Susan Hill’s always interesting, thought-provoking and opinionated blog lives up to all these epithets in her latest post on what Roland Barthes would have called ‘the death of the author’.
She’s talking about Terry Eagleton, a lit-crit professor whose work has also been exercising Emma Darwin recently, so I thought I would ruminate on all this stuff and leave you to think about it while I’m away in the Peak District. (Turned out we didn’t have enough money to go to Italy without dipping into the boys’ college fund. Couldn’t do that, obviously… so Derbyshire it is. Keep your fingers crossed for nice weather…)
Ms Hill extracts various quotations from a review by Terry Eagleton in the latest London Review of Books. Because I don’t have a LRB handy (tsk!) I shall quote her quotations, with the due acknowledgement to her blog:
TE in LRB: 'Writing, unlike speech, is meaning that has come adrift from its source.'
Me: So far, so good. Can’t argue with that.
TE in LRB: 'Literary works are peculiarly portable. They can be lifted from one interpretative situation to another and may change their meaning in the course of this migration.'
Me: Beginning to argue now. How can things change their meaning. Sure, you can give them another interpretation, but meaning? I don’t think so.
TE in LRB: 'Works of literature are to some extent cut free from those who engender them, wandering through the world to accumulate new meanings in different situations.'
Me: Beginning to think Prof Eagleton and I don’t agree about the meaning of the word ‘meaning’.
TE in LRB: 'Never trust the teller trust the tale. Literary works have intentions of their own of which their producers know little or nothing.'
Me: Well this if frankly tosh and piffle isn’t it? Literary works have intentions of their own? Is he seriously ascribing conscious agency to a ‘tale’ outside the mind of the author?
Eagleton was one of the literary theorists who lectured to undergraduates when I was at Oxford (he was very good, favoured denim, was witty and worth listening to; he even made up a song summarising a whole term’s worth of lectures at one stage which was fun) and I went to all his lectures. This may not sound like much but, given that there were terms when I attended no lectures at all, going to listen to somebody whilst I could have been ploughing through endless texts for one of that week’s two essays was a Big Deal. Despite Eagleton’s amusement value I found this whole ‘death of the author’ thing the most utter drivel. I know it’s not pc and may be thought arrogant to be so dismissive of something which lots of extremely clever people believe in, dismiss it I do as utterly ridiculous.
My view is even more entrenched now that I am a published writer. The thought that people out there would presume to say that their interpretation of Testament is just as valid as what I was trying to say - indeed, that what I thought I was doing is irrelevant - is frankly annoying.
Am I alone in this?
Friday, 23 May 2008
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
A rediscovery
American writer Laurie R. King – author of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice amongst other things – has a great blog here.
A post she put up a day or two ago about Michael Chabon really intrigued me. Not only is he a writer of off-beat sci-fi crime (inter alia) he is also a cultural critic. I read the article Laurie mentioned (from the LA Times) and, when I subsequently googled Michael Chabon, I was reminded that I had read his first novel - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh - almost twenty years ago and really enjoyed it. Why hadn’t I followed it up with his other stuff? I suspect it’s because his work is published in the US and not necessarily available or flagged up over here – with the internet little more than a twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye in 1988 there was no Amazon to chase books up, so Mr Chabon dropped off my radar.
I said a quite ‘hooray’ when reading the LA Times article because MC is basically saying ‘hey people, let’s not be so uptight about the whole high-brow, low-brow thing’. As somebody who is on record as saying that I am not an automatic fan of ‘literary’ novels, that I never watch art-house films and like rock music just as much – often more, because I’m more often in the mood – as classical, this message is liable to appeal to me. But he’s not just asking us to get off our high horses about what’s worthwhile and what’s not, he’s actually making a very real point about the function and source of entertainment, a point which we ignore to our own detriment, I think.
So, read the article and check out Michael Chabon’s work. I can’t resist the sound of his The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – nearly as good as The Herring Seller’s Apprentice in the ‘buy me, I’m different and funny and literate’ stakes. I shall be acquiring it as soon as funds allow.
A post she put up a day or two ago about Michael Chabon really intrigued me. Not only is he a writer of off-beat sci-fi crime (inter alia) he is also a cultural critic. I read the article Laurie mentioned (from the LA Times) and, when I subsequently googled Michael Chabon, I was reminded that I had read his first novel - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh - almost twenty years ago and really enjoyed it. Why hadn’t I followed it up with his other stuff? I suspect it’s because his work is published in the US and not necessarily available or flagged up over here – with the internet little more than a twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye in 1988 there was no Amazon to chase books up, so Mr Chabon dropped off my radar.
I said a quite ‘hooray’ when reading the LA Times article because MC is basically saying ‘hey people, let’s not be so uptight about the whole high-brow, low-brow thing’. As somebody who is on record as saying that I am not an automatic fan of ‘literary’ novels, that I never watch art-house films and like rock music just as much – often more, because I’m more often in the mood – as classical, this message is liable to appeal to me. But he’s not just asking us to get off our high horses about what’s worthwhile and what’s not, he’s actually making a very real point about the function and source of entertainment, a point which we ignore to our own detriment, I think.
So, read the article and check out Michael Chabon’s work. I can’t resist the sound of his The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – nearly as good as The Herring Seller’s Apprentice in the ‘buy me, I’m different and funny and literate’ stakes. I shall be acquiring it as soon as funds allow.
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Creative Writing Courses
An author I know who also teaches creative writing (CW) is currently engaged in a bit of reflective practice on the whole business of teaching and is asking friends, acquaintances and anybody connected with CW if they’d to help.
If you are on a CW course, if you have ever taken one or if you CW courses and you have a few moments, it would be great if you could have a look at the questions below. Any answers would – I know – be very much appreciated.
Just pop them in the comments box and it will be scanned daily… I’ve kicked off with my own responses.
1. Have you ever participated in writing workshops? If so, did you find them useful? How and why or why not?
2. If you teach, do you use the workshop format? Why or why not?
3. In your experience, is the workshop a good use of time on a course?
4. To your knowledge, are there creative writing programmes that do not utilise the workshop?
5. In your opinion, are workshops a necessary part of any undergraduate or postgraduate programme?
[PS - In response to Tim's question in the comments section about what 'workshop' means, I elicited the following answer:
Yes, 'workshop' is a weird word in that people use it differently. But a practical bias is right, specifically toward 'peer critique', e.g. members of a class looking at each other's work, guided by the leader... Hope that helps!]
If you are on a CW course, if you have ever taken one or if you CW courses and you have a few moments, it would be great if you could have a look at the questions below. Any answers would – I know – be very much appreciated.
Just pop them in the comments box and it will be scanned daily… I’ve kicked off with my own responses.
1. Have you ever participated in writing workshops? If so, did you find them useful? How and why or why not?
2. If you teach, do you use the workshop format? Why or why not?
3. In your experience, is the workshop a good use of time on a course?
4. To your knowledge, are there creative writing programmes that do not utilise the workshop?
5. In your opinion, are workshops a necessary part of any undergraduate or postgraduate programme?
[PS - In response to Tim's question in the comments section about what 'workshop' means, I elicited the following answer:
Yes, 'workshop' is a weird word in that people use it differently. But a practical bias is right, specifically toward 'peer critique', e.g. members of a class looking at each other's work, guided by the leader... Hope that helps!]
Friday, 16 May 2008
Making money from writing 2
Continuing the response to the questions posed in the last post…(If you haven’t read it, just scroll down, otherwise you won’t know what the hell I’m going on about.)
If not [ie if you don’t think a writer can make enough to live on from writing alone] what do you think is a suitable second occupation for him?
I’m not going to go all feminist and take issue with that ‘for him’ as these questions were originally asked in the 1940s. As everybody knows, no women wrote books before 1960.
A suitable second occupation… I think both Matt and Tim have covered this adequately so I don’t need to rehash the same stuff. What I did think about was the person who has always wanted to write, who has the odd first or novel outline squirrelled away in a bottom drawer, but has developed a very lucratiave career meanwhile.
What does that person do – particularly if he or she has a mortgage and a family to support – when the urge to write begins to dominate their life? How easy is it for any family to downsize so that one member can fulfil his or her dream? Should there be evidence of talent before the family moves to a smaller house, stops going on holiday and starts subsisting on lentils? Or simply evidence of determination? Or desperation? Should the person be required to have burned the midnight oil in a garret to prove to him/herself and their family that this is a real and burning ambition without which they can no longer be happy?
I think this is an infinitely tougher situation than that which the prospective author finds him/herself at the beginning of their writing + subsidiary career. .
Do you think literature suffers from the diversion of a writer’s energy into other employments or is enriched by it?
Speaking personally, my writing suffers from the diversion of my energy, but all writers are different. I expect this is partly determined by whether the person concerned is introvert or extrovert. Extroverts get energy from being with people, therefore an occupation which involves spending the day with others may possibly help this kind of author. Introverts (I am one) expend energy in being with people and need solitude to build up their energies again, so spending all day interacting with other people would not leave people like me with much energy to write.
Do you think the state or any other institution should do more for writers?
Given that the state doesn’t support me in my self-employed status as a speech and language therapist, I’m not sure I see any reason why they should support my self-employed author status. Both are my choice, nobody’s forcing me to do either.
Given that books basically exist to entertain people (I’m being reductive, but if they fail to entertain then I don’t think people will want to read them and any other laudable aims of literature will, therefore, be irrelevant) if they succeed in that aim, then they will sell and make money. I’m always slightly at a loss to know in what sense novels which sell in very small numbers (like under 200) are ‘good’. How is a book which startlingly few people wish to read ‘good’? Are we genuinely saying that only a tiny, tiny proportion of the reading public has the judgement to determine whether a book is ‘good’ and that the vast numbers to whom this particular book does not appeal and who do not, therefore, read it are not only wrong but somehow deeply lowbrow and philistine?
