Last week on Juxtabook’s blog, I wrote an article which talked about getting the email that all writers fantasise about – the offer to publish your work. This week, I find myself writing about the email that all writers dread, the one that begins with all the things your publisher really liked about your book but whose second paragraph begins with the ominous word ‘However…’. That’s when you know you’ve failed to pull off the difficult second book.
Now, bearing in mind everything I said in that piece for Juxtabook nobody would expect the decision not to publish Not One of Us in its current form to be anything but thoughtful, considered and taken with due concern for my future work as an author. Nor was it. But, despite the extent to which the right words can soften the blow, reading Will’s kind comments and perceptive criticisms it was abundantly clear to me that, although there were good things about Not One of Us, overall it didn’t accomplish what I’d set out to do.
But all is not doom and gloom. Quite the reverse. This blog post has been a difficult one to write, not just because I didn’t want to admit to failure (though obviously that came into it) but because I’ve been mulling over how to convey my state of mind vis a vis my writing at the moment without seeming falsely bright eyed and bushy tailed.
So, what is my state of mind? Well, having read the fateful email whilst I was cooking supper after getting home from work one day last week, I spent the rest of the evening in a bit of a slough, trying to find it in me to disagree with the difficulties Will and his colleagues had found with Not One of Us (and failing) and just basically being pissed off that I’d spent a year working on a project which part of me knew I should have abandoned with the previous unfinished version of the book a year ago. The following day (after waking up and thinking ‘bugger, it wasn’t a dream’) I re-read the email and realised two things.
1) Though my judgement as to whether the whole novel hung together had clearly been wrong, I had known which bits really worked and Will’s email had agreed with that judgement – he had flagged exactly those elements.
2) Two (and this arose directly out of 1) Not One of Us had not played to my strengths as a novelist.
Later that same day I spoke to Will on the phone and, as a result of our conversation, I made a decision. Well, two decisions, actually, but let’s take them one at a time.
Firstly, I decided that I had allowed the essential fascination of the split time narrative – the ability both to write a historical narrative and then to have contemporary characters play with it, interact with it, reflect on it – to seduce me into writing, as Will put it ‘a novel about history rather than a historical novel’. The things I find most fascinating about history – how it affects us today, how we peer into the mists but can’t possibly see it as it really was, how we interpret the fragments that have come down to us in myth and document - are the things that lead me off the path of narrative and into something which becomes more about the idea than the story.
And that brings us to the second decision which is that my next book is going to be a straightforward historical narrative. No contemporary strand, no batting back and forth; I’m just going to maroon myself and my reader in the fourteenth century and see what we make of the people and situations we find there.
Various agents, readers, friends and relations have told me for years that they thought that this is what I should do (write historical novels, not maroon people in the fourteenth century) but I’ve ignored them. I don’t honestly know why, except that a) I’m not good at doing what other people say I should and b) I felt that it was a bit presumptuous for me, a non-historian, to produce fictions which basically said ‘I know all about this’.
So what’s changed?
Well, even the most determined go-er alone eventually realises that an opinion expressed so often and by so many different people is unlikely to be completely mistaken. And writing historical fiction of the split-time variety has shown me that you don’t actually need to know everything, you just need to be convincing about the bits you choose to shine a light on. After writing Testament there are still a million things I don’t know about life in late fourteenth century England but I know a great deal about the things I chose to spotlight – masons and building, the Lollards and the relationship between church and university.
And something else has changed as well. Or perhaps I should say that I’ve made a resolution that it’s going to change. Like many writers I am reticent to the point of paranoia about letting another living being see my work whilst it’s in progress. I don’t discuss my work with anybody and I don’t let anybody see it. I’m not a member of a writing group of any kind. Basically I DON’T ASK ANYBODY’S ADVICE. (See comments on not being good at doing what other people tell me, above...)
And this has to change. If I’d shown Not One Of Us to Will at an earlier stage a lot of wasted time and effort might have been avoided. Either I would have acknowledged that what I was trying to do was too ambitious and abandoned it or I would have changed the focus and done something different with the central idea.
So… I have agreed with Will that I will send him a synopsis of the book which is germinating - sprouting, growing madly - in my mind and that we will discuss the progress of said book as it goes along. In other words I will bite the bullet and show him the thing. I may not like it but I have come to the conclusion that it’s a necessary discipline. It would be nice to go all literary and say that I just want to be left alone to write the books I want to write but the simple fact is that I want to be published. And, however many times I heard, prior to Will’s offer to publish Testament, that ‘it must be so rewarding to write’ it frankly isn’t rewarding if nobody’s reading your stuff. For me, writing is not its own reward. I want an audience.
So it seems sensible to show my stuff to the man who gets to make the decision as to whether I’ll get an audience somewhat earlier than the moment at which I type THE END so that he can point out to me when I’m wandering totally off the point and losing my audience in the long grass of my own preoccupations.
And, contrary to what you might think, these realisations and decisions have left me feeling astonishingly energised. I can’t stop thinking about the new book (working title The Black and The White), about the central character and his predicament. Everything I do or see seems to spark off some new train of thought, some new avenue for research. (By the way, speaking of research, if anybody knows any good books on the history of charcoal burning in Britain, more particularly in the medieval period, please let me know.)
Far from feeling daunted at the thought of confining myself to the fourteenth century I’m feeling liberated. I can think more purely about the story and less about the historical echoes. There won’t be those jumps out of one century into another when I look at the prose and wonder why I can’t mirror something of the quality of the historical voice in the present day narrative. I’ll be able to immerse myself and my reader in another world.
Of course I’m annoyed that my own mistakes mean that I’m not going to have a book published next year. People keep asking me ‘when’s the next one coming out?’ and having to tell them that NOOU hasn’t made the cut isn’t quite the conversation I’d hoped for about the fate of my next book.
Of course I’m cross with myself that the characters of whom I’ve become so fond aren’t going to be there on the shelves for other people to get to know.
Of course I’m cross with myself that – even if all goes astonishingly well – there’s going to be a gap of more than four years between Testament’s publication and the next one. Not good for building reader loyalty.
And I suspect that people are going to take my enthusiasm for work on The Black and The White as a smokescreen behind which I’m attempting to hide NOOU’s failure. But it’s not. I’m quite honestly very excited every time I think about the new book. Probably more excited than I’ve been about writing since I got the idea for Testament. And that’s a good feeling.
Wish me luck…
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Playing away...
Just in case you all thought I was being horribly lazy about getting blog posts up here recently, I have been working on a long-ish piece about being published by MNW for Juxtabook. In lieu of anything going on here today, you can find the piece here.
More news on current writing projects chez Bizarre soon.
More news on current writing projects chez Bizarre soon.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Piracy or Publicity?
What are writers to think of this article about the increasing practice of pirating books on the net? Do we all start scouring the web-waves for examples of our books being hi-jacked by those who don’t want to pay, or should we, as Cory Doctorow says at the end of the article, be thankful for the publicity it gives our work?
I had a discussion with Son Number 1, better known to readers of this blog as the Ultimate Frisbee Freak, the other day about the Pirate Bay trial where various Swedish e-facilitators were found guilty of copyright theft/infringement. His opinion was that a) it put the word about bands, films and games ‘out there’, b) that many of the people downloading stuff from the site were probably kids who couldn’t afford to pay for the stuff legitimately and represented an untapped audience that would grow up to – possibly – become paying fans, c) that fans will always want the real thing (the CD, the DVD) partly because d) the ripped off copies are usually sub-standard for various technical reasons.
I don’t know what to think. (A state of affairs I find increasingly common. I thought one was supposed to get more dogmatic with age, not less?) For published authors, few of us are making enough money not to care that some people – who might otherwise buy our book – are downloading it free simply because they can. Yes, yes, I know that our primary reason for writing is that people will read our books and, clearly, that is what is happening with the pirated copies and yet… having had the validation of a publishing contract, we also now feel that, as well as wanting people to read our books, we’d quite like people to actually shell out money for them. We’ve put in the hours, our publishers have put in the dosh, it seems unfair that some people should benefit, gratis, from these investments.
But then there’s point a) above. We all – apart from those authors who are sure-fire big sellers from the off – want to be ‘word of mouth’ successes. Well, once the initial burst of publicity is over, maybe the best kind of word of mouth now has an e-component? Maybe where we once relied on recommendations passing from mouth to ear, we now need to see free copies being downloaded and a ‘buzz’ created on the forum or comments trail of many websites. Because if c) above is correct then that will translate into actual, hard-copy sales.
What do you think?
I had a discussion with Son Number 1, better known to readers of this blog as the Ultimate Frisbee Freak, the other day about the Pirate Bay trial where various Swedish e-facilitators were found guilty of copyright theft/infringement. His opinion was that a) it put the word about bands, films and games ‘out there’, b) that many of the people downloading stuff from the site were probably kids who couldn’t afford to pay for the stuff legitimately and represented an untapped audience that would grow up to – possibly – become paying fans, c) that fans will always want the real thing (the CD, the DVD) partly because d) the ripped off copies are usually sub-standard for various technical reasons.
I don’t know what to think. (A state of affairs I find increasingly common. I thought one was supposed to get more dogmatic with age, not less?) For published authors, few of us are making enough money not to care that some people – who might otherwise buy our book – are downloading it free simply because they can. Yes, yes, I know that our primary reason for writing is that people will read our books and, clearly, that is what is happening with the pirated copies and yet… having had the validation of a publishing contract, we also now feel that, as well as wanting people to read our books, we’d quite like people to actually shell out money for them. We’ve put in the hours, our publishers have put in the dosh, it seems unfair that some people should benefit, gratis, from these investments.
But then there’s point a) above. We all – apart from those authors who are sure-fire big sellers from the off – want to be ‘word of mouth’ successes. Well, once the initial burst of publicity is over, maybe the best kind of word of mouth now has an e-component? Maybe where we once relied on recommendations passing from mouth to ear, we now need to see free copies being downloaded and a ‘buzz’ created on the forum or comments trail of many websites. Because if c) above is correct then that will translate into actual, hard-copy sales.
What do you think?
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
I have just read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.
Now, I read a lot of books and I’ve never read read anything like this. I was captivated almost from the first page and the presence of Edgar, the central character, kept me engrossed all the way through.
Unique, then. But it’s a very hard book to categorise. Or even describe. At one level it’s a book about a boy and his dogs. The Sawtelles breed and train (boy do they train!) their very own breed of dog. I am a resolutely cat person and even I wanted a dog of my own by the end of the book.
At another level it’s a psychological thriller but to try and categorise it in that way would do the book a great disservice.
At yet another level it’s a coming of age novel. Or a weird road-trip with dogs...
But none of these begin to sum up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
I think, possibly, it’s a book whose main preoccupation is communication. Edgar is mute - not deaf, just mute. For some reason he simply cannot speak or make any vocal noise. So he signs, even to his dogs. But his silence seems to be more deep-rooted than a simple anatomical difficulty with voice production – his mother describes him as a silent, inward person and the reader gets the impression that his most effective communication is all non-verbal.
The book is also very concerned with the way in which people communicate the things they know. And how they know what they know. Edgar has an almost telepathic kind of information-exchange with his dog, Almondine (who gets her moment as a viewpoint character) and both he and his mother effect a kind of non-verbal communication with their dogs which seems not simply out of the ordinary but almost supernatural.
And this sense of the supernatural keeps cropping up. There is communication from beyond the grave and psychic communication from a lesser, but very vividly realised character. In a book that works hard to present us with the nuts and bolts of the dog-trainer’s art, which goes into a great deal of historical detail about the development of the Sawtelle’s method, which presents a very unforgiving and unromantic view of a small rural community, this kind of excursion into the realms of the unknowable shouldn’t work. But it does. And that makes The Story of Edgar Sawtelle a strange, memorable and unusual book.
But, oddly, I think the thing that stays with me is the American-ness of the book. There is a certain kind of North American novel that conveys, in its language, its symbolism and its characters the vast emptiness of the continent, the lonely, self-sufficient independence of rural life, the ultimate significance of the questions about life that are inspired by vast prairies and endless skies. It’s difficult to be bogged down in trivia when your insignificance in the universe is demonstrated to you every night by the very visible presence of a billion stars.
Unique, then. But it’s a very hard book to categorise. Or even describe. At one level it’s a book about a boy and his dogs. The Sawtelles breed and train (boy do they train!) their very own breed of dog. I am a resolutely cat person and even I wanted a dog of my own by the end of the book.
At another level it’s a psychological thriller but to try and categorise it in that way would do the book a great disservice.
At yet another level it’s a coming of age novel. Or a weird road-trip with dogs...
But none of these begin to sum up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
I think, possibly, it’s a book whose main preoccupation is communication. Edgar is mute - not deaf, just mute. For some reason he simply cannot speak or make any vocal noise. So he signs, even to his dogs. But his silence seems to be more deep-rooted than a simple anatomical difficulty with voice production – his mother describes him as a silent, inward person and the reader gets the impression that his most effective communication is all non-verbal.
The book is also very concerned with the way in which people communicate the things they know. And how they know what they know. Edgar has an almost telepathic kind of information-exchange with his dog, Almondine (who gets her moment as a viewpoint character) and both he and his mother effect a kind of non-verbal communication with their dogs which seems not simply out of the ordinary but almost supernatural.
And this sense of the supernatural keeps cropping up. There is communication from beyond the grave and psychic communication from a lesser, but very vividly realised character. In a book that works hard to present us with the nuts and bolts of the dog-trainer’s art, which goes into a great deal of historical detail about the development of the Sawtelle’s method, which presents a very unforgiving and unromantic view of a small rural community, this kind of excursion into the realms of the unknowable shouldn’t work. But it does. And that makes The Story of Edgar Sawtelle a strange, memorable and unusual book.
But, oddly, I think the thing that stays with me is the American-ness of the book. There is a certain kind of North American novel that conveys, in its language, its symbolism and its characters the vast emptiness of the continent, the lonely, self-sufficient independence of rural life, the ultimate significance of the questions about life that are inspired by vast prairies and endless skies. It’s difficult to be bogged down in trivia when your insignificance in the universe is demonstrated to you every night by the very visible presence of a billion stars.
In many ways, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle shouldn’t work.
But work it does. I loved it.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Home Again
Many thanks to everybody for the kind comments on the finishing of Not One of Us - it was great to come home to the comments on my last post. Thank you all.
Whilst I was away, despite being away from home and somewhat occupied with keeping house for my dad whilst my mother was in hospital, I found myself constantly going over Not One of Us in my mind and wondering how it’s going to be received, so it was wonderful to come home (mum in tow to convalesce) and read this wonderful review of Testament from Juxtabook.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that NOOU would be on my mind. Not only had I finally got around to letting my nearest and dearest read it (being married to a writer must be awful – we spend all this time and intensity doing something which excludes everybody else and we won’t let them near it until it’s damn near perfect – or, at least, that seems to be the case with most of us) but also I was slap bang in the middle of the area where the novel is set, where the Rebecca Riots took place in the 1840s.
Then I was persuaded to discuss the book with some old friends I haven’t seen since we left school and who still live in the area inand I spent hours walking my parents’ dog around the lanes and woods of the valley that almost becomes a character in its own right in the book. I discussed Welshness and incomers with my family, all of whom still live in Cardiganshire and almost heard my characters joining in. I felt as if I was surrounded by my novel.
