Well. Did I did learn a couple of things. One: I'm not like Ian McEwan. Two: I don't want to write like Ian McEwan. Three: I wish I had McEwan's sales figures.
The other thing that struck me was something McEwan said when he talked about his early writing., which was along the lines of during his first four books he was under the misapprehension that you should not show a character's interior thoughts. And that clearly he changed his mind. Martin Amis said something along the same lines last week, talking about theme in his own writing - that when one has written a few books then you can go back and have a look at the preoccupations that unite them all. I find this very reassuring because I still feel I'm learning about writing, and clearly both of them learnt from their early books that then helped them go on and write more.
As far as the rest of the lunch: very pleasant, and McEwan was a good deal more humourous than his work might make you think. I even went so far as to buy his latest book, Chesil Beach, but found it hard to get through the first sentence without being repelled. No other writer has this affect on me - of turning me off immediately - and I tried to work out why and pushed on further into the book, and it's the narratorial voice I dislike, which is irritatingly all-knowing.
Still, Passing Under Heaven and Ciao Asmara both went into their second impression this week, which is great news, and I'm struggling against the deadline for a couple of short stories, which seems a much more difficult style of writing than writing books. Got a very exciting March coming up, with a tour of China's lit fests, from Hong Kong to Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai and Suzhou. Strangely, it's the thought of the various foods I'll be eating along the way that is exciting me most. But food, intelligent conversation, and fine wine are about as good a combination as you can find. Which strangely brings me back to the lunch. More please!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Literary Lunches
I'm having lunch with Ian McEwan tomorrow. Well, not just me. There's about forty of us who have paid a nice sum for the honour of eating and drinking some fine fare, and then listening to Mr McEwan talk about his work for half an hour.
And all this feels very relevant as next month I will be taking a month off touring the various Chinese literary festivals, and I'm wondering what exactly lit fests and lunches are all about. What do we hope to achieve or learn by listening to an author talking about their work. And - as an author - what do I gain by meeting an audience?
I suppose that the author's motivation is clear. Beyond the pure ego-boost, and the chance to sell books, I'm very clear about the purpose of these events for me. It stems from the fact that writing is a peculiarly divorced art form, with artist and audience seperated by time and place and in case of translation - even language. Readings are the only time an author meets their audience and when I read I get to feel their reaction, in the same way that an actor can feel the audience from the stage.
As a spectator I'ma little more confused by lit fests. And I suppose there's a rainbow of reasons why people attend. I go to learn something from the authors, or to be inspired. But the problem is that authors are so random at delivering a performance anything like thier books. Very entertaining raconteurs I remember seeing include Louis de Bernieres and Simon Winchester, but - my first - AS Byatt was less interesting than a pot of paint.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting from tomorrow's lunch. I'm not a big fan of McEwan's writing, but he has certainly hit a groove in the popular British literary scene - and I am sure I can learn tomorrow - and now all that's left is to hope that McEwan is one of those writers who can hold the attention of an audience in the flesh, as well as on the page.
And all this feels very relevant as next month I will be taking a month off touring the various Chinese literary festivals, and I'm wondering what exactly lit fests and lunches are all about. What do we hope to achieve or learn by listening to an author talking about their work. And - as an author - what do I gain by meeting an audience?
I suppose that the author's motivation is clear. Beyond the pure ego-boost, and the chance to sell books, I'm very clear about the purpose of these events for me. It stems from the fact that writing is a peculiarly divorced art form, with artist and audience seperated by time and place and in case of translation - even language. Readings are the only time an author meets their audience and when I read I get to feel their reaction, in the same way that an actor can feel the audience from the stage.
As a spectator I'ma little more confused by lit fests. And I suppose there's a rainbow of reasons why people attend. I go to learn something from the authors, or to be inspired. But the problem is that authors are so random at delivering a performance anything like thier books. Very entertaining raconteurs I remember seeing include Louis de Bernieres and Simon Winchester, but - my first - AS Byatt was less interesting than a pot of paint.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting from tomorrow's lunch. I'm not a big fan of McEwan's writing, but he has certainly hit a groove in the popular British literary scene - and I am sure I can learn tomorrow - and now all that's left is to hope that McEwan is one of those writers who can hold the attention of an audience in the flesh, as well as on the page.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Phew! That's over then....