People routinely denigrate authors like Dan Brown (don’t suppose he cares) and even the output of a whole publishing house in the case of Mills and Boon. ‘Oh, they’re rubbish’, people say, ‘I don’t know why anybody would want to read them.’
What ludicrously arrogant nonsense! These books are brilliant on their own terms. They tell page-turning stories which people want to read. I read the Da Vinci Code and enjoyed it. I don’t think it’s Dan Brown’s best book but it’s not a bad book. It’s well paced, the story is interesting, you want to find out what happens at the end. Which of those facts makes it a bad book? It may not have the most psychologically convincing characters ever – who cares? They entertain. Misery memoirs have horribly psychologically real characters and I don’t want to read beyond page one of any of them. Maybe Dan Brown’s prose style deosn’t make you gasp and re-read sentences to savour them – but then I don’t suppose he set out to write a prose masterpiece; he set out to write a thriller.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying, no I don’t think authors should be state subsidised. If people want to read your books, they will buy them. If they don’t then they won’t. If you want people to read your books, make them readable. It is possible to write beautiful prose in the service of a compelling story without compromising your artistic integrity – Owen Sheers, whose book I reviewed last week and whose work is, therefore, fresh in my mind, shows that this is true. I hope his book sells in the hundreds of thousands, it deserves to.
Are you satisfied with your own solution of the problem and have you any specific advice to give young people who wish to earn their living by writing?
I am astonishingly fortunate to have a partner who is prepared to support our family so that I can write but I am loath to advise young people to choose their life-partner on the basis of their earning capacity.
If a young person I knew wished to be a novelist I would give them the following advice.
Don’t. Not unless you absolutely must. If you think it’s the way to make money, you’re a badly-informed fool – no basis from which to write books. If you think it's a romantic, bohemian lifestyle, you've believed somebody else's publicity. It's neither.
If they were still determined then I would say this. Find yourself an undemanding job which will leave you time to write. Do not develop expensive tastes. Do not aspire to having holidays. Do not allow yourself to become interested in fashion of any kind. Find out where all the local second hand shops are. Develop a tendency towards resourcefulness and shun going out to eat. Cultivate a total disregard for society’s views on success. Write every day in a disciplined manner. Do not on any account wait for inspiration. If you want it to be your job, treat it like a job and have proper hours when you do it. Then you might just make it. But you have to be prepared for the fact that you probably won’t.
In the end, it has to be admitted that, should you have the astonishingly good fortune to find one, a supportive partner’s your best bet.
If not [ie if you don’t think a writer can make enough to live on from writing alone] what do you think is a suitable second occupation for him?
I’m not going to go all feminist and take issue with that ‘for him’ as these questions were originally asked in the 1940s. As everybody knows, no women wrote books before 1960.
A suitable second occupation… I think both Matt and Tim have covered this adequately so I don’t need to rehash the same stuff. What I did think about was the person who has always wanted to write, who has the odd first or novel outline squirrelled away in a bottom drawer, but has developed a very lucratiave career meanwhile.
What does that person do – particularly if he or she has a mortgage and a family to support – when the urge to write begins to dominate their life? How easy is it for any family to downsize so that one member can fulfil his or her dream? Should there be evidence of talent before the family moves to a smaller house, stops going on holiday and starts subsisting on lentils? Or simply evidence of determination? Or desperation? Should the person be required to have burned the midnight oil in a garret to prove to him/herself and their family that this is a real and burning ambition without which they can no longer be happy?
I think this is an infinitely tougher situation than that which the prospective author finds him/herself at the beginning of their writing + subsidiary career. .
Do you think literature suffers from the diversion of a writer’s energy into other employments or is enriched by it?
Speaking personally, my writing suffers from the diversion of my energy, but all writers are different. I expect this is partly determined by whether the person concerned is introvert or extrovert. Extroverts get energy from being with people, therefore an occupation which involves spending the day with others may possibly help this kind of author. Introverts (I am one) expend energy in being with people and need solitude to build up their energies again, so spending all day interacting with other people would not leave people like me with much energy to write.
Do you think the state or any other institution should do more for writers?
Given that the state doesn’t support me in my self-employed status as a speech and language therapist, I’m not sure I see any reason why they should support my self-employed author status. Both are my choice, nobody’s forcing me to do either.
Given that books basically exist to entertain people (I’m being reductive, but if they fail to entertain then I don’t think people will want to read them and any other laudable aims of literature will, therefore, be irrelevant) if they succeed in that aim, then they will sell and make money. I’m always slightly at a loss to know in what sense novels which sell in very small numbers (like under 200) are ‘good’. How is a book which startlingly few people wish to read ‘good’? Are we genuinely saying that only a tiny, tiny proportion of the reading public has the judgement to determine whether a book is ‘good’ and that the vast numbers to whom this particular book does not appeal and who do not, therefore, read it are not only wrong but somehow deeply lowbrow and philistine?
People routinely denigrate authors like Dan Brown (don’t suppose he cares) and even the output of a whole publishing house in the case of Mills and Boon. ‘Oh, they’re rubbish’, people say, ‘I don’t know why anybody would want to read them.’
What ludicrously arrogant nonsense! These books are brilliant on their own terms. They tell page-turning stories which people want to read. I read the Da Vinci Code and enjoyed it. I don’t think it’s Dan Brown’s best book but it’s not a bad book. It’s well paced, the story is interesting, you want to find out what happens at the end. Which of those facts makes it a bad book? It may not have the most psychologically convincing characters ever – who cares? They entertain. Misery memoirs have horribly psychologically real characters and I don’t want to read beyond page one of any of them. Maybe Dan Brown’s prose style deosn’t make you gasp and re-read sentences to savour them – but then I don’t suppose he set out to write a prose masterpiece; he set out to write a thriller.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying, no I don’t think authors should be state subsidised. If people want to read your books, they will buy them. If they don’t then they won’t. If you want people to read your books, make them readable. It is possible to write beautiful prose in the service of a compelling story without compromising your artistic integrity – Owen Sheers, whose book I reviewed last week and whose work is, therefore, fresh in my mind, shows that this is true. I hope his book sells in the hundreds of thousands, it deserves to.
Are you satisfied with your own solution of the problem and have you any specific advice to give young people who wish to earn their living by writing?
I am astonishingly fortunate to have a partner who is prepared to support our family so that I can write but I am loath to advise young people to choose their life-partner on the basis of their earning capacity.
If a young person I knew wished to be a novelist I would give them the following advice.
Don’t. Not unless you absolutely must. If you think it’s the way to make money, you’re a badly-informed fool – no basis from which to write books. If you think it's a romantic, bohemian lifestyle, you've believed somebody else's publicity. It's neither.
If they were still determined then I would say this. Find yourself an undemanding job which will leave you time to write. Do not develop expensive tastes. Do not aspire to having holidays. Do not allow yourself to become interested in fashion of any kind. Find out where all the local second hand shops are. Develop a tendency towards resourcefulness and shun going out to eat. Cultivate a total disregard for society’s views on success. Write every day in a disciplined manner. Do not on any account wait for inspiration. If you want it to be your job, treat it like a job and have proper hours when you do it. Then you might just make it. But you have to be prepared for the fact that you probably won’t.
In the end, it has to be admitted that, should you have the astonishingly good fortune to find one, a supportive partner’s your best bet.
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Writing for a Living
On the Macmillan New Writers blog at the moment, Matt Curran has put up a post about the 10th anniversary of a “lost” book The Cost of Letters. This was a Waterstone’s publication, setting the record straight both for consumer and potential writer, around the finances of writing. For this they plundered the opinions of writers such as Will Self, Sebastian Faulks, Jane Rogers, Fay Weldon and Melvyn Bragg, and compared them to 1948 authors such as George Orwell, Dylan Thomas and Cyril Connolly – authors that were approached in 1946 to answer a post-war questionnaire on the big issue: “How much do you think a writer needs to live on?”Matt has challenged all of us MNW authors to answer Connolly’s questions and he has done so on his blog here.
The following is my attempt to answer the same qustions. I’m going to divide this up into two or three posts because it takes some thought and I’m v. busy on the wip at the moment.
Anyway, Connolly’s questions are in bold type, my answers (in case you hadn’t guessed, are what follows…)
How much do you think a writer needs to live on?
This, surely, is one of those ‘how long is a piece of string?’ questions. How much does anyone need to live on? it depends where you live, whether you own (or whether the bank/building society owns) your own house and how many, if any, dependents you have. Also, whether you are lucky enough to have somebody who is prepared to share, or even take on the bulk, of providing for the family.
The Other Half and I believe that two people working full time is a recipe for a stressed family/nervous breakdown/a lot of money expended in getting your house cleaned, your ironing done etc.
So, insofar as we have been able to afford it, one of us has always worked part time. For the last few years it has been me. Prior to MNW offering to publish Testament, I was working half-time as an independent Speech and Language Therapist in schools. This was both more lucrative and considerably less stressful than working for the NHS. When MNW made my day (week, month, year, life…) in January 2007 by saying that they would like to publish my book, we looked at my writing time and decided, as from September 2007, I would cut down my working time to one day’s consultancy a week and write the other four days. This keeps a certain amount of money coming in to save for holidays, the boys’ university fund, keeping two cars going (with three, about to be four, drivers in the house, two cars doesn’t seem too many) funding the boys’ musical and ultimate frisbee aspirations etc). But, essentially, I, the boys and my writing exist thanks to the full time work of the Other Half.
If I was on my own with the Ultimate Frisbee Freak and the Bassist I would have to work full time and writing would be next to impossible.
All this is a roundabout answer…
But there is no easy answer to this question. Every family needs to work out what its own needs are. We don’t go much for foreign holidays in our family but we do think it’s important that the boys don’t leave university with huge debts. We don’t spend much on clothes but we do think that driving is a life skill so we’re prepared to put our money into keeping a second car which the boys monopolise. Etc.