So, although I’d left behind the kitchen table where I wrote the book and our house in which the novel had come to life, going to Cardiganshire wasn’t ever likely to be a break from the book.
Now, back at home, while I wait to hear the fate of Not One of Us, I’m beginning to think about the next book. I’ve started looking around for background reading and research and the story is beginning to take shape – already two of the characters are hovering in my mind, waiting for my undivided attention so that they can step forward and we can get to know each other. But they’re going to have to wait another week, I’m a bit preoccupied as yet. And anyway, I’d like to let a bit of research inform the background that my characters are going to step out of into the light.
So… here I am, back at home and there are three books on my mind: Testament because of
Juxtabook’s wonderful review and because my copies of the Spanish edition of Testament arrived while I was away. (I have to say they’re rather splendid. ) Not One of Us because it's finally launched tentatively into the world or at least into my family and on to the desk of Will, our MNW commissioning editor whose verdict I'm simultaneously eagerly awaiting and dreading. And the new, as yet unplanned and unnamed book whose characters and stories are beginning to creep out from the corners of my subconscious.
It’s good to be back.
Whilst I was away, despite being away from home and somewhat occupied with keeping house for my dad whilst my mother was in hospital, I found myself constantly going over Not One of Us in my mind and wondering how it’s going to be received, so it was wonderful to come home (mum in tow to convalesce) and read this wonderful review of Testament from Juxtabook.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that NOOU would be on my mind. Not only had I finally got around to letting my nearest and dearest read it (being married to a writer must be awful – we spend all this time and intensity doing something which excludes everybody else and we won’t let them near it until it’s damn near perfect – or, at least, that seems to be the case with most of us) but also I was slap bang in the middle of the area where the novel is set, where the Rebecca Riots took place in the 1840s.
Then I was persuaded to discuss the book with some old friends I haven’t seen since we left school and who still live in the area inand I spent hours walking my parents’ dog around the lanes and woods of the valley that almost becomes a character in its own right in the book. I discussed Welshness and incomers with my family, all of whom still live in Cardiganshire and almost heard my characters joining in. I felt as if I was surrounded by my novel.
So, although I’d left behind the kitchen table where I wrote the book and our house in which the novel had come to life, going to Cardiganshire wasn’t ever likely to be a break from the book.
Now, back at home, while I wait to hear the fate of Not One of Us, I’m beginning to think about the next book. I’ve started looking around for background reading and research and the story is beginning to take shape – already two of the characters are hovering in my mind, waiting for my undivided attention so that they can step forward and we can get to know each other. But they’re going to have to wait another week, I’m a bit preoccupied as yet. And anyway, I’d like to let a bit of research inform the background that my characters are going to step out of into the light.
So… here I am, back at home and there are three books on my mind: Testament because of
Juxtabook’s wonderful review and because my copies of the Spanish edition of Testament arrived while I was away. (I have to say they’re rather splendid. ) Not One of Us because it's finally launched tentatively into the world or at least into my family and on to the desk of Will, our MNW commissioning editor whose verdict I'm simultaneously eagerly awaiting and dreading. And the new, as yet unplanned and unnamed book whose characters and stories are beginning to creep out from the corners of my subconscious.
It’s good to be back.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Finished...
OK, so, well, it's done... the editing of the work in progress is finished. It is a work in progress no longer.
I am a little on the exhausted side but, on the whole, cautiously pleased with how the thing's turned out. A finished novel is never quite the towering work of genius (ahem) that you envisaged at the outset but, from my far from objective position with my nose permanently grazed from the grindstone, it looks OK.
As I said to my editor, Will, ideally instead of sending it off to him (which I now have) I would leave the book somewhere for three months to forget about it, then read it with fresh eyes, cry 'Aaargh' or something articulate like that and set about re-writing the whole thing.
Or maybe I'd say 'Hmmm, not so bad after all..'
Who can tell?
Anyway, the point is, it's done, it's sent and there's nothing more I can do about it for at least a fortnight because I'm going away.
I shall be out of email and blog contact because I'm going where there's no internet (my parents house) or internet cafe (the town nearest to my parents farm) so I shall be incommunicado.
It'll be good for me.
Let me just say it again - the book's finished!
Hooray...
For those who haven't picked it up from various ramblings here over the last few months, it's called Not One of Us. At least for the moment.
I really should update the Work in Progress page on the website... remind me when I get back... got to go and pack.
Have a fab Easter everybody!
I am a little on the exhausted side but, on the whole, cautiously pleased with how the thing's turned out. A finished novel is never quite the towering work of genius (ahem) that you envisaged at the outset but, from my far from objective position with my nose permanently grazed from the grindstone, it looks OK.
As I said to my editor, Will, ideally instead of sending it off to him (which I now have) I would leave the book somewhere for three months to forget about it, then read it with fresh eyes, cry 'Aaargh' or something articulate like that and set about re-writing the whole thing.
Or maybe I'd say 'Hmmm, not so bad after all..'
Who can tell?
Anyway, the point is, it's done, it's sent and there's nothing more I can do about it for at least a fortnight because I'm going away.
I shall be out of email and blog contact because I'm going where there's no internet (my parents house) or internet cafe (the town nearest to my parents farm) so I shall be incommunicado.
It'll be good for me.
Let me just say it again - the book's finished!
Hooray...
For those who haven't picked it up from various ramblings here over the last few months, it's called Not One of Us. At least for the moment.
I really should update the Work in Progress page on the website... remind me when I get back... got to go and pack.
Have a fab Easter everybody!
Monday, 6 April 2009
Time to think about...
Over at Juxtabook, Catherine has picked up a time theme from Simon at Savidge Reads and invites us all to have a go.
So I took a break from the editing marathon and here’s my effort.
What time do you find the best time to read?
I’m literally a morning, noon and night reader. Having to sit in front of my lightbox for half an hour in the morning for the darker six months of the year has trained my brain to expect thirty minutes of reading matter with breakfast and this carries on into the summer. I’ll usually take at least half an hour for lunch and I read then (lunch has to be something eatable with one hand as I’m using the other to hold the book open). And, at the end of the day, I find it almost impossible to get to sleep unless I’ve read for at least half an hour.
At the weekend and on holidays, my idea of bliss is uninterrupted reading time somewhere warm.
What are you spending time reading right now?
Just at the moment, I’m rereading Ian McEwan’s Atonement and finding it brilliant all over again. I don’t generally re-read books (life’s too short and I read too slowly) but my younger son is studying it for AS Level and I wanted to be able to discuss it properly with him rather than relying on my ludicrously poor memory. It’s started us both on an Ian McEwan reading trajectory – he’s just read my copies of Black Dogs and Enduring Love. He’s got Saturday and Chesil Beach waiting for him and I need to acquire Amsterdam. Couldn’t ever get on with The Child in Time…
What’s the best book with time in the title you have read?
Like most other people in the known universe I did enjoy Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife very much. And The Thief of Time allows me to cheerlead for Terry Pratchett – way more than a spoof fantasy writer.
But if I can cheat and put in a plea for a book with a time-related word in the title I’d recommend Sue Gee’s The Hours of the Night, a beautiful, lyrical, deeply humane book.
What is your favourite time (as in era) to read novels based in?
The medieval period – it just fascinates me - though I love the Lindsey Davis’s Falco novels set in Imperial Rome, too. I’ve also recently read a book or two set during the English Civil War and that has whetted my appetite for more novels from this period. Any recommendations?
What book could your read time and time again?
As mentioned above, I’m not a huge one for re-reading but I do regularly re-read Terry Pratchett as his books cheer me up so infallibly, particularly any of the titles that feature the witches, Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax and Magrat Garlic.
What recently published book do you think deserves to become a classic in Time?
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Absolutely stunning. (My review of it is here.)
What book has been your biggest waste of time?
James Joyce’s Ulysses. I felt I had to read it while I was at university. Finnegan’s Wake, ditto.
What big book would you recommend to others to spend time reading if they haven’t?
It’s quite old now but Leon Uris’s Exodus – a wonderful epic about European Jewry in the early twentieth century and the birth of the state of Israel; the entire Harry Potter canon – storytelling at its page-turning best; Dickens’ Bleak House.
What’s your favourite read of all time?
I find this an impossibly difficult question as various books have been important to me at different times. When I was ten, I read The Swiss Family Robinson six times in a single year so that must be a contender though I can barely remember a word of it now. Except one word which I’d never come across before I read it and had to look up. Isinglass…
So I took a break from the editing marathon and here’s my effort.
What time do you find the best time to read?
I’m literally a morning, noon and night reader. Having to sit in front of my lightbox for half an hour in the morning for the darker six months of the year has trained my brain to expect thirty minutes of reading matter with breakfast and this carries on into the summer. I’ll usually take at least half an hour for lunch and I read then (lunch has to be something eatable with one hand as I’m using the other to hold the book open). And, at the end of the day, I find it almost impossible to get to sleep unless I’ve read for at least half an hour.
At the weekend and on holidays, my idea of bliss is uninterrupted reading time somewhere warm.
What are you spending time reading right now?
Just at the moment, I’m rereading Ian McEwan’s Atonement and finding it brilliant all over again. I don’t generally re-read books (life’s too short and I read too slowly) but my younger son is studying it for AS Level and I wanted to be able to discuss it properly with him rather than relying on my ludicrously poor memory. It’s started us both on an Ian McEwan reading trajectory – he’s just read my copies of Black Dogs and Enduring Love. He’s got Saturday and Chesil Beach waiting for him and I need to acquire Amsterdam. Couldn’t ever get on with The Child in Time…
What’s the best book with time in the title you have read?
Like most other people in the known universe I did enjoy Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife very much. And The Thief of Time allows me to cheerlead for Terry Pratchett – way more than a spoof fantasy writer.
But if I can cheat and put in a plea for a book with a time-related word in the title I’d recommend Sue Gee’s The Hours of the Night, a beautiful, lyrical, deeply humane book.
What is your favourite time (as in era) to read novels based in?
The medieval period – it just fascinates me - though I love the Lindsey Davis’s Falco novels set in Imperial Rome, too. I’ve also recently read a book or two set during the English Civil War and that has whetted my appetite for more novels from this period. Any recommendations?
What book could your read time and time again?
As mentioned above, I’m not a huge one for re-reading but I do regularly re-read Terry Pratchett as his books cheer me up so infallibly, particularly any of the titles that feature the witches, Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax and Magrat Garlic.
What recently published book do you think deserves to become a classic in Time?
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Absolutely stunning. (My review of it is here.)
What book has been your biggest waste of time?
James Joyce’s Ulysses. I felt I had to read it while I was at university. Finnegan’s Wake, ditto.
What big book would you recommend to others to spend time reading if they haven’t?
It’s quite old now but Leon Uris’s Exodus – a wonderful epic about European Jewry in the early twentieth century and the birth of the state of Israel; the entire Harry Potter canon – storytelling at its page-turning best; Dickens’ Bleak House.
What’s your favourite read of all time?
I find this an impossibly difficult question as various books have been important to me at different times. When I was ten, I read The Swiss Family Robinson six times in a single year so that must be a contender though I can barely remember a word of it now. Except one word which I’d never come across before I read it and had to look up. Isinglass…
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Editing
Editing. What is it like? To what shall I compare it?
It’s like photoshopping your rather poor and out of focus photographs – you blur a bit here, sharpen up a bit there, make the colours in this part of the image more intense, bleed those out a bit so they’re a little more opaque…
It’s like doing a jigsaw where there’s no picture to follow and the blocks of apparently quite distinct colours aren’t actually distinct at all but turn out to be mingled in all sorts of unexpected ways.
It’s like doing one of those puzzles that are made up of eight tiles in a frame of nine spaces that force you to move one tile at a time in order to get everything to line up and make sense.
It’s laborious, it’s creative, it can be immensely frustrating, it messes with your head but, ultimately, it’s the difference between having a good idea and writing a book that actually works.
It’s like photoshopping your rather poor and out of focus photographs – you blur a bit here, sharpen up a bit there, make the colours in this part of the image more intense, bleed those out a bit so they’re a little more opaque…
It’s like doing a jigsaw where there’s no picture to follow and the blocks of apparently quite distinct colours aren’t actually distinct at all but turn out to be mingled in all sorts of unexpected ways.
It’s like doing one of those puzzles that are made up of eight tiles in a frame of nine spaces that force you to move one tile at a time in order to get everything to line up and make sense.
It’s laborious, it’s creative, it can be immensely frustrating, it messes with your head but, ultimately, it’s the difference between having a good idea and writing a book that actually works.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Waverton Good Read Award Shortlist
Well, Testament didn’t make it to the short list of the Waverton Good Read Award but the whole experience was great fun – especially being invited up to Waverton to talk about the book. What the people of Waverton are doing with their Award is so different to any other literary prize in Britain that I feel it’s very much to be encouraged and supported. Ordinary people who don’t depend on the literary scene for their living are putting in a lot of time and effort reading, commenting on and voting for Good Reads. Fantastic. I hope Borders’ sponsorship places the Award a little more firmly on the literary map and that we start seeing books with ‘Shortlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award’ and ‘Winner of the Waverton Good Read Award’ stickers on booksellers’ shelves. .
The shortlisted novels are:
A girl made of dust - Nathalie Abi-Ezi
The Outsider- Sadie Jones
Spider – Michael Morley
Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
Four very different books – I’ll be fascinated to see which one wins.
Meanwhile, the editing is bringing Not One of Us into much sharper focus for me and the whole thing is beginning to feel like a finished novel instead of a work in progress.
The structural edit’s done, now I need to go over it one more time tightening the language, sharpening the focus yet again, pruning where I’ve not yet been ruthless enough.
This time next week I might actually be getting to the stage where I’m ready to let another human being read it.
The shortlisted novels are:
A girl made of dust - Nathalie Abi-Ezi
The Outsider- Sadie Jones
Spider – Michael Morley
Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
Four very different books – I’ll be fascinated to see which one wins.
Meanwhile, the editing is bringing Not One of Us into much sharper focus for me and the whole thing is beginning to feel like a finished novel instead of a work in progress.
The structural edit’s done, now I need to go over it one more time tightening the language, sharpening the focus yet again, pruning where I’ve not yet been ruthless enough.
This time next week I might actually be getting to the stage where I’m ready to let another human being read it.
Friday, 20 March 2009
Amazon Reviews
I found this article about Amazon reviews and their influence on the bookbuying public on the Book 2 Book booktrade bulletin recently. And I was intrigued because the way in which Testament is represented on Amazon is not something I’ve given a lot of thought to. Stupidly, as it turns out.
I’ve been fortunate – the few Amazon reviews that Testament has received have been kind and complimentary but the article makes the point that it only takes a few sharp-tongued critics to ruin your star-average and have an impact on sales.
To which the answer is…get people to write lots of nice reviews.
Has anybody reading this blog solicited reviews? Is it becoming an acceptable thing to do, a simple marketing tool? Or is it a bit naff, a bit desperate?
Though one of Testament’s Amazon reviews was written by somebody I know, it was done entirely gratuitously rather than at my request, though I was no less grateful for that. Probably more grateful indeed; there’s nothing like a free gift, after all.
