As I said in my last blog-post, I had intended that our time away in the Cevennes should be a complete break from the work in progress but things keep breaking in, and not entirely as a result of my inability to stop thinking about the book. So, as the weather is horrible today, I thought I’d tell you about one of the break-ins.
On the day after we arrived, there was a wedding in the village. As we’re across the valley from the church here, we wouldn’t have known anything about it but for the local custom which involves driving from church to reception-venue with one’s hand held permanently on the car’s horn. This produces an ever-increasing cacophony of horns at all kinds of pitch which, in the stillness of a remote French valley where every car engine is audible, is quite something.
So, why did this remind me of the work in progress, sitting on laptop and memory stick at home? Because this local custom is – I think - a remnant of the tradition of charivari whereby some marriages (and, more specifically, consummations) would be greeted by a noisy accompaniment from village people. Though this is known as a French custom, the sources I have read (for reasons which become obvious in a minute) suggest that it may, once upon a time, have been a far more widespread European folk-custom which sought to regulate and regularize marriage practices.
The reason I have been reading about folk customs is that a colourful one appears in my current book. The carrying of the ceffyl pren, or wooden horse, is likely (apparently) to be an offspring of the same ancestor as the charivari. Used, in the period in which my current book is set, as an tool of social disapproval, the ceffyl pren probably had its origins in a charivari-like ceremony which was then, by extension, invoked to punish those who were failing to be married in an acceptable way – wife beaters, adulterers and those who fathered and then rejected illegitimate children were all suitable candidates to be made to mount the wooden horse and be paraded and jeered at all around the village, with a little rough-handling from the men en route to make sure they mended their ways.
By the nineteenth century, its use had been extended far beyond marital misdemeanours and was used to punish anybody who was infringing generally-held social rules that were not otherwise safeguarded by the law. Cheaters, swindlers, sellers of substandard produce – anybody could find their door being knocked on in the middle of the night by a mob of their neighbours beating drums and blowing horns to create the maximum public kind of embarrassment as the miscreant rode around the village on an uncomfortably thin wooden horse.
The Rebecca Riots – rural unrest sparked off by the multiplication of illegal and overcharging tollgates on turnpike roads and the central theme of the work in progress – used the ceffyl pren and its associated carnival to great advantage. Men dressed as women, their faces blacked, rode out at night to right the wrongs being perpetrated in their community. And sometimes got a little out of hand...
From marriage 2008 via agricultural workers’ protests back into the mists of European folk history… as a novelist with a strong historical bent it seems I’ll never be safe from my source material; perhaps I should have brought the laptop after all…
Showing posts with label work in progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work in progress. Show all posts
Monday, 20 October 2008
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Good and Bad things happening in the w-i-p
Something very gratifying ocurred this week in the work in progress. I’ve known since the beginning of the book that a certain thing happened between two of the main characters but what I didn’t know was why. Now I do. It just emerged one day from thinking about the characters and what was happening to them at the time. It was a relief as I’m heading inexorably towards the scene where this event happens and I was beginning to worry that it wasn’t going to happen at all as the motivation wasn’t there. But now it is and I’m left thinking, ‘of course that’s why it happened, how could it be otherwise?’
I find this whole process – that of knowing that things must happen but having to find out through familiarity with the characters exactly why they happen – to be simultaneously baffling and fascinating. And, in its fascination, it’s one of the things I love most about writing, the fact that these characters have become so real to me that watching them interact explains the reasons behind events I imagined before I knew them.
Another gratifying thing was that I wrote a scene I was very pleased with. It was something a little out of the ordinary and I knew it was going to be a difficult thing to get right but, after a couple of days I found I’d achieved what I set out to do in terms of action, voice and emotional interplay.
And then the bad thing happened. The following day, when I came to review the scene and move on to the next, I realised that it didn’t fit.
