I've been writing. I've changed my routine to fit with the write everyday mantra I espoused a couple of posts ago. Specifically I have consciously fought the urge to go back and revise what I wrote the day before.
Normally something I write has been redone to within an inch of its life by the time I get to the end of the first draft. Then I revise some more. This time, I haven't bothered even to read what I wrote the day before, but just carry on regardless. This is very, very hard for me to do. I know there are gaping holes in the story and the writing is flabby and I'll end up with an incoherent narrative that I must go and fix right now.
Anyway, I'm 13,000 words in. Unusually for me, I don't have a working title yet. I find a working title helps me focus my thoughts as I write, but so far so good. My overall aim is the bastard child of Dan Brown and the Umberto Eco of Foucault's Pendulum, though veering towards the latter in content.
That last isn't to knock Dan Brown, by the way. I know it is fashionable to do that, but I'm not going to. Why? Well, I was in a bookshop the other week and a couple of tourists were in looking for something for the flight home. One of them recommended The Da Vinci Code and was totally genuine about it, enthusing about how much they enjoyed it and were gripped by it. That strikes me as a good thing.
Tuesday, 10 October 2017
Friday, 22 September 2017
No Intermediate Adjustment
I've dived back into Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time
after a year away from it; I've just finished book 4--At Aunt Molly's.
It is remarkable for many reasons, once you get into the rhythm of the
prose.
I see a lot of writing advice, especially in genre, that is neither more nor less than a rehash of Campbell's "Hero's Journey". I'm not knocking it, it has been the backbone of most of the commercial successes for several decades and underlies almost every movie to make the big time. What struck me this morning, though, was that the two novels I have enjoyed most of late--Edna O'Brien's "A Pagan Place" and "At Aunt Molly's" contain not a hint of the Hero's Journey. At no point is the protagonist facing peril which cannily mirrors a character flaw, both of which require to be overcome to reach a satisfactory denoument. No grizzled mentor wanders by to offer clues, an exposition dump and/or surprising kung-fu skills for one so old.
I see a lot of writing advice, especially in genre, that is neither more nor less than a rehash of Campbell's "Hero's Journey". I'm not knocking it, it has been the backbone of most of the commercial successes for several decades and underlies almost every movie to make the big time. What struck me this morning, though, was that the two novels I have enjoyed most of late--Edna O'Brien's "A Pagan Place" and "At Aunt Molly's" contain not a hint of the Hero's Journey. At no point is the protagonist facing peril which cannily mirrors a character flaw, both of which require to be overcome to reach a satisfactory denoument. No grizzled mentor wanders by to offer clues, an exposition dump and/or surprising kung-fu skills for one so old.
Although O'Brien and Powell are very different writers, what both books have in common is that they are 1st person fictional memoirs based on deep characterisation and acute observation.
Powell is also wickedly funny. A lot of the humour is buried in the complexity of his prose, but occasionally one is sucker punched: "She was dressed in a manner to be described as impregnable, like a long, neat, up-to-date battle cruiser." "Not even such a mournful haunt of the third-rate as the Celtic Twilight had played a part in her life."
Powell is also wickedly funny. A lot of the humour is buried in the complexity of his prose, but occasionally one is sucker punched: "She was dressed in a manner to be described as impregnable, like a long, neat, up-to-date battle cruiser." "Not even such a mournful haunt of the third-rate as the Celtic Twilight had played a part in her life."
Saturday, 26 August 2017
Statement of the Bleedin' Obvious
I don't like it when I don't write, but not writing seems to be my default state just now, mostly because of work. I find it hard to pick up the thread of things where I left off because my mind is elsewhere.
In a "doh!" moment yesterday I realised that it didn't matter, so long as I was writing something, anything, to flex the creative muscles. It doesn't have to be tied to an existing project. So I jotted down a couple of ideas and images, then wrote a 1500 word short story in one sitting. It needs revision, but it came as a relief just to get it out of my fingers and into my Dropbox.
The task now is to turn it from a mere story into actual writing.
In a "doh!" moment yesterday I realised that it didn't matter, so long as I was writing something, anything, to flex the creative muscles. It doesn't have to be tied to an existing project. So I jotted down a couple of ideas and images, then wrote a 1500 word short story in one sitting. It needs revision, but it came as a relief just to get it out of my fingers and into my Dropbox.
The task now is to turn it from a mere story into actual writing.
Sunday, 6 August 2017
Estimated Epiphany
A couple of viable short stories hit the notebook, the second of which is now written, kind of. It got mashed up with something else I was pondering featuring a Grateful Dead tribute band.
980 words in 1st draft and stream-of-consciousness around some fixed waymarkers. And I rather like it, albeit that it's still in early draft.
980 words in 1st draft and stream-of-consciousness around some fixed waymarkers. And I rather like it, albeit that it's still in early draft.
Tuesday, 18 July 2017
Summertime Blues
Another postcard from the frontier.
Writing continues around the constraints of the dayjob. The novel I'm working on is meandering but moving in directions that interest me; and another short story demanded to be born, and was duly delivered. The story that was on-hold pending the results of the UK election has gone into the "finished" folder.
That short, together with some stuff on Twitter recently, has led me back to thinking about writing and why I do it and, by extension, to thinking about publishing. I have an ambivalent relationship with publishing; on the one hand it is nice when people say nice things about something I've written, on the other hand that isn't why I write.
In the first instance I write for a target audience of one--me. That isn't to say I don't have other people in mind, because I know what I write will get shared with a handful of people whose opinions (and patience) I trust and value; it's just that I would write anyway even were they not there, though their feedback always makes my stuff better.