But, to look at the question from the other end, how many of us actually read Amazon reviews before we buy books? I tend only to buy books on Amazon if I already know about them and have failed to buy them in a real live bookshop or can’t afford to do so. But, I’m assuming that Amazon wouldn’t bother with the whole ‘people who buy this book also bought’ thing if people didn’t impulse buy or browse.
And if we don’t read reviews on Amazon, where do we get book recommendations? I’m often swayed by reviews from other bloggers but most of my book buying is done in store and after a good long time happily browsing shelves. How about you?
I’ve been fortunate – the few Amazon reviews that Testament has received have been kind and complimentary but the article makes the point that it only takes a few sharp-tongued critics to ruin your star-average and have an impact on sales.
To which the answer is…get people to write lots of nice reviews.
Has anybody reading this blog solicited reviews? Is it becoming an acceptable thing to do, a simple marketing tool? Or is it a bit naff, a bit desperate?
Though one of Testament’s Amazon reviews was written by somebody I know, it was done entirely gratuitously rather than at my request, though I was no less grateful for that. Probably more grateful indeed; there’s nothing like a free gift, after all.
But, to look at the question from the other end, how many of us actually read Amazon reviews before we buy books? I tend only to buy books on Amazon if I already know about them and have failed to buy them in a real live bookshop or can’t afford to do so. But, I’m assuming that Amazon wouldn’t bother with the whole ‘people who buy this book also bought’ thing if people didn’t impulse buy or browse.
And if we don’t read reviews on Amazon, where do we get book recommendations? I’m often swayed by reviews from other bloggers but most of my book buying is done in store and after a good long time happily browsing shelves. How about you?
Monday, 16 March 2009
Testament in Germany
Just thought I'd show you the cover for the German version of Testament which comes out, so the Goldmann site tells me, in August of this year. If my v. rusty German serves me the title means The Master Mason's Testament but I'm prepared to be corrected.
I think it's rather striking - what do readers of HB think?
Monday, 9 March 2009
One I prepared earlier...
OK, time to 'fess up. The editing is going along pretty well but it is becoming all consuming, so here’s one I prepared earlier – like about a month ago - and forgot about! It’s a tag which originated with Nik Perring – I picked it up at Aliya Whiteley and Neil Ayres’s blog:
List at least five things you do to support and spread a love of the written word.. If you list something that touches youngsters, you get a bonus...
One:
I have a house which is apparently spawning books as we speak. Every time we think we have enough bookcases, it seems only to be a matter of days before we discover that books have begun to colonise the stairs, the windowsills, the blanket box in the living room which is supposed to house nothing but DVDs and Wii stuff - you know, you’re not supposed to put things on top of it because you can’t get at the stuff inside easily, so – obviously - there are books on it most of the time. Bedrooms, obviously are full of books, that goes without saying but bathrooms – do other people have stacks of books in their bathrooms – balancing on the side of the bath, stacked next to the loo rolls in the downstairs loo…
So, whenever anybody comes to our house they kind of have no choice but to interact with at least one book on their visit – normally so that they can sit down on anything. They’ve got to be interested in at least one, right?
Two:
For years when my children were small I read dozens of books to them – often many, many times (Cherry Tree Farm anyone? I can probably still do it off by heart all these years later.) And I wouldn’t mind but THEY DON’T REMEMBER A SINGLE ONE. They don’t remember any of the characters they loved so much. Not a word. I mention Cherry Tree Farm and Hairy McLairy and they look at me blankly. And, more to the point, once they became literate themselves they did not start reading books off their own bat. Oh no. They became uninterested in books (unless I was reading to them, which I persisted in until they were 12 and 11) until very recently. Mind you, the Bassist is now talking about reading English at university and does things like hauling off and reading the whole F Scott Fitzgerald oeuvre which is more than I’ve ever done, so maybe Cherry Tree Farm and Hairy McLary from Donaldson’s Dairy weren’t such a vain effort after all.
Three:
Despite the prevailing tendency to listen to iPods on public transport, I persist in reading books whenever I am on a train or a bus. It puts me at a disadvantage in the carrying things around stakes – iPods are little and light and books are heavier and more chunky – but do I care? No. Reading Bill Bryson in public certainly spreads the love of the written word – nobody watching me have silent, I’m-laughing-in-front-of-other-people hysterics at something he’s written could fail to get the message that books are good for you.
Four:
I am forever lending books to friends, whether they want them or not. This may be related to One, above, but I’m not going to discuss that.
Five:
I shovel ridiculous amounts of money in the direction of Watersones and – when we’re particularly broke – the local Oxfam bookshop. The latter is also the recipient of the consequences of One, above – the trouble is, we tend to go in with a rucksack full of books which we leave with them to sort and shelve, only to leave with a rucksack full of books off the shelves. Poor effort.
Anyway, hope that goes some way to making up for the very poor showing in terms of recent posts here. I shall be putting up a few thoughts on the editing process in the next couple of days… be warned.
List at least five things you do to support and spread a love of the written word.. If you list something that touches youngsters, you get a bonus...
One:
I have a house which is apparently spawning books as we speak. Every time we think we have enough bookcases, it seems only to be a matter of days before we discover that books have begun to colonise the stairs, the windowsills, the blanket box in the living room which is supposed to house nothing but DVDs and Wii stuff - you know, you’re not supposed to put things on top of it because you can’t get at the stuff inside easily, so – obviously - there are books on it most of the time. Bedrooms, obviously are full of books, that goes without saying but bathrooms – do other people have stacks of books in their bathrooms – balancing on the side of the bath, stacked next to the loo rolls in the downstairs loo…
So, whenever anybody comes to our house they kind of have no choice but to interact with at least one book on their visit – normally so that they can sit down on anything. They’ve got to be interested in at least one, right?
Two:
For years when my children were small I read dozens of books to them – often many, many times (Cherry Tree Farm anyone? I can probably still do it off by heart all these years later.) And I wouldn’t mind but THEY DON’T REMEMBER A SINGLE ONE. They don’t remember any of the characters they loved so much. Not a word. I mention Cherry Tree Farm and Hairy McLairy and they look at me blankly. And, more to the point, once they became literate themselves they did not start reading books off their own bat. Oh no. They became uninterested in books (unless I was reading to them, which I persisted in until they were 12 and 11) until very recently. Mind you, the Bassist is now talking about reading English at university and does things like hauling off and reading the whole F Scott Fitzgerald oeuvre which is more than I’ve ever done, so maybe Cherry Tree Farm and Hairy McLary from Donaldson’s Dairy weren’t such a vain effort after all.
Three:
Despite the prevailing tendency to listen to iPods on public transport, I persist in reading books whenever I am on a train or a bus. It puts me at a disadvantage in the carrying things around stakes – iPods are little and light and books are heavier and more chunky – but do I care? No. Reading Bill Bryson in public certainly spreads the love of the written word – nobody watching me have silent, I’m-laughing-in-front-of-other-people hysterics at something he’s written could fail to get the message that books are good for you.
Four:
I am forever lending books to friends, whether they want them or not. This may be related to One, above, but I’m not going to discuss that.
Five:
I shovel ridiculous amounts of money in the direction of Watersones and – when we’re particularly broke – the local Oxfam bookshop. The latter is also the recipient of the consequences of One, above – the trouble is, we tend to go in with a rucksack full of books which we leave with them to sort and shelve, only to leave with a rucksack full of books off the shelves. Poor effort.
Anyway, hope that goes some way to making up for the very poor showing in terms of recent posts here. I shall be putting up a few thoughts on the editing process in the next couple of days… be warned.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Trampled by a herd of toddlers...
So, with the first draft of the Work In Progress finished around teatime on Sunday 22nd (cue champagne) on Monday 23rd I started editing my friend’s non-fiction book – all 51, 029 words of it.
It took me 2 eight-hour days to do the spelling, punctuation and grammar sweep (and to get a feel for how it read as a whole book after reading chapters as they were produced) and another 11-hour day to do the structural and content editing.
On Thursday I’d arranged to travel to Buckinghamshire to catch up with an old schoolfriend and on Friday I was being gainfully employed.
I had gone 12 days without a break. (Seeing the friend was lovely but, for an introvert, not a break.) By Saturday I could barely string a sentence together and that’s when my non-fiction writing friend came round to work through my suggestions in front of his laptop, MS’s Track Changes feature to the fore.
On Sunday, I allowed myself to slump and cursed the fact that the Other Half and I have given up alcohol for lent. (Actually, by Friday, we were saying things like ‘maybe we could give up except for Friday evenings…’)
So, today I am sorting emails, writing this and catching up with the housework which has been horribly neglected for the last fortnight. Currently, our house looks like a badly-run ironing agency in a parallel universe where the vaccuum cleaner has yet to be invented.
Editing will have to wait until tomorrow.
As far as half term and the finishing – in draft – of the WIP (working title, Not One of Us) goes, I can give you a feel for how much I ignored my family (the boys were away for the latter half of the week) if I tell you that, in an average writing week - four days of actual writing - I produce between 5000 and 7 000 words whereas, during the week before last, I wrote over 23,000 words in 7 days.
I’m told that 25% of the calories you take in are used by your brain. Well I think my brain was taking more than its fair share during the last couple of weeks because my body feels as drained as my mind. I feel positively post-viral.
But still… it’s done. There is a book. And, given that I’ve been trying to get this particular book into some kind of shape since before MNW offered to publish Testament, it’s taken a while. I spent 18 months on an earlier version which I just left on one side when it was 80% finished and 120 000 words long. The current version, started last April, has incorporated the historical elements I had already written - something like 40 000 words - but, given that Not One of Us currently stands at 201,331 words I have been quite busy since the end of April 2008. I just wish I’d worked out who was supposed to be telling the story – and therefore what shape the story was going to take – a little earlier.
My younger son, known to long-time readers of this blog as The Bassist, asked whether the final chapters, having been written so quickly, were going to be easier to edit or more difficult. ‘Cos maybe, as he put it, I was really in the zone when I wrote them.
Good question.
I feel at a loss to know how long the edit is going to take. I’ve done quite a lot of structural work already – in July I looked at the previous three months’ work and realised that one of my characters wasn’t coming through strongly enough so went back and restructured. I’ve also done other tweakings on the way. So I’m hoping that the basic shape of the thing is right.
But whether my characters leap off the page as the people they are in my mind; whether the themes that the book is structured around are too opaque, or – possibly – too laboured; whether the ‘flow’ of what is a slightly unusually multi-viewpoint book works… I won’t know any of these things until I start reading it.
What I would do – ideally - is read the whole thing through in one go. But, given my slow reading speed this would take almost 12 hours, so that’s not going to be possible. Not with a family to live around.
Also, just reading wouldn’t be possible. Not realistically. I’ll need to make notes about what needs to be changed and, possibly, how. That will slow me down. So it’s going to take, if I’m sensible, between two and three average days' work to get the thing read from cover to cover and begin to think about where I’m going with it. So I should start tomorrow and hope I get it all done by close of play on Wednesday as I’m gainfully employed again on Thursday.
But, should I begin with a read-through, or should I edit the last part of what I wrote in that hectic week, which amounts to about 15 000 words? If I don’t, that’s going to have had considerably less editing than everything else as every other section of the book has been read and tweaked, word by word, at least three times.
And, all the while, I still feel as if I’ve been trampled by a herd of toddlers after babysitting them for 24 straight hours.
Ah well, today’s been a nice day off…
It took me 2 eight-hour days to do the spelling, punctuation and grammar sweep (and to get a feel for how it read as a whole book after reading chapters as they were produced) and another 11-hour day to do the structural and content editing.
On Thursday I’d arranged to travel to Buckinghamshire to catch up with an old schoolfriend and on Friday I was being gainfully employed.
I had gone 12 days without a break. (Seeing the friend was lovely but, for an introvert, not a break.) By Saturday I could barely string a sentence together and that’s when my non-fiction writing friend came round to work through my suggestions in front of his laptop, MS’s Track Changes feature to the fore.
On Sunday, I allowed myself to slump and cursed the fact that the Other Half and I have given up alcohol for lent. (Actually, by Friday, we were saying things like ‘maybe we could give up except for Friday evenings…’)
So, today I am sorting emails, writing this and catching up with the housework which has been horribly neglected for the last fortnight. Currently, our house looks like a badly-run ironing agency in a parallel universe where the vaccuum cleaner has yet to be invented.
Editing will have to wait until tomorrow.
As far as half term and the finishing – in draft – of the WIP (working title, Not One of Us) goes, I can give you a feel for how much I ignored my family (the boys were away for the latter half of the week) if I tell you that, in an average writing week - four days of actual writing - I produce between 5000 and 7 000 words whereas, during the week before last, I wrote over 23,000 words in 7 days.
I’m told that 25% of the calories you take in are used by your brain. Well I think my brain was taking more than its fair share during the last couple of weeks because my body feels as drained as my mind. I feel positively post-viral.
But still… it’s done. There is a book. And, given that I’ve been trying to get this particular book into some kind of shape since before MNW offered to publish Testament, it’s taken a while. I spent 18 months on an earlier version which I just left on one side when it was 80% finished and 120 000 words long. The current version, started last April, has incorporated the historical elements I had already written - something like 40 000 words - but, given that Not One of Us currently stands at 201,331 words I have been quite busy since the end of April 2008. I just wish I’d worked out who was supposed to be telling the story – and therefore what shape the story was going to take – a little earlier.
My younger son, known to long-time readers of this blog as The Bassist, asked whether the final chapters, having been written so quickly, were going to be easier to edit or more difficult. ‘Cos maybe, as he put it, I was really in the zone when I wrote them.
Good question.
I feel at a loss to know how long the edit is going to take. I’ve done quite a lot of structural work already – in July I looked at the previous three months’ work and realised that one of my characters wasn’t coming through strongly enough so went back and restructured. I’ve also done other tweakings on the way. So I’m hoping that the basic shape of the thing is right.
But whether my characters leap off the page as the people they are in my mind; whether the themes that the book is structured around are too opaque, or – possibly – too laboured; whether the ‘flow’ of what is a slightly unusually multi-viewpoint book works… I won’t know any of these things until I start reading it.
What I would do – ideally - is read the whole thing through in one go. But, given my slow reading speed this would take almost 12 hours, so that’s not going to be possible. Not with a family to live around.
Also, just reading wouldn’t be possible. Not realistically. I’ll need to make notes about what needs to be changed and, possibly, how. That will slow me down. So it’s going to take, if I’m sensible, between two and three average days' work to get the thing read from cover to cover and begin to think about where I’m going with it. So I should start tomorrow and hope I get it all done by close of play on Wednesday as I’m gainfully employed again on Thursday.
But, should I begin with a read-through, or should I edit the last part of what I wrote in that hectic week, which amounts to about 15 000 words? If I don’t, that’s going to have had considerably less editing than everything else as every other section of the book has been read and tweaked, word by word, at least three times.
And, all the while, I still feel as if I’ve been trampled by a herd of toddlers after babysitting them for 24 straight hours.
Ah well, today’s been a nice day off…
Sunday, 22 February 2009
The cunning plan worked...
Well... I'm not entirely happy with the epilogue and I've already got 2 whole A4 pages of notes entitled Things To Change which I need to address when I start editing but... for now, the work in progress has reached the end of draft 1. Or 2 or 3 depending on whether you think doing a major rewrite half way through entails a whole different draft and whether you think a version of the same story with different characters is a different book or an early draft.
