Novel-Writing for Beginners....

I have had something of a religious conversion to novel-writing. Having never attempted it before because I have primarily been interested in the craft of the short story, it is a fascinating process.

Of course NaNoWriMo is not traditionally how you write a novel. The aim is to move fast, move ahead, conquer that daily word count. But I have discovered that it has helped me enormously. I am a relatively slow writer, keen on crafting each sentence, discovering the absolutely right word, the rhythm and cadences of sentences. Sometimes I stop and stumble back over something: fiddling, fiddling oh so much fiddling. I like the indulgence of a good metaphor, the odd fanciful simile. Luxuries that further slow me down

So why is NaNoWriMo good for me in particular?

1. For once I have silenced that nagging perfectionist line editor that follows me like poo on a sheep’s behind.

2. I am concentrating solely on narrative, solving problems of plot as I go, not spending weeks as if I am planning to rebuild the pyramids.

3. More than ever, the story is breathing after I turn off the computer. Remarkably so.

4. I have conquered my fear of dialogue and it flows. It is carried in my head from character to character.

5. There is no looking back. So no novel turning to a pillar of salt.

6. I have produced now 28,445 words. Perhaps not the most exquisitely carved Michelangelo but a piece that can be chipped away afterwards to take away the roughness. In the worst instance, I can do what any ruthless business person does when they take over a large company: I can boil it down and slice away lots of the components, create several short stories. I already have one in mind from a minor character I have just ‘found.’

7. Did I say that I had produced 28, 445 words. For me, in fourteen days? A miracle. Usually I would have 2,000 words of the same story.

8. I am looking forward to the edit, always my favourite part of the whole process.

9. I am calmer, more purposeful. This feels like a job now. I go to work and actually manufacture something.

10. Characters have become friends - some enemies - but it is so much fun to string-puppet their lives. I can say pretentiously that I am a novelist. But whatever happens, I have gone on the journey……

Honeymoon period on NaNoWriMo

Five days into NaNoWriMo - over 8,000 words as of yesterday - stretching my fingers for today’s efforts. Like a nervous athlete. But there is alchemy afoot here: a chore has become an organic experience. I am sitting in my office and it seems that my characters are living in the walls with me. I can pretentiously call the exercise a novel…at best it is stream of consciousness, a meander around a story not yet realised or credible. But it lives. Fantastically so. The house lies in sluttish abandon, I have fobbed off my child to another parent….all I want to do is write.

Of course I am not expecting this to last. It’s the new lover syndrome, before the odorous socks and picking of the teeth gets noticed. But for now, I’m enjoying the ride.

Also, my Jack the Ripper story has been selected for inclusion in The Whitechapel Society’s anthology. A few sweeties on the path help the journey. I will be giving Ripper anthologies and Vanessa Gebbie’s book Short Circuit for Christmas. Everyone should be writing and if I sound like a junkie pedalling the stuff - words that is - then I am unashamed of the fact.

Pssst, you out there want to buy an endless supply of your own imaginary worlds?

AT LAST! Writing! I am human once more!

Today I chained myself to a chair and set myself a challenge. A competition that closed today. 3,000 words.

Did it.

Sent it off to The Whitechapel Society Short Story Competition.

How could there be anything better than killing people at home? On the page only, of course.......

Happy.

Ashamed not to have blogged since July. In fact, I have not really written anything significant since then. I have been in quicksand in literary terms, barely holding on to branches that friends have thrown from time to time. It is strange not to write: distressing, frustrating, alien. Life of course continues and the world is still both evil and wonderful around me.

I also had a rat in my house, under the floorboards, building a nest. To me it really symobolised my lack of action; that another creature had moved into my life and was happily 'getting on with things.' Absurdly, I first thought the scratching behind the wall was mice and researched some gentle mice deterrents. They hate bay leaves apparently and so I picked a dozen, stuffed them into the hole in the air brick into which they had burrowed. I felt a tug and deftly, rather gently, an invisible paw tugged them away from me. So it was a rat, not a mouse. Rats love bay leaves. They are such clever creatures that they use them for natural flea control in their nests.

