Writing, not Posting

I am writing or, more to the point, doing this before I write. I have laid the foundations and now I'm building the trellises and the supports around which the plants of my story will grow.

(image found here)

I still agree with John Fowles when he says that writing is an organic process. He wrote this, on pages 85 & 86 of my copy of The French Lieutenant's Woman:

You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons. ... Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world.

but living breathing organisms also need a purpose and a direction and, as they grow, they conceal, and can replace, the 'planned world' - the pergolas, around which they began their growth.

When the pergolas and the trellises are completed, I shall write.

So I won't be posting for some time.

I don't know how long.

But, for the moment, the MATs have flown.

(image found here)

When is a MAT harder than writing? ...

... when it results in this:

Describe your five strengths as a writer

I found the challenge HERE and because I was busy MATing (reading readers' and writers' blogs to avoid writing) I told myself that I would do it, that stumbling across it served me right for avoiding writing, and that I'd get back to writing as soon as I'd done it.

Now that I've said I'll do it I'm as horrified as Sarah was when Bendrix walks back into their bedroom after the bomb. She thinks he's dead and she's on her knees promising God that if he will let Bendrix live she will never see him again. (The End of the Affair, Graham Greene). He lives so she has to keep her promise.

An excessive reaction you may think ... but the fear that positive honesty will result in ridicule resides in all of us, I think. (Enough rs. Ed.)

1 I write emotional truth
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes that emotional truth is difficult to define but instantly recognisable. It is the antithesis of explanation. It is an empathetic human quality and my writing has it. It is the most important thing to me about my writing. When I read I want to be engaged, and the only way a novel truly engages me is when it touches me. My writing touches readers.

2 I write courageously and honestly
If I didn't my stories would bore. I write what I know to be true, metaphorically speaking. I write about soul truths. I write about heart truths. These are, of course, my truths and the truths that belong to the characters I write, so they are subjective truths. But every time I write something that evades the truth of a story I delete it, eventually.

3 The language I use is poetic, lyrical
The words matter. The way they are put together matters. I will work at the way a story is written until the words sing back to me. Sometimes they sing straight away, but usually I need to redraft, and redraft, to find the right rhythms before the words can sing.

4 I paint pictures with words
When I am writing, I see what I'm writing about in my mind's eye. I see the place, the person, the people who aren't speaking, the colours, the angles, the action, the inaction and I know what the weather's doing even if I haven't described it. My writing transmits pictures to its readers.

5 I write succinctly because less is always more
(I cut a lot.)

A new relationship with my writing ...

... is what I need.

I realised over the weekend, while thinking about other relationships in my life, that the relationship I have with my writing is one of dread fuelled by the certainty that it will be a struggle: that I always expect to discover that what I thought was a story isn't, that the characters I thought realistic aren't and that the situations I thought plausible are as unstable as, well, something very unstable.

My relationship with my writing is fuelled by my dread that it won't be what I thought it was, either in the imagining or in the rereading. I dread that I have, and will end up with ... nothing.

But what I realised on my way back from Salisbury yesterday was that if I change my expectations, if I welcome the lack of knowing where it's all going as a puzzle I'll probably be able to solve instead of a failure of imagination; if I delight in the exploration instead of feeling inadequate because I'm not already filled with ideas; if I have the courage to dare to see what happens next without rejecting ideas before they have the chance to flower, then that black cloud of dread could be pierced by shafts of sunlight and I'll get down to writing quicker and, who knows, this whole MAT business could become a thing of the past.

Here goes ... .

When is writing also a MAT?

When it's another piece of writing.

I managed to stop writing the short story (the one that was a novel, you remember) this week so that I could resurrect the idea for a children's novel from a horrible first draft written one thousand (well, ten) years ago.

And the reason for stopping? To send three re-re-re-re-re-re-redrafted chapters and a synopsis of the children's novel to Fidra Books's competition A New Book for Fidra. The deadline was today, I emailed my submission yesterday afternoon and now I am worrying about having too many pieces of writing on the go at once (and having to find even more reasons to avoid doing any of them).

