A Slip of the Keyboard

by Terry Pratchett

  The books I’m really most proud of having written are the children’s books. It was brought home to me today when I was talking to the kids, why this is. They started asking about the turtles. Then they continued asking about the turtles. And I said, “Okay, no turtle questions.”

  They said: “Okay, well, about the elephants then …”

  The thing is that when you write for kids you have to be more precise. You have to answer the questions. You can’t leave people hanging around. You can’t rely on them filling in too many gaps for themselves. But kids are also remarkably astute about narrative these days. They’ve got plot savvy. I remember my daughter watching a movie many years ago, she was about eight or nine perhaps, and it was an action-adventure and she said, “That black guy is going to survive.”

  And this is about a third of the way through, and we knew it was that kind of movie where lots and lots of people are going to get killed. And I said, “How do you know it’s going to be him?”

  “That guy’s going to survive, and that woman’s going to survive, and the black guy is going to survive because the other black guy got killed earlier.” Actually she was wrong, but her reasoning was spot-on. Already she had been working out how plots work, and lots of bright kids are doing that. So it really stretches me to write the children’s books. You have to stay ahead of them.

  I think I have probably done great harm to the world of fantasy. Fortuitously, although I’m not very cerebral about what I write, lots and lots of people are doing theses and doctorates on me. So, apparently, I’m a postmodern fantasy writer. I think this is because I’ve got a condom factory in Ankh-Morpork. Admittedly, the troll that does all the packing wonders what the women are laughing about when he is packing the “Big Boys.” But you cannot imagine a condom machine in Middle-earth. Well, actually, I can, regrettably. But you certainly can’t imagine one in Narnia, and nor should you. But the curious thing is Ankh-Morpork can survive this. Ankh-Morpork does survive most things.

  I was told one day, by a fan in the business, that I could get a coat of arms.

  I said, “Could it have hippos on either side of it like the Ankh-Morpork one?” “No, you can’t do that; you have to be either the Queen or a city.” I said, “Well, I’m personally not a city so I can’t, but I could do it anyway, couldn’t I? I mean, what happens if I do it?” “We won’t like it.” So I thought, “This is 2004, I could live with that.” But he really wasn’t impressed with the city motto of Ankh-Morpork: “Quanti canicula ille in fenestra” which does translate very nicely as “How much is that doggie in the window?”

  Anyway, once the shuttle is flying again there are secret plans afoot to get the mission patch from The Last Hero on board it somewhere. I suspect that the Latin motto, when translated, reads “We who are about to die, don’t want to.” My contact tells me the astronauts would have no problem with that.

  It has been tremendous fun. It’s made me a lot of money. I wish I was a real author. I truly do. I haven’t thought a great deal about what I’ve done. I’ve gone ahead and done it. It comes as a huge shock to read these theses, that sneak in at a rate of one every month or two, and find out about my wonderful use of language and the cleverness with which I do these things. I think “Nah!” I just do it because that’s what it’s like … That bit goes there because it’s impossible to imagine it going in any other place. And then they go and make me a Guest of Honour. There are far, far better authors out there, folks. But I thank you very much for reading this one. It has been tremendous fun. Discworld is twenty-one years old next month, which kind of means something in England, even now. Once upon a time, it was when you were allowed to drink. But now you are officially allowed to drink at the age of about eight years old, although here in the United States you have to be thirty. But, somehow, it means you have come of age.

  I am pleased to tell you that my heart is holding out very well, but I now intend to write only one book a year. The trouble is that would give me spare time. My wife pointed out recently that the last time we went on holiday I wrote a quarter of a book in two weeks. Well, it was in Australia. It was great. You’d get up early, the birds were singing, there was a fridge full of cold beer, it was 6 a.m., the sun was out, so I sat and wrote, it was great fun. The place we go to in Australia is a little lodge up in the rain forest, but close to the sea. There are no kids and no dogs. Why not? Because the sharks eat them. If the sharks don’t get you, the saltwater crocodiles will have a go. And if the saltwater crocodiles don’t find you, the box jellyfish will. Come on in, the water’s heaving! We like the place. What we particularly like about it is the tennis court and golf course, because it doesn’t have them.