Suffice it to say that my writing would not – in any way - keep us in this lifestyle.
Do you think a serious writer can earn this sum by his writing and if so, how?
See previous answer.
However, Testament was only published in January of this year, so I’m not sure how much I’m going to make from it yet. It goes into paperback next January but, so far, royalties have amounted to just over eight quid as the March royalty cheque only covered sales made before Jan 1st. As the book came out on Jan 18th, you may imagine (and you’d be correct) that sales were not great before this date. In fact I’m surprised there were any.
However, the royalty cheque due in September will be a different kettle of fish, covering sales up to the end of June 08. As German and Spanish language rights have been sold, just the proceeds from this will (over time) compensate almost entirely for the one and a half days’ work I have given up to writing this year. Then there’s the money which will accrue from actual sales of the book. September should be reasonable. But then I’m expecting very little next March as, between June and the end of December, there will be very few sales given that the hardback is selling out and the paperback is only due to be published in January 09.
As this will indicate, quite apart from how much writers earn from their wriiting, there’s the whole sporadic nature of the earnings. I’m sure, over time, if one gets the books out quickly enough and they stay in print, these things will even out but, at the early stages when one is likely only to have an income from one – or at most two – books, things could be considerably more hand-to-mouth if one was trying to live on the proceeds.
More along the lines of the following, in a day or two. Those of you who are also writers might like to answer the questions on your own blog. The remainder follow below.
If not, what do you think is a suitable second occupation for him?
Do you think literature suffers from the diversion of a writer’s energy into other employments or is enriched by it?
Do you think the state or any other institution should do more for writers?
Are you satisfied with your own solution of the problem and have you any specific advice to give young people who wish to earn their living by writing?
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Resistance
I honestly thought that nothing would beat Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders for the best book I would read this year. But it’s only May and already there is a contender – Owen Sheers’ Resistance.
The premise of the book is simple – the D Day landings in Normandy in 1944 failed and a resurgent German army has invaded Britain.
On the opening page of the book we learn that Sarah Lewis’ husband, Tom, has left in the night. It soon becomes apparent that all the other men in the Olchon valley (this is not a large number – the husbands and sons of a handful of farms) have left too. Plans long in the preparation have swung into action with the Wehrmacht’s arrival and the British Reistance is underway, the farmers forming Active Service Units like thousands of other previously non-combatant men all over the country.
But the book is not about these men; it focuses entirely on the consequences of their desertion on the women of the Olchon, farmers’ wives, daughters and mothers.
What will happen to them? In other areas where the men have left, it is made clear, their families are used as bait to lure them home or killed as punishment for the men’s resistance.
The other set of characters in the book is a small German army unit, handpicked (the reasons he picks them are little gems of serendipity) by their Captain, Allbrecht Wolfram. We are told fairly early on in the book that Wolfram has been given a special mission, that he is not in the Olchon simply to subdue and subjugate the locals; the unit even spends several days in Oxford so he can undertake research which will help him in his unspecified missin. But, despite the blurb on the back of the book we do not find out til nearly the end of the book what this special mission is. It hardly matters, however, it’s just a device to get Wolfram into the valley so the real action – the growth of his attraction towards Sarah Lewis and his determination to survive the war and have a life with her – can take place.
It is all beautifully done. Sheers is a poet as well as a novelist and, boy, it shows. There isn’t a word out of place in the entire book; the valley and its changing seasons (the action takes place over the period of a year and more) are wonderfully depicted; characters are perfectly drawn from telling details. Everything is rooted in the landscape and metaphors, similes and reminiscence root the characters very firmly as part of their surroundings. These people do not simply live in this valley, they are a moving, breathing part of it, as essential to its nature as the bilberries and the ponies, the steep-sided hills and the snows which cover them in winter.
We see most of the action – and, therefore, the other characters – through the eyes of Sarah and Albrecht and the shifting nature of old friendships and new allegiances is beautifully done and psychologically convincing. Sheers shows, with pitiless accuracy, why – though the Germans are just men, little different to the husbands and sons who have deserted them – they can never be just men to the women of the Olchon. War makes enemies of us because there are always victors and vanquished; even those who do not align themselves with the rhetoric and methods of the victors, or do take part in the violence of the vanquishing, are still of the same nationality and, therefore, cannnot be seen simply as human beings with the same loves and hates, fears and joys as us.
I’m not going to say any more about the book because the plot is simple and to give any more details would be to spoil it. But if you love true, sympathetically-drawn characters who are living in a fictional landscape so real you can touch, feel and smell it in the words on the page, then this is the book for you.
Incidentally, part of the reason the Olchon is so well drawn is that it is a real place. Many of the events in the book really happened and, had D Day not gone as planned, one can only imagine that the rest would inexorably have fallen into place just as Owen Sheers describes.
The premise of the book is simple – the D Day landings in Normandy in 1944 failed and a resurgent German army has invaded Britain.
On the opening page of the book we learn that Sarah Lewis’ husband, Tom, has left in the night. It soon becomes apparent that all the other men in the Olchon valley (this is not a large number – the husbands and sons of a handful of farms) have left too. Plans long in the preparation have swung into action with the Wehrmacht’s arrival and the British Reistance is underway, the farmers forming Active Service Units like thousands of other previously non-combatant men all over the country.
But the book is not about these men; it focuses entirely on the consequences of their desertion on the women of the Olchon, farmers’ wives, daughters and mothers.
What will happen to them? In other areas where the men have left, it is made clear, their families are used as bait to lure them home or killed as punishment for the men’s resistance.
The other set of characters in the book is a small German army unit, handpicked (the reasons he picks them are little gems of serendipity) by their Captain, Allbrecht Wolfram. We are told fairly early on in the book that Wolfram has been given a special mission, that he is not in the Olchon simply to subdue and subjugate the locals; the unit even spends several days in Oxford so he can undertake research which will help him in his unspecified missin. But, despite the blurb on the back of the book we do not find out til nearly the end of the book what this special mission is. It hardly matters, however, it’s just a device to get Wolfram into the valley so the real action – the growth of his attraction towards Sarah Lewis and his determination to survive the war and have a life with her – can take place.
It is all beautifully done. Sheers is a poet as well as a novelist and, boy, it shows. There isn’t a word out of place in the entire book; the valley and its changing seasons (the action takes place over the period of a year and more) are wonderfully depicted; characters are perfectly drawn from telling details. Everything is rooted in the landscape and metaphors, similes and reminiscence root the characters very firmly as part of their surroundings. These people do not simply live in this valley, they are a moving, breathing part of it, as essential to its nature as the bilberries and the ponies, the steep-sided hills and the snows which cover them in winter.
We see most of the action – and, therefore, the other characters – through the eyes of Sarah and Albrecht and the shifting nature of old friendships and new allegiances is beautifully done and psychologically convincing. Sheers shows, with pitiless accuracy, why – though the Germans are just men, little different to the husbands and sons who have deserted them – they can never be just men to the women of the Olchon. War makes enemies of us because there are always victors and vanquished; even those who do not align themselves with the rhetoric and methods of the victors, or do take part in the violence of the vanquishing, are still of the same nationality and, therefore, cannnot be seen simply as human beings with the same loves and hates, fears and joys as us.
I’m not going to say any more about the book because the plot is simple and to give any more details would be to spoil it. But if you love true, sympathetically-drawn characters who are living in a fictional landscape so real you can touch, feel and smell it in the words on the page, then this is the book for you.
Incidentally, part of the reason the Olchon is so well drawn is that it is a real place. Many of the events in the book really happened and, had D Day not gone as planned, one can only imagine that the rest would inexorably have fallen into place just as Owen Sheers describes.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Green of Canterbury
I am green with envy. In fact I am so green with envy that it’s a wonder the Other Half hasn’t planted me in the new bits of garden we have clawed back by removing the two-foot-thick hedge between us and next door. (This has added something like 15% to the width of the garden) She has been having great fun moving things (all the shrubs are in the wrong place, now, stranded in mid-bed) and buying things with garden tokens carefully saved since Christmas.
But it’s not the garden I’m green with envy over, it’s a book. One of those books you wish you’d written yourself and are sick with envy that somebody else wrote instead.
I spent four years (sitting in an English classroom (not continuously, obviously, they did let me out to eat and go to the odd other lesson) looking at a quote from Coleridge about the difference between prose and poetry:
Prose – words in their best order
Poetry – the best words in the best order
Well, the author of the book I’m currently reading is both poet and novelist and it shows. His prose is most definitely the best words in the best order – you just wouldn’t want to change a single one.
What’s the book? I’m not telling you yet. I’m going to wait til I’ve finished it and do a proper paean of praise review then. But reading has slowed to bedtime only at the moment as I try and keep my mind on the WIP – no breakfast reading, no lunchtime reading as I forge on, so this lovely book is being read an hour at a time, which means about forty pages as I keep going back and re-reading beautiful paragraphs, or just a perfectly-turned sentence.
I’m halfway through, so expect a review a the weekend.
By the way, what do people think about the poetry/prose distinction made by S T Coleridge?
But it’s not the garden I’m green with envy over, it’s a book. One of those books you wish you’d written yourself and are sick with envy that somebody else wrote instead.
I spent four years (sitting in an English classroom (not continuously, obviously, they did let me out to eat and go to the odd other lesson) looking at a quote from Coleridge about the difference between prose and poetry:
Prose – words in their best order
Poetry – the best words in the best order
Well, the author of the book I’m currently reading is both poet and novelist and it shows. His prose is most definitely the best words in the best order – you just wouldn’t want to change a single one.
What’s the book? I’m not telling you yet. I’m going to wait til I’ve finished it and do a proper paean of praise review then. But reading has slowed to bedtime only at the moment as I try and keep my mind on the WIP – no breakfast reading, no lunchtime reading as I forge on, so this lovely book is being read an hour at a time, which means about forty pages as I keep going back and re-reading beautiful paragraphs, or just a perfectly-turned sentence.
