All this and some eye of newt, by Catriona

Since we just wrapped “spooky season,” do you subscribe to any writing superstitions? Any mythical or spiritual practices that help your process?

Irrelevant but irresistible

Superstitious, moi? I'm the most rational person I know apart from my husband who is just as rational but can also build you a model of the cumulative probability of any set of related outcomes.

So, no way, I absolutely do not need to have a washed-up-on-the-beach brick penholder full of blue Bic Cristals on my desk and a spare packet of them in my drawer.

I certainly don't need a Tesco basic notebook for every year, counting summer to summer, to keep all my book thoughts in.

Nor do I need to have the book - title, plot, setting, characters - held absolutely secret from everyone until the first draft is finished. That's real diva behaviour. And if "everyone" includes the publisher who has already bought the novel, it verges on obnoxious.

Nor do I need to write it straight through without reading what I've written. That would be stupid. What if something slipped my mind? Imagine if I broke my arm and didn't write for a few weeks and then went back to my (top-secret) draft with a pen (blue Bic Cristal) and pad (Tesco) and I couldn't remember who the two people in the scene were and had to guess. How idiotic would that make me?

Idiotic enough to think that I need to print all drafts and keep them until the book is published? Because who needs trees? 

I wish I did have some superstitions. I'd be willing to sacrifice a few chickens (only crocheted ones, mind) to make sure that this idea I've had for a series doesn't get written by someone else before I can turn to it. A couple of times I've heard news items that seem to be such obvious springboards to my precious idea that I feel sick and hope no one else is listening. We'll see . . . 

Either I'll write it or I'll be in the corridors of Malice, Left Coast and Bouchercon in years to come, bearing down on unsuspecting first-time attendees, who'll ask "What's that round your neck? Is that some kind of crocheted bird? Hey! Hold off, unhand me, grey-beard loon."

Fingers crossed,

Cx