So I had an intelligent life form living beneath my house that was sharper than me. Or was at least at that time. We baited a live trap and the creature took the food and escaped before the door slid down. Genius. At night a huge owl took position on our roof and hunted it. It still survived and every evening I would hear this hard hard scratching.

I am not afraid of rodents. I have respect for their intelligence, particularly rats. If man died out, rats and cockroaches would remain. Fact. But I could not share my house with one, for all sorts of reasons, mainly that he was chewing through floorboards, then possibly wires. not hygenic either, if he got into the house.

Finally, a bacon bait did the trick and the rat sat there shrieking as I approached. It looked like a frightened wild animal, acclimatised to fear by man's hatred and need to destroy it. But we covered it, took some food and released it in a wood five miles from home. Perhaps it has a chance to survive. It had a large belly.....a very large belly.....so possibly pregnant. Just trying to cope with the usual preoccupations: finding a home, procreating, keeping safe.

Then I saw Lost Land of the Volcano, where a giant and friendly rat was discovered. In fact, all the animals were trusting, loving. They had no experience of man's neurotic need to change, kill or wipe out other species...including his own.

There is a twitch forming, a need to write. An absolute need, like a drug hit.

I wonder how my little rat is doing. I have a rat exterminator coming tomorrow. We booked him as an emergency measure, in case we had to poison them. But now I just want his advice where to block up holes etc. I must resist the urge to tease him though. When his mother gave birth to him, she gave him a fine aristocratic French christian name to go with his equally fine aristocratic surname. I don't think that she dreamed of him as an exterminator, or boasted to her friends that her son worked with poisons for a living. She was proud of him, proud of her son ROLAND.

Mustn't tease......

LARDING IT OVER OTHERS (For Anti-Plagiarism Day)

They castrate the books of other men in order that with the fat of their works they may lard their own lean volumes - Jovius


I am not very good at most things: opening jars, riding bicycles, changing lightbulbs. There is a faulty mechanism in the ‘practical’ section of my brain. But I DO words and I even have been known to form them into pleasing and resonant sentences. Stories have always been my friends. At seven, I would write twelve pages when asked for one, escaping into wondrous or terrible worlds. Then when I learnt to shape them properly, those stories got published, even won prizes. My writing made me happy, more than my practical incompetence made me miserable.

So my words are precious. The ideas behind them, which are kept secret until I can form them into something coherent, more so. Because they are original to me, caused by synapses crackling in my mind that make strange connections. Creating peculiar and I hope, interesting characters. I am also often entrusted with other writers’ ideas and their stories in the raw. I can admire, or criticize, or be envious of their skill. But I have never been tempted to take from them. Ever. If someone produces something brilliant, that is their baby. You wouldn’t steal someone else’s child. Would you?

It has taken me a while to realise that not everyone thinks I should be the sole owner of my ideas. In fact, that no-one actually owns their ideas. Is there anything worse than the creep who cribs your answers at an exam? The one who can’t be bothered to revise themselves. The lazy, unethical ones who feel that cheating is OK. When it is down on the paper, it’s theirs – however it got there. The plagiarist who steals ideas, plots or words is this type of cheat.

It is true that ideas cannot be copyrighted. But if a writer steals from others because they have nothing of their own, this is lowest point at which they can sink. If they do it frequently and compulsively, it is an admission of madness, illness or desperation. It doesn’t matter what they do with this stolen property, whether they dress it up and make it beautiful. It’s still linked to someone else and it will never truly be theirs. It carries another writer’s unique scent.

In their hands though, it will always smell rotten.

So instead, let's celebrate the freshness of an original idea, the uniqueness that makes us the writers we are....

Plenty of stimulating aspects in my writing ‘career’ at the moment, not least that I am actually using the word career. In fact, I am feeling as if there is a path of sorts emerging that might lead somewhere, rather than just wandering in a forest, looking for the occasional gingerbread house on which to nibble.

The BBC want to workshop the writers from the Penguin anthology The Map of Me – perhaps to transform the book into a radio play or somesuch. This should be informative, interesting, hopefully productive.