I’m halfway through, so expect a review a the weekend.
By the way, what do people think about the poetry/prose distinction made by S T Coleridge?
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Great review
I am a very happy novelist. I think you'll know why when you read the following review from the Church Times, which was kindly forwarded to me by Justin Lewis-Anthony of the 3 Minute Theologian blog.
Ta Justin. (If you click on the image, it gets bigger)
I think it's the most perceptive review I've read so far and to be compared to two of the most page-turning novelists I know... well, what more can I say?
Ta Justin. (If you click on the image, it gets bigger)
I think it's the most perceptive review I've read so far and to be compared to two of the most page-turning novelists I know... well, what more can I say?
David McLaurin, whom I discover to be a regular book reviewer for the CT and elsewhere, is also a novelist in his own right. In fact, his book The Bishop of San Fernando won the Daily Express book of the year award. I don't know about the rest of you writers out there, but it feels great to be congratulated by a reviewer who's also a novelist.
Happy weekend!
Thursday, 1 May 2008
What Was Lost
OK, so What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn was last night’s book group offering. I don’t generally read ‘prize’ books as I’m not a literary book lover on the whole but that’s book groups for you, they put gems in your way that you’d haver stepped over yourself.
So, what was lost? As well as a little girl, innocence is lost, illusions are lost, brothers are lost and years of life are lost to monotonous, joyless, dead-end jobs. All of which makes it sound depressing. And some of it is depressing, but there are also laugh-out-loud moments, particularly when we are seeing life through the viewpoint of ten-year-old Kate, intrepid private detective, accompanied by her faithful monkey companion and her ‘how to be a detective’ book.
Kate goes to the school from hell, populated by wonderful child characters and Mrs Finnegan, the kind of teacher we all hope never to encounter, even at one remove. She can’t stand children and seeks only to subjugate.
The Green Oaks shopping centre – both the setting and a character in the book in its own right - is a bit like Mrs Finnegan. If there is a presiding spirit of Green Oaks (such an ironic name for a sprawling city of concrete) it is malign, it does not view the people who flock through its doors benevolently, it sucks them in and drives them to despair. Even the glue-sniffers on the roof who are the least affected by what goes on inside are eventually undone by its malignant despair.
We are given occasional views into the inner worlds of those who wander around Green Oaks, little italicised slices of the lives of Sunday browsers buying what they don’t need, security guards wondering what it’s all about and mystery shoppers who are close to psychotic breakdown. These vignettes bring to mind Thoreau’s famous line about most men living lives of quiet desperation.
But the most mind-numbing and aspiration-sapping effects of Green Oaks are felt by those who work there. Everyone except Gavin, the very peculiar security guard who makes videos of the service tunnels, wants to leave and isn’t sure why they haven’t left already. It becomes one of the reader’s greatest wishes, whilst reading the book, that some, at least, will escape.
So if it’s so bleak, what was there to enjoy?
Catherine O’Flynn is a wonderful delineator of character – in a few well-chosen sentneces people are laid bare before the reader, their souls dissected, their past lives served up in a few well-chosen details. She is not afraid of grotesques and Green Oaks is full of them, but her best characters are the everyday ones, the people we could imagine being ourselves.
But best of all is Kate, little Kate Meaney with her dedication to her craft [‘Tuedsay 24th April. Nothing to report today. Man seen eating orange peel from brown paper bag. Followed him for 40 minutes but no further deviance observed. Spent two hours outside banks – no one looked wrong’] her monkey, Mickey [she’s the sort of ‘tell it like you see it’ child who really would have called him that] and her friendships with Adrian, indolent grown up son of the newsagent and Theresa, her class’s most deviant and cleverest member.
Don’t read this book if you’re feeling low. It is a critique of consumerism which will make any attempt to shop your way out of a blue mood seem not only futile but doomed. Ditto reading your way to happiness. Read it if you want characters so real you feel you have to go and ask them how they felt about being written about in this book and what they thought about what happened to young Kate Meaney.
So, what was lost? As well as a little girl, innocence is lost, illusions are lost, brothers are lost and years of life are lost to monotonous, joyless, dead-end jobs. All of which makes it sound depressing. And some of it is depressing, but there are also laugh-out-loud moments, particularly when we are seeing life through the viewpoint of ten-year-old Kate, intrepid private detective, accompanied by her faithful monkey companion and her ‘how to be a detective’ book.
Kate goes to the school from hell, populated by wonderful child characters and Mrs Finnegan, the kind of teacher we all hope never to encounter, even at one remove. She can’t stand children and seeks only to subjugate.
The Green Oaks shopping centre – both the setting and a character in the book in its own right - is a bit like Mrs Finnegan. If there is a presiding spirit of Green Oaks (such an ironic name for a sprawling city of concrete) it is malign, it does not view the people who flock through its doors benevolently, it sucks them in and drives them to despair. Even the glue-sniffers on the roof who are the least affected by what goes on inside are eventually undone by its malignant despair.
We are given occasional views into the inner worlds of those who wander around Green Oaks, little italicised slices of the lives of Sunday browsers buying what they don’t need, security guards wondering what it’s all about and mystery shoppers who are close to psychotic breakdown. These vignettes bring to mind Thoreau’s famous line about most men living lives of quiet desperation.
But the most mind-numbing and aspiration-sapping effects of Green Oaks are felt by those who work there. Everyone except Gavin, the very peculiar security guard who makes videos of the service tunnels, wants to leave and isn’t sure why they haven’t left already. It becomes one of the reader’s greatest wishes, whilst reading the book, that some, at least, will escape.
So if it’s so bleak, what was there to enjoy?
Catherine O’Flynn is a wonderful delineator of character – in a few well-chosen sentneces people are laid bare before the reader, their souls dissected, their past lives served up in a few well-chosen details. She is not afraid of grotesques and Green Oaks is full of them, but her best characters are the everyday ones, the people we could imagine being ourselves.
But best of all is Kate, little Kate Meaney with her dedication to her craft [‘Tuedsay 24th April. Nothing to report today. Man seen eating orange peel from brown paper bag. Followed him for 40 minutes but no further deviance observed. Spent two hours outside banks – no one looked wrong’] her monkey, Mickey [she’s the sort of ‘tell it like you see it’ child who really would have called him that] and her friendships with Adrian, indolent grown up son of the newsagent and Theresa, her class’s most deviant and cleverest member.
Don’t read this book if you’re feeling low. It is a critique of consumerism which will make any attempt to shop your way out of a blue mood seem not only futile but doomed. Ditto reading your way to happiness. Read it if you want characters so real you feel you have to go and ask them how they felt about being written about in this book and what they thought about what happened to young Kate Meaney.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Busy.....
Book group tonight, talking about the Costa-winning ‘What Was Lost’ by Catherine O’Flynn.
Stroke of genius to base a book in a shopping centre but the real genius is the way she’s carried it off – her characters are flawless, understated, pin-point accurate – you can just see them. And some you love and some you just want to pour paint over. Why paint? No idea, just came out.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of a good patch in the wip so I’m getting back to it. I just didn’t want you all to think I’d forgotten you.
Work tomorrow (as in going out to earn money) but I’ll try and put up a proper review of What was Lost tomoz evening.
Meanwhile, happy Wednesday evening!
Stroke of genius to base a book in a shopping centre but the real genius is the way she’s carried it off – her characters are flawless, understated, pin-point accurate – you can just see them. And some you love and some you just want to pour paint over. Why paint? No idea, just came out.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of a good patch in the wip so I’m getting back to it. I just didn’t want you all to think I’d forgotten you.
Work tomorrow (as in going out to earn money) but I’ll try and put up a proper review of What was Lost tomoz evening.
Meanwhile, happy Wednesday evening!
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Suddenly, Wales is Sexy
Read on It’s a Crime’s site the other day an extract from the Times announcing that, after years being very unsexy, Wales is now culturally hot.
Well, thank goodness for that! Wales is where the action in my new book takes place and I’d hate to have it turned down because I’ve chosen to set it the geographical equivalent of a fat git with back hair.
But, the article (in case you didn’t follow the link) continues:
Peter Gill, however, worries that, although there are Welsh singers, TV stars and sportsmen aplenty, there are fewer writers, poets and composers to match.
Well, that’s as maybe but I’m hoping that Peter Ho Davies’s ManBooker nominated The Welsh Girl and Owen Sheers’s Resistance, both set in Wales, will begin to break down the novel-buying public’s prejudices to work set in the Principality.
Interestingly, both these books are set during the Second World War – is this an indication that writers think this is the last time Wales was interesting? Both are also set in rural areas, unlike most of the success stories which the Times article is celebrating which are urban-based TV programmes and bands/solo artists most of whom (with the exception of Duffy, from the Lleyn peninsula) are from South Wales.
My novel is not set in the Second World War. It is, like Testament, a parallel narrative with one strand set in the past (in this case, the nineteenth century) and one taking place in contemporary West Wales. I think it’s a fascinating place to write about not just because I grew up there (that would just be frank nostalgia) but because I’m aware of everything that’s going on there still. All my immediate blood relations (except my children) live there. I have parents growing old there and wishing they’d got to grips with Welsh when we were little and nephews growing up there, trying to be bilingual. I read bits of the local paper now and again online (didn’t always do that, I started doing it for research and kind of got into it) and visit the website of the town nearest to the farm where I grew up. This website used to have a well-contributed-to forum in which natives and incomers had a lot to say to each other. Sadly, it’s been closed down, though a similar online presence makes an appearance in the book.
The Times article which It’s a Crime quotes, says:
Could it just be that much of Wales reminds many of us of how the rest of Britain used to be, in simpler, quieter, smaller times?