As a rule, I tend to write chronologically, writing scenes in the order in which they’ll be read rather than employing a cut-and-paste technique where scenes get written as they occur to me and are then slotted in when their moment appears to have arrived. And this just wasn’t the next scene. I had thought it was for various reasons but, once I’d written it, I realised that it had the effect of brining things in one narrative thread to a head much too soon. But all is not lost – the scene still has a place in the book, it’s just much later on. Because it will now be out of the immediate narrative flow, putting it in later will inevitably entail some re-writing as things will have moved on in various directions but, nevertheless, I think the bulk of it will be useable.
Thankfully, I don’t tend to write scenes in the wrong place too often. What I do have a tendency to do is to write scenes which don’t actually belong in the book. I write them and I read them the next day and I think ‘this is OK but it doesn’t need to be in the book. It’s too long, the same effect can be achieved by putting in a few lines somewhere else. Then again, sometimes I think I’m going to sit down to write one kind of scene but a chance remark by one of the characters (this happens a lot in dialogue scenes which is why there’s quite a lot of dialogue in my books – I need to hear my characters interacting) takes it in quite another – usually much better – direction.
All of which makes it sound as if my method of constructing a book is chaotic verging on anarchic. Not so. I go for weeks just putting scene after scene after scene, like a brickie putting one course on top of another to make a wall, then a room, then a house. I reckon I’m halfway up the first floor (second if you’re in the US) at the moment and the roof’s in sight. Windows and the rest of the ‘making the house watertight’ I consider to be final draught stuff. We’re not quite there yet but I know what sort of windows I need and I’m pretty sure they’re available.
Oh, and the other thing I’m happy about this week is the way I haven’t allowed Wimbledon to get in the way of work. I watched my first match today – Murray v. Haas. It was a good one to have saved up.
(For those of you who didn’t see it/aren’t interested, Andy Murray, the young Scot, won in four sets. Except… why am I telling you if you’re not interested?)
I find this whole process – that of knowing that things must happen but having to find out through familiarity with the characters exactly why they happen – to be simultaneously baffling and fascinating. And, in its fascination, it’s one of the things I love most about writing, the fact that these characters have become so real to me that watching them interact explains the reasons behind events I imagined before I knew them.
Another gratifying thing was that I wrote a scene I was very pleased with. It was something a little out of the ordinary and I knew it was going to be a difficult thing to get right but, after a couple of days I found I’d achieved what I set out to do in terms of action, voice and emotional interplay.
And then the bad thing happened. The following day, when I came to review the scene and move on to the next, I realised that it didn’t fit.
As a rule, I tend to write chronologically, writing scenes in the order in which they’ll be read rather than employing a cut-and-paste technique where scenes get written as they occur to me and are then slotted in when their moment appears to have arrived. And this just wasn’t the next scene. I had thought it was for various reasons but, once I’d written it, I realised that it had the effect of brining things in one narrative thread to a head much too soon. But all is not lost – the scene still has a place in the book, it’s just much later on. Because it will now be out of the immediate narrative flow, putting it in later will inevitably entail some re-writing as things will have moved on in various directions but, nevertheless, I think the bulk of it will be useable.
Thankfully, I don’t tend to write scenes in the wrong place too often. What I do have a tendency to do is to write scenes which don’t actually belong in the book. I write them and I read them the next day and I think ‘this is OK but it doesn’t need to be in the book. It’s too long, the same effect can be achieved by putting in a few lines somewhere else. Then again, sometimes I think I’m going to sit down to write one kind of scene but a chance remark by one of the characters (this happens a lot in dialogue scenes which is why there’s quite a lot of dialogue in my books – I need to hear my characters interacting) takes it in quite another – usually much better – direction.
All of which makes it sound as if my method of constructing a book is chaotic verging on anarchic. Not so. I go for weeks just putting scene after scene after scene, like a brickie putting one course on top of another to make a wall, then a room, then a house. I reckon I’m halfway up the first floor (second if you’re in the US) at the moment and the roof’s in sight. Windows and the rest of the ‘making the house watertight’ I consider to be final draught stuff. We’re not quite there yet but I know what sort of windows I need and I’m pretty sure they’re available.
