I'm a big fan of Radio 4, and there have been a number of inspirational radio plays this year that have been a great aid in my writing.
I've just listened to the latest: Ted Hughes Letters. It's moving, beautiful, shockingly tragic: and exposes you to the private thoughts of a great writer. On a personal note, it reminds me of my Yorkshire childhood, and I'm lucky enough to have stayed at Lumb Bank, which is now one of the host sites of the Arvon Foundation. And not far from there is Sylvia Plath's grave. And his now, I guess, although he was still alive when I was there. [Actually he was cremated and his ashes spread far from Yorkshire and Sylvia, on Dartmoor]
But this is writing at its best: accessible to anyone. You've got a week to catch it - if you're reading this after 5th November 2007, then sorry. For the rest of you, this is a real treat:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_play.shtml
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Revising: the Joys of Rewriting
Ok, it's not very glamorous, it's not sexy, and it doesn't do much for your home life: but revision is absolutely integral to any book. Some books more than less, but for the beatniks out there, while On the Road was typed on one long sheet of paper, it was heavily revised before publication.
I've not written anything here because I've been rumaging back through my novel, like nosing my way back into a wardrobe stuffed full of old clothes, trying to sort out which bits I want to keep and those I want to throw away.
And it's a process...I've been at work for about three weeks, putting alot of my other life on hold (answering emails, gaming, updating the website etc) - while I try and sort my way into some kind of sense. First of all I wanted to introduce my main character with a chapter of his own. In that chapter I introduced two new characters because I want a nice set of interesting characters well established by the middle of the book. And now I find that I need to write more about these two characters, and In doing so I'm altering where they are from, because I have found that I can use this group of three friends to tell the story I wanted much better than I was trying with the main character alone.
Alot of the work I am doing is because I have a clear idea of where I want the book to be by the middle of the novel - and how far from that I had got. By comparing the two, it allows me to assess how much I have achieved that I wanted to achieve.
I've also learnt something about my writing style, that I tend to plot very closely the movements of the characters through the physical geography of the novel, when I am not clear about where the novel is going. This all struck me when I started reading Far from the Madding Crowd, where each scene is clearly set out, and the consequences feeding into the next, and the unimportant details are then left out.
I'm bearing this in mind as I go back into the wardrobe, but also when I write my next novel, I want to plan out the process a little more clearly: because I think this will save me a few months hard work. I should work out the themes and the ideas I want to get across and then work out how various characters can carry each of these along. I feel I could go back and rewrite huge chunks now, and stick to the main scenes.
This all reminds me of something Mary Renault talked about: using the fast forward button for a story, just cutting unimportant details with the insertion of a sentence or paragraph, and getting back to the main details.
The best way of breaking down a novel, I find, is to take coloured cards - with each character getting a seperate colour - and then write what happens in each chapter on each card. I then pin these on my wall, chapter by chapter, allowing me to visualise the story a little bit better. If there are too many blocks of one colour, then I look where I can insert another story thread into the mix. Then I mark the main story events: and look through my list of events for scenes I can cut, or scenes that achieve the same thing as another, or just slack.
I've not written anything here because I've been rumaging back through my novel, like nosing my way back into a wardrobe stuffed full of old clothes, trying to sort out which bits I want to keep and those I want to throw away.
And it's a process...I've been at work for about three weeks, putting alot of my other life on hold (answering emails, gaming, updating the website etc) - while I try and sort my way into some kind of sense. First of all I wanted to introduce my main character with a chapter of his own. In that chapter I introduced two new characters because I want a nice set of interesting characters well established by the middle of the book. And now I find that I need to write more about these two characters, and In doing so I'm altering where they are from, because I have found that I can use this group of three friends to tell the story I wanted much better than I was trying with the main character alone.
Alot of the work I am doing is because I have a clear idea of where I want the book to be by the middle of the novel - and how far from that I had got. By comparing the two, it allows me to assess how much I have achieved that I wanted to achieve.
I've also learnt something about my writing style, that I tend to plot very closely the movements of the characters through the physical geography of the novel, when I am not clear about where the novel is going. This all struck me when I started reading Far from the Madding Crowd, where each scene is clearly set out, and the consequences feeding into the next, and the unimportant details are then left out.