So, I'm on for the non-fiction editing this week. I may fit in a hair cut and a visit to see a friend as celebrations for finishing the wip as well. And then, as of a week tomorrow, I'm into editing and rewriting with the aim of sending it off to my editor by Easter.
There, I've laid the marker down.
Stay with me....
So, I'm on for the non-fiction editing this week. I may fit in a hair cut and a visit to see a friend as celebrations for finishing the wip as well. And then, as of a week tomorrow, I'm into editing and rewriting with the aim of sending it off to my editor by Easter.
There, I've laid the marker down.
Stay with me....
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Cunning plan update
Well, it's working so far. Got til Sunday and I'm on the last scene. Though there may be an epilogue of some kind. There generally is, I find...
Sunday, 15 February 2009
I have a cunning plan...
OK, as I seem physically unable to bring the writing of the work in progress to an end, I have done something which is going to make me finish it this week. It was supposed to be finished last week – in my mind at least. And we’re talking first draft, here, not the totally finished, hand-it-to-editor item. Sigh…
So, what have I done?
I have agreed to edit a friend’s non-fiction book.
In fact, since he is in a hurry, I have not only agreed to edit it in a kind of 'oh yeah, when I've got a minute' way, I have agreed ona timetable for the week following half term:
Sunday - he will email the final article to me.
By Wednesday evening I will email his 50 000 word typescript back to him, liberally laced with the speech bubbles of MS Word’s ‘track changes’ feature.
He will then pore over my suggestions and all the punctuation I have provided and we will email back and forth (apart from when I’m at work on Thursday) until Friday evening.
He will then come over on Saturday and we will work on the whole thing most of the day.
In other words I WILL HAVE A WEEK WHERE I WILL BE MORALLY UNABLE TO WORK ON THE WIP. I therefore must finish this week.
And, then, following this frenzy of punctuation and suggestion, I will be mentally cleansed and prepared for the hard-core editing of my own work necessary if I'm going to get the book to Will (my editor) before Easter.
So, it’s simple, if you want to force yourself to finish your book, agree to interfere with somebody else’s.
So, what have I done?
I have agreed to edit a friend’s non-fiction book.
In fact, since he is in a hurry, I have not only agreed to edit it in a kind of 'oh yeah, when I've got a minute' way, I have agreed ona timetable for the week following half term:
Sunday - he will email the final article to me.
By Wednesday evening I will email his 50 000 word typescript back to him, liberally laced with the speech bubbles of MS Word’s ‘track changes’ feature.
He will then pore over my suggestions and all the punctuation I have provided and we will email back and forth (apart from when I’m at work on Thursday) until Friday evening.
He will then come over on Saturday and we will work on the whole thing most of the day.
In other words I WILL HAVE A WEEK WHERE I WILL BE MORALLY UNABLE TO WORK ON THE WIP. I therefore must finish this week.
And, then, following this frenzy of punctuation and suggestion, I will be mentally cleansed and prepared for the hard-core editing of my own work necessary if I'm going to get the book to Will (my editor) before Easter.
So, it’s simple, if you want to force yourself to finish your book, agree to interfere with somebody else’s.
Monday, 9 February 2009
The Hows and Whys of Hisorical Fiction 2
One of the most important things about writing historical fiction – particularly if you’re writing a dual narrative and have a contemporary voice as well – is to decide on a voice or prose style which conveys something of the contemporary world without actually attempting to imitate the language of the period. In Testament this was relatively simple as I couldn’t possibly resort to anything like a contemporary vernacular or I’d have been writing Chaucerian Middle English and that would have left the book with a very limited audience.
Still, I wanted it to be recognisably different from the voice used in the twenty-first century strand. I wish I could tell you what carefully thought out decisions that then entailed but that would be disingenuous. The truth is, I wanted to make it sound different, so I just did. By ear, or feel or whatever.
That’s how I do a lot of my writing, how I make a lot of the really important decisions – unconsciously. By what sounds or feels right.
Just to digress for a second about the general mechanics of producing a book, I am always astonished by the sheer number of books on writing which many other novelists appear to have read. Perhaps this is because, unlike painting, music, dance or acting, writing has – until recently – not been something that you went and studied until you got good enough to practice or realised you weren’t good enough to practice. So 'how-to' books filled a niche.
I’ll be honest: I don’t read books on writing. I never have (with the one exception of Stephen King’s On Writing which is more autobiography than how to book). I have a kind of bloody-minded ‘well, I read English at university, what the hell more do you want?’ kind of mindset, I suspect. So, as far as my own writing goes, there is a horribly arrogant feeling that I’ll find it out myself, thanks, make my own mistakes, find my own way, rather than doing it somebody else’s way. Which, of course, is why it took me almost twenty years and three books in the bottom drawer before I got remotely near getting published
In my defence, there’s also the slightly more relevant fact that I find it horribly difficult to assimilate lots of ideas at once, as in a ‘how to’ manual. I have picked up bits of interesting writing lore from reading blogs and, because these are bite-sized, single-idea messages, on the whole, I find that they stick in my mind. Often they explain to me why I do what I’m doing anyway but sometimes they are useful – ‘describe the coffin not the grief’ was a great one I picked up from the wonderful The Sound of Butterflies (though I haven't been able to identify the exact post - apologies.) ‘The writer makes a contract with the reader in the book’s first page’ was, I think, gleaned from the frighteningly well-read David Isaak’s Tomorrowville. But those are the only two I can remember off-hand.
All that is a long-winded way of explaining why I didn’t consciously sit down and try and plan what my fourteenth-century voice would sound like.
As I was going along, however, I noticed a few things:
I didn’t use contractions – I always used ‘would not’ rather than ‘wouldn’t’ ‘cannot’ instead of ‘can’t’ etc, including dialogue.
I developed a tendency to avoid latinate words in favour of more Anglo Saxon-sounding ones where possible and where it didn’t do violence to the rhythm of what I was writing. I noticed that I was doing this quite early on in the writing of Testament and it became a conscious decision thereafter. And it’s not just because one of the themes of Testament is the native Englishness of what’s going on in Salster but because most latinate words were introduced into English in the eighteenth century, three or four centuries after Testament is set. Linguists and grammarians of the time – under the pan-European influence of Latin and, possibly, a more national, lingering influence of the noble Norman French vs. the peasant Anglo Saxon thing – felt that English needed beefing up if it was going to be a suitable language for serious literature and public discourse. So, I decided that, if I could keep out as many fo these later imports as possible, I could create a pared-back, pre-enlightenment effect, if only to myself.
Similarly, in terms of grammar, I always tried to use the active voice, avoiding passive constructions and gerundive verbs. Again, I was aiming for a less circumlocutory, Latinate way of constructing things.
I’m not saying that no page of fourteenth century narrative in Testament contains any words or word-roots introduced after 1400 or other than subject-verb-object sentences – that would be difficult and dull – it just became a conscious effort to limit my vocabulary and to be selective about the kind of grammar I used.
Similes and metaphors present their own challenges. I once read an otherwise excellent Young Adult historical title where a character was described as being ‘drop dead gorgeous’ – such a jarring note that I almost stopped reading at that point. It was such an anachronistic phrase. And, even if I was wrong and it was actually a phrase which had been current in Tudor England, it’s such a popular phrase these days that to have it used in that context just felt very out of place – clumsy and maladroit.
But avoiding anachronisms isn’t enough. As readers in the US might say, that’s hist fic 101. You’ve also got to use your language to strengthen the feel that you are in another time and – therefore – another place. The texture of the language has to reinforce that feeling. So, for instance, modern-day similes and metaphors feel wrong, even if they might have been current then; de facto, they’re part of our world, not of the world of the historical characters, so they need to be omitted or altered.
The challenges presented by my current book, which has a mid-nineteenth century component were quite different, but I think they are going to provide fodder for another post…
Still, I wanted it to be recognisably different from the voice used in the twenty-first century strand. I wish I could tell you what carefully thought out decisions that then entailed but that would be disingenuous. The truth is, I wanted to make it sound different, so I just did. By ear, or feel or whatever.
That’s how I do a lot of my writing, how I make a lot of the really important decisions – unconsciously. By what sounds or feels right.
Just to digress for a second about the general mechanics of producing a book, I am always astonished by the sheer number of books on writing which many other novelists appear to have read. Perhaps this is because, unlike painting, music, dance or acting, writing has – until recently – not been something that you went and studied until you got good enough to practice or realised you weren’t good enough to practice. So 'how-to' books filled a niche.
I’ll be honest: I don’t read books on writing. I never have (with the one exception of Stephen King’s On Writing which is more autobiography than how to book). I have a kind of bloody-minded ‘well, I read English at university, what the hell more do you want?’ kind of mindset, I suspect. So, as far as my own writing goes, there is a horribly arrogant feeling that I’ll find it out myself, thanks, make my own mistakes, find my own way, rather than doing it somebody else’s way. Which, of course, is why it took me almost twenty years and three books in the bottom drawer before I got remotely near getting published
In my defence, there’s also the slightly more relevant fact that I find it horribly difficult to assimilate lots of ideas at once, as in a ‘how to’ manual. I have picked up bits of interesting writing lore from reading blogs and, because these are bite-sized, single-idea messages, on the whole, I find that they stick in my mind. Often they explain to me why I do what I’m doing anyway but sometimes they are useful – ‘describe the coffin not the grief’ was a great one I picked up from the wonderful The Sound of Butterflies (though I haven't been able to identify the exact post - apologies.) ‘The writer makes a contract with the reader in the book’s first page’ was, I think, gleaned from the frighteningly well-read David Isaak’s Tomorrowville. But those are the only two I can remember off-hand.
All that is a long-winded way of explaining why I didn’t consciously sit down and try and plan what my fourteenth-century voice would sound like.
As I was going along, however, I noticed a few things:
I didn’t use contractions – I always used ‘would not’ rather than ‘wouldn’t’ ‘cannot’ instead of ‘can’t’ etc, including dialogue.
I developed a tendency to avoid latinate words in favour of more Anglo Saxon-sounding ones where possible and where it didn’t do violence to the rhythm of what I was writing. I noticed that I was doing this quite early on in the writing of Testament and it became a conscious decision thereafter. And it’s not just because one of the themes of Testament is the native Englishness of what’s going on in Salster but because most latinate words were introduced into English in the eighteenth century, three or four centuries after Testament is set. Linguists and grammarians of the time – under the pan-European influence of Latin and, possibly, a more national, lingering influence of the noble Norman French vs. the peasant Anglo Saxon thing – felt that English needed beefing up if it was going to be a suitable language for serious literature and public discourse. So, I decided that, if I could keep out as many fo these later imports as possible, I could create a pared-back, pre-enlightenment effect, if only to myself.
Similarly, in terms of grammar, I always tried to use the active voice, avoiding passive constructions and gerundive verbs. Again, I was aiming for a less circumlocutory, Latinate way of constructing things.
I’m not saying that no page of fourteenth century narrative in Testament contains any words or word-roots introduced after 1400 or other than subject-verb-object sentences – that would be difficult and dull – it just became a conscious effort to limit my vocabulary and to be selective about the kind of grammar I used.
Similes and metaphors present their own challenges. I once read an otherwise excellent Young Adult historical title where a character was described as being ‘drop dead gorgeous’ – such a jarring note that I almost stopped reading at that point. It was such an anachronistic phrase. And, even if I was wrong and it was actually a phrase which had been current in Tudor England, it’s such a popular phrase these days that to have it used in that context just felt very out of place – clumsy and maladroit.
But avoiding anachronisms isn’t enough. As readers in the US might say, that’s hist fic 101. You’ve also got to use your language to strengthen the feel that you are in another time and – therefore – another place. The texture of the language has to reinforce that feeling. So, for instance, modern-day similes and metaphors feel wrong, even if they might have been current then; de facto, they’re part of our world, not of the world of the historical characters, so they need to be omitted or altered.
The challenges presented by my current book, which has a mid-nineteenth century component were quite different, but I think they are going to provide fodder for another post…
Saturday, 7 February 2009
A pick me up.
I know it probably only means that Testament has sold two copies in a few branches compared to other books’ one or none, but still, getting a phone call from a friend to tell me about this sighting of Testament on WHSmith’s bestsellers list was pretty amazing.
More on writing historical fiction tomorrow – today has been taken up with driving lessons, ironing, making lemon drizzle cakes and going to ogle my own book in town…
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The Hows and Whys of Historical Fiction
I mentioned the other day that I’d had an interesting time thinking about Testament from a technical point of view, so that I could talk about it cogently to the folks up at Waverton.
I believe I mentioned plot, character, theme and language.
So, while I’ve got a few minutes to think about the blog, while it snows outside, I thought I’d jot a few things down.
I thought I’d start with a few thoughts on research.
I do two basic kinds of research for my historical fiction – the general kind where I immerse myself in the period as much as I can so that I get a feel for how the people and places I’m writing about would have looked and sounded, felt and smelled. I need to know what my characters would have thought and believed, the likely prejudices of the age, the things so taken for granted that they’re never spelled out.
At this stage, I’m trying to find out what, at a basic level, it was like to live then.
Then there’s the more focused research – for Testement, this involved teaching myself about medieval architecture and building, medieval learning and the difference between English universities and those on the continent, the state of the English church and the heretical sect known as the Lollards. After trying to find out about everything, you suddenly narrow your focus to a very small field.
This can lead to interesting imbalances – like when I realised that I knew pretty much every tool and technique a journeyman, labourer or master mason might use during the day but I had no idea how they arranged the whole issue of going to the toilet… Fortunately, I didn’t need to know but it bothered me that I hadn’t managed to find out something so basic. (Interestingly, I know that kind of detail for the book I’m writing now, which is based in the nineteenth century. And I know because the contemporary commentators were so outraged at the primitive arrangements in the area I’m writing about. Sources are everything…)
Of course, I’m not doing all this research so I can put every last little detail in my book. Far from it. Paradoxically, you do research so that you can leave most of it out. In the same way that you know your own contemporary world intimately, but never refer to the vast majority of what you know, you need to leave most of what you’ve learned about your historical period in your notes. You still need to know it’s there, because you might want to refer to it tangentially, without going into detail, but for each fleeting reference, you’ll probably have a whole page of notes on how this fits in to the world of century/decade X.
At least, that’s how it is for me.
You see, I think the reader of historical fiction enters into a relationship of trust with the writer - he trusts that you know the period and will continue to trust you until or unless you make an obvious mistake. It’s not a matter of proving how much you know by the barrowloads of colourful period detail you put in; you prove your grasp on how your plot and your characters inhabit the period by the telling details you choose to include.
So, I’ve always taken the view that I will put no more detail into the historical strands of my fiction than I include in the contemporary scenes. If I don’t routinely describe what my twenty-first people are wearing (and I don’t), then I won’t give you a garment-by-garment description of what my fourteenth century people – or, in the work in progress, my nineteenth century characters – are wearing either. People in my contemporary worlds are rarely seen eating so I’m not going to give you much in the way of what my historical characters had for breakfast unless it’s strictly relevant.
Interestingly, though, research can often take you in unexpected directions. As part of the background research for Testament, I read a book on the economic climate of the late fourteenth century. It sounded as dull as ditchwater from the title (I’m sorry, I’m too lazy to go and unearth it so that I can tell you the proper title and author, I’ll try and do that for the next post) but it turned out to be a gem. The author had ploughed through endless manorial and court accounts – who paid what to whom and what for – and, because money makes the world go round, it was fascinating.
