Prince Toby has started his own diary for National Novel Writing Month. You can follow his adventures here.
Friday 18th November 2022
Weight: 1319g (significant weight gain, even though I spent all morning sulking), cucumber consumption: 1½ slices (better than nothing, I suppose), escape attempts: 0 (sulking in the morning, spellbound by Marcus Sedgwick books in the afternoon), interruption of Very Important Human Tasks for No Reason Whatsoever: 0 (too busy sulking/reading), interruption of Very Important Human Tasks for Toilet-Related or Other Emergencies: 0 (not that Human No. 2 would have noticed if I had gone to the toilet all over my pen)
7.45 am: Shan’t get up. Shan’t! Shan’t!
8.00 am: Too cold for waking. Am going back in shell.
9.00 am: Human No. 1 tried luring me out with snapdragons, but I shan’t come out.
9.31 am: Human 1 has now abandoned me to go somewhere with the Human Grandma. Stuck with Human No. 2 instead. Oh well. At least he won’t bother me too much . . .
10.01 am: Some excellent entries to yesterday’s Tortmaster task. I had so many bedtime stories, it’s a wonder I managed to get to sleep at all! (Probably why I’m so tired.) A very moving story from Wendy’s House Bunnies, very flattering (and completely likely to really happen) stories from Anne and Hazel the Marvellous, some genius-level wordplay from Dr Ann, excellent advice from Adrian, thrills and chills from Gladys (Torterella), and a wonderful cucumber story (with mouth-watering visual aids) from Beverley and her tort Fray Bentos (pretty sure Fray Bentos did most of the work). Well done to you all! You get all the points!! There’s still time to enter if you haven’t already. I have lots of bedtimes and I’m always looking for new stories!
10.59 am: As expected, Human No. 2 is COMPLETELY IGNORING ME!!!! Hellooooooooo??? I might need something super-important!!! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!
11.27 am: Human No. 2 still hasn’t been down to check on me. Bet he’ll wait until just before Human No. 1 comes home and then he’ll set himself up in the Tortoise Parlour and pretend that he’s been there all along. What a fraud!
11.35 am: Not sure what’s going on with this whole Twitter thing, but apparently the Body Shop man has upset everyone and Twitter might explode overnight. Think I’ll stay up tonight and stare at it, just in case.
11.46 am: What will I do if Twitter explodes? Where will we play Tortmaster? Where will I speak to all my friends and many admirers?
11.47 am: Hmmm. Might have to learn how to use my Instagram account . . .
11.48 am: Human No. 1 doesn’t even have an Instagram account! What if she wants to share mine???
11.50 am: And then there’s this Mastadon dooberry-whatsit. Have no idea what it is. I thought that mastadons were extinct.
11.59 am: Don’t like change. Everyone is making plans for Twitter explosion. I refuse to make plans! Shall just tuck myself up in my shell until it all blows over.
12.03 pm: What if I come out of hibernation and Twitter has gone??? Do I even exist without Twitter?
12.04 pm: Having existential crisis. Send help!
12.07 pm: Have remembered that I spent seventy-three years of my life without Twitter, so will probably continue to exist if it explodes. Phew!
12.08 pm: Hmmm. Trying to remember what I did before I had Twitter.
12.11 pm: Oh yes, I got attacked by rats. Think I prefer things how they are now.
12.19 pm: Human No. 1 has returned. Hurrah! (Cue Human No. 2 pretending that he’d just nipped to the loo and has actually spent the entire morning attending to my every need.)
12.38 pm: Am tucked up in my shell sulking because it is too cold. My Twitter friend Ayesha is trying to coax me out, but I shan’t do it!
1.05 pm: Hurrah! Just heard the news about Neighbours returning next year!! (Wondered what Hazel the Marvellous was on about last night!) Now I can go on the Neighbours tour with Dr Ann! I hope Paul Robinson and Karl Kennedy are there when we go!