Oh, and the other thing I’m happy about this week is the way I haven’t allowed Wimbledon to get in the way of work. I watched my first match today – Murray v. Haas. It was a good one to have saved up.
(For those of you who didn’t see it/aren’t interested, Andy Murray, the young Scot, won in four sets. Except… why am I telling you if you’re not interested?)
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Busy.....
Book group tonight, talking about the Costa-winning ‘What Was Lost’ by Catherine O’Flynn.
Stroke of genius to base a book in a shopping centre but the real genius is the way she’s carried it off – her characters are flawless, understated, pin-point accurate – you can just see them. And some you love and some you just want to pour paint over. Why paint? No idea, just came out.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of a good patch in the wip so I’m getting back to it. I just didn’t want you all to think I’d forgotten you.
Work tomorrow (as in going out to earn money) but I’ll try and put up a proper review of What was Lost tomoz evening.
Meanwhile, happy Wednesday evening!
Stroke of genius to base a book in a shopping centre but the real genius is the way she’s carried it off – her characters are flawless, understated, pin-point accurate – you can just see them. And some you love and some you just want to pour paint over. Why paint? No idea, just came out.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of a good patch in the wip so I’m getting back to it. I just didn’t want you all to think I’d forgotten you.
Work tomorrow (as in going out to earn money) but I’ll try and put up a proper review of What was Lost tomoz evening.
Meanwhile, happy Wednesday evening!
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Suddenly, Wales is Sexy
Read on It’s a Crime’s site the other day an extract from the Times announcing that, after years being very unsexy, Wales is now culturally hot.
Well, thank goodness for that! Wales is where the action in my new book takes place and I’d hate to have it turned down because I’ve chosen to set it the geographical equivalent of a fat git with back hair.
But, the article (in case you didn’t follow the link) continues:
Peter Gill, however, worries that, although there are Welsh singers, TV stars and sportsmen aplenty, there are fewer writers, poets and composers to match.
Well, that’s as maybe but I’m hoping that Peter Ho Davies’s ManBooker nominated The Welsh Girl and Owen Sheers’s Resistance, both set in Wales, will begin to break down the novel-buying public’s prejudices to work set in the Principality.
Interestingly, both these books are set during the Second World War – is this an indication that writers think this is the last time Wales was interesting? Both are also set in rural areas, unlike most of the success stories which the Times article is celebrating which are urban-based TV programmes and bands/solo artists most of whom (with the exception of Duffy, from the Lleyn peninsula) are from South Wales.
My novel is not set in the Second World War. It is, like Testament, a parallel narrative with one strand set in the past (in this case, the nineteenth century) and one taking place in contemporary West Wales. I think it’s a fascinating place to write about not just because I grew up there (that would just be frank nostalgia) but because I’m aware of everything that’s going on there still. All my immediate blood relations (except my children) live there. I have parents growing old there and wishing they’d got to grips with Welsh when we were little and nephews growing up there, trying to be bilingual. I read bits of the local paper now and again online (didn’t always do that, I started doing it for research and kind of got into it) and visit the website of the town nearest to the farm where I grew up. This website used to have a well-contributed-to forum in which natives and incomers had a lot to say to each other. Sadly, it’s been closed down, though a similar online presence makes an appearance in the book.
The Times article which It’s a Crime quotes, says:
Could it just be that much of Wales reminds many of us of how the rest of Britain used to be, in simpler, quieter, smaller times?
Well, if that’s the case then I’m on to a hiding to nothing as the last thing the new book does is to portray a simpler, quieter way of life.
West Wales isn’t the conventional rural idyll. It has all the usual problems of rural youth depopulation, unemployment and retiree-immigration but, on top of that, it’s trying to preserve a culture and a language. If young people are the life blood of a language (and they are) then Welsh is suffering a slow, inexorable haemorrhage. If the greying of an area makes it difficult to keep village schools (the heart of a community) open, then West Wales has a real problem.