It's February, isn't it? I'm not entirely sure where the last three months went, but they've certainly gone. I blame all this on the fact that Christmastide coincided with an avanlanche of family visits. These started in November and ended mid-January, and all this means that life is only just starting to settle into its equilibrium. And life, of course, means the novel.
I actually got a fair amount of work done when they were here, but only in short bursts, and as soon as they left I got to get straight back to work, working full days and nights, and have been buried under drafts ever since.
People often ask me how to write novels, but I have no idea how to write, although I know alot more than I used to. I can tell you however, how I wrote each of my own novels: and they're all as different as children. Having written two novels I thought I knew something about how this one would go, but it's coming out in quite a different way from all the others - just proving the point that there are a hundred ways to reach the same destination.
But there are a few things that unify my novels:
One of the reasons that this novel is quite different to the others is that I know what the second half of the book will be like, and paused 2/3 of the way through to assess if I had enough characters to get me through this second half. The first time I got there I was well short. About 7 drafts have followed, and as soon as that 2/3s was working as a group and got me to the point I wanted to be at, then I've started cutting it to retain the best writing.
Novels have long planning times, and most of March I am going to be attending lit fests across China, so March will be a bit of a miss. My aim is to get this draft finished and then start drawing up detailed plans for the last part of the book. I'm always impressed with the way Desperate Housewives delivers their stories: they're bold and confident - and I rarely plot my novels much, but this time I'm going to try and plot the last chapter out much more closely. It'll be interesting to see how it works, but I'd like to try and treat each chapter like a poem: so that it's intense and concentrate.
Well, I'll let you know how it goes.
I actually got a fair amount of work done when they were here, but only in short bursts, and as soon as they left I got to get straight back to work, working full days and nights, and have been buried under drafts ever since.
People often ask me how to write novels, but I have no idea how to write, although I know alot more than I used to. I can tell you however, how I wrote each of my own novels: and they're all as different as children. Having written two novels I thought I knew something about how this one would go, but it's coming out in quite a different way from all the others - just proving the point that there are a hundred ways to reach the same destination.
But there are a few things that unify my novels:
- My first chapters inspire me throughout the rest of the book
- I have a strong sense of what I want the book to be: and when I'm far far out to sea, this is the light by which I navigate
- Confidence: there is nothing as valuable as having confidence in what you're writing, and it's a hard thing to get when it's not there. This is especially hard when you're writing about a time and place you're not familiar with, which is what I'm doing. But a couple of years into researching and writing this novel, I feel I'm starting to get my confidence about my work and it feels great to come at my draft and decide what stays in and what goes
One of the reasons that this novel is quite different to the others is that I know what the second half of the book will be like, and paused 2/3 of the way through to assess if I had enough characters to get me through this second half. The first time I got there I was well short. About 7 drafts have followed, and as soon as that 2/3s was working as a group and got me to the point I wanted to be at, then I've started cutting it to retain the best writing.
Novels have long planning times, and most of March I am going to be attending lit fests across China, so March will be a bit of a miss. My aim is to get this draft finished and then start drawing up detailed plans for the last part of the book. I'm always impressed with the way Desperate Housewives delivers their stories: they're bold and confident - and I rarely plot my novels much, but this time I'm going to try and plot the last chapter out much more closely. It'll be interesting to see how it works, but I'd like to try and treat each chapter like a poem: so that it's intense and concentrate.
Well, I'll let you know how it goes.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Talking Books: How to achieve 'epic'?
It's funny how books - like people I suppose - turn up in your life and deliver answers almost before you know what the question was.
I've been working on the novel, and got to the point where I was quite happy with the basics: storyline, character, language etc. But something else seemed missing. It didn't seem to have any gravitas. It was, I suppose, just a story, but not something that said anything profound about the world: and I like to read things that are profound.