Well, if that’s the case then I’m on to a hiding to nothing as the last thing the new book does is to portray a simpler, quieter way of life.
West Wales isn’t the conventional rural idyll. It has all the usual problems of rural youth depopulation, unemployment and retiree-immigration but, on top of that, it’s trying to preserve a culture and a language. If young people are the life blood of a language (and they are) then Welsh is suffering a slow, inexorable haemorrhage. If the greying of an area makes it difficult to keep village schools (the heart of a community) open, then West Wales has a real problem.
Immigrants who are past compulsory school age see no need to learn Welsh as everybody speaks English and so the attrition continues.
All this forms the backdrop to the book I’m writing.
It presents a community finally saying ‘enough’ and doing something on its own cultural and linguistic behalf. It is not simple, quiet or nostalgic.
I hope that’s not a mistake.
Well, thank goodness for that! Wales is where the action in my new book takes place and I’d hate to have it turned down because I’ve chosen to set it the geographical equivalent of a fat git with back hair.
But, the article (in case you didn’t follow the link) continues:
Peter Gill, however, worries that, although there are Welsh singers, TV stars and sportsmen aplenty, there are fewer writers, poets and composers to match.
Well, that’s as maybe but I’m hoping that Peter Ho Davies’s ManBooker nominated The Welsh Girl and Owen Sheers’s Resistance, both set in Wales, will begin to break down the novel-buying public’s prejudices to work set in the Principality.
Interestingly, both these books are set during the Second World War – is this an indication that writers think this is the last time Wales was interesting? Both are also set in rural areas, unlike most of the success stories which the Times article is celebrating which are urban-based TV programmes and bands/solo artists most of whom (with the exception of Duffy, from the Lleyn peninsula) are from South Wales.
My novel is not set in the Second World War. It is, like Testament, a parallel narrative with one strand set in the past (in this case, the nineteenth century) and one taking place in contemporary West Wales. I think it’s a fascinating place to write about not just because I grew up there (that would just be frank nostalgia) but because I’m aware of everything that’s going on there still. All my immediate blood relations (except my children) live there. I have parents growing old there and wishing they’d got to grips with Welsh when we were little and nephews growing up there, trying to be bilingual. I read bits of the local paper now and again online (didn’t always do that, I started doing it for research and kind of got into it) and visit the website of the town nearest to the farm where I grew up. This website used to have a well-contributed-to forum in which natives and incomers had a lot to say to each other. Sadly, it’s been closed down, though a similar online presence makes an appearance in the book.
The Times article which It’s a Crime quotes, says:
Could it just be that much of Wales reminds many of us of how the rest of Britain used to be, in simpler, quieter, smaller times?
Well, if that’s the case then I’m on to a hiding to nothing as the last thing the new book does is to portray a simpler, quieter way of life.
West Wales isn’t the conventional rural idyll. It has all the usual problems of rural youth depopulation, unemployment and retiree-immigration but, on top of that, it’s trying to preserve a culture and a language. If young people are the life blood of a language (and they are) then Welsh is suffering a slow, inexorable haemorrhage. If the greying of an area makes it difficult to keep village schools (the heart of a community) open, then West Wales has a real problem.
Immigrants who are past compulsory school age see no need to learn Welsh as everybody speaks English and so the attrition continues.
All this forms the backdrop to the book I’m writing.
It presents a community finally saying ‘enough’ and doing something on its own cultural and linguistic behalf. It is not simple, quiet or nostalgic.
I hope that’s not a mistake.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Tagged
I’ve been tagged by Patricia Debney, the delightful Canterbury Laureate, to list six random things about myself. Random. As in strange (modern usage)? Or things which just whizz through my brain while I try and think of things I might actually want readers of this blog to know about me to make me seem more interesting / amusing / strange as in my strapline?
OK then, while I sit here with the best of Top Gear as company while I wait for the boys to get home from Frisbee (the OH is catching an early night – don’t know how she can go to bed when it’s light – that is actually a truly random fact about me: I can’t possibly go to bed when it’s still light outside, it’s just against some fundamental human law which I formulated when I was about six. ‘Mum, I can’t go to bed, it’s daytime…’ I had clearly better never spend the summer in Finland…) here are six not quite random things about me:
1. I have empty space in my brain where the sense of direction should be. I routinely – no, instinctively – turn the wrong way when eg coming out of restaurant loos and end up in the kitchens / a totally different bit of the restaurant where everybody seems to be eating sushi as in some parallel universe / outside in the cold, dark night…
2. Because of the above, I always leave ‘getting lost time’ whenever I go somewhere for the first (second and third) time(s). This is often used up. Especially in Margate. Have you ever been to Margate? It swallows you into its arcane system of ‘you can’t go down here, love’ roads.
3. I refuse to get sat-nav because I need to keep trying to grow the requisite bit of my brain, otherwise it will be nothing but a little black hole into which a nice lady (are they all ladies, GPSes? I’ve only ever heard ladies) tells me to go down yet another improbably weed-grown alley. They do this – all new Sainsbury’s delivery drivers unfailingly ring us up to say they’re lost because the GPS keeps telling them they’ve got to us when they’re sitting on a back lane which is parallel to our road but which is quite definitively not our road.
4. Unrelated to driving or senses of direction, I speak fluent Welsh. Or at least, I did when I still lived there. Given that I have not lived there for twenty five years, I understand fluent Welsh but occasionally find that – embarassingly – I can’t remember the word for something really obvious like ‘home’or ‘run’ or ‘face’. Mind you, that’s not wholly surprising to people who know me well. I often forget the English words for things like ‘home’ etc. My family are star interpreters of words like ‘thing’ ‘whatsit’ and ‘y’know’.
5. If I hadn’t gone over the time allowed, I would have won the Welsh under 16s stock judging championships at the Royal Welsh Show 1978. As I went over the two-minute time allowed for delivering my reasons why I had placed a ring of six British Fresian dairy cows in a particular order I was docked points. I therefore didn’t win, though my reasons were, according to the judges, the best. This wouldn’t have been an issue – moral victory etc, who cares about tropies – except that I therefore did not get an all expenses paid trip to Jersey to represent Wales in an international stock judging competition. Sadly, this did not teach me that brevity is the soul of wit. Or even make me keep my utterings pithy. (You lot should know, you read this blog.) I’ve still never been to Jersey.
6. I deeply hate patterned carpets. I’m not a big fan of carpets in general – I prefer wooden floors with rugs here and there. But I absolutely hate patterned carpets. At one stage in my life I had a bedroom carpet which was swirls of gold, black, orange and green. I’m still recovering.
The only fitted carpets in our house are in the attic, the boys’ domain.
OK, not absolutely random – more thematically related as far as 1 -3 are concerned, but interesting…no?
Right, I now have to tag other people and give you the rules.
The rules are:
Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about you in a blog post.
Tag six people in your post.
Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know your entry is up.
So, I’m tagging Aliya (or Neil I suppose), Akasha, Karen, Tim, David and Leigh
OK then, while I sit here with the best of Top Gear as company while I wait for the boys to get home from Frisbee (the OH is catching an early night – don’t know how she can go to bed when it’s light – that is actually a truly random fact about me: I can’t possibly go to bed when it’s still light outside, it’s just against some fundamental human law which I formulated when I was about six. ‘Mum, I can’t go to bed, it’s daytime…’ I had clearly better never spend the summer in Finland…) here are six not quite random things about me:
1. I have empty space in my brain where the sense of direction should be. I routinely – no, instinctively – turn the wrong way when eg coming out of restaurant loos and end up in the kitchens / a totally different bit of the restaurant where everybody seems to be eating sushi as in some parallel universe / outside in the cold, dark night…
2. Because of the above, I always leave ‘getting lost time’ whenever I go somewhere for the first (second and third) time(s). This is often used up. Especially in Margate. Have you ever been to Margate? It swallows you into its arcane system of ‘you can’t go down here, love’ roads.
3. I refuse to get sat-nav because I need to keep trying to grow the requisite bit of my brain, otherwise it will be nothing but a little black hole into which a nice lady (are they all ladies, GPSes? I’ve only ever heard ladies) tells me to go down yet another improbably weed-grown alley. They do this – all new Sainsbury’s delivery drivers unfailingly ring us up to say they’re lost because the GPS keeps telling them they’ve got to us when they’re sitting on a back lane which is parallel to our road but which is quite definitively not our road.
4. Unrelated to driving or senses of direction, I speak fluent Welsh. Or at least, I did when I still lived there. Given that I have not lived there for twenty five years, I understand fluent Welsh but occasionally find that – embarassingly – I can’t remember the word for something really obvious like ‘home’or ‘run’ or ‘face’. Mind you, that’s not wholly surprising to people who know me well. I often forget the English words for things like ‘home’ etc. My family are star interpreters of words like ‘thing’ ‘whatsit’ and ‘y’know’.
5. If I hadn’t gone over the time allowed, I would have won the Welsh under 16s stock judging championships at the Royal Welsh Show 1978. As I went over the two-minute time allowed for delivering my reasons why I had placed a ring of six British Fresian dairy cows in a particular order I was docked points. I therefore didn’t win, though my reasons were, according to the judges, the best. This wouldn’t have been an issue – moral victory etc, who cares about tropies – except that I therefore did not get an all expenses paid trip to Jersey to represent Wales in an international stock judging competition. Sadly, this did not teach me that brevity is the soul of wit. Or even make me keep my utterings pithy. (You lot should know, you read this blog.) I’ve still never been to Jersey.
6. I deeply hate patterned carpets. I’m not a big fan of carpets in general – I prefer wooden floors with rugs here and there. But I absolutely hate patterned carpets. At one stage in my life I had a bedroom carpet which was swirls of gold, black, orange and green. I’m still recovering.
The only fitted carpets in our house are in the attic, the boys’ domain.
