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Yesterday, after sending the first 175 pages of my Berlin novel off to Tamra Tuller, whose dearness cannot be quantified, I sat and read those 35,000 words through again. I'd spent the day reading and editing and trimming, of course, and the day before that day doing the same, but there's something about sending your work to another that enables you to read the work newly—to read as a reader and not as a writer.  There is, of course, a difference.

My Berlin novel is a complex book.  The history it contains and reflects is complicated and important.  Kreuzberg is a crazy mix of punkers, immigrants, rebels.  Friedrichshain is riddled with spies and deprivation.  The characters have to be (for me) a new breed of people.  There have to be sub-plots and entanglements.  Still, as I read I asked myself questions:  Too complex?  Too entangled?  Should I bring the language down a notch?

At one point, my husband near, I pondered out loud.

He listened, briefly, then decided.  "People like simple stories," he said.  "You should write The Godfather."

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The studio says that it authorized a 2004 novel, "The Godfather Returns," but not a 2006 follow-up, "The Godfather's Revenge," nor a new book, "The Family Corleone," that is planned for a May release.

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Since I became girlfriendless last week, I was freakin' miserable! No worries, though. I'm back on target with a new hot chick. I told you how my school did away with its 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy on vampires ... It was the only smart thing my phony priciple did all year. Anyway, some stupid new club claiming to be Vampire Slayers are all bent out of shape about it. I think they've watched

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I dreamed last night that I was accompanying a woman around, who needed my help, who was, indeed, in the grip of a severe emotional crisis. This wasn’t surprising, since she was composed of slices of chicken breast that needed to be reassembled. I spent a little time pondering this after I woke up, but it didn’t solve any of my current plot problems.

You might well say that it wouldn’t, but it’s odd how often solutions do come out of dreams. In many cases (like the chicken-slice woman) I’d find the solution by reflecting on the symbolism. In her case it could signify some sense of inner fragmentation, perhaps, but this doesn’t ring any bells with me. Leave her aside, however, and I can often jump from a dream about a tidal wave full of horrible fish to realising that my character’s repressed feelings about something or other must now leap out and grab her (or him) round the throat. Sometimes there’s no apparent connection at all, but thinking about the dream gives my imagination a nudge nonetheless, the dream has geared me up, maybe?

On at least one occasion, a major plot component was given me by a dream. This was years ago, when I was working on a novel for adults The Mountain of Immoderate Desires, and I took a nap in the afternoon because I wasn’t feeling very well. I woke up with a start, with my heart thumping, and a sense of terror, while a voice spoke to me: ‘You have come a long way to end outside a Chinese city wall.’ When I’d recovered from my fright, I thought: That’s it, Lily, the character in my novel has been abandoned outside the walls of a Chinese city, and she almost dies there. Of course I wasn’t taking exact dictation from the dream, but it was pretty apposite, and I was very pleased with the nudge from my subconscious.

I have other, less helpful dreams, in which I am writing a novel which, I know, is the same as one already written, and have this moment of horror when it gets through to me. Or else I’m just writing a different novel from the one I’m actually working on, and I know it’s rubbish. Then there are the strange published novels that pop up in my dreams, books I’ve written that I don’t recognise – and usually they’re not up to much, either. I have no hesitation in ascribing these dreams to the insecurity of the writer’s life, and I wonder if other writers have them?

Some dreams come, recognisably, out of a particular writer’s plot-bag. I dreamed the night before last that I was Death’s granddaughter (though not at all like Miss Susan) and subsequent to the End of the World – which was, however, only temporary, for reasons perhaps known to Terry Pratchett – I had to tidy up all the mess people had left behind them. I remember making beds – literally, I had to staple ticking onto divan covers and assemble mattresses (such is the quaint verbal literalness of the dreamer’s mind) clearing up kitchens, weeding gardens – for as long as the world stayed ended, the beds stayed tidy – and then the Last Trumpeter appeared again and played, presumably, the Reveille. And everyone got up and the world un-ended. The interesting thing about this dream was its close attention to plot and thematic consistency, whereas most dreams jump from one plot to another like a grasshopper making its way across the field. I also woke at the trumpet, and heard my alarm going off.

And not so long ago, I dreamed I was watching the hobbits arrive at the Bridge in Rivendell. They came there, not on ponies, but in an old VW dormobile, the kind that was painted all over with flowers and CND symbols. They had to leave it in the car park (National Trust, of course) and run up the marked trail to the river, and when the Black Riders arrived in pursuit they came in a stretch limo and got out, all dressed in dark suits and dark glasses like Mafiosi. This surely indicates a distinct cultural connection between The Lord of the Rings and The Godfather.

Quite a while ago, there was a quote on an ABBA blog fr

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I watch too many movies. I should read more, watch less. But my misspent hours with my DVDs aren’t entirely wasted, professionally speaking. There are scenes in my favourite films that I’d love to be able to – well, not reproduce, obviously; that would be stealing. But I’d like to get the same energy, the same straight-to gut hit that you get from the best movie scenes.

It’s not possible, obviously. Movies don’t have to hang about describing the landscape, they just dump you straight in it. Same with character description, the weather, the background music... There are scenes that are all but perfect film moments and they couldn’t be written – or not in the same way, not as a sort of storyboard-in-a-novel. The tango scene in Moulin Rouge! could only be a movie scene; it couldn’t live that way in prose. Some movies do it better even when there is a book – Sonny Corleone’s book-bound death in The Godfather was never as elegant and brutal as the one he met in the film.

I was thinking about both those scenes recently because I’m on holiday and I ran out of books (sob), and moved all too early onto DVDs. But just as I was in the slough of despond about not being able to write a tango scene that danced, or a death scene that – well, that also danced – my eight-year-old daughter (who never seems in danger of running out of books) announced that the abridged version of Call Of The Wild was her new favourite.

‘Good pictures, too,’ says I.

‘Yes, the pictures of Buck were good. But John Thornton didn’t look like that.’

‘Oh,’ says I.

‘The pictures are good,’ she says, ‘but my mind-pictures are always the best.’

Which reminded me of something someone said recently – and I have to apologise because I can’t remember if it was here or on Facebook or somewhere else, so I have to paraphrase – ‘No two people in the world ever read the same book.’

Which is so reassuringly true: everybody has a different mind-picture. Everybody sees the same film – more or less. Visually, anyway. But everybody reads a different book. I’d love to see what readers see when they read my characters but it’s probably just as well that I never will - though I get a real kick out of hearing how someone else pictured a character or placed a scene. It’s magical to think of someone reading your words, but making his own mind-picture. (What’s more, the power of the mind-picture is consolation for any author who hates the face printed on the cover of their book.)

Besides, going back to films, it works both ways. There are words that can’t be successfully filmed – not as they were written. For Whom The Bell Tolls is one of my favourite books. It was made by a great director, word-for-word and scene-for-scene, into one of the most turgid film experiences ever.

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