It told me, for instance, that an order was given, one summer, for all journeymen, whatever their trade, to down tools when the weather was fair, and help to bring in the harvest. Previous years’ harvests had been diabolical and there was a serious risk of mass starvation so the powers that be (and I had no idea how much the machinery of the state interfered in every aspect of daily life in the fourteenth century) decided that the harvest was the thing and everyone would have to do their bit to make sure it was successfully brought in.
Well, once I knew this, I had to include it, it was just too fascinating to ignore. And, fortunately for me, it provided a useful way of moving the plot on and providing conflict. Because, if the weather’s been dreadful and the harvesters have been waiting for a few nice days to get the grain in to the barns, the master mason has been waiting for exactly the same weather to progress his building. Send his journeymen out to bring in corn when there’s building to be done? I don’t think so…
More next time on getting the language right in historical fiction.
Don’t go away…
I believe I mentioned plot, character, theme and language.
So, while I’ve got a few minutes to think about the blog, while it snows outside, I thought I’d jot a few things down.
I thought I’d start with a few thoughts on research.
I do two basic kinds of research for my historical fiction – the general kind where I immerse myself in the period as much as I can so that I get a feel for how the people and places I’m writing about would have looked and sounded, felt and smelled. I need to know what my characters would have thought and believed, the likely prejudices of the age, the things so taken for granted that they’re never spelled out.
At this stage, I’m trying to find out what, at a basic level, it was like to live then.
Then there’s the more focused research – for Testement, this involved teaching myself about medieval architecture and building, medieval learning and the difference between English universities and those on the continent, the state of the English church and the heretical sect known as the Lollards. After trying to find out about everything, you suddenly narrow your focus to a very small field.
This can lead to interesting imbalances – like when I realised that I knew pretty much every tool and technique a journeyman, labourer or master mason might use during the day but I had no idea how they arranged the whole issue of going to the toilet… Fortunately, I didn’t need to know but it bothered me that I hadn’t managed to find out something so basic. (Interestingly, I know that kind of detail for the book I’m writing now, which is based in the nineteenth century. And I know because the contemporary commentators were so outraged at the primitive arrangements in the area I’m writing about. Sources are everything…)
Of course, I’m not doing all this research so I can put every last little detail in my book. Far from it. Paradoxically, you do research so that you can leave most of it out. In the same way that you know your own contemporary world intimately, but never refer to the vast majority of what you know, you need to leave most of what you’ve learned about your historical period in your notes. You still need to know it’s there, because you might want to refer to it tangentially, without going into detail, but for each fleeting reference, you’ll probably have a whole page of notes on how this fits in to the world of century/decade X.
At least, that’s how it is for me.
You see, I think the reader of historical fiction enters into a relationship of trust with the writer - he trusts that you know the period and will continue to trust you until or unless you make an obvious mistake. It’s not a matter of proving how much you know by the barrowloads of colourful period detail you put in; you prove your grasp on how your plot and your characters inhabit the period by the telling details you choose to include.
So, I’ve always taken the view that I will put no more detail into the historical strands of my fiction than I include in the contemporary scenes. If I don’t routinely describe what my twenty-first people are wearing (and I don’t), then I won’t give you a garment-by-garment description of what my fourteenth century people – or, in the work in progress, my nineteenth century characters – are wearing either. People in my contemporary worlds are rarely seen eating so I’m not going to give you much in the way of what my historical characters had for breakfast unless it’s strictly relevant.
Interestingly, though, research can often take you in unexpected directions. As part of the background research for Testament, I read a book on the economic climate of the late fourteenth century. It sounded as dull as ditchwater from the title (I’m sorry, I’m too lazy to go and unearth it so that I can tell you the proper title and author, I’ll try and do that for the next post) but it turned out to be a gem. The author had ploughed through endless manorial and court accounts – who paid what to whom and what for – and, because money makes the world go round, it was fascinating.
It told me, for instance, that an order was given, one summer, for all journeymen, whatever their trade, to down tools when the weather was fair, and help to bring in the harvest. Previous years’ harvests had been diabolical and there was a serious risk of mass starvation so the powers that be (and I had no idea how much the machinery of the state interfered in every aspect of daily life in the fourteenth century) decided that the harvest was the thing and everyone would have to do their bit to make sure it was successfully brought in.
Well, once I knew this, I had to include it, it was just too fascinating to ignore. And, fortunately for me, it provided a useful way of moving the plot on and providing conflict. Because, if the weather’s been dreadful and the harvesters have been waiting for a few nice days to get the grain in to the barns, the master mason has been waiting for exactly the same weather to progress his building. Send his journeymen out to bring in corn when there’s building to be done? I don’t think so…
More next time on getting the language right in historical fiction.
Don’t go away…
Monday, 26 January 2009
An Award - Hooray!
Clearly, being nominated for awards is one of those things that comes in waves...because as well as the Waverton Good Read award longlisting, I have just been given an award by Juxtabook! Here it is.
It’s immensely gratifying when people say, publically, that they enjoy your blog and it set me to wondering what is is about the blogs which I like reading most that keeps me going back each time.
I have to confess that I’m a bit of a blog-tart and will follow trails from one blog to another to another on occasion just to see what I’m missing. In the ‘blogs’ folder on my favourites menu I have nearly fifty entries, though many of these are visited only ocasionally. But, of the top dozen or so (which are visited almost daily) what are the common factors? Four of my top 12 are Macmillan New Writers, including the collective blog. The other eight are also writing related – the blogs of writers published and unpublished, the blogs of people connected to the writing business – booksellers and publishers. In fact, I have to scroll down in to the twenties to find a blog not connected with writing and a few more before I find the next one, though I do have a separate folder for blogs related to the podcasts I listen to and that is far more eclectic. (Clearly, writers are prone to write blogs, people fascinated by other things are more likely to produce a podcast.)
So what – if anything – do all the writerly blogs which I read have in common?
Some are humorous, some are far more serious; some are self-deprecating, some are more upfront about their own artistry; some write exclusively about writing and others write about various aspects of their life; some review other people’s work, others might comment more tangentially on books not their own.
But what they all have in common is that they take their writing very seriously. Some share craft secrets they have learned through their own writing apprencticeship whilst others digest the ‘how to’ writing of others. But writing, and doing it as well as humanly possible, is their concern.
So, because part of the award Juxtabook has given me is a meme, I have to award it along the line to others.
Here are the rules of the meme:
1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. Award up to ten other blogs.
4. Add links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message for your awardees on their blogs.
I’m sending the award to David Isaak, Aliya Whiteley and Neil Ayres, Tim Stretton, Karen Clarke and Simon and Tim at Open a Bookshop.
Do check them out if you haven't already, they're all great blogs.
More on theme etc as promised in my last post, hereafter.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
A lovely time in Waverton
Well, I’m now back from Cheshire having had a wonderful time speaking to a large and enthusiastic group of book-reading people in Waverton. They were so welcoming, so interested, so nice about my book (those who had read and reviewed Testament) that it was an absolute pleasure to be there. I spoke for far too long – over 50 minutes when I’d been asked for 30 to 40 – but you know how it is, they laughed at my jokes and asked interesting questions so the impetus to sit down and shut up was small.
I spent the train journey up to Chester writing my talk which was, essentially, about the main elements of a novel – plot, characters, theme and language – and how it’s almost impossible to separate them fully. Obviously, I was doing this with reference to Testament so I kept having to flick through the book to find relevant bits that I could read and, every now and again, I’d find myself actually quite impressed by what I’d done. That’s when I wasn’t wanting to rewrite the thing, obviously….
I must have looked a bit dappy. There I was sitting with my notebook in front of me, Testament on my lap, listening to The View on my little iPod (and occasionally, unintentionally, singing along… ooops!), scribbling my illegible spider diagrams which got more and more densely annotated until I had to make a fair copy so that I could glance at them and actually be able to read them during the talk.
Gwen Goodhew - one of the prime movers of the Waverton Good Read Award - had very kindly said that she would meet me at Chester station and take me home for supper before the meeting. ‘I’ll be holding a copy of your book’ the email had assured me. Well, better than a red carnation, I thought…and described myself and what I would be wearing as I am notoriously able to walk past burning buildings and not see them, never mind somebody standing in a crowd holding a book.
I shouldn’t have worried. Gwen had chosen a fairly quiet spot to wait for me in and the copy of the book that she was holding turned out to be an A4 bound proof copy. In other words, it was big. Unmissable, even for the observationally challenged.
‘Crikey’, I said, ‘where on earth did you get that?’
It turned out to be the only copy MNW had had to send. I realised that the Wavertons’ request for review copies of the book must have arrived at a time when the hardback edition of Testament had sold out and the paperbacks were not yet available.
Still, if you’ve ever seen a book bound in A4 format, you’ll realise what a disincentive it is to reading the thing, especially in bed (visions of it falling on your face and leaving you permanently scarred would immediately spring to mind) so I was even more chuffed when Gwen told me that everybody who had – man/womanfully - read it seemed to have liked it and Testament had made it to the longlist for the Award.
So, now, copies of the book will go out to anybody in the village of Waverton who wants to read it and is prepared to fill in a review sheet and give it marks out of ten. It’s fantastic that so many people who otherwise might not come across Testament are going to get a chance to read it.
It’s also in illustrious company. Here are the other longlisted books:
A Girl Made of Dust by Nathalie Abi-Eze
The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
One Man’s Empire by Geoffrey Bird
The Paradise Trail by Duncan Campbell
How to Survive Your Sisters by Ellie Campbell
The Palace of Strange Girls by Sallie Day
The Love of My Life by Louise Douglas
The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato
Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
Nights Beneath the Nation by Denis Kehoe
Spider by Michael Morley
Warrior of Rome 1: Fire in the East by Harry Sidebottom
The End of Sleep by Rowan Somerville
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling
Monster Love by Carol Topolski
An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson
The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse
Those in the know will spot a couple of books which have been nominated for other prizes and, if what the people I spoke to on Monday evening said is to be believed, there are some crackers on the list. Spider by Michael Morley and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith were particularly singled out for mention. Macmillan New Writing is represented twice (Geoffrey Bird is also an MNW author) which, given that the imprint only produces twelve books a year, speaks extremely well for the editorial judgement of Will Atkins.
One of the questions I was asked was –approximately – ‘given that you can’t untangle plot, theme, character and language, how do you actually go about writing a scene?’
The subject of the next blog post here, I suspect.
I spent the train journey up to Chester writing my talk which was, essentially, about the main elements of a novel – plot, characters, theme and language – and how it’s almost impossible to separate them fully. Obviously, I was doing this with reference to Testament so I kept having to flick through the book to find relevant bits that I could read and, every now and again, I’d find myself actually quite impressed by what I’d done. That’s when I wasn’t wanting to rewrite the thing, obviously….
I must have looked a bit dappy. There I was sitting with my notebook in front of me, Testament on my lap, listening to The View on my little iPod (and occasionally, unintentionally, singing along… ooops!), scribbling my illegible spider diagrams which got more and more densely annotated until I had to make a fair copy so that I could glance at them and actually be able to read them during the talk.
Gwen Goodhew - one of the prime movers of the Waverton Good Read Award - had very kindly said that she would meet me at Chester station and take me home for supper before the meeting. ‘I’ll be holding a copy of your book’ the email had assured me. Well, better than a red carnation, I thought…and described myself and what I would be wearing as I am notoriously able to walk past burning buildings and not see them, never mind somebody standing in a crowd holding a book.
I shouldn’t have worried. Gwen had chosen a fairly quiet spot to wait for me in and the copy of the book that she was holding turned out to be an A4 bound proof copy. In other words, it was big. Unmissable, even for the observationally challenged.
‘Crikey’, I said, ‘where on earth did you get that?’
It turned out to be the only copy MNW had had to send. I realised that the Wavertons’ request for review copies of the book must have arrived at a time when the hardback edition of Testament had sold out and the paperbacks were not yet available.
Still, if you’ve ever seen a book bound in A4 format, you’ll realise what a disincentive it is to reading the thing, especially in bed (visions of it falling on your face and leaving you permanently scarred would immediately spring to mind) so I was even more chuffed when Gwen told me that everybody who had – man/womanfully - read it seemed to have liked it and Testament had made it to the longlist for the Award.
So, now, copies of the book will go out to anybody in the village of Waverton who wants to read it and is prepared to fill in a review sheet and give it marks out of ten. It’s fantastic that so many people who otherwise might not come across Testament are going to get a chance to read it.
It’s also in illustrious company. Here are the other longlisted books:
A Girl Made of Dust by Nathalie Abi-Eze
The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
One Man’s Empire by Geoffrey Bird
The Paradise Trail by Duncan Campbell
How to Survive Your Sisters by Ellie Campbell
The Palace of Strange Girls by Sallie Day
The Love of My Life by Louise Douglas
The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato
Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
Nights Beneath the Nation by Denis Kehoe
Spider by Michael Morley
Warrior of Rome 1: Fire in the East by Harry Sidebottom
The End of Sleep by Rowan Somerville
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling
Monster Love by Carol Topolski
An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson
The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse
Those in the know will spot a couple of books which have been nominated for other prizes and, if what the people I spoke to on Monday evening said is to be believed, there are some crackers on the list. Spider by Michael Morley and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith were particularly singled out for mention. Macmillan New Writing is represented twice (Geoffrey Bird is also an MNW author) which, given that the imprint only produces twelve books a year, speaks extremely well for the editorial judgement of Will Atkins.
One of the questions I was asked was –approximately – ‘given that you can’t untangle plot, theme, character and language, how do you actually go about writing a scene?’
The subject of the next blog post here, I suspect.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Of mice and me
Apologies for the dearth of posts recently – I am suffering from what I can only assume is the beginnings of RSI and am therefore keeping typing to a minimum – ie to the work in progress.
On the subject of RSI, I already have various gizmos (laptop stand to put it at the correct eye-height, separate plug-in keyboard) but was wondering about investing in an ergonomic vertical mouse, as it seems to be the ‘cocked wrist’ position which is causing the trouble. Does anybody have any experience of these so-called ‘handshake position’ mice? If so, I’d be very grateful to hear from you in the comments trail.
With luck, I will be able to type more easily when my hands have had a couple of days rest on my jaunt to Cheshire so I hope to have more to say then...
On the subject of RSI, I already have various gizmos (laptop stand to put it at the correct eye-height, separate plug-in keyboard) but was wondering about investing in an ergonomic vertical mouse, as it seems to be the ‘cocked wrist’ position which is causing the trouble. Does anybody have any experience of these so-called ‘handshake position’ mice? If so, I’d be very grateful to hear from you in the comments trail.
With luck, I will be able to type more easily when my hands have had a couple of days rest on my jaunt to Cheshire so I hope to have more to say then...
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
The Waverton Good Read Award
It is with immense pleasure that I can tell readers of this blog that Testament has been nominated for the Waverton Good Read Award.
In case you don’t know about the award, Wikipedia has this to say:
The Waverton Good Read Award was founded in 2003 by villagers in Waverton, Cheshire, based on Le Prix de la Cadiere d‘Azur, a literary prize awarded by a Provencal village. First adult novels written by UK residents and published in the previous twelve months are eligible for consideration and are read by villagers. "The aim was not only to stimulate reading in the village but to provide encouragement to British writers".