I was thinking about this when I started reading John D. Rateliff's excellent The History of the Hobbit, which gives a draft by draft account of The Hobbit: where Thorin was Gandalf; Gandalf was Bladorthin; Smaug was Pryftan; and the Goblin king was called Fingolfin. All a bit obscure unless you're a Tolkien fan - but the important thing for me was a letter CS Lewis (of Narnia fame) wrote about The Hobbit, to Charles Williams 'The Hobbit escapes the danger of degenerating into mere plot and excitement by a very curious change of tone....we pass insensibly into the world of epic. It is as if the battle of Toad Hall had become a serious heimsokn [hall-burning] and Badger had begun to talk like Njal'
It was the phrase 'escapes the danger of degenerating into mere plot' that struck me. My novel felt like it was well-paced and drafted, but failed to reach to the pinnacle of relevance: when it says something profound about the human condition.
I came across a similar concept yesterday while reading VS Naipaul's Reading and Writing. He quotes a letter by Joseph Conrad, who is commenting on a novel by a friend: 'the novel was clearly one of much plot but all the drama all the truth are thrown away by the mechanisms of the story.' And Naipaul writes of Conrad: 'The discovery of every tale was a moral one.'
It's easy to understand what is missing and quite different working out how to fix it. I have my ideas, and will come back when I think I've solved it. There's another relevant quote from Naipaul which gives a very interesting insight: 'A novel was made up; that was almost its definition...at the same time it was expected to be true...so that part of a novel came from rejecting the fiction, or looking through it to a reality. '
Seeing reality through the fiction: this is of course what all good novels - good writing - all good art - does. It adds insight to our lives.
I've been working on the novel, and got to the point where I was quite happy with the basics: storyline, character, language etc. But something else seemed missing. It didn't seem to have any gravitas. It was, I suppose, just a story, but not something that said anything profound about the world: and I like to read things that are profound.
I was thinking about this when I started reading John D. Rateliff's excellent The History of the Hobbit, which gives a draft by draft account of The Hobbit: where Thorin was Gandalf; Gandalf was Bladorthin; Smaug was Pryftan; and the Goblin king was called Fingolfin. All a bit obscure unless you're a Tolkien fan - but the important thing for me was a letter CS Lewis (of Narnia fame) wrote about The Hobbit, to Charles Williams 'The Hobbit escapes the danger of degenerating into mere plot and excitement by a very curious change of tone....we pass insensibly into the world of epic. It is as if the battle of Toad Hall had become a serious heimsokn [hall-burning] and Badger had begun to talk like Njal'
It was the phrase 'escapes the danger of degenerating into mere plot' that struck me. My novel felt like it was well-paced and drafted, but failed to reach to the pinnacle of relevance: when it says something profound about the human condition.
I came across a similar concept yesterday while reading VS Naipaul's Reading and Writing. He quotes a letter by Joseph Conrad, who is commenting on a novel by a friend: 'the novel was clearly one of much plot but all the drama all the truth are thrown away by the mechanisms of the story.' And Naipaul writes of Conrad: 'The discovery of every tale was a moral one.'
It's easy to understand what is missing and quite different working out how to fix it. I have my ideas, and will come back when I think I've solved it. There's another relevant quote from Naipaul which gives a very interesting insight: 'A novel was made up; that was almost its definition...at the same time it was expected to be true...so that part of a novel came from rejecting the fiction, or looking through it to a reality. '
Seeing reality through the fiction: this is of course what all good novels - good writing - all good art - does. It adds insight to our lives.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
The First Man Asian Literary Prize
Not all hedge funds are bad: and in a world where literature - from the writers to the organisers of festivals -are usually involved in a loss-making business (writers usually receive something less than the minimum wage for the hours, or years on a novel), it is important that Man Group plc have stepped up to support a Asian Man award, a prize very much along the lines of the Man Booker in the UK.