I'm bearing this in mind as I go back into the wardrobe, but also when I write my next novel, I want to plan out the process a little more clearly: because I think this will save me a few months hard work. I should work out the themes and the ideas I want to get across and then work out how various characters can carry each of these along. I feel I could go back and rewrite huge chunks now, and stick to the main scenes.
This all reminds me of something Mary Renault talked about: using the fast forward button for a story, just cutting unimportant details with the insertion of a sentence or paragraph, and getting back to the main details.
The best way of breaking down a novel, I find, is to take coloured cards - with each character getting a seperate colour - and then write what happens in each chapter on each card. I then pin these on my wall, chapter by chapter, allowing me to visualise the story a little bit better. If there are too many blocks of one colour, then I look where I can insert another story thread into the mix. Then I mark the main story events: and look through my list of events for scenes I can cut, or scenes that achieve the same thing as another, or just slack.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Reviewing the novel so far.....
So - I've had a few weeks away from the novel and I take this opportunity to sit down and print it out and read it, a little fresher: and I have to say I'm disappointed.
There are a couple of things that are not as good as I had hoped.
There are a couple of things that are not as good as I had hoped.
- the opening chapter is GREAT - but it feels as thought the narration loses some of its authority after that. Not sure why this is: maybe because I was less sure of the direction of the story after the first chapter, and spent a couple of months re-writing this point, and then cut lots of it and made it much more simple and straightforward.
- I'm not happy with the main character's character: even though my readers have all said they're happy. I guess this is where being the novelist helps, as I have a certain idea of what I want this narrator to be like, and he's not as rounded as I want. Too much of his personality is shown by action, which is something that comes naturally to me (the infamous show not tell) but I need to find another way of developing and adding to his character. Note to self: This can be a very small touch, and might not necesserily mean more than a paragraph or sentence even. And in doing it, make sure you don't patronise the reader.
- There's a point about half way though where the narration feels like it loses momentum, the main character going home in a way that is reminiscent of an earlier chapter. Perfectly fine in real life, but stories are not real life, and they shouldn't be. It would make a much more interesting movement to cut that chapter [point B] and get directly from point A to C. Also in this chapter the problems the character face are cast in too universal a light: so they are problems that seem to affect all of England. I need to find a way of making it personal to him. I keep in mind Dicken's Tale of Two Cities, where he's dealing with a big historical event, but where the French Revolution is made personal to all the characters involved.
- Improving the characters: I have to admit I'm lazy in the sense that I don't do things that I've heard other novelists do (like writing letters in each character's voice, writing reams character background and motivations) - I like to sketch characters in bold black and white lines, rather than try and paint them in photographic detail. But there are times I need to update that sketch, especially as the story develops and the role of the characters becomes larger and more central than I had originally envisaged. I've had my wife read out a long list of questions about these characters I'm concerned about. I have her read the list to me (a very dull task) because I like the spontineity of the response that comes out, which I feel gives me more interesting and more truthful answers for these characters. I guess in the same way that we have to act instinctively to sudden changes or surprises, without lots of pre-thought.
It's great to have had this time away from the novel, though I wish I had come away feeling happier about it all, but novel writing is all a process, and if it makes the book better at the end then it's a good thing. But it does remind me how novel writing is a process of continual disappointment - like a child that never quite lives upto the parent's expectations. High expectations are cruel to impose on children, but I think you need to have high expectations of art, because its the only way you produce your best by pushing yourself, forcing yourself to improve and make the writing better.
I'm writing all this, knowing that my writing time is going to be limited in the next few weeks as I have a few things that will keep me occupied. One is a book I need to read and review by Monday. And another is a short story competition I agreed to help judge way back in the spring, and suddenly find I have 30-odd short stories to read and judge. But it's important to go in with the right mind-set, and I like looking at other people's work:they're a nice break from my own writing.