  And I remember our first walk in the rain forest there. You go around the corner and there is a spider the size of the palm of your hand, bouncing in its web going woingggg. And what do you do? Well, you creep round, a long way round, like half a mile round if necessary. And we were climbing up this cliff, holding on to a rope, and it was starting to rain, and I was looking where I put my feet … and there was this big snake strangling a goanna. So I called down to the guide and said, “There’s a snake!” And he said, “What sort?” And I cried out, “I’m halfway up a cliff, it’s raining hard, I’m holding on to a rope, I’m beginning to slip, and I’m not going to play ‘What’s My Snake!’ but I think it’s a kind of python.” “Why do you think it’s a kind of python?” “Because the iguana’s eyes are going out like this … mwaa.” And so he came up and said, “That’s all right, yeah, no worries, kick it into the bushes.” So we prodded it gently into the bushes. And that was my first walk in the Australian rain forest. And from that, The Last Continent came.

  I remember the first time I went to Australia, flying over the Pacific in the middle of the night. The Pacific has these ultracumulus clouds that grope for the sky—by moonlight they look like Marge Simpson’s hairstyle. I watched them for a while, sipping a brandy (this wasn’t the coach cabin, you understand) and all was quiet. Then I trotted along to clean my teeth before settling down and I caught sight of myself in the mirror and said: “What happened? Why should you be here? Thank goodness there’s no justice in the world!”

  I feel like that right now.

  Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

  *1 [later] And thus it happened—but not in the way I’d expected.

  DISCWORLD TURNS 21

  Discworld Convention programme, 2004, titled “A Word from Terry on being 21”

  It rumbles along, the whole business. Once a book is finished it isn’t mine anymore; I stop thinking about it. But sometimes I look back.

  Ten years have passed since I wrote this, and Granny is still going. Moist von Lipwig, who made his first appearance in Going Postal, has now been found in various places, and I think I shall shortly need someone who is not him. I really like Moist—he grew, just like Commander Vimes grew, although that was because Vimes had a child. Once there are children, you have different people. And so now, again, I’m looking at the old characters and wondering which new ones are going to strut onto the stage. Discworld changes, but it changes in its own way.

  So … here we are then. Twenty-one years. It’s been a good ride, no small children were hurt, and there wasn’t much screaming.

  I’m not sure why twenty-one. We could have made a big fuss about the twenty-fifth book, The Truth, which had the advantage of being a bigger number, or maybe everyone could have waited another handful of years for the 50,000,000th sale, or ten years or so in case I manage the big golden Fiftieth Discworld book.

  That’s a chilling thought. Already there are hulking great fans who got started by reading their parents’ Discworld collection. A couple of years ago I did a talk at a school where the headmaster recalled, as a student, queuing at a Discworld signing. That was unnerving. There are families of Discworld readers. Stay alive long enough, and the years just fall over.

  But we’re stuck with this magic twenty-one, a legacy of the days when you
had to wear short trousers until you had been shaving for five years. Twenty-one, then, and the best part of three million words.

  The trouble is, I can’t remember a lot of it. I’m told I had fun. What I can remember is looking around the posh cabin of a 747 high over the Pacific, in the summer of 1990. People were sleeping. Outside there were huge towering clouds in the moonlight. Some hours ahead was my first Australasian tour. There was an orchid in a vase in the toilet. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought: This isn’t real, is it? Not really …

  That general state of amazement has never left me. It’s followed me into Buckingham Palace, the halls of various universities, behind the scenes of the Library of Congress, and into innumerable bookshops: oh yes. At least a year and a half of those twenty-one years was spent sitting in bookshops. It followed me to Alice Springs and upriver in a rain forest in Borneo, where I did a small impromptu signing at a camp that rehabilitates orphaned orangutans back to the wild. (None of them joined in, but I signed three books for the British kids who’d just arrived there to work on various “green” projects; the baby orangs had better things to do, like pillage the carelessly fastened knapsacks in the dormitories for anything edible, such as, e.g., toothpaste and vitamin pills.) My name’s been given to an extinct species of turtle, and various characters are commemorated in the Latin names of small plants and, I think, insects.