But I am the only person who asked me to do this, and so I am the only person I can turn to. Just as, when people ask me how I manage to be disciplined about writing I say, 'If, by seven o'clock in the evening (The Archers, of course) I haven't any writing to show for myself (or research done or thoughts written down), I am the only person I can blame for my pissed-offness at the lack. And I get sick of being pissed-off (and only having myself to blame) at the bottom of the stairs of an evening.

So, perhaps writing will beget writing?

PS: Did you know that Jennifer Aldridge's Ambridge website really exists? How does that work? A real website about a fictional village on a site for a soap peopled with invented characters on the BBC? I am confused ... but I sense a new MAT coming on.

Emily Young's Wounded Angel

sculpture copyright Emily Young, photograph copyright Angelo Plantamura

You can see this beautiful angel (called Wounded Angel I) in Kew Gardens, in London, or you can see a photograph of him in Tacit Hill's A Light Touch and a Long View which was published in June and is full full full of colour plates of Emily Young's sculpture.

Emily Young's angels truly touch me. I first saw one at the London Art Fair several years ago and have searched them out ever since. This one is part of her Earth Angel project ... and in my workroom, among the piles of paper, work in progress (not to mention the other people's work in progress that I'm editing), in pride of place on the floor is a copy of A Light Touch and a Long View and it's usually open at this page because this angel's expression is almost unbearably touching to me. But he can also send me into reflective mood, and I often end up in a (story) place I hadn't intended heading for ... he is, sometimes, like a story guardian angel. When I'm lost for words, or tired of editing, or anything really, I look at him.

Emily Young also writes about the stone she sculpts. She writes about the 'stink' that sometimes comes from a piece of stone when she cuts into it, a stink that has been trapped in that piece of stone for millennia. She talks about the age of the stone and the stories hidden in the stone, the stories the stone carries.

Looking at her work is worth not writing for. But, unusually for a MAT, it also sets me on the road to writing.

Editing, MATs and piles of paper

Most writers, in fact surely all of us except those with humungous sales, earn their living by doing something else (obviously not by MATing).

I earn mine by editing other people's non-fiction, and/or proofreading it. I have just quoted for a piece of editing work and while I am waiting for the editor at the publishing house to say whether my quote and the length of time I've said it will take are acceptable, I MATed (just a bit) on the net, and I found this while searching for a solution to my horrible when-I-add-a-picture-or-a-quote-the-line-spacing-on-my-blog-goes-single problem. (I know, they hardly seem related, but you'd be surprised):

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

The third pile of paper accurately represents the state of my writing room (mostly piles of editing in varying states of completion, but also one novel pile and one short story pile - writers of novels and short stories have to research, you know, and research often leads to paper). Anyway the cartoon made me laugh while I was trying to solve an irritating problem (which has been solved HERE, if any other Blogger is suffering similar symptoms), and there are lots of Dave Walker's cartoons on We Blog Cartoons (link above) that you can copy into your blog for free, if they appeal to you. Dave Walker says he lets us do this because:

The more people who enjoy my work the better, and life is generally too short not to give things away.

I, uncharitably perhaps, shall not be giving any of my editing work away.

Orchids for Simon

I am overwhelmed.

This orchid is for Simon at Stuck in a Book for his overwhelming review of Speaking of Love. See The word on ... at the top on the right.

Orchids, according to Clare Florists' flower meanings are flowers of magnificence and, although I'm not at all sure what the thanking-for-a-blog-book-review etiquette is, it would surely be rude not to thank Simon, publicly, for such a magnificent review, wouldn't it? So thank you, Simon.

It is also the most wonderful MAT yet ... I read the review early this morning, fell over, read it again, posted a thank-you comment on Simon's blog for it, failed to do my exercises, haven't even had a bath yet, and am sitting here in my PJs writing this before I do any of the above, let alone before I get down to writing for the day.

But there is a serious point to make, too. Speaking of Love is published by the wonderful, independent Beautiful Books and, as dovegreyreader says in this post 'small publishers work with limited funds' and so, if the literary review pages don't review the books the small publishers publish (and send out in their hundreds to them for review) - and they didn't review Speaking of Love - the bookshops won't stock their books. And if the bookshops don't stock the indie publishers' books how do the indies sell their books, when they can't afford to buy the space in the big-chain bookshops' windows? And it's almost impossible to get a review in the literary review pages if the writer and the publisher are unknown. So how does an indie publisher become better known if the literary review pages ignore them? See my post here on this Catch-22 situation-situation.