EDIT: I was walking last night and was convinced I had to go back to the end of the first chapter and cut the other 43,000 words and start again: but I think the problem is the way the main character is introduced in the second chapter. He is found in quite a passive way, and him being passive as his first moment in the novel, gives the reader a lingering sense of passivity about him. So I think I'm going to go back and introduce him in a chapter of his own, with all the details about him that give the reader quite a different impression of him from the start. Then, I think, there is not so much I will need to edit, because there is very little internal thought, and much more character shown through action - which will still work, but the reader will interpret him slightly differently.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Ubud Literary Festival
The last few weeks have been a little crazy: in preparing to leave for Bali, being at the lit fest, and then coming home again and trying to tackle the snow drift of jobs that have been piling up - which is all a bit irrelevant, except for the fact it means a three week break from my novel.
I'm a little supersticious of taking any break from the writing, especially when the novel is flying along, but sometimes there's no choice. Shit happens. You are sick, your children are sick, the novel is stuck, you're out of enthusiasm for the novel, for writing in general.
So - I try and find ways to make this work for me. One nice aspect of a forced break is that it gives you a chance to put the book away for a while, and then come back to it a little fresher, a little more like a reader will come to the book. And that's a great thing to achieve, because you start to see the saggy bits or the bits that really shine.
Sometimes - and this is the same with many problems, not just writing - taking a break allows your subconcious to bubble away quietly, and then the solution or inspiration will suddenly spring upon you and surprise and delight!
I'm half way through the book. 50K in, and as this is a novel based on real events, the second half is vaguely set out for me. It's up to me to decide how to deal with these recorded events: maybe by following them like a dot to dot drawing, or filling in the gaps between.
I've almost finished digging through the snow-drift, but having waited this long I'm happy to wait a little longer. I hope to start reading next week, and deal with the results, and then pull the story along. Just add a thousand words or so.
Notes to self:
1. Make sure the 50k so far works
2. Make sure the characters are full and rounded and empathetic
3. Make sure I have enough characters to carry the story through the second half of the book. This is the most important one, I think.
This all brings me back to the reason I was away: the Ubud Lit Fest. I'm a fan of lit fests, mostly because I'm a writer who enjoys reading to an audience. Writing is such an isolated art form, my audience is usually a simgle person who picks up a book alone, in a room, maybe years after I have written the book, and opens the book to the first page, and starts to read. No other art form is the artist so divorced from the audience, so readings give me a chance to feel the audience reaction, like an actor or musician.
I used to feel somewhat schitzophrenic at lit fests, as you go from no one to speaker and then back to no one again. But I don't feel that any more: I like lit fests. They give me a chance to meet other writers, and to talk ideas, inspiration, techniques, experiences and problems with agents and publishers. They're the closest thing writers get to conferences, and the conferencing usually goes on with a bottle of wine. Because writers are solitary creatures, by necessity, which is not something that seems to hold true for artists, who seem to mingle much more easily.
Ubud is a beautiful place, and there was a great bunch of writers and artists and literary types around. Its a credit to Janet de Neefe, and all the other people involved, all the more remarkable that this festival is less than 5 years old.
I'm a little supersticious of taking any break from the writing, especially when the novel is flying along, but sometimes there's no choice. Shit happens. You are sick, your children are sick, the novel is stuck, you're out of enthusiasm for the novel, for writing in general.
So - I try and find ways to make this work for me. One nice aspect of a forced break is that it gives you a chance to put the book away for a while, and then come back to it a little fresher, a little more like a reader will come to the book. And that's a great thing to achieve, because you start to see the saggy bits or the bits that really shine.
Sometimes - and this is the same with many problems, not just writing - taking a break allows your subconcious to bubble away quietly, and then the solution or inspiration will suddenly spring upon you and surprise and delight!
I'm half way through the book. 50K in, and as this is a novel based on real events, the second half is vaguely set out for me. It's up to me to decide how to deal with these recorded events: maybe by following them like a dot to dot drawing, or filling in the gaps between.
I've almost finished digging through the snow-drift, but having waited this long I'm happy to wait a little longer. I hope to start reading next week, and deal with the results, and then pull the story along. Just add a thousand words or so.
Notes to self:
1. Make sure the 50k so far works
2. Make sure the characters are full and rounded and empathetic
3. Make sure I have enough characters to carry the story through the second half of the book. This is the most important one, I think.
This all brings me back to the reason I was away: the Ubud Lit Fest. I'm a fan of lit fests, mostly because I'm a writer who enjoys reading to an audience. Writing is such an isolated art form, my audience is usually a simgle person who picks up a book alone, in a room, maybe years after I have written the book, and opens the book to the first page, and starts to read. No other art form is the artist so divorced from the audience, so readings give me a chance to feel the audience reaction, like an actor or musician.
