Crikey!

The heart of the story for the novel I want to write, after I have written the practice pieces, fell into place this morning. I was jotting some random thoughts down as bullet points in a commonplace book and all of a sudden my sub-conscious joined the dots and zapped the message through to the front of my brain.

I'd like to say it happened in a flash of inspiration and natural genius but, of course, it actually came after several months of research, false starts and ponderings (aka drinking tea and staring blankly at the wall).

This now leaves me free to develop the story properly because I have a big picture, the specific thing on which the plot turns and a clear idea of the role of the lead characters and their motivations and challenges.

Oh Lordy

So I got cracking on the first of the warm up books and then went back and had a look at what I'd written and realised that I was boring myself let alone a reader. So I had a long ponder. It now begins:

I was eight when they first came for my daddy. I don't know why they came but it wasn't for the worst things he did: they were our secret until the morning I killed him.

Thirty six words down, several thousand more to go.

Sometimes good things happen

One of my issues with my "limbering up" books has been to work out an economic structure for the place were it is set. Today I was reading a research paper on the types of endemic corruption to be found in the distribution of emergency disaster relief and I saw before me almost the whole thing, entire and complete.

I can see you...

Many years ago I was smitten by Bill Bryden’s “Mysteries” cycle with the National Theatre’s Cottesloe Company.  One of the staples of that company was actor Jack Shepherd who later wrote of their approach

The line was the line. You just said it. Comfortably. Easily. You didn’t try and ‘do things with it’, or draw attention to it. It was simply an expression of the need to communicate something and as natural as breathing.If, after the rehearsal of a particular scene, a watching member of the cast was seen shaking his head and muttering ruefully, ‘There’s an awful lot of “acting” going on’, this was a sure sign that things were not right. In other words, if the people watching are aware of ‘the acting’, then you clearly aren’t doing it properly, because your performance is demanding more attention than the play.

I have become increasingly aware of reading “literary” authors only to find myself prowling the edge of their stage muttering “I can see you writing”.  Frequently this is enough for me to lay down the book and not pick it up again.

I was digging through some old cuttings today and discovered to my delight something that Elmore Leonard wrote in the NY Times and reprinted in the Guardian 18 July 2001 (no link available). He wrote:

My most important rule [for writing] is ... if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.

Welcome...

I've now told (only) three people about this blog and this is by way of a welcome to Rosemary.

Rosemary also made some kind comments about the "brutal" love story below. After chatting on Facebook last night I was suddenly gripped by a desire to recast it in Eddic verse with assonance, alliteration and syllabic stresses. I am resisting that urge but, given that I still want to polish it up somewhat, I may give in to it a little bit when I do a final revision.

Curse you, characters

My limbering up exercise has taken an interesting twist. I had an outline prepared for myself and some other material and started writing out some early scenes. This is a story which I am specifically writing as a means of learning to write and it has immediately taught me a hard lesson - even practice characters stand up and give you abuse if you don't treat them seriously.

The swine!

Also, as I continue to work out aspects of the story I really want to write, something occurred to me.  I was thinking about European folk tales in which someone is whisked off to the land of Fairie and spends a short time there only to return and find that years or decades have passed in the "normal" world. I don't know why it hadn't struck me before but this is obviously a relativistic effect.