1.50 pm: Thinking a lot about the super-duper Marcus Sedgwick today and how much he will be missed by me and my humans and the whole wide world. Am remembering him by reading some of his brilliant books with Human No. 1. We’re starting with Midwinterblood because that’s Human No. 1’s favourite. She loves it so much that, when she went to see Marcus Sedgwick talk about The Raven Mysteries in Hay-on-Wye, she managed to sell a copy of Midwinterblood to some random person in the Hay Festival bookshop. (She didn’t work there – she just really wanted people to read it!)
2.11 pm: Human No. 1 was lucky enough to attend webinars with Marcus Sedgwick this year and she talked a lot about how kind and wise and funny and encouraging and humble he was. (If she’d talked this way about anyone else then I might have got a bit grumpy about the whole thing, but I listened in on some of his webinars when I was supposed to be fast asleep and he was super-duper amazing, so I decided to let it slide.) He said in a writing workshop: ‘you’re going to spend 95% of your time not knowing what you’re doing, but that’s okay.’ He also said that desire and obsession are more important than having confidence in your writing. So, I’m going to keep writing and Human No. 1 will keep writing (because she is obsessed with me), and we will keep writing forever and ever, whether you want us to or not - so there!
2.20 pm: He gave Human No. 1 some excellent advice about the book she has written about yours truly: ‘You say there’s a royal tortoise, there’s a goddamn royal tortoise.’ I feel validated. And to all those naysayers who question my regal status, he had this to say: ‘It’s a royal tortoise. Deal with it.’
2.21 pm: Very wise words. Think I might take them as my motto. I’m a royal tortoise. Deal with it!
2.22 pm: Actually, think I will add that to my Twitter bio.
2.24 pm: He also mentioned a book called Letters from a Lost Uncle by Mervyn Peake, where the protagonist has a giant turtle as his manservant. Will have to get hold of that, but I think it would have been better if the human was the giant turtle’s manservant. Perhaps I need to do a retelling . . .
2.33 pm: He also said, when talking about writing synopses in an article in the Guardian: 'It's SUCH a dumb idea to make creative people try to predict exactly what they are going to write.'
2.34 pm: This is very true. I had no idea what was going to happen in 'The Final Cucumber' until I wrote it, would you believe? And no idea that it was going to be eclipsed by 'The Final Final Cucumber.' (And I definitely didn't know that Sherlock Tobes and Tortiarty would get married!)
2.45 pm: Not that I could ever write as well as Marcus Sedgwick. Am looking forward to re-reading his Raven Mysteries series, which is all about a super-clever raven called Edgar. (There are some humans in it too, but they are far less important.) Think The Raven Mysteries are my favourite. If you want to read them too (and why wouldn't you?!), the first one is called Flood and Fang.
3.23 pm: Going to have a little snooze now and dream about the super-duper magical worlds that Marcus Sedgwick created for us.
6.56 pm: Woke up to a lovely pile of Marcus Sedgwick books (and some cucumber). Hurrah! Looking forward to getting started on these! And tomorrow, I will get cracking on The Tort of the Baskervilles, which won't be as good as Marcus Sedgwick's books, but am sure it will be literary masterpiece in its own right.
7.00 pm: Off to sleep again to dream of castles and oddballs and super-clever ravens called Edgar.
Editortial Assistant's note: Today's diary entry is dedicated to the wonderful Marcus Sedgwick - a kind, generous and wise man and beautiful writer, who was taken from the world much too soon. Thank you, Marcus, for encouraging and inspiring so many of us to write and believe in ourselves. We will hold tight to the memories of your kindness and to the magical worlds and words that you have left behind.
You can follow Prince Toby on Twitter @PrinceTobyTort (and Instagram, where he is now frantically trying to learn the ropes in case of Twitter explosion, also @PrinceTobyTort). Also, play Tortmaster on Twitter! The prize task is now open! Look out for a new task every Thursday night during the first break of Taskmaster.
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