Immigrants who are past compulsory school age see no need to learn Welsh as everybody speaks English and so the attrition continues.
All this forms the backdrop to the book I’m writing.
It presents a community finally saying ‘enough’ and doing something on its own cultural and linguistic behalf. It is not simple, quiet or nostalgic.
I hope that’s not a mistake.
Well, thank goodness for that! Wales is where the action in my new book takes place and I’d hate to have it turned down because I’ve chosen to set it the geographical equivalent of a fat git with back hair.
But, the article (in case you didn’t follow the link) continues:
Peter Gill, however, worries that, although there are Welsh singers, TV stars and sportsmen aplenty, there are fewer writers, poets and composers to match.
Well, that’s as maybe but I’m hoping that Peter Ho Davies’s ManBooker nominated The Welsh Girl and Owen Sheers’s Resistance, both set in Wales, will begin to break down the novel-buying public’s prejudices to work set in the Principality.
Interestingly, both these books are set during the Second World War – is this an indication that writers think this is the last time Wales was interesting? Both are also set in rural areas, unlike most of the success stories which the Times article is celebrating which are urban-based TV programmes and bands/solo artists most of whom (with the exception of Duffy, from the Lleyn peninsula) are from South Wales.
My novel is not set in the Second World War. It is, like Testament, a parallel narrative with one strand set in the past (in this case, the nineteenth century) and one taking place in contemporary West Wales. I think it’s a fascinating place to write about not just because I grew up there (that would just be frank nostalgia) but because I’m aware of everything that’s going on there still. All my immediate blood relations (except my children) live there. I have parents growing old there and wishing they’d got to grips with Welsh when we were little and nephews growing up there, trying to be bilingual. I read bits of the local paper now and again online (didn’t always do that, I started doing it for research and kind of got into it) and visit the website of the town nearest to the farm where I grew up. This website used to have a well-contributed-to forum in which natives and incomers had a lot to say to each other. Sadly, it’s been closed down, though a similar online presence makes an appearance in the book.
The Times article which It’s a Crime quotes, says:
Could it just be that much of Wales reminds many of us of how the rest of Britain used to be, in simpler, quieter, smaller times?
Well, if that’s the case then I’m on to a hiding to nothing as the last thing the new book does is to portray a simpler, quieter way of life.
West Wales isn’t the conventional rural idyll. It has all the usual problems of rural youth depopulation, unemployment and retiree-immigration but, on top of that, it’s trying to preserve a culture and a language. If young people are the life blood of a language (and they are) then Welsh is suffering a slow, inexorable haemorrhage. If the greying of an area makes it difficult to keep village schools (the heart of a community) open, then West Wales has a real problem.
Immigrants who are past compulsory school age see no need to learn Welsh as everybody speaks English and so the attrition continues.
All this forms the backdrop to the book I’m writing.
It presents a community finally saying ‘enough’ and doing something on its own cultural and linguistic behalf. It is not simple, quiet or nostalgic.
I hope that’s not a mistake.
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
Christmas books
Waking from the chocolate-flavoured, carol-sound-tracked, new-clothes strewn oblivion of Christmas Day, life surfaces again chez nous. This afternoon the Bass Player, the Other Half and I went shopping with the Waterstones’ cards we got for Christmas. The Ultimate Frisbee Freak was too busy doing payable chores around the place (severely broke after Christmas) to come with us, though he did send us off with instructions to see if the Dalai Lama’s autobiography was out yet – v. attracted by the Dalai Lama is the UFF.
Once over the threshold of the only bookshop left in town (sigh…) I was determined not to just go for the three-for-twos, partly because I’m beginning to feel dictated to and partly because I want to support authors whose publishers haven’t stumped up for a place on the front tables. And, if I’m totally honest, I’ve read all the three-for-twos I fancy anyway…
The results are in the pile on the right – three chosen by the Other Half, three by me. All will be read by both with much gusto.
