Emily Perkins’ new novel The Forrests made a more noticeable impression on me than any new book I’ve read in 20 years; in fact, by the end of it I was buzzing as though I’d taken a drug. I had to go back over the last 30 pages and immediately reread them because the effect was so powerful. An interview with Perkins has been on the cards (or the books) since The Good Word became required viewing for writers and book lovers, a show that will be sorely missed when the station is closed down in June (boo!). (Photo: Patricia Phelan)

The Bridge is one of those books I first read long ago but have no recollection on whose recommendation it was. More unusually, I don’t remember where I was when I read it for the first time. It was published in 1986, when Banks was 32. He apparently told SFX magazine’s Mary Branscombe in 1996 that The Bridge is the intellectual among his bibliography. “It’s the one that went away to university and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books.” As such, he warned against reading it before his other books, which I did.

I love it because it’s a novel in which the writer takes some hair-raising risks.

I’ve always enjoyed reading anything other writers have to say about their writing processes, and in particular the series of Guardian articles featuring the rooms writers work in. Why this should be I’m less sure about; it may be that my subconscious hopes there’s something alchemical about writing; some secret formula that, if known, can be replicated. But my rational brain sees straight through this conceit. You can’t make writing easier, you only strive to make it less painful. For that you want your tools of the trade to hand, your mascots around you, your works of reference and your gurus looking down on your work, imparting whatever wisdom you’re capable of absorbing.

“Thomas Wolfe was once his favorite author, though today he prefers Marcel Proust and André Gide, and in painting, his idols were Rembrandt, Daumier, and Goya, who would now be joined with Bonnard, Kokoschka and Vuillard,” American Artist magazine wrote in 1961 of Russell Hoban.

He is best known today for his novels – the blurbs of which hint that he “worked as a book illustrator before becoming a writer” – or for his children’s books. Few today would know that his art wasn’t just a temporary diversion, and yet his work included covers like this for Time magazine. His Joan Baez portrait took 16 days from commission to delivery, and he spent 10 or more of those working on the portrait, with at least one all-nighter required to finish the job. After all that, Baez hated it.

John Lydon couldn’t have become Johnny Rotten if Mervyn Peake hadn’t first created Steerpike, it doesn’t matter whether Lydon ever read Titus Groan. Peake troubled himself to describe the tics that not only make Gormenghast’s denizens come to life but also turn them into supernormal beings; his humour sparks life into them; he makes characters fascinating in the way anything that cannot be fully understood is fascinating. I can think of few other writers courageous enough to glance away from irresistible action to describe “rissoles” of fat on the kitchen floor, but it’s the complexity of Gormenghast that makes it so terrifyingly humdrum; so splendidly real. (Illustration: Mervyn Peake’s Steerpike in ‘Titus Groan’, or Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols?)

“Schultz punching now for his life. Connecting with a straight left ka plonk on Al’s nose which instantly cascaded bleeding blood. Schultz momentarily still and aghast at the horrifying crimson sight of Al’s face. Al undaunted cutting free with a looping right connecting with Schultz’s unblack eye. Schultz hanging on in a clinch.”

JP Donleavy is the ultimate stylist. My proof: few other writers are instantly recognisable from a paragraph taken at random from one of their books. Schultz is the story of theatrical impresario Sigmund Franz ‘Isadorable’ Schultz, a man so dogged by misfortune and his own clumsiness that its first 150 pages wear you down and punch you drunk so you feel you’ve gone 15 rounds with a prize-fighter. My trainer, a grizzled old pro called Sebastian Dangerfield, told me to persevere, to keep getting back up, so I did.

About five years ago I acquired a second-hand, yellowed Penguin paperback of Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words and it’s since become the most often used book in my writer’s reference library. The edition I have has a more attractive cover than any of those I’ve been able to locate on the internet, and its hand-lettered illustration by Jeffrey Fisher (shown here) makes it seem even more special to me. The trouble with most reference works (as Bryson points out in an introduction for the benefit of those afraid that reading any book about words would be about as pleasant as eating it), is that “they so frequently assume from the reader a familiarity with the intricacies of grammar that is – in my case, at any rate – generous”. Troublesome Words can enjoyably and profitably be read from cover to cover as entertainment, rather than just dipped into when needed.

Typo Blod meets a stranger on public transport, causing him to become absorbed by Edward Hopper’s paintings like a fly in amber. Time halts at the instant Hopper depicted in his most famous works and Blod’s world is thrown out of kilter. In Fulcrum, a part-historical-part-fantastical city, Blod falls in love with Ellen Bogen, the subject of Hopper’s painting Summertime. Blod first meets C.O. Jones, a mysterious, homeless character, begging on a commuter train. Jones claims to be trapped in a “vicious circle” and shows Blod a book that has a dramatic and physical effect. Later, Jones shows up again, provoking Blod with questions about distant memories. Here’s one of their early encounters…

One of the aims I had for this website was for it to provide resources for other writers from a variety of tools and aids that have worked from me – everything from reference works to the kind of music that might inspire or map a route away from Blighter’s Rock. There are so many writers’ reference works that it isn’t just a problem knowing which ones to invest in but also which ones to reach for when you have a word problem that needs a solution. Most days, all you need is a good dictionary and a clear head. At other times, your brain needs a bit more help. That’s where Mark Broatch’s In A Word: The Essential Tool for Finding the Perfect Word comes in.

As I said in my previous post, music often plays a role in creating conditions conducive to writing. Just to recap, my criteria for great music to write by are: 1. It has to be more than wallpaper, should enhance your mood while not distracting you from the task at hand. 2. It should engender a mood of anticipation; filled with possibilities, not the intimidation that makes a blank page seem bigger and scarier than the potential it holds. 3. There should be an underlying, bristling electricity that hints at anything-could-happen. You’re seeking an inner tranquillity and an outward tingling; a 3 o’clock in the morning feeling that shifts your mind up a gear.

I’m reviewing another oldie this time, Brian Eno and Harold Budd’s 1984 recording The Pearl. An interval of 27 years between its release and my review seems about right, although it sounds fresh enough to have been recorded yesterday.