Hear them here first: Man Asian Literary Prize, 2009

So. It's November again, and another Man Asian Literary Prize. Well, it's only the third so far, but already becomming a well-established event. To recap: the prize is for a work by an 'Asian' writer (difficult to determine, but roughly a resident or national of an Asian country) with a work not yet published in English.

The idea of the prize is to promote Asian writing around the world, and the short-list this year are a fairly mixed bag in terms of experience and recognition. Su Tong is an already established writer, with an oscar winning film (Raise the Red Lantern) adapted from one of his early novellas. Other literary veterans include US/Philipino author, Eric Gamalinda and Indian publisher and author, Siddharth Chowdhury. The young bloods are Nitasha Kaul, whose phd thesis intruiginly combined economics and philisophy; and Omair Ahmad, a journalist/analyst with an expertise in Kashmir.

Last night, we got to hear them all talking about and reading from their work. The last two prizes it seemed clear after the reading which novel would win, but can't say I can tell this one. They all had strengths, and with a new set of judges (Colm Toibin, Gish Jen, and Pankaj Mishra) who knows which they'll go for.

Other men than me were confident Su Tong is going to win, but who knows.

I had the pleasure and honour of reading Su Tong's piece in English. Back in the 90s, Su Tong was the only Chinese novelist who work varied from the Wild Swan's style misery books and I think he's one of the really interesting voices to come out of China so if you haven't had the chance to read him yet, put him on your list.

Dinner, was at Yung Kee, where it was interesting to see that once you put a couple of glasses of wine into them, the shyest writers on stage became quite eloquent.

Prize announced tonight.



Su Tong, Eric Gamalinda, Siddharth Chowdhury, Nitasha Kaul, last year's winner Miguel Syjuco, Omair Ahmad and myself.
Thanks alot to Martin Merz for sending me this pic.

Lunch with Colm Toibin

Colm is over as the chair of judges for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize. On Saturday we had lunch at M at the Fringe, and I was lucky enough to sit opposite the big man, but barely shared a word as I was also sitting next to the aunt of the restaurant owner, a very entertaining lady, Diana Marsland - who sailed from Australia to London as a younger lady, worked at the Hilton, and travelled back east by land, and had many interesting stories about Afghanistan.

Anyway! Colm was very entertaining after lunch, and one of the writers you listen to and think, i should go and buy one of his books.

Twiddling my thumbs

So! As the poem began, I finished the book!

Well, I've been saying that for so long I can't remember. Partly because there are so many stages, it seems, to finishing. There's the first draft. The second draft. The draft that went to the agent. The draft that came back from the agent. The draft that incorporated his feedback. The draft I finally finished, and then I sat on the book over the weekend to see if any other points came back to me, and the draft that included those little changes.

Each time something about the book changed. It got longer, usually, smaller characters got bigger parts, and some of the characters began to drift through various drafts in their roles and motivations. As the author it was all fascinating!

And the book's not really finished. Like the fatted cow, it's just finished enough to go to market.

And now I'm twiddling my thumbs, which is a wonderfully odd place for me, as this book has been about 4 years work (I can't get a reliable doc 'created' date as 'm on a different computor, but the earliest file I have is a six page beginning, which is still the beginning, last modified on 27th October 2006 which fits nicely my recollection of a year's research, followed by three years writing.)

Where next? The sequel of course, which is great to look forward to. And the selling of the book, which is part of the general air of disappointment (not necesserily with the money, but the whole slightly grubby but entirely necessary marketisation of my book. But also putting my feet up more, spending more time with the kids (genuinely!) and reading. Four years is a long time to learn things, and I've learnt alot of stuff during (and not necesserily connected to or because of) writing this book. One is the kind of books I like to read. I knew it of course, but I'm clearer now about what kind of books I don't like. I suppose 'genre' is the closest way to describe the kind of books I like. But 'genre' seems to be a term used to describe books (crime, fantasy, science fiction, romance, whatever) where story is important. And I have found that I rather like story. In fact, story is gripping in a way that beautiful language, clever literary references, or any of the other marks of that rather doomed genre 'literary fiction' is not.

And to make some kind of sense of this blog, I think each draft has made this novel more about the story (as well as the historicity and the characters and the beauty of the language of course!) It's a good thing to have learnt. But hell, this is only my fourth novel, so I'm just a beginner really.

What is she called? Well, this novel has gone through a couple of names, and now she's called Shieldwall. Not a very female name to be honest, and as I've compared my other novels to girlfriends, I guess this one is less like a lover than a great friend. Reader, meet Shieldwall, Shieldwall, meet reader! I think you'll get along very just fine!

Past Lives

I lived another life apparently. In Dark Age England. Or so I was told at a party this weekend when talking about the book I'm just finishing off.

It's a little odd. I've been telling people I'm finishing for about six months. And it's true. I finished the novel to show an agent - now my agent - the very impressive Charlie Viney - and then finished it again with his comments included, and so on, until now - i'm finishing the book so I can sell it, and then they'll be comments from the editor, and I'll finish it all over again.

