Happy Christmas!

No, I haven't finished my shopping yet. Yes, I have scoffed all the mincepies that I was planning to freeze and whip out Nigella-like on the day. The Christmas tree is shedding needles like Britney her clothes. And I am craving stilton and a custardy glass of Advocat - neither of which, being up the duff, I am allowed. But since the peasouper has descended I have been feeling Christmassy at last. The fog makes London look Dickensian and wintry - or like a nightclub smoke machine has malfunctioned and choked the city. And as I'm not travelling anywhere and won't be spending Christmas on a bench in Heathrow I'm rather enjoying the prospect of staring out of the window at the thick whiteness and mulling over the past year. 2006 has been pretty momentous for me. I'm still amazed and delighted that so many people have read my first novel and appear to have enjoyed it. A better present than anything Santa can toss down the chimney. So if you're one of those readers, a big thank you! Have a very happy Christmas!

Polly xx

A pregnant pause

To my huge relief, people have bought The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy paperback - it hung out in The Sunday Times top ten for five weeks. I have no idea who my readers are but I feel stupidly grateful to each and every one. And I am now almost 30,000 words into my third book, which I was beginning to fear would stay a few scribbles on a post-it note forever. This said, progress is slow. Mostly because I am pregnant with my second child. Well, that’s my excuse. Having written two books while not being pregnant I can vouch for the fact that those pesky pregnancy hormones definitely do something to the brain, slowing it, dulling the spark of connections that make writing come alive. And then there’s the urge to sleep. When you work in an office as a pregnant person, you have something to prove – I am a clever professional, not just a mum-in-waiting – even if you feel sick as a dog and like you haven’t slept in weeks. Work at home as a pregnant person and you are liberated from the pretence. The bed beckons mid-morning. Then again around tea time, just after the cake break. It takes an iron will to resist. Or a rubbish word count.

Back to school

My tan has faded. Toddler is back at nursery. Holidays are well and truly over. In fact I’ve been back at my desk – old kitchen table covered in oat cake crumbs – for – big gulp – two weeks already. And where my third book should be – document title, ‘tbc’ – is blank. Terrifyingly blank. I’ve written two novels now but I don’t think starting a new one gets any easier. It’s tempting to lie in bed (yes, essential part of the freeform creative process) fantasising about the moment when I tap in the words ‘The End’ rather than working out the intricacies of plot or actually writing, which is, in truth, often a bit of a slog, rather than a rapturous form of self expression. Nudging ideas into my notebook, I attempt to channel the person who wrote the first two books so efficiently but it’s difficult, like trying to channel a slimmer self while eating a doughnut. But I am not despairing. I have displacement activities to be getting on with. My UK paperback comes out this week. (Anxiety: will my sales hold up without the friends and family who dutifully bought the hardback at the bequest of my mother?) I’m gearing up for my US publishing date in January, which is just so exciting because there’s something about being published in America that makes me feel grown-up and rather glamorous. And there is a Chanel sample sale next week. Sure to get the muse going, no?

The egg race draws to a close

In three days I am due to file my second novel, The Egg Race, to my editor. I shouldn’t be here, writing website entries. Or booking fake tan appointments. Or browsing Amazon. I should be engaged in manic 11th hour tweaking. The problem is that after ten intense months spent writing the damn novel, I can hardly bear to look at it. Not that I’m complacent. But the disheartening thing about the editing process is that it doesn’t matter how many times you rewrite and reread, a text can always be improved. (This is why reading old published work, whether fiction or journalism, is so excruciating. Shit, you think, did I really write that? Give me a red pen now.) The last lap is also the period when I am most prone to creative naval-gazing. My latest anxiety? That I’ve enjoyed writing The Egg Race too much. And now that I have my own office, an ergonomic chair and great childcare, it’s all too cosy. Should I be suffering more? Did I write better on that spine-abusing kitchen chair? I’ll soon find out. Editors, unlike me, rarely mince their words. And they have fearsome red pens.

Groundhog

After months writing, and writing some more to promote my writing, I have emerged back into the world, blinking, with a bad back, wearing the wrong clothes. Everyone has moved on. No one wears boots inside their jeans anymore. Apart from me. And no one in London wears bootleg jeans anymore. Apart from me. It’s shocking for someone who used to be ‘in fashion’, albeit very half heartedly, many years ago, but I only recently purchased my first pair of skinny jeans. After a deep inhalation, I zipped the zipper and wore them inside my boots last week. I also bought a pencil skirt. It made me feel like a new woman. Sadly, as I scamper to catch up after my solitary confinement, it seems the rest of the world has already moved on. A fashion ed friend has already assured me that the pencil and skinnies are in danger of becoming ‘very over.' Time to burrow myself in book two.

Blisters and sales figures

I’ve hung up my Prada wedges. The launch party is over. I’d been half expecting a vaguely traumatic affair, much like a wedding, but it was actually huge fun. Friends and journos packed out London's Proud Gallery, champagne was glugged, cupcakes eaten and books sold. The next morning one of my friends texted me to say she’d found a cupcake crushed into the pocket of her best coat and had no recollection of how it got there. The sign of a good party, no?

With the party milestone over, I can now succumb fully to Amazonitis, an affliction caused by scanning Amazon’s hourly-updated sales lists to discover the commercial fate of one’s book. Symptoms include heart palpitations, severe impairment of concentration and RSI of the mouse clicking index finger. Today 88! Three hours later, it’s 155. Is someone buying books, then returning them? 77. Oh right, that will be my mother’s friends then. 280! Oh God, it’s all over. No, wait. I better just double check that...

Countdown

My mother bought five copies of The Daily Mail, because it featured me (styled in white) talking about my book. She then announced she was ‘off to text friends about it.’ Many minutes later – she hits the keys warily and painfully slowly, as if a mistake might launch a nuclear warhead – she announced that she and her friends think I should probably avoid wearing white in the future. (Oops - see left). So begins my life as a novelist.

There are a couple of things preoccupying me right now. Who will baby sit my son during my launch party? What shoes will I wear? Will there be enough alcohol? The real issue - will anyone actually buy my book, let alone like it - is far too terrifying to contemplate.

Sometimes it feels like the launch of The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy should be spearheaded by someone rather more convincing. It would help if I could read aloud without stuttering, or sign books without leaving what looks like a clump of fake eye lashes squashed on the page. But never mind, me and my book are stuck with each other. It's time to start enjoying the launch process. To quote Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, ‘Let the wild rumpus start!’

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