PROPUESTA SIMPLIFICADA

for the spring. Nobody else was there. Just

me.The others were inside the house with

Doctor Death, worrying about the baby.

I just knew that this would be the start of a new story and that it would be a longer piece than any of the stories I’d just finished. As soon as I sat down that day and started writing I knew it would be a children’s book. I’d always wanted to write one, but until that point I hadn’t found the right story and the right style. With Skellig, the whole thing came together. So I hadn’t planned to write a children’s book at that point – it came and got me!

With that one opening sentence came a huge freight of possibilities. I went back home and began writing. I didn’t plan out the book in the way I carefully plan out novels now. I do a lot of work on the shape and structure of a novel before I begin. With Skellig I just took a deep breath and took it as it came. The story happened as a series of short scenes which came out like quick bursts of energy. The book took about six months, which is pretty quick for me. It was written in just one draft, really. I did a few tweaks and occasional changes to the odd scene, but very little. I’m amazed at how little I did. I think Skellig will be the only book that will be that straightforward to write as everything else is usually really hard work. The whole time I was writing it I was aware that it was something new for me, something good.

Unlike the following novel, Kit’s Wilderness, the plot to Skellig didn’t really take any false turns. Usually I find that a story can take many false turns and I’ll have to stop and go back and change or delete some of what I’ve written. With Skellig it sort of felt as if I wasn’t writing the story but more that the story had found me, and it was coming through me onto the page. When the writing was going well, there were moments when it seemed that I was just transcribing the words as they came so quickly and easily. I learnt a lot from that process. Nowadays, I actually strive to get to those moments when the story begins to take on that kind of energy where the writing flows so freely. It’s this selfless condition where you stop struggling with it and you and the story become as one as

75 Cover of David Almond’s novel Skellig

you are writing. With Skellig that happened all the way through. It’s very much like that moment when you’re reading and you get so engrossed and engulfed and you’re not aware of reading the words anymore.

Originally the book was going to be called ‘Mr Wilson’. I knew it was wrong, but I just needed a title. Unless a story has a title at the top of the page, it doesn’t exist for me. It has to have a name from the start – so I just put something at the top, even if it’s just ‘Mr Wilson’! You see, that was Skellig’s original name. The name ‘Skellig’ comes from the Skellig Islands, off the south west coast of Ireland.

I didn’t know Skellig was going to turn out to have wings until I got to the point where Michael puts his hand across Skellig’s back. And I thought, ‘Oh no! He’s an angel!’ I remember thinking, ‘Do I really want to have an angel in this story?’ There’s so much nonsense written about angels – glossy coffee table books. Yet there are also some very good books about angels that I’ve read. I was worried about getting into a schmaltzy area, I suppose. Skellig may have angelic characteristics but he does have wordly credentials too – he’s dirty and dusty and grimy and he eats bluebottles. So because of this, I thought it was okay, and I’d let him have his wings!

Children in schools always ask me about him. They ask me what he is, and I tell them that I don’t know. Some children find this situation strange. They’ll say ‘You don’t know? But you wrote the book!’ But they do accept it. There’s so much that kids don’t understand about the world yet they accept this situation. I see children as being in a condition of not knowing so many things. But when you get older you imagine you’re in a condition of knowing, though I believe we’re all in a condition of knowing very little. Mina is the most important character in the book for me. I think she gives it the sternness that the book needed. She keeps things under control and she gets Skellig out of the garage and into the empty house. Mina’s the one that causes the other characters to act, and so keeps the story moving forward. She also brings in the powerful off-beat themes – such as Blake and home education.

And why are there references to Blake and Darwin? Though I knew it was more of a children’s book, I was thinking only of openness and it didn’t seem to matter if I made references to Blake and Darwin. As I said, the story took on its own life and energy, anyway. With Darwinism I was speculating where evolution is going now and with Mina being a girl schooled at home it seemed appropriate to the story. I didn’t censor these things at all. The only moments I remember thinking that I can’t do such-and-such was when I would be writing something and think that everybody had heard it before. Then I realised that children wouldn’t have heard it before. That’s one of the many exciting things for children, that their minds are fresh and their minds are fluid. There’s a moment in the novel where Mina says to Michael something like ‘Maybe we’re just dreaming this.’ And Michael replies, ‘If we are dreaming, how would we know?’ I thought that adult readers might not accept that – but it might actually excite some children’s minds.

It was very instinctive for me to include Blake and Darwin. It’s all to do with the possibilities of being human. It goes back to what Skellig is. What is he? Well, he’s human because he’s got the full range of human experience. We’re all potentially angelic like him, and we’re all potentially bestial like him too. So these two references expand upon these ideas. Darwin said ‘Look, we were once that but now we’re this’ – and there’s a thread between us and the beasts. And Blake believed we are more than what we seem to be, that there is a spiritual aspect to all of us.

There’s another moment in the book that when I was writing it I originally thought, ‘I can’t do that.’ It’s the moment where Michael and Mina fly around the room with Skellig.

You’ve got this guy with wings in this room upstairs. He’s being very beastly – he’s eating owl pellets and dead animals brought in by the owls. The children are searching around in the darkness downstairs. I felt great excitement as this whole scene came about, but I also felt a great technical thrill. As I was writing this part I felt as if I was writing it really well. At the moment when the three of them start flying, and actually step off the ground, I felt I was using exactly the right words, the right prose to portray that scene. I was excited that they were flying and that Michael could see ghostly wings coming out of Mina’s back. Even though I wrote it, I think it’s a lovely moment. To write that scene was wonderful.

We met him in the middle of the room. He stood erect. He seemed