  And all the time there’s been this slight feeling that it was happening to someone else.

  I never took writing seriously. In fact, that’s not entirely true. I took writing very seriously, which was probably the right thing to do at the time. I read books that explained how hard it was to make any money from writing, and, seriously, journalism looked a much better bet. I wrote as a hobby and made some early sales, but the thought of trying to make a living from it never crossed my mind. (I was probably sensible. Then, as now, writing for most authors was buttressed by a real job that could be relied upon to pay the bills.)

  When I found I could make a living—oh, that wonderful Saturday morning when I looked at the figures and realized that if I played my cards right I might never have to do an honest day’s work ever again—I never thought I’d get rich.

  See? Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.

  Maybe it’s time to make some plans now. Two books a year as a reliable thing? That is stopping, not gradually, but as from now. There isn’t the time anymore. The U.S. market has opened up. Everyone wants me to tour and, bluntly, two books a year get in one another’s way. They don’t get the review coverage because, well, Pratchett books are always there, a kind of biographical constant, and twice a year there’s a month of high stress when three books are happening all at once. One’s being started, one’s being proofed and edited (in two countries at once, now), and one’s due to be toured. It’s a juggling act. If anything goes wrong, it’s a train wreck. It’s dawned on me that I don’t need to do it, not every year. Within a few days of a book the readers, god bless ’em, ask: “What’s next in the pipeline?” There is no pipeline. It’s just me.

  The children’s books will continue. They take as much time as the adult books, but they work, and a change is nearly as good as a rest. Nearly. Two more Tiffany Aching books are planned.

  As for Discworld, it will carry on. One reason I started the children’s Discworld series was to give me a different area to play in, because “adult” Discworld is filling up. Granny Weatherwax may have a crotchety but lengthy life expectancy (magic seems to extend life and there’s no evidence that her own grandmother is dead) but Vimes is feeling the cold mornings these days. How much of a major overhaul would readers tolerate? Blow them, how much could I tolerate? Someone else running Ankh-Morpork? Or the Watch? Or Unseen University? I suspect there’s a few ghosts that won’t go away.

  Fortunately, Discworld time moves slower than ours. But Going Postal will contain all-new major characters, because that’s what the plot requires. Next year’s book, which just has a working title right now (and that is not being divulged to anyone lest Amazon begin taking orders for it next week) is Watch-based and looking rather good. After that, I’m pleased to say, the future is a mysterious fog that might contain anything at all.

  And then there’s been the fans, who write me letters and invite me to their weddings and without whose constant interest and advice I wouldn’t have a clue where I was going wrong. They know when to take the joke seriously and let it become more than a joke.

  But what is a typical fan? Can you spot them? Some can. Those of you who standeth upon the face of the earth in queues, watch carefully next time as the local newspaper photographer enters the bookshop. Yes, he’s looking for the legendary Typical Terry Pratchett fan! Watch him pace up and down, past the people in suits, the people who look like someone’s mum or dad, the people who look like they have a job and are on their lunch hour. What’s this? Three hundred people in the queue and not one of them with the decency to wear a pointy hat?

  Or, as one puzzled security man said, after watching a queue that had amiably refrained from doing the expected but curiously weird things for three hours, “They’re all so … so normal!”

  To which I replied, “Oh, no, they’re not that bad.…”

  It’s been fun. It is fun. Long may it be fun.

  Thank you.

  KEVINS

  The Author, Winter 1993

  Back in the golden days when I was first writing, my wife, Lyn, used to bring me elevenses. And with the elevenses came a lot of manuscripts and a lot of letters.…

  My wife christened them Kevins. It’s quite unfair. It was just that … well … one day the post included three letters all from boys called Kevin, and she wrote “Kevins” on the small folder and somehow the name stuck.

