"There is an old African proverb which I made up"

"There is an old African proverb which I made up - if you want to go quickly, walk alone, if you want to go far, walk together." - Al Gore in a brilliant cameo on 30Rock.

Just for that one line skewering Hillary Clinton, Alice Walker and others who have used fictitious African tribes and made-up African proberbs to project their truthandlightquests and their flimmyflammywishywashyearthgoddessymumbojumbo, Tina Fey and team, I will love you forever, forever be mine.

Some brilliant news from Russia: a permanent moratorium on the death penalty

Blog readers know how much I am opposed to the death penalty, so I am pleased to share the news that Russia's constitutional court has confirmed that the moratorium on the death penalty that had applied since 1996 and which would have expired on 1 January 2010, will not be revisited, meaning a permanent ban. As the BBC reports: "Russia's ban on the death penalty will remain when a current legal suspension expires on 1 January, the country's Constitutional Court has ruled." This is a wonderful example for some other first world countries and yes, America and Japan, I am looking at you.

The Alps grow red in splendour as Switzerland wins the youth World Cup

I only found out on the flight from Copenhagen this morning that Switzerland beat Nigeria 1-0 in the U-17 World Cup. I am sorry that I was not watching it with my football-loving Kush. This is brilliant for those young boys and for Switzerland. Here is a team that includes the sons of immigrants and asylum seekers, boys with distinctly un-Swiss names like Haris Seferovic and Nassim Ben Khalifa, playing their socks off for Switzerland. As the New York Times says: "They are the new Swiss, born in the country and raised in its soccer schools, but more than half of them have dual nationality. For they are the sons of immigrants, in some cases asylum seekers, who today make up one-fifth of Switzerland’s 7.7 million population."

There is worry in the jubilation, though, over whether Switzerland will be able to hold on to them ... some of these kids represent the new global citizen I was talking about in Oslo just last night, because there is, of course, the small matter of nationality -switching. According to FIFA rules, any player whose mother or father comes from another land is qualified to play for that country. As the New York Times explains: "FIFA ... recently changed its regulations so that playing for a national youth team no longer binds a player to that country. Until they represent Switzerland at senior level, those players may opt to play for another nation. So Switzerland might be undone by a rule signed by their countryman, Sepp Blatter, the FIFA President."

Ach weh!

(The picture above is of Pumas gone Swiss (nice) and the blog title is taken from the majestic words of Alberich Zwyssig's Schweizerpsalm, the Swiss national anthem.)

The paperback version of "An Elegy For Easterly"

Here is the cover of the paperback version of "An Elegy for Easterly". I love it in a million different ways. Thanks to the support of all my readers, we are approaching the end of the print run for the trade paperback (that's the Jacaranda trees cover), just in time for the launch of this paperback, which goes on sale on 7 January 2010. Zvaitwa!

Two videos to watch: Uwem Akpan on the Oprah Book Club and Marina Hyde in conversation with Charlie Brooker

I am interrupting my short hiatus to say please watch this webcast of the Oprah Book Club, featuring Uwem Akpan, author of the latest Oprah pick, the searing Say You Are One of Them. He is an absolutely lovely man, Uwem, his laugh is more infectious than the swine flu in Mexico City. I have said before how I much I admire writers with rich and busy lives unrelated to writing, writers who show that there is more than one way to be a writer, so it tickles me no end that here is this Nigerian man who is a Jesuit priest and a bestselling author. Magic.

A different treat is this video of a conversation between Guardian columnists Marina Hyde and Charlie Brooker. Fantastic stuff. I join all the below-the-line commentators who want a role reversal: now Charlie has to interview Marina. I am a huge fan of these two, they are my favourite columnists anywhere. My love for Marina reached new and dangerous levels of obsession when I found out that she is as much in awe of Chantal Biya, First Lady of Cameroon, as I am ... She crowned Madame Biya "your new favourite presidential second wife", thus dethroning Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Hee! After that, I simply had to join the Facebook group called "Marina Hyde ... The Best Thing Since Refrigeration". Because she is.

I have nothing to post today, other than this picture of Martin Amis with lots of books

I have a folder on my computer of random things I intend to blog about, but I sometimes forget what I have in there, as happened with this picture of Martin Amis with lots of books. Why am I posting this now? Well, it is (almost) the middle of November, there are lots of things to talk about, from healthcare in America, the hypocrisy of the Afghan election, Alec Baldwin in 30Rock, partial boycotts in Zimbabwe, 30Rock and Alec Baldwin, Andre Agassi's wig in the 1990 French Open, and did I mention Alec Baldwin in 30Rock... so so so much to talk about, but rather than talk about things, I am concerned right now with the things I have to do, actually, I am rather overwhelmed by them, and I am also exhausted. I spent all my vacation time this year travelling and promoting my book, and I am beginning to more than feel it. I am desperately tired, but the year has two more months to go. So that is why, instead of a real post, I have posted this picture of Martin Amis with a lot of books. I will most likely not post again until I come back from Norway, and in the meantime, enjoy this picture of Martin Amis with lots of books.

