining as last night's!!!

Edited another 50 or so pages of the fantasy book. I'm almost done with the current edit -- all going well, I should wrap things up on Wednesday and move along. I'm itching to get some new writing done - specifically I want to write the second book of the multi-book series which I started earlier this year - but editing is every bit as important as getting a first draft in the bag, and when it has to be done, it has to be done. The way things are shaping up, I'm going to move on to an edit of my 4 book series after this (as well as going through the page proofs of Wolf Island within the next week or two), so it will probably be late July or early August before I can put the editing to one side for a while and move on. Oh well -- at least all this means I'm well ahead of my publication schedule! It might seem somewhat excessive, focusing on edits of books which won't come out for another 2 or 3 years. It's very tempting to leave those books for a while and work on the new books which are calling to me. But that's how you run into deadline problems!! I like having plenty of time to work on a book at my own pace, so I do everything I can to avoid falling into a situation where I have to rush to complete a book. Rushing very often means compromising, and I'm proud of the fact that I've never had to hurry out a book of mine before I'm properly finished with it. Control is very important for an author, but it's something that's very easy to lose, and once it's gone, it's hard to reclaim.

It was Bas's birthday today, so we went out for a nice meal together in the evening. I'm not that bothered about birthdays, but Bas loves them, so I made sure I got her a nice present, and even a card -- though I ended up recycling one of the cards I made to send out at Christmas, because I forgot to get her a birthday card!!!! Whoops!!!!!!!! It's a good job she can see the funny side of stuff like that!! I wouldn't last long with a high-maintenance girlfriend!!!! Anyway, let's all sign together: "We wish you a merry Chri--"

Er, I mean, "Happy birthday to Bas! Happy birthday to Bas! Happy birthday dear Ba-a-ass!!!! Happy birthday to Bas!!!!!!!!"

I've been steadily working my way through the fantasy book over the last few days -- this was a work weekend; I'll take a day or two off later in the week instead, but right now I'm stuck in the book and don't want to look up for breath!!! I'm very pleased with how it's going, and how I'm finding natural ways to tighten it up and move things along a bit quicker. That's the big advantage of working the way I do, and spreading the writing process out over a number of years. I wrote the first draft of this book in 2003 -- yes, 5 years ago!!! Having allowed myself so much time to work on it, I've been able to get quite objective about it -- no writer can ever put themselves entirely outside their work and see it as somebody with no knowledge of the story or vested interest in it can, but it's possible to get close to that position. When I first worked on it, I felt very close to the story, and didn't see it the way readers would -- it worked for me, but I don't think it would have worked for a lot of other people! Now that I'm more distanced from it, I'm able to look at it more critically and say "That doesn't work ... this needs to be changed ... they don't need to know that much!" Hopefully that will allow me to end up with a book that will be as interesting for others as it has been for me... though I doubt if anyone will spend quite as much time in the world of the book as I have!!!!!

I got an email from the people at RTE today which made me smile. As I said last week, I'm going to be appearing on a show called Eye 2 Eye, and I offered to send out an email to fans in Ireland, inviting them to email the producers and request a spot in the audience when it's being filmed. The good folk at RTE thought that was a splendid idea, so I sent out an email to everyone on my registered list -- but I don't think they realised quite how many of you guys are out there!!!! They've been inundated with requests, and are struggling to process them all!!!!!! Heh heh -- that's a good problem to have in my opinion, though I think the person handling the emails might have a different point of view!!! Anyway, if you're one of the many who applied, please be understanding if you don't end up being invited onto the show -- there are very limited places, and with so many of you guys looking to come along, a lot of you are going to have to be disappointed. But I think that will make it all the sweeter for those of you who DO get lucky!!!!!!!