However, I think I have discovered a secret weapon. This Sunday, 19 August, I'm going to Mostly Books in Abingdon to take Mark Thornton's one-day course for writers on how to sell your book into indie bookshops. I heard him talk at the Society of Authors on 25 July (see my post here for more). And I will post about his course and my success, or failure - which I'm sure will be because of my incompetence, not his advice - when I am armed with the secrets of (t)his secret weapon.

In dovegreyreader's post about all this she says that she thinks the 'Indies should just band together and set up their own review magazine'. I heartly endorse that and enthusiastically forwarded her post to Beautiful Books, and suggested they go and hear her at the Publisher's Publicity Circle lunch at Foyle's on 30 August: see here.

But in the meantime, here are more orchids for Simon,

for giving Speaking of Love a helping hand on its way out into the world.

Thank you, Simon.

Writing, MATs and ticker-tape turn ups

On Friday morning, in the bath, before I started work (a bath can be a MAT, but only if I'm still in it after the practical stuff is over), the sentence, 'On the whole we resist falling in love' turned up in my head. This isn't unusual (not that sentence, but sentences in general, or phrases, often turn up in my head). Sometimes they're connected with the piece I'm writing at the time, sometimes they're not, but they stream through my head on what seems to me to be ticker-tape, although they stream horizontally, not vertically, and if they're not connected with the piece I'm writing at the time, they're often springboards to the next. (A springboarding ticker-tape?)

I've just Googled ticker-tape to make sure it was what I thought it was, and here is a rather beautiful (copyrighted) image of a working replica of a stock ticker, and a Wikipedia entry that explains.

Anyway, the short-story-that-was-a-novel found itself being given, 'On the whole we resist falling in love' as its new opening sentence and (I hate to say this for fear of the wrath of the writing gods ... but ...) beginning that way imposed a structure on the story that works. At least it worked on Friday and it was still working yesterday. And so, naturally, I am resisting getting back to it by posting this MAT-blog in case (a) I'm proved wrong today, or (b) it continues to work and so requires me to continue to put one word after another. One word after another ... that was the word I needed in Sunday's blog - not one word in front of another, nor one word behind another.

And so, with trepidation, to work.

Making the language sing

So ... I spent yesterday rewriting the first seven pages of the short-story-that-was-a-novel. Or, as I prefer to call it, making the language sing.

Now that's not a full-scale opera you understand, just one short under-rehearsed aria, but I hate clunky language. I'm a huge fan of the less-is-more-poetic school of writing, but when I'm trying to find out what the story is (although in this case I mostly know that) and what order it should be told in, the language doesn't get enough attention. (Obviously I'm not much of a multitasker, despite the fact that I'm a woman.)

Today ... I'm about to get down to doing the same to the next seven or so pages (I know, it's late, and this post will be the absolute LAST of my MATs for the day). Then there are about another seven roughly drafted, and then who knows which of the remaining parts of the once-upon-a-time-this-was-a-novel will make it into the short story? No doubt I shall find out next week.

First novels and short stories

The thing about writing your first novel is that as well as doing it you're finding out how to do it. So, you would have thought that I'd have discovered at least the fundamentals of the how by now.

But it seems that I haven't, or hadn't. My second novel, which I had the idea for while I was still writing my first, in 2003 (or was it 2004?), turned out - in early 2007 - to be a short story. And the reason is simple (I realise, three years on). What I have been struggling to turn into a novel is a glimpse of a life (as William Trevor so deftly describes the essence of the short story) not a sinuous, continuous, easily-flowing or utterly dammed-up great big chunk of a life. (Or better, all these things, in their turn.)

A short story revolves around one main event, not a series of events caused by the characters or which cause them to react (or not). Of course the characters in a short story are affected by, or have caused, the event (which won't necessarily be a concrete exterior event, it could be an interior, psychological event), but this event is the fulcrum of the story. What has happened before it or what may happen after it do not belong in the short story: the event itself and how the characters deal with it serve as food for speculation about the before and the after in the readers' minds.