It seems a little odd to encompass Asia into one literary prize, but actually all the other great landmasses already have their own prizes - a plethora of them in North America and Europe - and apart from the generic 'misery books' that China throws out, along the lines of Wild Swans, Asian voices seem under represented on the shelves of most bookshops.
Having spent the afternoon listening to the finalists of this, the first Man Asian Literary Prize, reading and talking about their work I have been struck at how universal their stories are, and how accessible and important. There is Jose Y. Dalisay's dark comedy about the body of an overseas Philipino who is sent home in a coffin, and gives us the flip side of the impact of US naval bases on a local community; Reeti Gadekar's clever and funny exploration of Western and Indian culture and society; and Xu Xi's novel which - like many of Hong Kong's residents - straddles cities as far apart as New York and Hong Kong.
Unlike most literary prizes, which peg their publicity on the 'big' names who file around the shortlists on 5-yearly intervals (please not McEwan/Rushdie again!) the names of this list, chosen from a staggering 200+ entrants from across Asia, are probably unknown to most people. None of them have been published in the UK or USA, which does not mean they shouldn't be. Jiang Rong's 'Wolf Totem', is a run-away best-seller in his native China, with sales figures in the league of JK Rowling (2 million official sales, and an estimated 4 million pirated copies). Nu Nu Yi, a favourite Burmese writer, has written fifteen novels, and over a hundred short stories, while five of Dalisay's novels have won the Filipino National Book Award. That writers of this calibre have remained undiscovered is surely a crime, and more than this: it is a loss to people who love literature.
Of course - and this is part of the purpose of the prize - this award will help propel some of these writers out of the 'Asian' world into a Western bookshop. Wolf Totem has been picked up by Penguin and will be out in the UK in March 2008, and many of the other writers have publishers who have shown interest.
It begs the question why do we need a prize to encourage readers to try something from a Burmese or Philipino writer? Stories are about people, and having written two novels about Chinese characters - both eminently successful - I heard nothing from the writers this afternoon that would preclude a Western reader from sitting and enjoying their tales. Because good writing is - and there is no doubt that the five writers shortlisted here are good writers - universal. It is about the human experience and that experience does not change radically if you are Thai or French or American or Chinese.
Hopefully this prize will put Asian writing more onto the map: and also give Asian writers more confidence and more encouragement to put their experiences and lives into literature. Certainly the profound changes that are happening here deserve a literary voice.
It seems a little odd to encompass Asia into one literary prize, but actually all the other great landmasses already have their own prizes - a plethora of them in North America and Europe - and apart from the generic 'misery books' that China throws out, along the lines of Wild Swans, Asian voices seem under represented on the shelves of most bookshops.
Having spent the afternoon listening to the finalists of this, the first Man Asian Literary Prize, reading and talking about their work I have been struck at how universal their stories are, and how accessible and important. There is Jose Y. Dalisay's dark comedy about the body of an overseas Philipino who is sent home in a coffin, and gives us the flip side of the impact of US naval bases on a local community; Reeti Gadekar's clever and funny exploration of Western and Indian culture and society; and Xu Xi's novel which - like many of Hong Kong's residents - straddles cities as far apart as New York and Hong Kong.
Unlike most literary prizes, which peg their publicity on the 'big' names who file around the shortlists on 5-yearly intervals (please not McEwan/Rushdie again!) the names of this list, chosen from a staggering 200+ entrants from across Asia, are probably unknown to most people. None of them have been published in the UK or USA, which does not mean they shouldn't be. Jiang Rong's 'Wolf Totem', is a run-away best-seller in his native China, with sales figures in the league of JK Rowling (2 million official sales, and an estimated 4 million pirated copies). Nu Nu Yi, a favourite Burmese writer, has written fifteen novels, and over a hundred short stories, while five of Dalisay's novels have won the Filipino National Book Award. That writers of this calibre have remained undiscovered is surely a crime, and more than this: it is a loss to people who love literature.
Of course - and this is part of the purpose of the prize - this award will help propel some of these writers out of the 'Asian' world into a Western bookshop. Wolf Totem has been picked up by Penguin and will be out in the UK in March 2008, and many of the other writers have publishers who have shown interest.