OK, not absolutely random – more thematically related as far as 1 -3 are concerned, but interesting…no?
Right, I now have to tag other people and give you the rules.
The rules are:
Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about you in a blog post.
Tag six people in your post.
Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know your entry is up.
So, I’m tagging Aliya (or Neil I suppose), Akasha, Karen, Tim, David and Leigh
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Progress
My desk is awash with colour-coded cards, the restructured version of the book is a nicely-shaped outline and the rewrite is well underway. I am a happy novelist. More blogging when I’m less involved…review of Mr Y tomorrow, hopefully.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Scrivener and me
Ever since I read an article about a programme for writers called Scrivener, I have wanted to get it. It sounded so elegant and beautiful and just what every writer to uses a computer needs. But it’s only available for Macs and, though a lot of my formative writing years were spent on Macs, I currently use a Windows machine – mainly because, working in schools, I needed my stuff to be compatible with theirs.
So, do I rush out and – at vast expense – buy a Mac?
I wish.
No, I formulate a do-it-yourself version of Scrivener using Word and Powerpoint.
I’ve always made the vast majority of my notes on paper in a kind of spider diagram / mind map amalgam but, since I prefer to use A4 notebooks as my ideas tend to sprawl, I end up with pages of notes which it’s not always easy to read at a glance. Since I don’t then tear them out of the book and file them neatly in a folder divided into sections like ‘plot’ ‘characters’ ‘themes’ ‘odd scenes which might go somewhere’ ‘sudden inspirations’ etc, I have to flick through the whole book if I’m trying to find a brilliant thought I had the week before last.
As people have been telling me pretty much all my adult life, I need to file things better. As I’ve been responding pretty much all my adult life, I don’t DO filing.
The problem is, because I was so viscerally averse to the huge amount of filing I had to do when I was an NHS drone, I have always let myself off doing any at all in my writing life. This, I have decided, has been unhelpfully self-indulgent. As I find it difficult to hold lots of ideas in my head at once, I need to have them where I can see them; I need to be able to physically move them about and change them. I need to externalise my working memory because the one that came built into my system is rubbish.
So, Draft two of the work in progress (which I am forced to call a pretty comprehensive re-write since I allowed myself to be telling the story through too many narrative voices which hasn’t worked) is being planned out more thoroughly, using powerpoint slides as index cards. I haven’t used index cards since I did the research for Testament x number of years ago and I’m not about to start using the physical sort again. I need things you can alter easily and play with constantly. Since I’m not into rubbing out pencilled-in ideas, working in a computer programme is much easier. Also there’s the whole business of me typing far faster than I can write, and not losing my small desk beneath a tidal wave of colour coded index cards.
So, in the interests of getting a grip on my story and retaining it, I now have PP files called ‘key events’ (this is to build each chapter around); ‘key people’ (in an attempt to crystallise my throughs on each of the people I’ve allowed to remain in the narrative after my Draft 2 purge); ‘key events from L’s childhood’ (as I weave the main character’s past into her present; ‘historical episodes’ (basically my nineteenth century chapters tidied up) and ‘themes’ just so that I can keep track of what it is that I’m highlighting and bringing out in this tale of everyday rioting-type country folk.
AND each set of slides (which I shall print off as index cards) is colour-coded, so that I can move each of them around and make sure I’ve got a good balance of things happening.
Scrivener would do it all much better and you can do clever things like link notes to chapters and all that kind of stuff. But this is a good start for me. Already I’m feeling much more in control of the rewrite than I ever did of Draft 1 which was a bit of a seat-of-the-pants ride, if I’m honest, and not altogether comfortable.
So, let’s all watch this nicely-filed space…
So, do I rush out and – at vast expense – buy a Mac?
I wish.
No, I formulate a do-it-yourself version of Scrivener using Word and Powerpoint.
I’ve always made the vast majority of my notes on paper in a kind of spider diagram / mind map amalgam but, since I prefer to use A4 notebooks as my ideas tend to sprawl, I end up with pages of notes which it’s not always easy to read at a glance. Since I don’t then tear them out of the book and file them neatly in a folder divided into sections like ‘plot’ ‘characters’ ‘themes’ ‘odd scenes which might go somewhere’ ‘sudden inspirations’ etc, I have to flick through the whole book if I’m trying to find a brilliant thought I had the week before last.
As people have been telling me pretty much all my adult life, I need to file things better. As I’ve been responding pretty much all my adult life, I don’t DO filing.
The problem is, because I was so viscerally averse to the huge amount of filing I had to do when I was an NHS drone, I have always let myself off doing any at all in my writing life. This, I have decided, has been unhelpfully self-indulgent. As I find it difficult to hold lots of ideas in my head at once, I need to have them where I can see them; I need to be able to physically move them about and change them. I need to externalise my working memory because the one that came built into my system is rubbish.
So, Draft two of the work in progress (which I am forced to call a pretty comprehensive re-write since I allowed myself to be telling the story through too many narrative voices which hasn’t worked) is being planned out more thoroughly, using powerpoint slides as index cards. I haven’t used index cards since I did the research for Testament x number of years ago and I’m not about to start using the physical sort again. I need things you can alter easily and play with constantly. Since I’m not into rubbing out pencilled-in ideas, working in a computer programme is much easier. Also there’s the whole business of me typing far faster than I can write, and not losing my small desk beneath a tidal wave of colour coded index cards.
So, in the interests of getting a grip on my story and retaining it, I now have PP files called ‘key events’ (this is to build each chapter around); ‘key people’ (in an attempt to crystallise my throughs on each of the people I’ve allowed to remain in the narrative after my Draft 2 purge); ‘key events from L’s childhood’ (as I weave the main character’s past into her present; ‘historical episodes’ (basically my nineteenth century chapters tidied up) and ‘themes’ just so that I can keep track of what it is that I’m highlighting and bringing out in this tale of everyday rioting-type country folk.
AND each set of slides (which I shall print off as index cards) is colour-coded, so that I can move each of them around and make sure I’ve got a good balance of things happening.
Scrivener would do it all much better and you can do clever things like link notes to chapters and all that kind of stuff. But this is a good start for me. Already I’m feeling much more in control of the rewrite than I ever did of Draft 1 which was a bit of a seat-of-the-pants ride, if I’m honest, and not altogether comfortable.
So, let’s all watch this nicely-filed space…
Friday, 18 April 2008
Scarlett Thomas
Fascinating. I write some dross about structure in my novels – or not in my novels and then I start reading The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas which I picked up at the opening of The Big Green Bookshop and have, funnily enough, never seen anywhere else. Why did I pick it up? It has black-stained page edges which makes it look different. Yes, I really am that easily hooked. Sad. But true.
Anyway, the point is that The End of Mr Y is fascinating in various ways. For a start, nobody else seems to have heard of it, though it could easily turn into a huge cult thing. Secondly, it’s based in Canterbury, or, if it’s not (the town’s name hasn’t been mentioned yet, but I’m only a quarter of the way through) there’s a town which shares Canterbury’s features to a spooky degree. It even begins with a bit of the university falling into a huge hole made by an early railway tunnel – this really happened to one of the University of Kent at Canterbury’s buildings.
So I went online to find out about Scarlett Thomas - who she is, why she’s setting her novels in Canterbury, etc to find that she’s got quite a lot to say about structuring the modern novel here.
She also has a Myspace page which kind of implies that she wishes she didn’t. In fact she seems ambivalent about a lot of stuff, as you can see here.
So, Scarlett Thomas, anybody want to tell me what the rest of her books are like and whether there is a growing cult out there? Or is the mysterious The End of Mr Y mysterious for a reason…
Anyway, the point is that The End of Mr Y is fascinating in various ways. For a start, nobody else seems to have heard of it, though it could easily turn into a huge cult thing. Secondly, it’s based in Canterbury, or, if it’s not (the town’s name hasn’t been mentioned yet, but I’m only a quarter of the way through) there’s a town which shares Canterbury’s features to a spooky degree. It even begins with a bit of the university falling into a huge hole made by an early railway tunnel – this really happened to one of the University of Kent at Canterbury’s buildings.
So I went online to find out about Scarlett Thomas - who she is, why she’s setting her novels in Canterbury, etc to find that she’s got quite a lot to say about structuring the modern novel here.
She also has a Myspace page which kind of implies that she wishes she didn’t. In fact she seems ambivalent about a lot of stuff, as you can see here.
So, Scarlett Thomas, anybody want to tell me what the rest of her books are like and whether there is a growing cult out there? Or is the mysterious The End of Mr Y mysterious for a reason…
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Structure, sonnets and novels
I have been thinking a lot about structure recently and decided that more is better. OK, let me expand on that as it is – I realise – a little vague. I think I need to have a structure on which to hang my novels rather than letting them evolve in a haphazard way. Over the five novels I’ve written (if you include the wip which is about to enter 2.0 territory) I’ve tried pretty much every putting-a-novel-together method from detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown from the off to ‘ok I know where I’m headed, let’s see where the journey takes me’. And I think my optimum modus operandi is somewhere between those two. I need a structure tight enough to give me security but not so tight as to prevent the characters coming to life and surprising me. (Or me, frankly, having a better idea in the middle of the book and changing the whole planned course of the second half.)
I think maybe it’s a bit like poetry, which I’ve written for thirty years and more (dear God that makes me sound old!) entirely for my own benefit. Mostly I write in free verse and use rhyme and metre to suit my purpose but sometimes, if I really want to flex my poetic muscles, I’ll write a sonnet. I prefer the English or Shakespearian version (rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg) to Italian version (abbaabba then cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce). It’s a bit more like a short story with a twist at the end in that couplet.
I can’t say I’m a wonderful exponent of the sonnet but I do enjoy writing them. The discipline of distilling a thought or a feeling or even an event into those fourteen lines can be wonderfully creative for somebody who’s inclined to let things get a bit flabby.