I used to feel somewhat schitzophrenic at lit fests, as you go from no one to speaker and then back to no one again. But I don't feel that any more: I like lit fests. They give me a chance to meet other writers, and to talk ideas, inspiration, techniques, experiences and problems with agents and publishers. They're the closest thing writers get to conferences, and the conferencing usually goes on with a bottle of wine. Because writers are solitary creatures, by necessity, which is not something that seems to hold true for artists, who seem to mingle much more easily.
Ubud is a beautiful place, and there was a great bunch of writers and artists and literary types around. Its a credit to Janet de Neefe, and all the other people involved, all the more remarkable that this festival is less than 5 years old.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Goodbye to all that
My first novel has just gone out of print. I didn't know books went out of print any more, what with print on demand publishing, and I it's left me feeling rather stumped.
The Drink and Dream Teahouse, because that is her name, was my first literary love affair: an intense and passionate love affair. I threw everything I had into her. When I was away from the computer, I couldn't stop thinking about the story and the characters, and what they were going to do next. I became tense and cranky. I wanted to get home and touch her again, I recited her opening paragraphs to myself and laughed out loud, and if she could have spoken I would have called her late at night on the phone. When I was writing her she made my life a mix of extremes.
When I had sat and written something that I knew was great, I could run a marathon; drink a case of wine; go find a woman. Sometimes I combined all three. And when she was finished, I plunged into depression and despair, and missed the excitement of creating. When she went out into the world alone, I probably sang 'Wild World' and thought of her and cried.
But now she's out of print. It's a personal thing for me. It makes me feel sad, like autumn, the scent of jasmine and walking along the playing fields I used to play in as a child.
Make no mistake: The Drink and Dream Teahouse was a great novel. The Washington Post picked her as one of the Top Reads of 2001. She won a Betty Trask Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; was translated into 13 languages, and she was so profound that the Mainland Chinese government even banned her! But she was charming too, and was good at attracting attention for me at parties: and it was because of her that I sat and shared a cup of tea with Valerie Eliot, TS Eliot's widow.
But also a lot of things happened which weren't great, like they do to all doomed relationships. My editor and I both left the publishing house before the paperback launched, so I guess she was launched somewhat half-heatedly. In the US she launched a month after September 11th, and disappeared, like so many people, into that great pile of rubble.
When I got the email last night, my first reaction was to go onto Amazon and search for new copies of her I could buy. I need new copies for my children, and their children, if life blesses me with those. But I also felt relief: despite the great memories. I left her behind a long time ago, went onto other novels and other stories, and now I feel that she has finally left me alone. The door is closed. She is that nagging ex-girlfriend who has finally got a life of her own, and has moved away from town.
She lives on of course, on living room bookshelves and in second hand bookshops, and when a reader opens that first page she blooms effortlessly into full flower, without regret or hesitation or remorse. Unlike real girlfriends, who age or sag or loose too much weight or hang around with dorks, or harbour bitter memories, she is still as beautiful as the day she left me. As the day we left each other, I should say.
You know, if I were you I'd go and find yourself a copy. Get a hardback and protect the dust jacket in a slip-case. Get a good bookcase to sit her on, and surround her with great books.
Cherish her - don't leave her there to dust and fade in the sun! Bring her down occasionally, open her wide on your lap, pick a page at random, or a favourite scene, and she will sing arias, as she sang to me that summer I created her.
The Drink and Dream Teahouse, because that is her name, was my first literary love affair: an intense and passionate love affair. I threw everything I had into her. When I was away from the computer, I couldn't stop thinking about the story and the characters, and what they were going to do next. I became tense and cranky. I wanted to get home and touch her again, I recited her opening paragraphs to myself and laughed out loud, and if she could have spoken I would have called her late at night on the phone. When I was writing her she made my life a mix of extremes.
When I had sat and written something that I knew was great, I could run a marathon; drink a case of wine; go find a woman. Sometimes I combined all three. And when she was finished, I plunged into depression and despair, and missed the excitement of creating. When she went out into the world alone, I probably sang 'Wild World' and thought of her and cried.