Do you want to be a writer? Then read this, because here, I reveal the secret to success!

I have been getting a lot of emails and Facebook messages from people who want to write. A lot of people want to know what the magic thing is that you have to do to be a writer or get published. Is it the right agent? Luck? How do you get the right agent? The right publisher? How do you get a publisher? Others ask me to read their work or write introductions to their books. The most recent email I got was from a guy who said he had been working on his novel for years, and wanted to know at what point he should stop.

I cannot always review people's work; when I have time, I am happy to do it because I love editing, I love it when I can help someone make their work better. I used to be very active on the Zoetrope Virtual Studio, and one of the thrills was when I lit upon a story that showed promise, and I helped to make it sing. I am also happy to recommend writers to my agent, she does not take many new people, however, so I will only do this when I feel the writer has a reasonable chance to be taken on. I was delighted earlier this year when she took on someone I consider one of the most talented writers I have read and whom I had recommended to her.

But it is easy to give this sort of guidance to people who have something in the hand, easy to recommend them to an agent, easy to help them make their work better so that it is accepted by an agent. A lot more people just want to know how they can be "real" , and that word keeps coming up, how they can be "real" writers. It is to these aspiring writers that I now reveal the secret to writing success.

Write.

That's it.

Just write.

A writer is a person who writes.

Talent is overrated. Luck is overrated. The right agent is overrated. It helps to have all three, but they are all worthless without that thing in your hand, the manuscript, the thing in your hand that may become a book for which trees will die and that will be published and primped and pampered and put on bookshelves and paid for by people.

And this is what is underrated: the sitting down and grinding it out part. Because that is what writing is. You, at your computer or with your notebook, writing, and writing, revising and writing, and revising again.

As Henry Fielding says, examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts, so let me introduce you to two of my writing friends.

Meet Zoey and Xavier. They live in two different countries, one is tall and fat, the other is short and thin, one is black and blue, the other is yellow and green, one has a low but loud laugh, the other a high but quiet one ... they could not be more different to each other. They have this in common though, they are both outrageously, ridiculously talented at turning out a sentence. Xavier, is, quite frankly, one of the most musical writers you will ever read, his is the kind of writing that flows into itself and then out at you ... like Pachelbel's Canon in D, it wraps itself around your head and enters your blood stream and speeds up your heart rate. If his writing could be patented, it would cure heart disease. Zoey has a brain larger than the Grand Canyon, she can generate ideas faster than your nearest McDonald's churns out Happy Meals, she is brilliant and brain-buzzingly original.

Xavier has written a couple of stories. Zoey has published three stories, including one that was chosen in an internet poll as the best story to be published on the internet in the last 1000 years. It was that good. Both of these writers were headhunted by agents. This was 7 years ago.

They have not written much since then.

What have they been doing in those 7 years? Well, Xavier had a bit of a set back when he applied to the creative writing programme at Iowa and didn't get in. It took him more than three years to recover from the disappointment. In fact, he is still recovering. Zoey fell in love, but not with Xavier, even though they were in love with each other's minds. She got marrried, she had a baby, and then fell out of love and then had a divorce. Then her country collapsed and she spent all her time writing angry, brilliant and brain-buzzlingly original short essays about that. Then she set up a blog and wrote short but brilliant and brain-buzzingly original posts about the chaos of her life. In between, Xavier and Zoey sent each other emails mocking those who had published books. Xavier was inspired by these emails to set up a blog in which he reviewed, usually scathingly, books published by other writers, concentrating his vitriol particularly on writers who had been on the Iowa writing programme.

The clunkiness of the prose, exclaims Xavier!

And talk about passé, says Zoey.

You would be so much more original, Xavier says to Zoey.

And you can write better than that in your sleep, says Zoey.

They could do so much better, they agree.

Well, maybe.

Possibly.

Very likely, in fact.

Except they won't.

They won't do better and they haven't written anything better because they haven't written at all.

A writer is a person who writes.

So, this is the answer in its beautiful and stark simplicity. You can have all the talent in the world, but this is nothing if you do not actually write.

So write. Just write.

The rest can take care of itself, but without that thing in your hand, that manuscript that could be a book, that thing in your hand that comes only after hours of sitting down and doing it, you will never give yourself the chance to be a "real" writer.

Just write.

Because a writer is a person who writes.

That is the beginning of everything.