Free verse is more flexible, obviously, and allows me to search for the refrain or the repeated line/image which is central to the poem and allows me to highlight it with rhyme, metre and repetition.
I think my novels need to be a combination of the two. I need anough form to make me think in a careful, structured way about what I’m doing – to weigh more easily whether things belong and to give me a means whereby the thing can be shaped into a lean, sinuousness. But too much form and the thing is constrained, there’s insufficient room to see those recurrent motifs, the call-and-echo between characters in the past and the present, the surprise burst which takes both reader and writer’s breath away.
It’s going to be an interesting re-write, folks. Watch this space.
I think maybe it’s a bit like poetry, which I’ve written for thirty years and more (dear God that makes me sound old!) entirely for my own benefit. Mostly I write in free verse and use rhyme and metre to suit my purpose but sometimes, if I really want to flex my poetic muscles, I’ll write a sonnet. I prefer the English or Shakespearian version (rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg) to Italian version (abbaabba then cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce). It’s a bit more like a short story with a twist at the end in that couplet.
I can’t say I’m a wonderful exponent of the sonnet but I do enjoy writing them. The discipline of distilling a thought or a feeling or even an event into those fourteen lines can be wonderfully creative for somebody who’s inclined to let things get a bit flabby.
Free verse is more flexible, obviously, and allows me to search for the refrain or the repeated line/image which is central to the poem and allows me to highlight it with rhyme, metre and repetition.
I think my novels need to be a combination of the two. I need anough form to make me think in a careful, structured way about what I’m doing – to weigh more easily whether things belong and to give me a means whereby the thing can be shaped into a lean, sinuousness. But too much form and the thing is constrained, there’s insufficient room to see those recurrent motifs, the call-and-echo between characters in the past and the present, the surprise burst which takes both reader and writer’s breath away.
It’s going to be an interesting re-write, folks. Watch this space.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
My family - insufficiently outrageous!
With many thanks to Randy Glasbergen, whose cartoons amuse the Other Half and me on a regular basis!
Thursday, 10 April 2008
What's on MyShelf?
With all the debate recently (not least at the Oxford Literary Festival which I didn’t go to but refer to here to make myself seem like valid literary type) about lit-bloggers vs. professional reviewers, it was interesting to get sent a link today, by Sophie at MNW, to a review of Testament on a book-reviewing site called MyShelf. They offer free books in exchange for ‘professional reviews’. Since one of the things litbloggers are always a little leery about is the (possible) expectation of a good review if they are sent a review (free) copy of a book, it’s interesting that this site is completely upfront about its modus operandi.
So, it’s not a site where people are blogging about books they happen to have read and liked, as many of us do, nor is it a newspaper books page where reviewers are paid to comment on (aka criticise – in both senses) books they are sent by publishers. As many lit-bloggers adhere to the code of ‘if you didn’t like a book, don’t blog about it’ (which is endearingly like my Mum’s maxim ‘if you can’t find something nice to say about somebody, just don’t mention them’) it’s interesting to read reviews on a site which is not party to the same line but who aren't being paid to do entertaining put-downs either.
You can apply to be a reviewer for MyShelf on their site www.myshelf.com (click the link for New Reviews) – here are some of the requirements:
Address in USA - unless an ebook reviewer
Willing to review more than 1 book a month.
Turn in reviews on time. (Deadline: 22nd of each month).
Will not accept books on behalf of MyShelf without permission.
Serious about the commitment
Reachable by email
Willing to join MyShelf contact list at Yahoo
Drat that first requirement, I was getting quite excited about free books… Still, it’s interesting that MyShelf feel there’s a market for this. Are people getting cynical about reviews in newspapers? There’s certainly a feeling around amongst bookreaders I know that newspaper reviewers don’t feel they’ve done their job properly unless they’ve chopped the writer down to size (though the books editor of the Sunday Telegraph said in a recent article - for which, I apologize, I haven’t been able to find a link - that they have a gentleman’s agreement not to ‘go for’ debut authors). But even he admitted that an excoriating review was more entertaining to read than a laudatory one.
So, what do readers of this blog think? Where do you go when you want to find out what’s hot in the latest releases? Litbloggers, Library Yhing (someone seriously needs to explain to me how this works, please!) Amazon, the newspapers, friends? Or do you not bother and just go and browse in your local bookshop and dip in and out?
The link to the Testament review is here, by the way, in case you’re interested.
So, it’s not a site where people are blogging about books they happen to have read and liked, as many of us do, nor is it a newspaper books page where reviewers are paid to comment on (aka criticise – in both senses) books they are sent by publishers. As many lit-bloggers adhere to the code of ‘if you didn’t like a book, don’t blog about it’ (which is endearingly like my Mum’s maxim ‘if you can’t find something nice to say about somebody, just don’t mention them’) it’s interesting to read reviews on a site which is not party to the same line but who aren't being paid to do entertaining put-downs either.
You can apply to be a reviewer for MyShelf on their site www.myshelf.com (click the link for New Reviews) – here are some of the requirements:
Address in USA - unless an ebook reviewer
Willing to review more than 1 book a month.
Turn in reviews on time. (Deadline: 22nd of each month).
Will not accept books on behalf of MyShelf without permission.
Serious about the commitment
Reachable by email
Willing to join MyShelf contact list at Yahoo
Drat that first requirement, I was getting quite excited about free books… Still, it’s interesting that MyShelf feel there’s a market for this. Are people getting cynical about reviews in newspapers? There’s certainly a feeling around amongst bookreaders I know that newspaper reviewers don’t feel they’ve done their job properly unless they’ve chopped the writer down to size (though the books editor of the Sunday Telegraph said in a recent article - for which, I apologize, I haven’t been able to find a link - that they have a gentleman’s agreement not to ‘go for’ debut authors). But even he admitted that an excoriating review was more entertaining to read than a laudatory one.
So, what do readers of this blog think? Where do you go when you want to find out what’s hot in the latest releases? Litbloggers, Library Yhing (someone seriously needs to explain to me how this works, please!) Amazon, the newspapers, friends? Or do you not bother and just go and browse in your local bookshop and dip in and out?
The link to the Testament review is here, by the way, in case you’re interested.
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Sales and Returns
Well here’s a thing - Amazon is now advising the unwary who click on Testament and wonder whether to buy it to ‘order soon!’ as there are only 5 left. And, indeed, in bookshops other than Amazon, Testament does seem to be getting hard to get hold of. Friends check in from various points in the country to tell me that it can no longer be had or ordered in bookshops for love nor money (OK, as far as I’m aware nobody has offered anything except money…). But, then, Amazon says cheerily ‘more on the way’ and this fails so completely to fit the available facts that I am inspired to wonder ‘where from, exactly?!’ Because, as far as I know, there are no ‘more’ to be ‘on the way’. Booksellers who try and order copies are told that neither Macmillan nor the wholesalers have any copies left. Perhaps Amazon is sourcing its copies from Goldsboro Books which, I believe, still has some signed copies.
Waterstone’s website is advising would-be purchasers to ‘contact customer services’. Whether they want to warn people against committing their hard-earned cash to my debut fiction, tell you they can trawl their stores for copies hanging around unloved on shelves, or advise customers to wait until next January and the paperback version is unclear. And yes, they are offering the paperback version (£7.99 in case you’re interested) for pre-order. As are Amazon.
For goodness sake! Who orders a book nine months in advance? I know people are fond of comparing their novels to offspring, but there are limits…
All this sales stuff is baffling to me. Well, ok, not baffling, I’m not an idiot - I do get the general concept. MNW do lots of unseen publicity, lots of booksellers think they like the look of the book, they order it, they put it in their shops/on their site, it sells, royalties accrue. It’s confusing, though, and slightly bewildering, to have no idea how the thing is actually selling in terms of people removing it from shelves, taking it to a till and parting with actual money. Booksellers may be enthusiastic about a book which the public totally fails to take to its collective reading bosom. In other words, there may be tons of returns. I’m hoping that the fact that Waterstones.com are trotting out the ‘customer service’ line and Amazon are having to draw on some hitherto unsuspected (most things about Amazon were hitherto unsuspected, let’s face it) source of copies means that there won’t be tons of returns but – and here’s the bit which baffles me slightly – I HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING.
I suspect that the bafflement is a largely first-book phenomenon. You’ve spent years writing the thing, polishing, honing, hawking it about, polishing, honing, hawking it about – I don’t have to draw you a picture - and then somebody offers to publish it, and suddenly it’s not your book any more. It’s theirs and they deal with all the sordid details like whether it’s actually making its way, via a commercial transaction, into people’s homes and on to their to-be-read piles. It would be great, as an author, to have some kind of access to sales data but it’s just impractically difficult. I just have to get used to not knowing what’s happening to my book any more. If I can talk MNW into publishing the next one, I’ll know what to expect.
Before we wander off the subject of returns completely, HarperCollins’ new idea of ‘no frills’ publishing which includes not accepting returns from booksellers, is an interesting one, is it not?
Initially, my reaction was to say ‘Hooray! Jolly good show!’ and throw items of headgear in the air but then realism kicked in and I realised that, in terms of debut fiction, booksellers would be monumentally unlikely to take books nobody’s heard of by people nobody’s heard of without the option of sending the things back if they looked like long-term shelf-clutterers.
What HarperCollins are clearly hoping, on the other (more optimistic) hand is that booksellers might just be motivated to exert themselves to sell the stock they’ve bought.
I’m not being funny, but which do you think is more likely?
PS, independent booksellers – THIS DOESN’T APPLY TO YOU – you are all lovely, self-exerting-type people.
Waterstone’s website is advising would-be purchasers to ‘contact customer services’. Whether they want to warn people against committing their hard-earned cash to my debut fiction, tell you they can trawl their stores for copies hanging around unloved on shelves, or advise customers to wait until next January and the paperback version is unclear. And yes, they are offering the paperback version (£7.99 in case you’re interested) for pre-order. As are Amazon.