But now she's out of print. It's a personal thing for me. It makes me feel sad, like autumn, the scent of jasmine and walking along the playing fields I used to play in as a child.
Make no mistake: The Drink and Dream Teahouse was a great novel. The Washington Post picked her as one of the Top Reads of 2001. She won a Betty Trask Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; was translated into 13 languages, and she was so profound that the Mainland Chinese government even banned her! But she was charming too, and was good at attracting attention for me at parties: and it was because of her that I sat and shared a cup of tea with Valerie Eliot, TS Eliot's widow.
But also a lot of things happened which weren't great, like they do to all doomed relationships. My editor and I both left the publishing house before the paperback launched, so I guess she was launched somewhat half-heatedly. In the US she launched a month after September 11th, and disappeared, like so many people, into that great pile of rubble.
When I got the email last night, my first reaction was to go onto Amazon and search for new copies of her I could buy. I need new copies for my children, and their children, if life blesses me with those. But I also felt relief: despite the great memories. I left her behind a long time ago, went onto other novels and other stories, and now I feel that she has finally left me alone. The door is closed. She is that nagging ex-girlfriend who has finally got a life of her own, and has moved away from town.
She lives on of course, on living room bookshelves and in second hand bookshops, and when a reader opens that first page she blooms effortlessly into full flower, without regret or hesitation or remorse. Unlike real girlfriends, who age or sag or loose too much weight or hang around with dorks, or harbour bitter memories, she is still as beautiful as the day she left me. As the day we left each other, I should say.
You know, if I were you I'd go and find yourself a copy. Get a hardback and protect the dust jacket in a slip-case. Get a good bookcase to sit her on, and surround her with great books.
Cherish her - don't leave her there to dust and fade in the sun! Bring her down occasionally, open her wide on your lap, pick a page at random, or a favourite scene, and she will sing arias, as she sang to me that summer I created her.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Tolkien, writing, and raising the stakes
I had the toughest week getting the chapter I was working on right. Writing is a funny business: you get one chapter spot on, and then you try to do the same again, and suddenly you find yourself overwhelmed with the fear that the novel is becoming too generic: that the plot is repeating itself: in my case, the main character returns home, finds something from his father, someone arrives, and that arrival forces the main character to act.
I remember reading somewhere that the stakes should keep increasing for the main character, till the crescendo of the story is reached. If you think of Lord of the Rings, this process follows nicely for Frodo. He gets a ring. The ring must be hidden, then it must be taken to Rivendel, then it must be destroyed: and at each point the task becomes more and more difficult and the ring goes from a clever ring to a symbol of terrible power, then to a source of corrupting power in itself. In this way the stakes are ratcheted up. Imagine if Frodo had got to Rivendel and someone took the ring off him, or if someone said, oh - this ring is not so dangerous - then the story would have ended there. What could have happened next? Where could the story have gone?
Think of the Hobbit, for example: the majority of the book is about a journey ('There' in which the plot structure repeats itself even more obviously) where there is danger. The same journey is taken at the end of the book ('...and back again') but there is little danger after the defeat of Smaug and the goblins, and so this journey is dealt with in a much more succinct manner.
The Lord of the Rings, especially The Fellowship of the Ring is surprisingly generic: the plot repeats itself almost chapter by chapter. The hobbits face a challenge (black riders, the Old Forest, more black riders [who get increasingly close to the hobbits - till they break into their bedroom], the barrow downs, black riders again - and then the black riders stab Frodo with a magical knife that starts to burrow through his flesh to his heart.
If you go through this chapter by chapter, Tolkien was re-using a similar chapter structure of increasingly difficult challenges. And I think that it's important to realise as a writer that the reader will accept a certain amount of repetition, as long as that is interesting and exciting and informative. And repetition in that manner will not seem so apparent. The key is to getting the events that happen to the characters interesting and exciting.
Sometime on Friday afternoon I created a new character, who seemed to solve my problems. Not because he did anything particularly special, just that he allowed me to take some of the pressure off the main character by switching between their view-points and story lines, and I altered the timing of some of the scenes, and a chapter that had me tense and cranky suddenly seemed to work.