But apparently, my previous life had to be in that time, because the world is so vivid to me. The world's leading practitioner of second life reinformcement/enhancement - I can't remember exactly - is flying into Hong Kong and I could see her, if I liked. And I was quite tempted, I have to admit.

I've certainly found that this book, this topic and these characters chime closely with me. But they it seems to link into thoughts and ideas I had when I was a child. It runs off the kind of things I read when I was a boy: Njal's Saga, Laxdaella Saga, King Harald's Saga, and of course, The Lord of the Rings.

This edit is particularly exciting, because there is little to change. You are teetering on that sentence or paragraph, whilst you balance the rest of the book on your shoulders. And so you have to keep all that in your head, all the characters, action, story lines, love affairs, whilst thinking about that comma.

It has taken up most of my attention for about two months now, during which my ability to do simple things like answer emails, has ground almost to a halt. But I should finish this week, which prompts me to remember other novels, and how I parted with them. I like this one, and in many ways I don't feel that abrupt break, as this is the first of a trilogy, and the characters will continue into the next book.

Of course I meant to be chronicalling this whole period with this blog, but life somehow got in the way of good intentions, and so this is very late in the whole process. Passing a resolution long before New Year to keep up blogging my way through whatever is left of my time with this novel, which now has a name - or I should say it's now got a name that has stuck.

Dear Reader, meet Shieldwall; Shieldwall, it's an exciting time for me, because you will soon be meeting your dear readers.....

Diamonds

My wife is in diamonds, and the funny thing about these clumps of carbon, is that uncut, they're fairly uninspiring. There's certainly no sparkle.

I said before how, if I started writing the novel today I would a better and more succinct novel - and I'm not in a position to put aside the previous year and a half of work. So what to do?

I took a week off writing, and made a list of the twenty scenes left in the book. Which brought me, after a couple of days of mulling on the matter, to the core of the story: which is not the core I thought it was.

Illumination! Fantastic. Which brings me to diamonds. NOTE TO SELF: I write best when I write as succinctly and tightly as possible. When the words are as finely chiselled as possible. When the story moves as boldly on from one scene to the next. It's an exciting thing for a reader, to follow a story that leaps from scene to scene like a mountain goat: rather than one that cow-plods from field to field.

It's quite a simple thing really, but very hard to have that level of control/condifence over the story and the characters to write this well. I was listening to Bruce Springsteen at the time, and was fairly inspired by his style of lyric, which is fairly distinctive in that his songs tell a story. Dont believe me? Have a listen Or here

If a song can tell a story, with a voice and characters and conflict, then why can't a novel?

Plotting, Part 2

Life has given me a handy deadline of six weeks to get to the end of this novel - and it's a target that's just possible to reach.

How to do this best, I wondered to myself this morning an came up with a plan. I will limit myself to 20 scenes to bring all my characters to the end of thier stories. Which means sitting down this morning and looking at the story, and looking at the characters and working out which scenes are the crucial ones.

In fact, this seems like a great way to plan a novel. If I was to start again, I'd spend a few weeks or maybe months writing about the characters: so I could get to know them and how they act in different situations. Then I'd plan out seventy - and no more than seventy scenes for the whole novel. Then I'd sit down and write them. You wouldn't even have to write them in sequence.

It seems so easy, doesn't it?

How to Structure a Novel

Some people use graphs to show how a novel should build and peak. Some think of concertos. Both these certainly have their uses. Structure is certainly something I struggle with - and hopefully next time I'm struggling I'll stumble upon this post and remind myself of the best way for me to understand how all this stuff fits together: Shakespeare, dear boy. Shakespeare!

By which I mean, Acts and Scenes.

I'm not sure how it works but maybe from my school days, of sitting in English class taking it in turns to read out that month's Shakespeare play, I seem to have absorbed some kind of understanding of what makes a scene. And then what scenes make up am act. And how acts work together - or build upon each other - to make a play. Or story.

And plan it out from the beginning, in acts and scenes.

Something that's true from my first novel is that I seem to work in chunks of about 30,000 words. Not that I get to 30K and stop, just that the seams of the novel start to strain and stretch at this point, and it's at this point that I tend to take those 30K out and look at them and fit them pack them down together with less air between them.

Actually I tried planning this novel out from the beginning. But my plan - like those of generals - did not survive contact with the enemy. But I do wish I knew then what I know now about the whole tale. I would have spent much less time on the beginning, and jumped ahead to the main grit. I've been pencilling in scenes I should have written into the first half of the novel, and just pushing along, assuming they have written.

Of course a lot of this will shake out when the first whole draft is written and then I can look at the whole lot - lay the body out on the slab in front of me - and I can cut away all the flabby and unpleasant flesh.

Lessons for next time? Plan as much as possible, and understand the story and it's affect upon the characters as much as possible before starting.