For goodness sake! Who orders a book nine months in advance? I know people are fond of comparing their novels to offspring, but there are limits…
All this sales stuff is baffling to me. Well, ok, not baffling, I’m not an idiot - I do get the general concept. MNW do lots of unseen publicity, lots of booksellers think they like the look of the book, they order it, they put it in their shops/on their site, it sells, royalties accrue. It’s confusing, though, and slightly bewildering, to have no idea how the thing is actually selling in terms of people removing it from shelves, taking it to a till and parting with actual money. Booksellers may be enthusiastic about a book which the public totally fails to take to its collective reading bosom. In other words, there may be tons of returns. I’m hoping that the fact that Waterstones.com are trotting out the ‘customer service’ line and Amazon are having to draw on some hitherto unsuspected (most things about Amazon were hitherto unsuspected, let’s face it) source of copies means that there won’t be tons of returns but – and here’s the bit which baffles me slightly – I HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING.
I suspect that the bafflement is a largely first-book phenomenon. You’ve spent years writing the thing, polishing, honing, hawking it about, polishing, honing, hawking it about – I don’t have to draw you a picture - and then somebody offers to publish it, and suddenly it’s not your book any more. It’s theirs and they deal with all the sordid details like whether it’s actually making its way, via a commercial transaction, into people’s homes and on to their to-be-read piles. It would be great, as an author, to have some kind of access to sales data but it’s just impractically difficult. I just have to get used to not knowing what’s happening to my book any more. If I can talk MNW into publishing the next one, I’ll know what to expect.
Before we wander off the subject of returns completely, HarperCollins’ new idea of ‘no frills’ publishing which includes not accepting returns from booksellers, is an interesting one, is it not?
Initially, my reaction was to say ‘Hooray! Jolly good show!’ and throw items of headgear in the air but then realism kicked in and I realised that, in terms of debut fiction, booksellers would be monumentally unlikely to take books nobody’s heard of by people nobody’s heard of without the option of sending the things back if they looked like long-term shelf-clutterers.
What HarperCollins are clearly hoping, on the other (more optimistic) hand is that booksellers might just be motivated to exert themselves to sell the stock they’ve bought.
I’m not being funny, but which do you think is more likely?
PS, independent booksellers – THIS DOESN’T APPLY TO YOU – you are all lovely, self-exerting-type people.
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Flowers, music, furniture and writing...
Municipal parks have municipal flowers,
Woodland plants from woodland bowers
Are better.
I certainly thought that as I walked through one of Canterbury’s very beautifully-tended green spaces on my way home the other day. Though the day was balmy and the air smelled beautifully of hyacinths and primulas all I could think was that they weren’t a patch on the bluebells and primroses in an ancient woodland up the road in Blean.
I like flowers in direct proportion to how wild they are. So I can cope with forget-me-nots but not dahlias, buttercups but not lillies. I know the names of a good number of British wild flowers (aka weeds) but struggle to remember the name of a single garden variety which isn’t ‘tulip’. I like alpine flowers in rockeries (quite wild-looking) but can’t usually remember their names – I think they’re stored in the ‘garden’ bit of my brain which I’ve sub-labelled ‘not worth remembering the names of’.
I’m a bit the same with other things – preferring the simple to the over-elaborate. I like plain furniture without too much decoration; I can see the sheer artistry which has gone into an inlaid, carved and curlicued antique, but it doesn’t appeal to me. I’m more of a Shaker-sympathiser than a Chippendale-enthusiast. I suppose, in a way, I don’t like things which have been interfered with too much – I mean, why do we need blue roses?
Woodland plants from woodland bowers
Are better.
I certainly thought that as I walked through one of Canterbury’s very beautifully-tended green spaces on my way home the other day. Though the day was balmy and the air smelled beautifully of hyacinths and primulas all I could think was that they weren’t a patch on the bluebells and primroses in an ancient woodland up the road in Blean.
I like flowers in direct proportion to how wild they are. So I can cope with forget-me-nots but not dahlias, buttercups but not lillies. I know the names of a good number of British wild flowers (aka weeds) but struggle to remember the name of a single garden variety which isn’t ‘tulip’. I like alpine flowers in rockeries (quite wild-looking) but can’t usually remember their names – I think they’re stored in the ‘garden’ bit of my brain which I’ve sub-labelled ‘not worth remembering the names of’.
I’m a bit the same with other things – preferring the simple to the over-elaborate. I like plain furniture without too much decoration; I can see the sheer artistry which has gone into an inlaid, carved and curlicued antique, but it doesn’t appeal to me. I’m more of a Shaker-sympathiser than a Chippendale-enthusiast. I suppose, in a way, I don’t like things which have been interfered with too much – I mean, why do we need blue roses?
I think a lot of horticultural artistry is more a matter of mastery than aesthetics. ‘Look what I can do’, rather than ‘look how beautiful this is’.
My feelings about music are similar. The more producers have had to do with it – on the whole - the less I like it. I prefer the raw emotion involved in a live gig, even if the mistakes and rough edges can’t be edited out later, to the perfection of a sound-levelled, digitally-enhanced, added-tone production. I don’t want echo-effects and people singing in harmony with themselves. If they don’t sound good in the first place, why would I like more of them? I don’t – and this won’t surprise you a bit – like electronic music. It seems to have so little to do with people that I almost fail to recognise it as music at all. I’m not saying I’d prefer to listen to a scratchy, out-of-tune violin or an under-rehearsed choir, but I do prefer my music authentic and performed with all the raw passion people can conjour up. I’d prefer to listen to my boys playing cover-versions with their mates and having a whale of a time than a professional band going through the motions.
And then there’s writing. Where do my rough-hewn, don’t over-produce, leave it as nature intended with lots of passion preferences lead me in terms of my reading and writing habits?
Well, in terms of consumption, on the whole, I’m more of a commercial fiction genre-reader (mostly history and crime) than an enthusiast for literary fiction but that’s not to say that I’m more interested in plot than style. I like my prose to be opaque, by which I mean I don’t want to see straight through the prose to what's being said. I’m not a fan of prose styles which don’t add anything, just let the story do ‘what it says on the tin’ (sorry to non-UK readers - this is a reference to a tv advert which has become a mainstream slang saying meaning ‘does exactly what it’s supposed to do, no more, no less’).
Years ago, I used to do a lot of calligraphy and was advised that the art should always add to the reader’s understanding of what was being read, that just rendering words beautifully wasn’t enough – printing could do that quite adequately. And I suppose I take the same view with prose – it should add something to what you’re reading about, help you see it in a different way, either emotionally, philosophically, psychologically or visually.
Books which I love – a random sample from the top of my head might include The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris, The Hours of the Night by Sue Gee, the book I blogged about last week The Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, much of Ben Elton’s work – combine a deeply engaging story with prose which is in some way or another outstanding – sparkling, magical in the case of Joanne Harris; lyrical and poetic in the case of Sue Gee; quite brilliantly right for time and place in the case of Geraldine Brooks; witty, pithy and obliquely-truth telling in the case of Ben Elton.
I don’t often stop reading a book because of its prose style – though it has happened – but the books which stick in my mind, the words of whose sentences I will read and re-read because they are so utterly beautiful or precise or perfectly capture some concept, are books where prose style and the ability to tell a great story have come together perfectly.
It’s what I aspire to.
My feelings about music are similar. The more producers have had to do with it – on the whole - the less I like it. I prefer the raw emotion involved in a live gig, even if the mistakes and rough edges can’t be edited out later, to the perfection of a sound-levelled, digitally-enhanced, added-tone production. I don’t want echo-effects and people singing in harmony with themselves. If they don’t sound good in the first place, why would I like more of them? I don’t – and this won’t surprise you a bit – like electronic music. It seems to have so little to do with people that I almost fail to recognise it as music at all. I’m not saying I’d prefer to listen to a scratchy, out-of-tune violin or an under-rehearsed choir, but I do prefer my music authentic and performed with all the raw passion people can conjour up. I’d prefer to listen to my boys playing cover-versions with their mates and having a whale of a time than a professional band going through the motions.
And then there’s writing. Where do my rough-hewn, don’t over-produce, leave it as nature intended with lots of passion preferences lead me in terms of my reading and writing habits?
Well, in terms of consumption, on the whole, I’m more of a commercial fiction genre-reader (mostly history and crime) than an enthusiast for literary fiction but that’s not to say that I’m more interested in plot than style. I like my prose to be opaque, by which I mean I don’t want to see straight through the prose to what's being said. I’m not a fan of prose styles which don’t add anything, just let the story do ‘what it says on the tin’ (sorry to non-UK readers - this is a reference to a tv advert which has become a mainstream slang saying meaning ‘does exactly what it’s supposed to do, no more, no less’).
Years ago, I used to do a lot of calligraphy and was advised that the art should always add to the reader’s understanding of what was being read, that just rendering words beautifully wasn’t enough – printing could do that quite adequately. And I suppose I take the same view with prose – it should add something to what you’re reading about, help you see it in a different way, either emotionally, philosophically, psychologically or visually.
Books which I love – a random sample from the top of my head might include The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris, The Hours of the Night by Sue Gee, the book I blogged about last week The Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, much of Ben Elton’s work – combine a deeply engaging story with prose which is in some way or another outstanding – sparkling, magical in the case of Joanne Harris; lyrical and poetic in the case of Sue Gee; quite brilliantly right for time and place in the case of Geraldine Brooks; witty, pithy and obliquely-truth telling in the case of Ben Elton.
I don’t often stop reading a book because of its prose style – though it has happened – but the books which stick in my mind, the words of whose sentences I will read and re-read because they are so utterly beautiful or precise or perfectly capture some concept, are books where prose style and the ability to tell a great story have come together perfectly.
It’s what I aspire to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)