Patrick Ness

I've just got back from hearing Patrick Ness talk at the local library. He is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy which has won such great acclaim, particularly in the world of young adult fiction. The first book of the Trilogy is The Knife of Never Letting Go.

There's a great review of the book here. Interesting, too, what Boyce says about cross-over fiction.

Thoroughly enjoyed watching another author strut his stuff. There were two school groups there and Ness engaged them with an easy, laid-back talk on writing and a clever demonstration on just how much life experience we all have that can be turned into fiction.

This reminded me of my Great Big List of Everything I Know exercise. Grab your writer's journal and begin a list of everything you know - start with at least fifty things:
I know how to be a daughter, a mother, an only child, a wife, a girlfriend. I know how to be betrayed and how to betray. I know how to ride a horse and a bike, and how to ride pillion on a motorbike. I know how to spin yarn, knit and crochet. I know how to sew. I can darn socks. I can make soup, bread and pasta. I can throw a pot on a wheel. I can say I love you in French and sweetheart in Spanish. I know how to train a dog and how to look after tropical fish. I know how to get my own way, most of the time. I know how to go camping, if I have to. I know how to mix a good cocktail. I know how to make risotto. I know how to make a pizza from scratch and how to make a pizza oven. I know how to send a child overseas without crying at the airport. I know how to say goodbye to someone who is dying. I know how to be a step-mother. I know how to give birth and how to sit in a hospital with a sick, maybe dying child. I know how to argue - with lovers, husbands, children as well as people I don't know. I know how to surrender. I know how to write a haiku. I know how to juggle finances and overspend. I know how to pack books for a move. I know how to pack up an entire house for a move, but I never do it properly. I know how to price secondhand books and how to sell them. I know how to put together a rare book catalogue. I know how to research and all that entails - footnotes, bibliographies, tumbling piles of books on the library desk and hours spent chasing tails down the rabbit hole that is Google. I know how to be a good friend. I know how to be a bad friend. I know how to end a friendship. I know how to be loyal. I know how to tell a lie that will go undetected.

Wow! What a lot of material I have that I could use in my own writing! (Pity I'm not doing any at the moment...)