It begs the question why do we need a prize to encourage readers to try something from a Burmese or Philipino writer? Stories are about people, and having written two novels about Chinese characters - both eminently successful - I heard nothing from the writers this afternoon that would preclude a Western reader from sitting and enjoying their tales. Because good writing is - and there is no doubt that the five writers shortlisted here are good writers - universal. It is about the human experience and that experience does not change radically if you are Thai or French or American or Chinese.
Hopefully this prize will put Asian writing more onto the map: and also give Asian writers more confidence and more encouragement to put their experiences and lives into literature. Certainly the profound changes that are happening here deserve a literary voice.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The Harry Potter of Novel Writing
I've spent much of the last 6 weeks going back through the novel, teasing out scenes here, rewriting them at times, cutting in others. What has struck me and my readers is that I often build to a climax, and then avoid the climax and move on. Which means, when I go back I need to build all these scenes to their natural conclusion: which is truly exhausting work - and probably the reason I avoided doing it the first time round. I think of this process as a little like casting a spell, which is how Harry Potter comes in: because hitting these scenes is just like spell-casting.
Here's how:
Preparation: think about the scene, work out where you want it to end up, and what the climax should be. Get all the ingredients you need with you (not spider's legs but tea of coffee or cigarettes or whatever you're going to need for this process which might take anything up to a couple of hours.) Sit down. Clear away all the detritus of the day. Focus your mind.
Casting: Focus clearly. Put yourself into the characters - in wizard terms, possess your character's body and feel how they feel and see what they see and write it down as clearly and honestly as you can. There will probably be more than one character that you have to possess: which is an exhausting process as you take on the personality and backstory and experience of each of the characters in turn. Like a spellcaster, you are summoning spirits and illusions and movement to enchant and entrance the reader. Focus: your are summoning a world and a moment into being.
Recovery: If the spell has been cast properly then as all wizards in all tales - you will be exhausted. You're body will feel empty and dislocated from the world around you: because in truth you have passed from our world into the world of your imagination; have possessed the body of imaginary people and moved them like real.
The spell ends.
This analogy becomes much more understandable when you think of the original meaning of the word 'spell', whose spelling (from a different word source) hasn't changed since Old English times, and which comes to us in the word 'gospel' [O.E. 'godspel'].
For the original meaning of 'spell' is story. And what else is story-telling than the working of illusions, the charming and enchanting of an audience: once through sitting in a fire lit hall and telling them a tale, but now more likely through the words we write on a page.
Here's how:
Preparation: think about the scene, work out where you want it to end up, and what the climax should be. Get all the ingredients you need with you (not spider's legs but tea of coffee or cigarettes or whatever you're going to need for this process which might take anything up to a couple of hours.) Sit down. Clear away all the detritus of the day. Focus your mind.
Casting: Focus clearly. Put yourself into the characters - in wizard terms, possess your character's body and feel how they feel and see what they see and write it down as clearly and honestly as you can. There will probably be more than one character that you have to possess: which is an exhausting process as you take on the personality and backstory and experience of each of the characters in turn. Like a spellcaster, you are summoning spirits and illusions and movement to enchant and entrance the reader. Focus: your are summoning a world and a moment into being.
Recovery: If the spell has been cast properly then as all wizards in all tales - you will be exhausted. You're body will feel empty and dislocated from the world around you: because in truth you have passed from our world into the world of your imagination; have possessed the body of imaginary people and moved them like real.
The spell ends.
This analogy becomes much more understandable when you think of the original meaning of the word 'spell', whose spelling (from a different word source) hasn't changed since Old English times, and which comes to us in the word 'gospel' [O.E. 'godspel'].
For the original meaning of 'spell' is story. And what else is story-telling than the working of illusions, the charming and enchanting of an audience: once through sitting in a fire lit hall and telling them a tale, but now more likely through the words we write on a page.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Ted Hughes Letters: Brilliant listening
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
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
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