I am still excited about a short film being made of a flash I wrote during a timed session at The Fiction Workhouse. An hour’s work from twenty prompts – sweat forming – now all scripted and ready to be cast. A lovely young film director has taken it on and is also shouldering the stressful job of finding finance for it.

I am due to go on a weekend writing retreat in August with some other much respected writers. Chuffed to fluffy pillows.

I entered the Bridport. Not with a shrug or defeatist forgetfulness but a real: ‘Stands a chance of something, doesn’t it?’ – entering a reworked story that was shortlisted for this year’s Asham Award. The confidence given by being shortlisted makes writers walk taller and trust their talents more. It’s not false pride; it’s proper pride in a job well done.

I went to a swanky party recently. I don’t generally do swanky, as I am more and more a country girl in green wellies, listening happily to a tiny wren’s enormous song in the garden. But I enjoyed, despite myself, dressing up and standing in a room with J K Rowling and Tim Burton. Talking to another very down to earth film director, David Yates (The Way we Live Now, State of Play) about his passion and respect for the talent swimming everywhere in the British Film Industry: set directors, designers, prop makers. Not schmoozing, just watching the madness, the vanity and the people who buzz around the famous, trying to ‘catch’ some of their success. Failing to see that they have to get up off their arses and work hard.

Last of all, I nursed a chicken back to life after a serious illness. A vet called it miraculous and I felt great that I could do something else other than write stories. Something practical and caring. Something that qualifies as miraculous. I have also further developed a lovely friendship with a feisty elderly lady of 86. We have political discussions and she rings me to tell me how much she values my friendship. She’s a tall woman, quite intimidating, very brusque. Takes no prisoners. Writes letters to complain and tells doctors’ receptionists that they are ‘frightfully inefficient.’ I think that she’s fabulous.

Mind Your Language

Today has been a strange day. A mixed bag. A very respected colleague and friend of mine has decided, for very good reasons, that it is time to give time to her own writing and close her feathered wings to the many writers who have taken shelter under them previously. In the past couple of years, I have been supported, chastised, encouraged and generally made into a better writer by this powerhouse of a woman. She is blunt, original, unafraid of grinding toes into grit, egos to reality – if it gets the job done. It’s all about the writing: the nuance of story, the solidity of character, poetry on a page even in prose.

Her initials give her school report on her achievements to the writing community: VG. Very Good. Bloody hell: Fucking brilliant. You should save a swear or two for when it matters and when it comes to writing, the very passion and despair of arranging those swirly shapes on a piece of unprepossessingly paper – needs a touch of awed profanity.
Not going to miss you because the end result will be in those words – more of them – with your mind fully on the job rather than being altruistically splintered in all directions.

So strange day. Also feel that I need some more time – more quality of time. Had a whimsy to join a private club and damn the elitism. Just got an urge. But I don’t know anyone personally at The Groucho Club, so that dream squealed away like a lost balloon. Still, I do like their rules. If there have to be rules, they should be eccentric and witty. Words and the cleverness of language again – like music it’s all in the arrangement:


Club Rules
Upon arrival at the Club, Members shall approach the Reception Desk to SIGN and PRINT their names in the Signing-In Book, this Ancient Ceremony being a necessary preliminary to entry into all Club Rooms.The use within the Club of Mobile, Cellular, Portable or Microwave-controlled Telecommunication Instruments is an anathema, a curse, a horror, a dread and a deep unpleasantness and shall be prohibited in all locations save the Reception Area. Please be alert to the acknowledged misery of Ring Tones and silence all such mechanisms before entry into Club Rooms.The ingestion into the bloodstream of powders, pastilles, potions, herbs, compounds, pills, tablets, capsules, tonics, cordials, tinctures, inhalations or mixtures that have been scheduled by Her Majesty's Government to be Illegal Substances of whatever Class is firmly prohibited by Club Rules, whether they be internalised orally, rectally, intravenously, intranasally or by any means whatsoever. So let it be known. A member may invite into the club up to four (4) GUESTS at any one time, for whose behaviour and respect of these Rules the Member is responsible. Be it understood that a Guest will not be allowed into the bar unaccompanied by a Member. The wearing of String Vests is fully unacceptable and wholly proscribed by Club Rules. There is enough distress in the world already.To step out into Dean Street owing money to the Club leaves a stain on a Member's character that cannot be pleasing to them. For this reason all bills and moneys owing to the Club shall be settled in full before a member shall leave the Club.Upon settlement of aforesaid bills and levies, all Members are reminded that Soho is a neighbourhood containing many residents. Show dignity, consideration and kindness by leaving quietly and with as little brouhaha as may be contrived.A Club is a Club. A place of sociability in which to relax and be affable and friendly. Respect the views of your fellow members and ensure that your Guests do the same. Let amiability and charm be your watchwords.