So, at last I know what to do with this novel I've been wrestling with. It is both a huge disappointment (no novel) and a great relief (I haven't had to bin the idea completely).

So, now I know what to do I'd better stop writing this MAT and get on with it. (Sometimes, getting down to a piece of work when I know where I'm going is more daunting then getting down to a piece of work when I don't know where I'm going. Why? Because it might not work, of course.)

Man Booker Longlist, MATs and Natalie Goldberg

So ... the Booker Longlist is out and it includes four first novels which can only be good news for those of us with books which have cleared the finding-a-publisher-for-the-first-novel hurdle.

I looked in vain for Speaking of Love, knowing that it wouldn't be there but hoping, fantastically against the odds, that it would be. (Me and all the other first novel-makers among the 97 books that didn't make the longlist.) In my yoga class yesterday afternoon, which I went to to cure the RSI that my obsessive clicking on the Man Booker site had provoked, I even managed a Jimmy Rabbitte-(of-The-Commitments)-type interview with Germaine Greer (not sure why her ...) when I was supposed to be meditating on a clear lake with no ripples. (Roddy Doyle won the Booker with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in 1993.)

But what the fact that there are four first novels on the longlist really does is remind me that the cure for the MATs is simply to write the next part of the next story. When Natalie Goldberg is asked how writers write she simply holds up a pad and a pen. She doesn't say a word.

Thomas Keneally and the fear that haunts all writers

Did you hear Thomas Keneally this morning on Desert Island Discs? He was magnificent. He didn't mention MATs (multiple avoidance - of writing - techniques), but he talked about the most stultifying thing for a writer: FEAR. He said, I can't quote him exactly because you can't listen again to Desert Island Discs, but here's the sense of what he said:

The fear that haunts all writers is the fear that they can't write.

So that's what sends me into all my MAT-activity frenzies then. He also said that writing is a drug, a spirit to which writers are addicted. He said that real writers HAVE to write. And sometimes, he said, the writing does deliver on its spiritual promise. (It's true. I know that I'm a miserable old bag if I'm not writing, and I also know that sometimes my writing does reach what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls 'emotional truth'.)

Keneally was eloquent about subject matter too. He said that love across racial or spiritual divides makes for a good novel and that the best stories are those in which love flourishes where once there was hate. And, of course, that human imperfection is essential to the novel.

I agree. I agree. I agree. I just wish I could cut down on my MAT-activity-fuelled fear that I can't write. (The only way I know how to do that, by the way, is to write. There is no other cure.) Today my MAT-activity has consisted of putting on a load of washing that could have waited for more; making and then unmaking a bed (don't ask); looking at pages for the website for my first novel; eating; making cups of tea (Clive James, in North Face of Soho writes that if anyone could see him writing, they would see a man pointlessly making a cup of tea and then, in a desultory fashion, pointlessly changing his mind and making a cup of coffee. But I'm not drinking coffee at the moment); and then remembering that it's Sunday and I hardly ever write on a Sunday. (To give myself a day off from my MAT-activity, you understand.)

But Keneally was an inspiration. As is Adichie. So tomorrow it's back to the drawing board under which I shall find my writing boots, pull them on and get writing. I promise I will.

Life in my writing room

The walls are covered with quotations, this is one of my favourites: 'A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.' Thomas Mann. My head is always full of words but, this afternoon, they seem to be mixing with each other and making a grey sludge, rather than mixing with me and making black marks on white. So I'm avoiding writing the short story that I'm somewhere lost in the middle of, and posting my first blog instead.

The thing a writer learns the quickest (and probably knew even before she knew she was going to spend her life putting one word after another), is multiple avoidance techniques, or MATs. These, when listed end to end, would circle the universe at least once, but of course they are never listed, that would be too much like writing, they are simply done. (I never knew how much I liked staring through the window, for instance.) Posting a blog, you could argue, is a MAT, but it's not a true MAT because it requires me to put one word after another, even if in the wrong direction.

Anyone else out there suffering from an acute case of the MATs?