  So now, once a week or whenever I’m feeling guilty, I write replies to the Kevins. Many of them are female. Some of them are grandmothers. I’ve never really counted them. All I know is that I write almost 200,000 words, about two novels’ worth, of letters every year. Most of them are letters to Kevins.

  They never tell you about this in those How to Write books. Make some time to write every day … yes. Use one side of the paper only … yes. But do they tell you how to deal with almost thirty identical letters from Form 5A? No. Do they tell you how to reply to the man who accuses you of stealing his ideas by laser beam before he had time to write them down? Unaccountably not. Nor do they tell you that you might have to buy a guide to New Zealand to help identify badly written return addresses (you can make a reasonable stab at U.K. names like Newsquiggle-upon-Tyne, but almost anywhere in New Zealand that isn’t called Auckland or Wellington is called Rangiwangi … or at least looks as if it is).

  I suppose all this comes under the heading of fan mail. As a genre author, I am probably perceived by my readers as “belonging” to them in a rather more direct way than, say, Martin Amis belongs to his readers—I effect, according to one reviewer, “a snug mindfit of opinion between reader and writer” (he meant it nastily—he was a Sunday Times man, after all).

  So they don’t hesitate to ask for new titles featuring favourite characters. (“Dear Sir Arthur, Why not bring Sherlock Holmes back to track down Jack the Ripper …?”) Or for autographs. Or signed photographs. (This beats me. I mean who cares what an author looks like? You finish a book, perhaps the gripping narrative has left white-hot images snugly mindfitting into the brain—and then you turn to the back flap and there’s this short bald guy with a pipe.…)

  Why do people write to authors? Field evidence here suggests that some are aspiring authors themselves and want the map reference of the Holy Grail. People really do ask us: How do you get published? with a strong implication that there must be more to it than, well, writing a decent book and sending it to publishers until one of them gives in. They want the Secret. I wish I knew what it was.

  People really do ask: Where do you get your ideas from? And I’ve never come up with a satisfactory answer. “From a warehouse
in Croydon” is only funny once. After that you have to think.

  Sometimes they want to encourage us, as did the librarian who wrote: I think it’s marvellous that young readers enjoy your work, because that means we can get them into libraries and introduce them to real books.”

  Or occasionally to chastise us. A teacher complained about the bad grammar of an eighty-year-old rural witch who’d never been to school (“Dear Mr. Dickens, You really must do something about the way Sam Weller talks …”). On the other hand, I had a most interesting correspondence with a French academic on the correct modern usage of the word careen, which went on for some time.

  And the younger ones doing GCSE don’t hesitate to write on the lines of (to be read in one breath): “Dear Mr. Pratchett I have read all your books You are my favourite author I am doing a project on you Could you please answer these 400 questions by Friday because I have to hand it in on Monday.…”

  I get around these by selecting the twenty most interesting questions and getting the computer to print out a Q&A sheet in really tiny print, which is updated every month or so. I suspect that many a narrow pass mark has been achieved by a bit of careful copying.…

  It’s easy to tell a letter from a teenage reader. They tend to have numbered sentences, as in “Dear Mr. Pratchett, I would like to be a writer when I leave school. Can you tell me 1) Are you on flexitime? 2) What are your wages?” Every year, as regular as the arrival of the cuckoo, at least one of them writes asking if I could give them a week’s Work Experience, which I always think of in Hardyesque terms (“It were in 1993 that Master Pratchett took oi on as a prentice boy at one farthing a week—”).

  Further down the age range, pencil and crayon creep in. These letters are quite short. They tend to get answered first. They are often accompanied by pictures. Anyone who has written anything for children knows what I mean. Sometimes they contain the toughest questions. And a list of all the household pets by name. At the other end of the scale the Kevins often begin, “I bet you don’t get many letters from seventy-five-year-old grandmothers …”