Simon Carroll

When I was sixteen, I was part of a gang. Some were friends from school, others we had met in town or thereabouts – the way kids do. We hung around; some of us dressed up and called ourselves punk or adopted some other tribal tag. There were coffee shops we were thrown out of; my father hated boys hanging around the house who drank all his coffee and sat late at night at the kitchen table eating cereal. A boy nicknamed Wacko used to eat dog food from the tin.

One of the gang, who everyone trusted and confided in, was a big built boy called Caz, or Simon Carroll. He always wore a long tweed coat and with his strong Herefordian accent, would put both his thumbs up and say: ‘Right Ju?’ Always with a big smile. The biggest. He was into rollups and cider, dancing and drawing. Particularly good at the latter, he once showed me a picture of skulls he had drawn for an art lesson. The light and shading, the infinite delicacy of everything he had drawn and shaded on the page, was remarkable. It was no surprise when he went to Art College and I would still see him around when I was at the nearby Sixth Form. He’d be in a pair of Doc Martens, looking a bit like a dangerous skinhead. Except he wasn’t. There was a gentleness to him, this boy who took six sugars in his tea and lumbered around when the rest of us were all flitting around as exhibitionists, obsessed with our hair or our bondage trousers. He played in a band and a friend sent me a clipping a couple of years later, profiling his band as the worst in Hereford. That was Caz – everything for a lark. But he also fell in love a lot, often unrequited. We all went for the haircuts, the attitude – when right under our noses there was a sensitive, loving boy who had sixteen already looked like a man. I think he fell in love with me once and of course, I was blind too.

Caz lost one of his lovely brothers to cancer. I left Hereford, where we had grown up and had wild, teenage times. Then I found that humble boy had become a potter of note. Very avant-garde, profiled in magazines and exhibited in the Tate, St Ives. I looked him up, admired his very individualistic work and even saw a film of him beach painting with Rolf Harris. He was the true essence of a free spirit – where so many people try to be he was effortlessly so. I know that he struggled with an addiction to alcohol, the roots had been there in our adolescence. But everyone smokes and drinks, takes the risks that define a hormonal teenager. We were reaching that time in our lives where some of were reconnecting, enjoying a shared past.

Some time ago I sent him an email. He replied through a mate’s Friends Reunited account. It was a cheery note and I could hear his voice so clearly in it. I replied and told him how proud and pleased I was with his success. If anyone should have had recognition in life, it was Caz. People always smiled with recognition when you mentioned his name. A little bit mad. An enormous heart.

But I didn’t get another response and I put it down to eccentricity, his creativity…better to let him work. I thought about going to Cornwall to visit and another idea, a Hereford reunion of the old gang, was discussed by a friend. We could walk down by the river and shout our names under the bridge with the echo, or see how long one cup of tea could last. Of course we would be older, some of us with families – but you always carry a part of that time with you.

You should seize the day. Tonight I was called by a friend to tell me that he had only just heard that Cazzy had died.

But I refuse to be maudlin, or look back with any regret. I will remember those tweedy hugs, wrapped in fag smoke by strong arms. Him walking down the stairs in my house with that huge daft grin.

Simon Carroll, the talented potter. Caz. An artist but more importantly, someone I will always think of with such fondness.

All right Ju?

I’m all right, mate.

http://www.ceramics-aberystwyth.com/simon-carroll-interview.php

This morning I was walking around the ruins of Carthage, in Tunis. I saw the tombs of the babies sacrificed by the ancient people - their first born sons - so that the gods would be pleased and bless their households. Ashes in little stone boxes.....

