I do envy proper writers. Life is so simple for them. They just sit down, write, go on until they get to the end, then stop. It might be 20,000 words or 200,000 words. They then drop it into the post box and somebody else turns it into a book.
They need know nothing about book design and production and they do no typography. They probably think Bembo is a dog biscuit and Bodoni is a pasta. They have probably never set foot in a printers. Of course they need know nothing of colour reproduction, paper, boards and binding. Above all they don't have to be able to draw and paint, need have no knowledge of perspective or anatomy and do not have to carry the cross of HAND LETTERING.
As I write only picture books, texts are of necessity, very short. Fungus the Bogeyman and The Man were both about 10,000 words, which is exceptionally long for a picture book. All these books have to be a set number of pages, 32 usually, sometimes 40, but always a "working" - a folded sheet which must be a multiple of eight to make the book sections. Consequently the picture-book author has to write to a fixed space and length. The author-illustrator is usually the designer as well, so the three things: narrative, illustration and design go hand in hand from the beginning. Even though you write first, you see the pictures on the page (unlike proper writers who only see them in their heads). You also visualise the turning of the page, together with the rhythm and pace which this sets up.
I also envy proper writers because writing is so quick. Allan Ahlberg said once he had an idea for a picture book and wrote it in a day. His wife, Janet, then spent a year illustrating it. That is about the right ratio. Illustration takes about 365 times longer than writing.
Also, writing is the most enjoyable part because it is wholly creative. Illustration
is only partly creative. There is a lot of donkey work, which Stanley Spencer called "knitting". You can spend eight hours painting the tiles on a roof or the bricks in a wall, while listening to Radio Four, or to proper writers reading their novels on yards of tape.
So my writing day does not involve much writing. I can do that on a train. In fact, I find trains a very helpful environment. There is just enough distraction to help you concentrate. If you have perfect conditions as I have at home - peace and a beautiful view - you tend to daydream.
Making a picture book, particularly if it is in the strip cartoon form, is more like filmmaking than novel-writing. Having written the script, you then become the director, deciding who comes on first and from where, whether it is to be a long-shot or a close-up and who is present but out of shot.
You then become the designer and create the set, then the costume designer, then the lighting designer. You don't have to record the sound but you have to indicate it, with hand lettering.
Finally, you take this film and design it with the form of a book. Speech is turned into typography or hand-written speech bubbles, sometimes both, all with an eye on how much space is available on the page in mid-sentence or mid-paragraph. Each spread is like a chapter and has to be complete in itself. No wonder a book like Ethel and Ernest, which can be read in half-an-hour took three years to do.
So my writing day is really a space-adjustment, typographical text design and hand-lettering bubble-design day, with a little bit of creative writing once in a blue moon. Yes, I do envy proper writers.
Raymond Briggs's Ethel and Ernest was republished by Jonathan Cape last month.