It is the first British award to be judged by normal readers rather than literary figures.
and, should you be interested you can read more about the award on its website, here.
There’s also a natty summary of winners and shortlisted novels on Wikipedia here.
Having read all this, I am very honoured indeed that Testament has been nominated. I have read three out of the five previous winners – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Mark Haddon), Boy A (Jonathan Trigell) and A Brief History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Marina Lewycka), and enjoyed them all very much. It feels wonderful that Testament is being bracketed with books like these, even if it is only for a short while until the long list is announced…
I am off up to Cheshire next week as they have been kind enough to ask me to and talk to the group about Testament. Must remember which book I’m talking about and not start wittering on about the all-encompassing work in progress…
In case you don’t know about the award, Wikipedia has this to say:
The Waverton Good Read Award was founded in 2003 by villagers in Waverton, Cheshire, based on Le Prix de la Cadiere d‘Azur, a literary prize awarded by a Provencal village. First adult novels written by UK residents and published in the previous twelve months are eligible for consideration and are read by villagers. "The aim was not only to stimulate reading in the village but to provide encouragement to British writers".
It is the first British award to be judged by normal readers rather than literary figures.
and, should you be interested you can read more about the award on its website, here.
There’s also a natty summary of winners and shortlisted novels on Wikipedia here.
Having read all this, I am very honoured indeed that Testament has been nominated. I have read three out of the five previous winners – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Mark Haddon), Boy A (Jonathan Trigell) and A Brief History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Marina Lewycka), and enjoyed them all very much. It feels wonderful that Testament is being bracketed with books like these, even if it is only for a short while until the long list is announced…
I am off up to Cheshire next week as they have been kind enough to ask me to and talk to the group about Testament. Must remember which book I’m talking about and not start wittering on about the all-encompassing work in progress…
Sunday, 11 January 2009
Salutary Thoughts
I knew, from the beginning, that I was on to a good thing with Macmillan New Writing. Not, you understand, because I have a vast and varied experience of publishers and how they do what they do but because, sometimes, you can just feel that people are rooting for you, rather than just in it for the money; that they are people of integrity.
And then, earlier in the week I read this by literary agent Simon Trewin of United Agents. Read it and weep. It’s not a pretty picture. And it made me even more convinced that I’m in safe hands at MNW.
And then, earlier in the week I read this by literary agent Simon Trewin of United Agents. Read it and weep. It’s not a pretty picture. And it made me even more convinced that I’m in safe hands at MNW.
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Who decides which four percent?
Imagine not being able to read. Not being able to see the words on a page. Not being able to just pick up a book and lose yourself in it.
I do occasionally contemplate what it would be like to go blind. I have an eye condition which, if it progresses to its severe form, could leave me unable to see well enough to read even large print books.
It’s not a prospect I relish and it’s one I try not to think about very much.
Could I learn braille?
I don’t know. I imagine it’s hard to do once you’ve passed a certain age.
I had a blind friend at university whom I used to read for as critical works weren’t readily available. She had, I remember, a natty kind of tape recorder which enabled her to mark the tape so that she could find important passages easily. It was a kind of auditory highlighter. It seemed to me that the level of determination she needed to get through a degree in English when she had to rely on others to give her access to so much of the material she needed was far in excess of what the rest of us needed.
Why have I suddenly started talking about blindness?
Because I picked up this story on the lovely Juxtabook blog. In case you don’t want to read it, it’s about the need to protect the long-term future one of the most important braille presses in Britain. A campaign has been launched which is being supported by Ian Rankin who, apparently, has a son with a visual impairment.
This story told me something startling. Only 4% of books ever get produced in a form that visually impaired people can access. Four percent? That’s nothing!
And who decides? Who decides that this novel, this work of non-fiction, this reference book will be printed in braille while all the others won’t? Does there have to be a ‘demand’ and, if so, how does the blind and partially sighted community know what it should be demanding? Are people who read braille confined to ‘bestsellers’, never able to pick up something new and interesting off the obscure literary shelves, always waiting for sighted people to decide in large numbers that they think a book is good enough to warrant being produced in a braille version? Or am I being cynical.
Given the paucity of books already available in braille – four per cent, remember - I imagine I’d be panicking a bit if I was unable to read printed books and there was the prospect that one of the most important braille presses in the country was becoming more and more antiquated and out of date. I’d be worried that my supply of books was going to dwindle even further.
Seems like a good cause for book lovers to get behind, don’t you think?
I do occasionally contemplate what it would be like to go blind. I have an eye condition which, if it progresses to its severe form, could leave me unable to see well enough to read even large print books.
It’s not a prospect I relish and it’s one I try not to think about very much.
Could I learn braille?
I don’t know. I imagine it’s hard to do once you’ve passed a certain age.
I had a blind friend at university whom I used to read for as critical works weren’t readily available. She had, I remember, a natty kind of tape recorder which enabled her to mark the tape so that she could find important passages easily. It was a kind of auditory highlighter. It seemed to me that the level of determination she needed to get through a degree in English when she had to rely on others to give her access to so much of the material she needed was far in excess of what the rest of us needed.
Why have I suddenly started talking about blindness?
Because I picked up this story on the lovely Juxtabook blog. In case you don’t want to read it, it’s about the need to protect the long-term future one of the most important braille presses in Britain. A campaign has been launched which is being supported by Ian Rankin who, apparently, has a son with a visual impairment.
This story told me something startling. Only 4% of books ever get produced in a form that visually impaired people can access. Four percent? That’s nothing!
And who decides? Who decides that this novel, this work of non-fiction, this reference book will be printed in braille while all the others won’t? Does there have to be a ‘demand’ and, if so, how does the blind and partially sighted community know what it should be demanding? Are people who read braille confined to ‘bestsellers’, never able to pick up something new and interesting off the obscure literary shelves, always waiting for sighted people to decide in large numbers that they think a book is good enough to warrant being produced in a braille version? Or am I being cynical.
Given the paucity of books already available in braille – four per cent, remember - I imagine I’d be panicking a bit if I was unable to read printed books and there was the prospect that one of the most important braille presses in the country was becoming more and more antiquated and out of date. I’d be worried that my supply of books was going to dwindle even further.
Seems like a good cause for book lovers to get behind, don’t you think?
Friday, 2 January 2009
132 words instead of a photograph
What there should be here is a photograph.
Of Testament.
On a three for two table in Waterstones.
The total absence of photograph arises from the fact that:
1. I can’t seem to make my laptop recognise my mobile phone
2. Nobody else in the family can make their laptop recognise my mobile phone (it is very old)
3. I’m not prepared to stand in Waterstones taking pictures.
4. Nobody else in the family is prepared to stand in Waterstones…you get the picture.
A photograph would have conveyed the news much better. I wouldn’t have had to say anything. It would just have been there, underneath the title ‘Look What I Just Found’ or something. There it would be – Testament - obviously lying between Kate Mosse, Rose Tremain and Michelle Moran.
Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt.
Of Testament.
On a three for two table in Waterstones.
The total absence of photograph arises from the fact that:
1. I can’t seem to make my laptop recognise my mobile phone
2. Nobody else in the family can make their laptop recognise my mobile phone (it is very old)
3. I’m not prepared to stand in Waterstones taking pictures.
4. Nobody else in the family is prepared to stand in Waterstones…you get the picture.
A photograph would have conveyed the news much better. I wouldn’t have had to say anything. It would just have been there, underneath the title ‘Look What I Just Found’ or something. There it would be – Testament - obviously lying between Kate Mosse, Rose Tremain and Michelle Moran.
Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt.
Monday, 29 December 2008
A new arrival...
So, how was your Christmas? Peaceful and happy I hope.
OK, now for non-Christmas news. Today, my paperback copies of Testament arrived in the post. Not quite as astonishing a moment as when the hardbacks arrived and, for the first time, I saw my book as a real thing which other people would buy, but still quite something. And paperback – I mean, that’s a real book isn’t it, the kind of book ordinary people like you and me buy? (Many thanks, however, to all the wonderful, noble people who bought it in hardback…)
Interestingly, Pan has decided to retain the hardback’s dust jacket design for the paperback’s cover. I have to admit, it’s very distinctive and looks brilliant in the paperback format – just enough out of the ordinary to make people pick it up (or out – even the spine is gorgeous) and wonder what it’s about. I know we’re proverbially warned not to judge books by their covers but we all do, don’t we? So I’m very pleased with how it looks. Here it is...
OK, now for non-Christmas news. Today, my paperback copies of Testament arrived in the post. Not quite as astonishing a moment as when the hardbacks arrived and, for the first time, I saw my book as a real thing which other people would buy, but still quite something. And paperback – I mean, that’s a real book isn’t it, the kind of book ordinary people like you and me buy? (Many thanks, however, to all the wonderful, noble people who bought it in hardback…)
Interestingly, Pan has decided to retain the hardback’s dust jacket design for the paperback’s cover. I have to admit, it’s very distinctive and looks brilliant in the paperback format – just enough out of the ordinary to make people pick it up (or out – even the spine is gorgeous) and wonder what it’s about. I know we’re proverbially warned not to judge books by their covers but we all do, don’t we? So I’m very pleased with how it looks. Here it is...
It's slightly brighter (more red, less brown) than the original hardback image but in other respects it's the same. Actually, the published version is slighly different to the one above, with the ‘shout line’ (‘what would you sacrifice to carve your name in history?’) dropped further down the cover which I think looks better, though I’m not sure I understand why. Maybe a graphic designer out there could clarify the visual psychology?
The publication date is this Friday – the 2nd of January – so it’ll soon be out there in the bookshops… I shall be in Canterbury on Friday seeing if I can spot it. If any of you manage it, let me know!
I keep reading in papers - and even in The Author - that the dreaded credit crunch is going to mean an upswing in book sales as people decide that they can’t afford to eat in restaurants or treat themselves to expensive evenings out. And, when you think about it, a paperback book is amazing value when compared with other forms of entertainment. At 568 pages, Testament represents around 8 or 9 hours of reading time (if you’re a slow reader like me, at any rate) which, at £7.99 seems like a lot better value than a cinema ticket at anything upwards of £6.00 for a couple of hours’ viewing. And you can’t even take the film home and lend it to your friends! Scale up for the theatre (or premiership football match) and even more so for eating out and, suddenly, paperbacks seem like astonishingly good value.
Of course, I’m preaching to the converted here but I am pleased that the industry I’m part of offers such good value.
The publication date is this Friday – the 2nd of January – so it’ll soon be out there in the bookshops… I shall be in Canterbury on Friday seeing if I can spot it. If any of you manage it, let me know!
I keep reading in papers - and even in The Author - that the dreaded credit crunch is going to mean an upswing in book sales as people decide that they can’t afford to eat in restaurants or treat themselves to expensive evenings out. And, when you think about it, a paperback book is amazing value when compared with other forms of entertainment. At 568 pages, Testament represents around 8 or 9 hours of reading time (if you’re a slow reader like me, at any rate) which, at £7.99 seems like a lot better value than a cinema ticket at anything upwards of £6.00 for a couple of hours’ viewing. And you can’t even take the film home and lend it to your friends! Scale up for the theatre (or premiership football match) and even more so for eating out and, suddenly, paperbacks seem like astonishingly good value.
Of course, I’m preaching to the converted here but I am pleased that the industry I’m part of offers such good value.
Here’s to a New Year which sees publishing bucking the crunch trend!
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
Just to wish all visitors to Hawkins Bizarre a very
Thanks to all regular readers and commenters for your cyber-company this year - let's hope 2009 is happy, healthy and peaceful (with a bit of success thrown in) for all of us!
Have a good Christmas and some wittering here will recommence sometime between Christmas and the New Year.
Sunday, 21 December 2008
Back online
Hooray – we are connected to the world again! Can’t quite believe how bereft we all felt. We live in a digital blackspot and don’t have satelite TV so we were limited to the usual 4 channels (can’t get Channel 5 because we live too near France and the wavelength is used by a French channel) so the boys couldn’t watch lots of the stuff they normally catch up on online.
For me it was the sheer inconvenience of not being able to check stuff (as well as not being able to blog). And I did feel cut off. Although I refered elsewhere to blogging and reading blogs as being the solitary writer’s equivalent of water cooler conversation, I hadn’t realised how much I needed the human cyber-contact until it wasn’t there.
Still, I am hoping that a week of having to do his homework without the accompaniment of Facebook and MSN might convince the Bassist that this is a viable alternative form of work and that his output might even improve as a result. OK, as I hear the derisive laughter of parents the country over, I have to defend myself - I did say might.
I have now officially finished work – ie writing – until the 29th of December which is when the extended family which has begun to arrive chez Bizarre will depart. I’m connoting this positively and hoping that stuffing myself with unnecessary amounts of carbohydrates, alcohol and fats will somehow induce a spurt of creative energy which will induce the final few chapters of the work in progress to write themselves, instead of dragging their wordy little feet as I try and rip them out of my subconscious.
Meanwhile, I’ve been wondering about my best books of 2008 list. I realised I’d left out Sebastian Faulks’s Engleby which was an amazing read…sure I’ve left out lots of others too.
What about everybody else? What are your best reads of 2008?
For me it was the sheer inconvenience of not being able to check stuff (as well as not being able to blog). And I did feel cut off. Although I refered elsewhere to blogging and reading blogs as being the solitary writer’s equivalent of water cooler conversation, I hadn’t realised how much I needed the human cyber-contact until it wasn’t there.
Still, I am hoping that a week of having to do his homework without the accompaniment of Facebook and MSN might convince the Bassist that this is a viable alternative form of work and that his output might even improve as a result. OK, as I hear the derisive laughter of parents the country over, I have to defend myself - I did say might.
I have now officially finished work – ie writing – until the 29th of December which is when the extended family which has begun to arrive chez Bizarre will depart. I’m connoting this positively and hoping that stuffing myself with unnecessary amounts of carbohydrates, alcohol and fats will somehow induce a spurt of creative energy which will induce the final few chapters of the work in progress to write themselves, instead of dragging their wordy little feet as I try and rip them out of my subconscious.
Meanwhile, I’ve been wondering about my best books of 2008 list. I realised I’d left out Sebastian Faulks’s Engleby which was an amazing read…sure I’ve left out lots of others too.
What about everybody else? What are your best reads of 2008?
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Testament is on You Tube!
Still without the internet at home.... sigh...
Will, my editor, sent me this link - check it out, the trailer for the Spanish version of Testament.
It's amazing on many levels...
Will, my editor, sent me this link - check it out, the trailer for the Spanish version of Testament.
It's amazing on many levels...
Monday, 15 December 2008
Great Books of 2008
Still without the internet (come on Thursday, hurry up) I’m in Chambers - a wi-fi enabled café in Canterbury (thank you Denise and Bill!) catching up with emails, doing my Sainsbury’s shopping and putting up something on the blog lest you all forget me and go off somewhere else…
Since it’s that time of the year, I thought I’d talk about great books of the year but, instead of trawling through my reviews to see what I’d reviewed, I thought I’d just talk about the ones I actually remembered, because they’re the ones that have obviously made an impression.
So they are, in no particular order:
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. If you are in any way tempted by historical fiction, you seriously must read this book. Actually, even if you’re not into historical fiction you must read this book, it’s just brilliant.You can read my review (paean of praise) of it here.