There's a lesson in here for me: that a problem that appears as difficult and impossible to cross as a brick wall can actually have an easy solution. I spent the week getting scratched knees and sore fingers, only to find a secret doorway that allowed me through to the other side.
When I finish a chapter I set myself a signpost to head to for the next chapter. It's like looking at a sea of mist, and seeing a tree in the distance, and walking towards it. These signposts often come to me just after I finish my writing on Friday, and I scribble them down and come back to them on Monday morning, and set off towards them. I'm reminding myself that I have to raise the stakes for my character: so that the forces against him grow in strength and threat. It's a hard balance to strike.
I remember reading somewhere that the stakes should keep increasing for the main character, till the crescendo of the story is reached. If you think of Lord of the Rings, this process follows nicely for Frodo. He gets a ring. The ring must be hidden, then it must be taken to Rivendel, then it must be destroyed: and at each point the task becomes more and more difficult and the ring goes from a clever ring to a symbol of terrible power, then to a source of corrupting power in itself. In this way the stakes are ratcheted up. Imagine if Frodo had got to Rivendel and someone took the ring off him, or if someone said, oh - this ring is not so dangerous - then the story would have ended there. What could have happened next? Where could the story have gone?
Think of the Hobbit, for example: the majority of the book is about a journey ('There' in which the plot structure repeats itself even more obviously) where there is danger. The same journey is taken at the end of the book ('...and back again') but there is little danger after the defeat of Smaug and the goblins, and so this journey is dealt with in a much more succinct manner.
The Lord of the Rings, especially The Fellowship of the Ring is surprisingly generic: the plot repeats itself almost chapter by chapter. The hobbits face a challenge (black riders, the Old Forest, more black riders [who get increasingly close to the hobbits - till they break into their bedroom], the barrow downs, black riders again - and then the black riders stab Frodo with a magical knife that starts to burrow through his flesh to his heart.
If you go through this chapter by chapter, Tolkien was re-using a similar chapter structure of increasingly difficult challenges. And I think that it's important to realise as a writer that the reader will accept a certain amount of repetition, as long as that is interesting and exciting and informative. And repetition in that manner will not seem so apparent. The key is to getting the events that happen to the characters interesting and exciting.
Sometime on Friday afternoon I created a new character, who seemed to solve my problems. Not because he did anything particularly special, just that he allowed me to take some of the pressure off the main character by switching between their view-points and story lines, and I altered the timing of some of the scenes, and a chapter that had me tense and cranky suddenly seemed to work.
There's a lesson in here for me: that a problem that appears as difficult and impossible to cross as a brick wall can actually have an easy solution. I spent the week getting scratched knees and sore fingers, only to find a secret doorway that allowed me through to the other side.
When I finish a chapter I set myself a signpost to head to for the next chapter. It's like looking at a sea of mist, and seeing a tree in the distance, and walking towards it. These signposts often come to me just after I finish my writing on Friday, and I scribble them down and come back to them on Monday morning, and set off towards them. I'm reminding myself that I have to raise the stakes for my character: so that the forces against him grow in strength and threat. It's a hard balance to strike.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Getting started in the morning.....
Pst! It's past 11 and I've been here since 9 and I'm supposed to be working....
Work avoidance is fine when someone else is paying, but no one pays writers to cruise the internet; writers don't get overtime, and if you don't prduce books then you're not really a writer.
But what to do on mornings, like this, when life has just knocked the artistic creator out of you?
It's good to have little ceremonies that you associate with your writing, not because you need them very often, but at times like this, you need something to bring your mind away from bills, and deadlines and personal crises, and all that other stuff, and just bring you back to the book.
Here are some of the things that kick me off:
Work avoidance is fine when someone else is paying, but no one pays writers to cruise the internet; writers don't get overtime, and if you don't prduce books then you're not really a writer.
But what to do on mornings, like this, when life has just knocked the artistic creator out of you?
It's good to have little ceremonies that you associate with your writing, not because you need them very often, but at times like this, you need something to bring your mind away from bills, and deadlines and personal crises, and all that other stuff, and just bring you back to the book.
Here are some of the things that kick me off:
great music
a good cup of tea
notes and pictures
something that smells good
something completely different
revising previous pages
brainstorming characters, plots, emotions
and then just picking up the pen
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