Not that I’m going to get to these for a while, still got the birthday haul to enjoy. I’ve just finished reading The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris which I raved about here a couple of days ago and which I loved more and more as I read it. There’s something timeless about Joanne Harris’s books, as if they’re purely about the people and their predicament and don’t relate to the rest of the world, be it political situation, cultural context (whatever that might be) or historical time-scale at all. it’s a clever trick if you can pull it off, and she can. Apart from the one mention of the internet (to say that Yanne and her family didn’t have it) and the fact that one character is welded to his mobile phone (which immediately puts him beyond the pale) the modern world doesn’t intrude into The Lollipop Shoes any more than it did into Chocolat. The result is a kind of fable, a timeless story with a uninversal meaning. And I love that kind of thing.
But, though I love it, I don’t write it. My stories are much more time-bound. Testament is full of very specific historical references, both in the fourteenth century where Simon’s life and ambitions are bounded by the heresies of Lollardy and in the contemporary world where neither Damia’s campaign to save the college nor her long-distance relationship with Catz could possibly survive without constant use of the internet. Of course, the internet has its down-side as Damia also discovers.
It’s the same with the current work-in-progress. A memoir written about a single summer in 1843 and a contemporary story based very firmly in the West Wales of the twenty-first century. But, as I say, I do love fables and I’ve put one in to the w-i-p, though whether it will survive beyond the first draft, I don’t know. Stephen King (whom I seem to keep quoting as if all I know about writing comes from him instead of twenty years of practice) says that we should kill our darlings, ie cut out those bits of our books we cherish the most as they’re likely to be dead, purple weight. We shall see.
Meanwhile, am I getting any writing – or even editing, as predicted – done this holiday? Not yet. But tomorrow may be another day in that respect…
Once over the threshold of the only bookshop left in town (sigh…) I was determined not to just go for the three-for-twos, partly because I’m beginning to feel dictated to and partly because I want to support authors whose publishers haven’t stumped up for a place on the front tables. And, if I’m totally honest, I’ve read all the three-for-twos I fancy anyway…
The results are in the pile on the right – three chosen by the Other Half, three by me. All will be read by both with much gusto.
Not that I’m going to get to these for a while, still got the birthday haul to enjoy. I’ve just finished reading The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris which I raved about here a couple of days ago and which I loved more and more as I read it. There’s something timeless about Joanne Harris’s books, as if they’re purely about the people and their predicament and don’t relate to the rest of the world, be it political situation, cultural context (whatever that might be) or historical time-scale at all. it’s a clever trick if you can pull it off, and she can. Apart from the one mention of the internet (to say that Yanne and her family didn’t have it) and the fact that one character is welded to his mobile phone (which immediately puts him beyond the pale) the modern world doesn’t intrude into The Lollipop Shoes any more than it did into Chocolat. The result is a kind of fable, a timeless story with a uninversal meaning. And I love that kind of thing.
But, though I love it, I don’t write it. My stories are much more time-bound. Testament is full of very specific historical references, both in the fourteenth century where Simon’s life and ambitions are bounded by the heresies of Lollardy and in the contemporary world where neither Damia’s campaign to save the college nor her long-distance relationship with Catz could possibly survive without constant use of the internet. Of course, the internet has its down-side as Damia also discovers.
It’s the same with the current work-in-progress. A memoir written about a single summer in 1843 and a contemporary story based very firmly in the West Wales of the twenty-first century. But, as I say, I do love fables and I’ve put one in to the w-i-p, though whether it will survive beyond the first draft, I don’t know. Stephen King (whom I seem to keep quoting as if all I know about writing comes from him instead of twenty years of practice) says that we should kill our darlings, ie cut out those bits of our books we cherish the most as they’re likely to be dead, purple weight. We shall see.
Meanwhile, am I getting any writing – or even editing, as predicted – done this holiday? Not yet. But tomorrow may be another day in that respect…
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