Resistance by Owen Shears. Period fiction rather than historical as such (WW2) so I’m resisting the idea that I’m descending into predictability. Wonderful book. Review here.
Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly. The book of the blog. Very funny, very real, terribly moving at points. For sheer blistering honesty combined with brilliantly funny turns of phrase it’s a winner. The blog is here.
Light Reading by Aliya Whiteley. I know Aliya is a fellow MNW writer but that’s not the point. It’s just a great book by somebody who I’m betting is going to be a literary star one day. There, I’ve said it. Go to it Aliya. Review here.
The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Yes, Ms Brooks again. I haven’t reviewed this one on the blog because I read it at a moment when the work in progress was particularly demanding and all I could do on here was write blah blah blah. If you’re going to read this book do not under any circumstances read the reviews on Amazon because they seem, universally, to be written by people who either didn’t like or didn’t ‘get’ the book. Read this instead.
Brain Rules by John Medina
Not a novel, a non-fiction book about how your brain works. Or, more specifically, why it fails to learn as efficiently as it could. He feeds into at least one of my hobby horses when he says – basically – if you wanted to design educational establishments which stop children learning efficiently and happily, you’d come up with schools. But that’s a side issue. If you read it you’ll start taking exercise when you’re blocked, make sure you get decent sleep and will turn off the internet when you’re trying to concentrate on what you’re writing. It’s also one of the most entertainingly written non fiction book I’ve ever read. Oh, and there’s a website which goes with it which is always good.
The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
This is a bit of a cheat as I’m still reading this right now but it is amazing. I’ve always been interested in social psychology and the Ultimate Frisbee Freak reminded me about the Stanford Prison Experiment when he was doing A level psychology. I actually got this book for him but I’ve got completely into it as it starts with the prison experiment and then goes on to look at the ways in which basically decent people do horribly evil things. It goes a long way to explaining things like the Rwandan genocide and the atrocities committed during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. It also – chillingly – makes you realise that, in all probability, you would be no different.
Website here
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale. The family in this book has stayed with me since I read it, months ago. Always a sign of wonderfully drawn characters. I’ve read various others of Patrick Gale's books and his characters do have a tendency to step off the page and into your imagination as real people. If you haven’t read any of his work yet, I recommend him and this is a wonderful one to start with. My review is here.
That’ll do for now. Hopefully we’ll be back on the net at home soon and there will be more… of something…
Since it’s that time of the year, I thought I’d talk about great books of the year but, instead of trawling through my reviews to see what I’d reviewed, I thought I’d just talk about the ones I actually remembered, because they’re the ones that have obviously made an impression.
So they are, in no particular order:
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. If you are in any way tempted by historical fiction, you seriously must read this book. Actually, even if you’re not into historical fiction you must read this book, it’s just brilliant.You can read my review (paean of praise) of it here.
Resistance by Owen Shears. Period fiction rather than historical as such (WW2) so I’m resisting the idea that I’m descending into predictability. Wonderful book. Review here.
Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly. The book of the blog. Very funny, very real, terribly moving at points. For sheer blistering honesty combined with brilliantly funny turns of phrase it’s a winner. The blog is here.
Light Reading by Aliya Whiteley. I know Aliya is a fellow MNW writer but that’s not the point. It’s just a great book by somebody who I’m betting is going to be a literary star one day. There, I’ve said it. Go to it Aliya. Review here.
The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Yes, Ms Brooks again. I haven’t reviewed this one on the blog because I read it at a moment when the work in progress was particularly demanding and all I could do on here was write blah blah blah. If you’re going to read this book do not under any circumstances read the reviews on Amazon because they seem, universally, to be written by people who either didn’t like or didn’t ‘get’ the book. Read this instead.
Brain Rules by John Medina
Not a novel, a non-fiction book about how your brain works. Or, more specifically, why it fails to learn as efficiently as it could. He feeds into at least one of my hobby horses when he says – basically – if you wanted to design educational establishments which stop children learning efficiently and happily, you’d come up with schools. But that’s a side issue. If you read it you’ll start taking exercise when you’re blocked, make sure you get decent sleep and will turn off the internet when you’re trying to concentrate on what you’re writing. It’s also one of the most entertainingly written non fiction book I’ve ever read. Oh, and there’s a website which goes with it which is always good.
The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
This is a bit of a cheat as I’m still reading this right now but it is amazing. I’ve always been interested in social psychology and the Ultimate Frisbee Freak reminded me about the Stanford Prison Experiment when he was doing A level psychology. I actually got this book for him but I’ve got completely into it as it starts with the prison experiment and then goes on to look at the ways in which basically decent people do horribly evil things. It goes a long way to explaining things like the Rwandan genocide and the atrocities committed during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. It also – chillingly – makes you realise that, in all probability, you would be no different.
Website here
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale. The family in this book has stayed with me since I read it, months ago. Always a sign of wonderfully drawn characters. I’ve read various others of Patrick Gale's books and his characters do have a tendency to step off the page and into your imagination as real people. If you haven’t read any of his work yet, I recommend him and this is a wonderful one to start with. My review is here.
That’ll do for now. Hopefully we’ll be back on the net at home soon and there will be more… of something…
Saturday, 13 December 2008
The internet
Aaaargh! We are without the internet at the moment at home so I'm at a friend's house telling you this.
We are assured - huh! - that normal service will be resumed this Thursday... We shall see...
Friday, 5 December 2008
Lights out, people still home...
I suppose it was inevitable given my rant about the dark the other day that the lights would go out in our house.
One day there was flickering in the kitchen, next day (which would be the day my parents arrived to see the Bassist in his school play) there were no lights in the kitchen, the downstairs loo, the utility room or the cellar. Fortunately, the socket circuit was unaffected so we were working by the light of our SAD lightbox which was slightly surreal.
Amazingly, when I rang the electrician he said he’d be out today ( I was thinking Monday at the earliest) and when he came (which was at the time he’d said he would arrive, more miracles) he was able to fix the problem in twenty minutes with the aid of a natty head-torch. As he went down the steps of the cellar (where the fuse box and other things electrical whirr and shine and have their mysterious being) he looked more like a caver about to navigate an unknown system than an electrician who was about to discover and change a dodgy, burned-out fuse module (or something).
So we are lit once more – hooray! I don’t like using torches, unless it’s to read in bed so I don’t disturb the Other Half.
I wish glitches in novel-writing were so easily fixable. I wish I could delve into the depths of the work in progress, metaphorical head-torch affixed,a and surface mere minutes later waving a burned-out bit of narrative and saying ‘that’s it, everything should be fine now.’
But it’s not that easy.
Having said that, things are proceeding nicely with the work in progress after months of chopping, fitting, dashing ahead and then meandering at the pace of a bemused snail.
I’m not sure draft one (or is that draft three and a half?) is going to be finished before Christmas but it’ll be a close run thing.
Then there’ll be the small matter of a couple of months of editing… I know the book is too long (over 150 000 words already) and there are bits which need some reworking but I think I’m happy with the overall shape and flow now.
Still, it’s taken me the best part of two and a half years to write, though I did stop and pretty much start again in April and begin a complete rewrite with different characters and a different backstory which, inevitably, affected the narrative as I’d originally conceived it. The same things just can’t happen to different people, not unless you’re writing a ruthlessly plot-driven novel.
So, much as I say I’d like to be able to fix things quickly, I guess I wouldn’t. Anything good – including revisions and rewrites – takes time to get right, so it needs whatever time it takes.
I’m blinking glad the lights are back on though.
One day there was flickering in the kitchen, next day (which would be the day my parents arrived to see the Bassist in his school play) there were no lights in the kitchen, the downstairs loo, the utility room or the cellar. Fortunately, the socket circuit was unaffected so we were working by the light of our SAD lightbox which was slightly surreal.
Amazingly, when I rang the electrician he said he’d be out today ( I was thinking Monday at the earliest) and when he came (which was at the time he’d said he would arrive, more miracles) he was able to fix the problem in twenty minutes with the aid of a natty head-torch. As he went down the steps of the cellar (where the fuse box and other things electrical whirr and shine and have their mysterious being) he looked more like a caver about to navigate an unknown system than an electrician who was about to discover and change a dodgy, burned-out fuse module (or something).
So we are lit once more – hooray! I don’t like using torches, unless it’s to read in bed so I don’t disturb the Other Half.
I wish glitches in novel-writing were so easily fixable. I wish I could delve into the depths of the work in progress, metaphorical head-torch affixed,a and surface mere minutes later waving a burned-out bit of narrative and saying ‘that’s it, everything should be fine now.’
But it’s not that easy.
Having said that, things are proceeding nicely with the work in progress after months of chopping, fitting, dashing ahead and then meandering at the pace of a bemused snail.
I’m not sure draft one (or is that draft three and a half?) is going to be finished before Christmas but it’ll be a close run thing.
Then there’ll be the small matter of a couple of months of editing… I know the book is too long (over 150 000 words already) and there are bits which need some reworking but I think I’m happy with the overall shape and flow now.
Still, it’s taken me the best part of two and a half years to write, though I did stop and pretty much start again in April and begin a complete rewrite with different characters and a different backstory which, inevitably, affected the narrative as I’d originally conceived it. The same things just can’t happen to different people, not unless you’re writing a ruthlessly plot-driven novel.
So, much as I say I’d like to be able to fix things quickly, I guess I wouldn’t. Anything good – including revisions and rewrites – takes time to get right, so it needs whatever time it takes.
I’m blinking glad the lights are back on though.
Monday, 1 December 2008
Meeting the real David
I had a lovely afternoon on Friday going to London to meet David Isaak. He was in the UK on business and was taking the opportunity to catch up with as many of the MNW crew as he could. There was a big get-together organised in the evening which I couldn’t make so David very kindly agreed to come and have tea with me after a lunchtime rendezvous.
[Ooops, that sounds like the beginning of an interview. I feel I should now go on to say ‘So, David, your book…’ If you’re interested in Shock and Awe, David’s thriller, you can always read my review…]
It’s a slightly strange experience meeting people whom you’ve only ever ‘spoken’ to in the public forum of their blog or yours (or, in the case of David and myself, on the blogs of other MNW writers) in the sense that you feel you know them quite well but have no idea what they’re ‘like’ in a personally present sense.
For me it raised interesting questions (which I pondered on a long and almost infinitely delayed train journey home) about what being acquainted with somebody actually means. David and I have participated in lots of online discussions about writing – I know quite a lot of what he’s prepared to reveal in public about his writing habits, I have got to know at least some of his taste in reading, films and music. So I wasn’t meeting a stranger by any means, but I didn’t feel I knew him as well as I would know somebody from whom I’d learned all that information in verbal conversation.
David and I tangentially discussed this, wondering why he had had to come to London for a business meeting when none of the participants are based there. Why wouldn’t a video conference have done the trick? We both agreed that, despite the assumptions of the 80s technology gurus when we were young, meetings where everybody is only virtually present haven’t really taken off as a way of doing business.
What is it? Do we need to see the whites of peple’s eyes before we know that what they’re saying is what they really mean? Do we need to see what people look like before we really feel we’ve got a handle on who they are?
It’s an interesting philosophical question. More and more, our society seems to be coming to the conclusion that ‘we’ reside in our brains which may or may not be coincidental with our minds. If that’s the case, why the concensus that we need to ‘press the flesh’ before a real meeting of minds has taken place? Sounds to me as if minds are a good deal more spread about our whole person than we like to (rationally) think.
But, all that philosophising aside, it was absolutely great to meet David who is the kind of person you could just chat to for hours and hours. Now, when I read his blog, I’ll mentally hear his softly-spoken voice speaking his words and I’ll be able to think ‘yes, that sounds like the lovely person I met’.
[Ooops, that sounds like the beginning of an interview. I feel I should now go on to say ‘So, David, your book…’ If you’re interested in Shock and Awe, David’s thriller, you can always read my review…]
It’s a slightly strange experience meeting people whom you’ve only ever ‘spoken’ to in the public forum of their blog or yours (or, in the case of David and myself, on the blogs of other MNW writers) in the sense that you feel you know them quite well but have no idea what they’re ‘like’ in a personally present sense.
For me it raised interesting questions (which I pondered on a long and almost infinitely delayed train journey home) about what being acquainted with somebody actually means. David and I have participated in lots of online discussions about writing – I know quite a lot of what he’s prepared to reveal in public about his writing habits, I have got to know at least some of his taste in reading, films and music. So I wasn’t meeting a stranger by any means, but I didn’t feel I knew him as well as I would know somebody from whom I’d learned all that information in verbal conversation.
David and I tangentially discussed this, wondering why he had had to come to London for a business meeting when none of the participants are based there. Why wouldn’t a video conference have done the trick? We both agreed that, despite the assumptions of the 80s technology gurus when we were young, meetings where everybody is only virtually present haven’t really taken off as a way of doing business.
What is it? Do we need to see the whites of peple’s eyes before we know that what they’re saying is what they really mean? Do we need to see what people look like before we really feel we’ve got a handle on who they are?
It’s an interesting philosophical question. More and more, our society seems to be coming to the conclusion that ‘we’ reside in our brains which may or may not be coincidental with our minds. If that’s the case, why the concensus that we need to ‘press the flesh’ before a real meeting of minds has taken place? Sounds to me as if minds are a good deal more spread about our whole person than we like to (rationally) think.
But, all that philosophising aside, it was absolutely great to meet David who is the kind of person you could just chat to for hours and hours. Now, when I read his blog, I’ll mentally hear his softly-spoken voice speaking his words and I’ll be able to think ‘yes, that sounds like the lovely person I met’.
Monday, 24 November 2008
The Dark...
I hate waking up in the dark. Not hate as in ‘with venom’: that kind of hate – like the hate you have for injustice or stupid cruelty – I can cope with, get my teeth into, be passionate about. No, my hatred of waking in the dark – well, of anything in the dark really – is composed more of a cold fear in the pit of my stomach, an atavistic dread seeping through me, a physical teetering on the edge of sanity, if sanity is the ability to remember that most of my life is lived in the light, that it is good, and not be overwhelmed by negativity and despair.
Often, when asked about my favourite time of the year, I say I dislike winter but I don’t, actually. I mean, winter’s got a lot going for it – frost, wonderful light, snow, better stuff on the telly, comfort food. And the clothes - I much prefer winter clothes to summer ones. It’s something to do with the absence of doubt about whether you’re going to be warm enough (constant for me in British ‘summers’), about not having to slap sun screen on for a ten minute think in the garden and not having to sit in people’s gardens as the midges bite and we eat rapildy cooling barbecued food while I lose touch with my extremities...
And I love the lights of winter – Christmas lights on the high street, fairy lights in people’s windows, open fires, candles…
No, it’s the dark I hate and I’m quite capable of hating it in the summer too, it’s just that there’s so much more of it in the winter. Like when you wake up, which is where we came in…
We get up at 6.30 in our house, like lots of people, I guess, to get us all through the shower and a staggered breakfast before leaving for school, work or – in my case – a before-writing walk. Though I’m not the biggest morning person in the world, I’m ok at getting up when it’s light out. I actually resent having to sleep (at all) pretty thoroughly, so getting up and getting on seems like a good plan. But when it’s dark everything in me screams that this is not natural, that we should be being woken up by the sun when the day’s properly beginning, not by a little beepy noise which says ‘I know it’s dark, I know you hate and fear it, but tough, open your eyes and get up.’