What I mean is that I write for my own satisfaction, entertainment and enlightenment; to work out something that is teasing me with its potential.
My model for this, oddly enough, is something that Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh said a lot about how the Grateful Dead went about creating music. Garcia talked about finding the form beyond chaos; Lesh talked about the search for improvised epiphanies. It's why I often say my first drafts need "less narrative and more weirdness." To the extent that I'm finding a voice, if I can say that without pretence, it is in stripping away my expectations of a narrative to let the story come through. Elsewhere I've described this as looking for something in the story to reveal itself to me, the ghost in the story, the presence behind the narrative, and then finding a way to make it manifest to a putative reader.
That's why I'm half-hearted about publishing. Were I in my twenties and keen to be a writer and make some kind of living off it, or were I desperate to have 'writer' as a gilded lapel badge, I might be keener. But I'm not. I'm in my late fifties with a couple of careers behind me, I own my own house outright, and have a reasonable, if meagre, pension waiting for me when I finally retire. Crudely, I can give time to writing for its own sake without worrying about much else, and I can write what I want without any concern for externalities like proposals and outlines (or commercial potential).
I was thinking about this because of some exchanges I've been watching about the small-press business. A theme emerged of exhorting people to head to Amazon and give 5* reviews because it makes a big difference "in an algorithmic world" and is a necessity if one wants to read something other than "corporate fodder". I understand the point, but I also know of people publishing under several noms de plume who cross-review their own work and use that as marketing for their various identities. There is a kind of desperate deceit going on there, including self-deceit.
Small presses make a huge difference and are important--the novel I'm currently reading is from a small press and I'm enjoying it very much, just as much as I enjoyed the same writer when they were published by a bigger publisher--but there is as much "fodder" in small presses as there is from the big publishers.
So where I'm going with this is that I'll continue to submit stories from time to time if I see something, but I'll continue to write anyway. Publishing is sugar-frosting.
(Self-publishing? I've thought about it, and haven't ruled it out as an experiment, but see above.)
Writing continues around the constraints of the dayjob. The novel I'm working on is meandering but moving in directions that interest me; and another short story demanded to be born, and was duly delivered. The story that was on-hold pending the results of the UK election has gone into the "finished" folder.
That short, together with some stuff on Twitter recently, has led me back to thinking about writing and why I do it and, by extension, to thinking about publishing. I have an ambivalent relationship with publishing; on the one hand it is nice when people say nice things about something I've written, on the other hand that isn't why I write.
In the first instance I write for a target audience of one--me. That isn't to say I don't have other people in mind, because I know what I write will get shared with a handful of people whose opinions (and patience) I trust and value; it's just that I would write anyway even were they not there, though their feedback always makes my stuff better.
What I mean is that I write for my own satisfaction, entertainment and enlightenment; to work out something that is teasing me with its potential.
My model for this, oddly enough, is something that Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh said a lot about how the Grateful Dead went about creating music. Garcia talked about finding the form beyond chaos; Lesh talked about the search for improvised epiphanies. It's why I often say my first drafts need "less narrative and more weirdness." To the extent that I'm finding a voice, if I can say that without pretence, it is in stripping away my expectations of a narrative to let the story come through. Elsewhere I've described this as looking for something in the story to reveal itself to me, the ghost in the story, the presence behind the narrative, and then finding a way to make it manifest to a putative reader.
That's why I'm half-hearted about publishing. Were I in my twenties and keen to be a writer and make some kind of living off it, or were I desperate to have 'writer' as a gilded lapel badge, I might be keener. But I'm not. I'm in my late fifties with a couple of careers behind me, I own my own house outright, and have a reasonable, if meagre, pension waiting for me when I finally retire. Crudely, I can give time to writing for its own sake without worrying about much else, and I can write what I want without any concern for externalities like proposals and outlines (or commercial potential).
I was thinking about this because of some exchanges I've been watching about the small-press business. A theme emerged of exhorting people to head to Amazon and give 5* reviews because it makes a big difference "in an algorithmic world" and is a necessity if one wants to read something other than "corporate fodder". I understand the point, but I also know of people publishing under several noms de plume who cross-review their own work and use that as marketing for their various identities. There is a kind of desperate deceit going on there, including self-deceit.
Small presses make a huge difference and are important--the novel I'm currently reading is from a small press and I'm enjoying it very much, just as much as I enjoyed the same writer when they were published by a bigger publisher--but there is as much "fodder" in small presses as there is from the big publishers.
So where I'm going with this is that I'll continue to submit stories from time to time if I see something, but I'll continue to write anyway. Publishing is sugar-frosting.
Monday, 19 June 2017
General Update
I'm pleased to say a second story of mine has been accepted for publication. Thorfinn and Mathilde will be published in New Voices Scotland towards the end of the year.
The vamp stories have all had a further polish and are with an editor for a final once-over while I wonder what to so with them. Vamps 2, which will be a novel, with the working title Up the White Road, is in (slow) progress.
Meanwhile a short story I put to one side pending the outcome of the UK election can now be revised further, and today, the last day of my summer holidays, I wrote a short story that had been floating around my brain for a couple of days. 2500 words and untitled pending a full revision.
The vamp stories have all had a further polish and are with an editor for a final once-over while I wonder what to so with them. Vamps 2, which will be a novel, with the working title Up the White Road, is in (slow) progress.
Meanwhile a short story I put to one side pending the outcome of the UK election can now be revised further, and today, the last day of my summer holidays, I wrote a short story that had been floating around my brain for a couple of days. 2500 words and untitled pending a full revision.
Saturday, 18 March 2017
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