I think the light box that the Bassist and I huddle in front of every morning for six months of the year has got to migrate upstairs in the evenings, so that I can flick it on as soon as the alarm goes. I covet one of those dawn-light thingies which simulates sunrise but that’ll have to wait until we’re rich/the boys are through university…
And the point of all this maundering?
I think fear of the dark is, at some quite fundamental level, why I write at all.
Often, when asked about my favourite time of the year, I say I dislike winter but I don’t, actually. I mean, winter’s got a lot going for it – frost, wonderful light, snow, better stuff on the telly, comfort food. And the clothes - I much prefer winter clothes to summer ones. It’s something to do with the absence of doubt about whether you’re going to be warm enough (constant for me in British ‘summers’), about not having to slap sun screen on for a ten minute think in the garden and not having to sit in people’s gardens as the midges bite and we eat rapildy cooling barbecued food while I lose touch with my extremities...
And I love the lights of winter – Christmas lights on the high street, fairy lights in people’s windows, open fires, candles…
No, it’s the dark I hate and I’m quite capable of hating it in the summer too, it’s just that there’s so much more of it in the winter. Like when you wake up, which is where we came in…
We get up at 6.30 in our house, like lots of people, I guess, to get us all through the shower and a staggered breakfast before leaving for school, work or – in my case – a before-writing walk. Though I’m not the biggest morning person in the world, I’m ok at getting up when it’s light out. I actually resent having to sleep (at all) pretty thoroughly, so getting up and getting on seems like a good plan. But when it’s dark everything in me screams that this is not natural, that we should be being woken up by the sun when the day’s properly beginning, not by a little beepy noise which says ‘I know it’s dark, I know you hate and fear it, but tough, open your eyes and get up.’
I think the light box that the Bassist and I huddle in front of every morning for six months of the year has got to migrate upstairs in the evenings, so that I can flick it on as soon as the alarm goes. I covet one of those dawn-light thingies which simulates sunrise but that’ll have to wait until we’re rich/the boys are through university…
And the point of all this maundering?
I think fear of the dark is, at some quite fundamental level, why I write at all.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
The Bassist and his Bass
The Bassist, who was 17 on Friday, has added to his Bass-player credibility by making his own bass. Yes, from scratch,with wood and stuff. It was his Dad's idea - he thinks that you can do anything as long as you've got a book telling you how. Sadly, he's often right.
This is the result.
For those of you who know about these things, it was going to have a through neck but something warped and the strings lay too low on the fretboard (there's a technical term for this but I've forgotten it and, as the B is at school and the UFF is still in bed as befits a gap-year student, you will have to remain in ignorance. Or not if you know about these things.). So he had to buy a ready-made neck and attach it which was a bit sad but the bass plays beautifully. Apparently, not varnishing it gives it better low tone... he might wax it but then again, it sounds so good as it is he might not want to block up any spaces in the wood... Hmmm.
There are technical details about bridges, pickups etc which I can supply on request if readers of this blog are remotely interested, but only when the Bassist comes home.
I am amazingly impressed - at his age I could barely make toast...
Monday, 17 November 2008
Two Booker books
I’ve just read two books which had a similar feel – one was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year and the other won this year. As long as you know that this year’s winner was The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and have even a passing acquaintance with last year’s list, you’ll probably guess that the other one was Mosin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Why the similar feel? Well, Adiga’s novel is set in India, Hamid’s in Pakistan (though much of the action takes place in New York) so there’s the subcontinental resemblance, but that’s not it.
Both are first-person narratives detailing the dramatic changes in one person’s circumstances as they move away from the place they have grown up to seek their fortune elsewhere. But that’s not it either.
No, the thing which gives these very different books such a spookily similar feel is the fact that they are both constructed as stories which are being told to an audience of one.
Why the similar feel? Well, Adiga’s novel is set in India, Hamid’s in Pakistan (though much of the action takes place in New York) so there’s the subcontinental resemblance, but that’s not it.
Both are first-person narratives detailing the dramatic changes in one person’s circumstances as they move away from the place they have grown up to seek their fortune elsewhere. But that’s not it either.
No, the thing which gives these very different books such a spookily similar feel is the fact that they are both constructed as stories which are being told to an audience of one.
Balram Halawi, a sweet-maker by caste and a cut above those around him by his own estimation, describes himself as a social entrepreneur. At the beginning of the book he is in his incongruously chandelier-lit office in Bangalore late at night, waiting for his ‘start up’ business to come alive as the call centre workers begin to trickle home. He is, improbably, speaking to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, who is supposedly making a visit to Bangalore. Balram knows what Mr Wen will be shown on his visit and he wants to tell him what India is really like. So he tells him his own life story, the story of the one-in-a-generation phenomenon, the white tiger.
Mr Wen, he knows, will be shown the upside of modern India, the technology companies, the businesses ‘outsourced’ from Europe and North America, the shiny malls, the extensive building projects, the rising entrepreneur class which is going to propel India into the forefront of twentyfirst century economies.
What Balram Halawi wants Mr Wen – and, of course, us – to understand is that this dynamic modern India is an insubstantial urban mirage accessible only to the rich, the successful, the privileged; that the other ninety nine point nine percent of Indian society exists, in some sense, to service this mirage.
Balram’s India is a place where ruthlessness and not merit is a guarantor of success, where corruption is not simply common but necessary, where the vast majority of the populace are content to live in what he calls ‘the Rooster Coop’, unaware that they can break out, flap away and live a different sort of life. He presents an India where, despite the modern veneer, the caste system is as predictive of one’s chances of success as the feudal system was of the villein’s. In other words, if you’re born poor, don’t expect to be rich any time soon.
In Balram’s India the family structure – far from being the supportive, wisdom-imparting social network which we all mourn the loss of in the west – is a leech on a man’s talent and a bar to his ambition.
Balram’s India is not a nice place and Balram is not a nice person. He is, the novel asks us to believe, what his life, and India, has made him.
Changez – the considerably more likeable narrator of The Reluctant Fundamentalist – directs his narrative to someone considerably closer at hand, an American whom he has encountered in a restaurant and whom he treats to dinner and his life story. But, like Wen Jiabao, the American remains silent all through the book-long encounter. Though we infer his reactions (nervy, mistrustful, gun-toting) from the comments Changez makes in his slightly stilted, formal English, we never hear him speak, never hear his reactions to the picture Changez paints of a young Pakistani intellectual who goes to Princeton on a full scholarship, falls in love with an American girl (and her country) and then goes on to work as an analyst at a very prestigious firm. It is this business, with its constant insistence that its employees focus on ‘the fundamentals’ (ie the bottom line) which gives the book the reluctance of its title.
Or is it? While the novel shows how Changez grows disenchanted with America’s assumption of superiority in all possible spheres and rejects it in favour of his own country and its more ancient, less brash culture – his rejection of the ‘fundamentals’ of capitalism – I wonder if it’s also trying to suggest that, in rejecting one empire’s assumption of the right to dominate, Changez has made a positive decision for an alternative kind of domination?
The ending of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is ambiguous – at least to me.
As the novel unfolds, it has become clear that the large American is armed and military; given his constant silent watchfulness, it’s hard not to see him as an intelligence-gatherer of some kind. Is Changez’s insistence on taking hours to tell him his life-story an elaborate attempt to keep the American in the restaurant until some plan can be put into place? The final page certainly suggests this, or this possibility.
Has Changez, however reluctantly, abandoned the fundamentals of the capitalist creed only to take up those of another creed altogether?
So, similarities:
Both books ask what individuals will sacrifice to be successful in the world; each comes up with very different answers.
Both books, in very different ways, offer a critique of capitalism which has come adrift from morality.
Both books have narrators who are quite confident that they have seen the truth. In both cases the reader questions this.
I’d recommend both books – though, to be honest, I enjoyed The Reluctant Fundamentalist more as the world it portrayed wasn’t so brutal and its narrator was more engaging – and reading them back-to-back is an interesting exercise in various kinds of comparison.
Monday, 10 November 2008
The hardest thing...
Is it just me, or do other writers have problems getting in to scenes? As in, finding the right words to get the thing in motion, bridge from the last thing and into the next, mark the passage of time or just plain get the reader into the tortured thinking of the central character? I think I spend more time on these jumping off platforms than anywhere else in the book.
Once I’ve climbed up there and looked at the teeny tiny pool I’m aiming for and taken a deep breath and funked it, walked back, breathed again, aimed again and jumped… then, I’m usually OK…after the odd second failure to jump, near miss or weird landing in a different pool altogether.
But getting up there, leaving everything else behind and knowing exactly what you’re aiming for in this next effort – that seems to be the hardest thing for me.
What’s the hardest process thing for the other writers out there? Other than sorting out strained metaphors in other people’s blogs, obviously.
Once I’ve climbed up there and looked at the teeny tiny pool I’m aiming for and taken a deep breath and funked it, walked back, breathed again, aimed again and jumped… then, I’m usually OK…after the odd second failure to jump, near miss or weird landing in a different pool altogether.
But getting up there, leaving everything else behind and knowing exactly what you’re aiming for in this next effort – that seems to be the hardest thing for me.
What’s the hardest process thing for the other writers out there? Other than sorting out strained metaphors in other people’s blogs, obviously.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
An auspicious 200th post!
There was a note blu-tacked to the bathroom door this morning. It read ‘Obama won! He is now president elect of the United States!’ The Ultimate Frisbee Freak had stayed up til God knows what hour this morning to watch the coverage and relay this happy news to the rest of his family who have to get up early. This, I have to tell you, is a young man who struggles to remember which party forms the UK government and what the real name of the Tories is. Like so many of his generation, he doesn’t do politics. Just like so many people in the States who have never registered to vote before and yet did just that so that they could vote for Obama didn’t do politics. Just like young Jewish people who watched comedian Sarah Silverman’s Great Schlep video and took her seriously enough to mobilise not only themselves but their grandparents don’t generally do politics.
This was an important election.
I don’t think it was the fact that Barack Obama is of mixed race and therefore that history was about to be made by the first black president that made my son stay up. It wasn’t just that which made me well up and cheer at the news.
I think the emotions evoked by Barack Obama’s victory were the same as those I felt when I watched TV coverage of the first free elections in South Africa – people queuing hours to cast a vote they’d never had before - and Nelson Mandela became the first properly elected president of his country. What we saw then was a good man being chosen to run a newly liberated country and I think that what we are seeing today is a good man preparing to move his family into the White House. I think that’s what motivated the Ultimate Frisbee Freak’s vigil – he wouldn’t have stayed up to watch an African American with, for example, Sarah Palin’s views get elected.
I profoundly hope Barack Obama is the good man he appears to be because the world is in such a mess that the most powerful nation on earth has never been in greater need of a good man as its leader.
Good luck, Barack Obama, from a family that celebrated your victory with a note on their bathroom door.
This was an important election.
I don’t think it was the fact that Barack Obama is of mixed race and therefore that history was about to be made by the first black president that made my son stay up. It wasn’t just that which made me well up and cheer at the news.
I think the emotions evoked by Barack Obama’s victory were the same as those I felt when I watched TV coverage of the first free elections in South Africa – people queuing hours to cast a vote they’d never had before - and Nelson Mandela became the first properly elected president of his country. What we saw then was a good man being chosen to run a newly liberated country and I think that what we are seeing today is a good man preparing to move his family into the White House. I think that’s what motivated the Ultimate Frisbee Freak’s vigil – he wouldn’t have stayed up to watch an African American with, for example, Sarah Palin’s views get elected.
I profoundly hope Barack Obama is the good man he appears to be because the world is in such a mess that the most powerful nation on earth has never been in greater need of a good man as its leader.
Good luck, Barack Obama, from a family that celebrated your victory with a note on their bathroom door.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Feeling at home
I like going abroad but I’m even fonder of coming home again.
I like home.
France is a fascinating, beautiful, rich country but I couldn’t live there; I have known for years that I couldn’t live, permanently, anywhere non-Anglophone. Though I’m a competent linguist and pick up languages quickly, I know that I would never reach the stage where I would simply be able to open my mouth and speak my thoughts in the way that I can in English. I can say this with certainty because I was brought up as bilingual as it is possible for a person to be who does not have parents who speak different native languages and I was always aware that I thought in English, never in Welsh. However easily Welsh came to me, it never came with quite the fluency of English, there was never the sensation that language formed no barrier to thought.
And, quite simply, communication is so important to me that I couldn’t possibly forgo the ability to communicate effortlessly with the people around me.
I know I’d get by. I’m fairly confident I’d be able to do more than get by after a while but it wouldn’t be enough.
The sunshine wouldn’t be enough either. I know I’m sufficiently contrary that I would begin to miss clouds and rain and frost and drizzle after a while.
Quite apart from the language thing, there’s another barrier to living somewhere other than Britain. Like lots of writers, I’ve always felt that I exist on the edge of things, always an onlooker, an observer, never quite a full, self-forgetful participant. There’s always a part of me which is standing aside, watching myself doing things. I’m never more than an unwary step away from a feeling of alienation, a feeling that I don’t belong, that I’m not quite part of things in the way that other people are.
If I feel that in my own country, imagine how much of an outsider I’d feel elsewhere.
What do other writers reading this feel? Is alienation a common affliction for those of us whose default setting is ‘observe’? Is easy, thought-to-speech communication a fundamental need for you, too, or is that a foible of mine?
Such are the thoughts generated by a holiday….
I like home.
France is a fascinating, beautiful, rich country but I couldn’t live there; I have known for years that I couldn’t live, permanently, anywhere non-Anglophone. Though I’m a competent linguist and pick up languages quickly, I know that I would never reach the stage where I would simply be able to open my mouth and speak my thoughts in the way that I can in English. I can say this with certainty because I was brought up as bilingual as it is possible for a person to be who does not have parents who speak different native languages and I was always aware that I thought in English, never in Welsh. However easily Welsh came to me, it never came with quite the fluency of English, there was never the sensation that language formed no barrier to thought.
And, quite simply, communication is so important to me that I couldn’t possibly forgo the ability to communicate effortlessly with the people around me.
I know I’d get by. I’m fairly confident I’d be able to do more than get by after a while but it wouldn’t be enough.
The sunshine wouldn’t be enough either. I know I’m sufficiently contrary that I would begin to miss clouds and rain and frost and drizzle after a while.
Quite apart from the language thing, there’s another barrier to living somewhere other than Britain. Like lots of writers, I’ve always felt that I exist on the edge of things, always an onlooker, an observer, never quite a full, self-forgetful participant. There’s always a part of me which is standing aside, watching myself doing things. I’m never more than an unwary step away from a feeling of alienation, a feeling that I don’t belong, that I’m not quite part of things in the way that other people are.
If I feel that in my own country, imagine how much of an outsider I’d feel elsewhere.
What do other writers reading this feel? Is alienation a common affliction for those of us whose default setting is ‘observe’? Is easy, thought-to-speech communication a fundamental need for you, too, or is that a foible of mine?
Such are the thoughts generated by a holiday….
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Code word thingies
Is it just me, or have the 'I'm not a spammer' code word thingies on Blogger turned from random jumbles into vaguely credible words? They suddenly seem far easier to get to grips with and type.
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