I then went into Sidi.....where vendors told me that every deal was the best deal, that I was their friend. Every woman had 'beautiful' eyes...a lovely smile. Drank the sweetest teeth-jarring mint tea on a balcony overlooking the uniform blue and white houses...still thinking about those children, babies....all dusty in their premature coffins.....

Remember the Human

I attended a seminar recently run by the UK Wolf Conservation Trust (www.ukwolf.org) Two professors and a doctor….a lot of information and one particularly interesting speaker (Dr Alistair Bath) who talked about the wisdom of not ignoring the human element in animal conservation. So many decent, passionate and acutely intelligent conservationists only think of the animal. For example, Alistair talked about a farmer in a Slavic country who had thirty sheep. One night a wolf jumped his fence and killed twenty one of them. His grief was not purely based on economics – he cried and said that losing his animals was as bad as losing his children. These are people who have a bond with their creatures, with nature – they live and sleep with them. A shepherd’s average age is 77. Animals are their life and they are in tune with the changing of the seasons, they know if a creature is ill or afraid. Solutions have to think of the wolf but also the people who are intertwined with it.

I also had a chat with author Michelle Paver (www.Michellepaver.com), who is a director at the Trust. She is a quiet and deeply observant woman. As we chatted she put her hand through the bars to stroke one of the wolves, who clearly knew her well and rubbed herself against the bars in joy. Of course this is not recommended for just anyone and although she has a relationship with the wolves she was still told: ‘Michelle, do be careful with your hands.’ Quick as a flash she said: ‘I have another hand that I can write with…’ Wolves are her passion, as her series of children’s books demonstrates. We both stood there for a while, watching Torak, who runs that particular pack. He paced around, being photographed but ultimately keeping his lupine dignity, guarding his sisters. I truly liked Michelle….she is a real writer, lacking in cynicism and ego. She just gets on with the job.

I am also in the process of working with a young film-maker in turning one of my stories into a screenplay for a short film. Now I have to tell him all about my characters, those light shadowy creatures in a quickly written flash. It’s fun….

The Searchers

Yesterday I fell apart at the seams - like a rag doll in the care of a wicked child – while watching John Ford’s The Searchers. My father died in 2005 and The Searchers was one of his favourite films. We had a difficult relationship with huge communication problems. But we both loved westerns and war films. We would settle in front of them in comfortable silence, knowing that we were both lost in the narrative, the action, that actorly magic. The Searchers is a very emotionally manipulative film, as well as being an ambitious attempt at explaining racism and the bonds that tie, or sometimes break us. It was based on novel that was based on true events, of a young girl taken by Commanche Indians. John Wayne gave one of the best performances of his life; he was always my father’s hero. In fact, my father, who often said very little and was inwardly strong – truly emulated him. Through The Searchers, we always experienced a surge of feeling and heartbreak that we never ever showed one another face-to-face. So that film will always be a floodgate. I cannot watch but I cannot turn away and oddly, through celluloid I mourn him. But I also bear in mind the power of genetics and my father had once told me that as a young man, he had loved to make up stories. So maybe that's where my need comes for writing.

Today I will be....

Birthdays should be all about whimsy and be defiantly egocentric. After all, it is one day – one day only – to celebrate your slippery entry into the world. So in the spirit of all things whimsical and willful, I like to imagine having a different life on every birthday, no matter how absurd or mercurial. For this one, I would like to be a mudlarker. Originally a job – considered one of the worst jobs – for the very poor….mudlarking is really all about scavenging in the chocolate mud that skirts the dimpled brown water of the Thames. For treasure of course but then treasure is a subjective term – there are many wonderful objects that the Thames regularly belches out onto the pebbled shores: fragments of pottery, clay pipes, horses’ teeth. You now have to have a licence and report all finds to a recognized museum but now, the Mudlarking Society has numerous enthusiasts who don wellies and gloves to lose themselves in the looking. What joy, for time to slip away and to find history to casually secreted…..

'Sometimes they would throw a sixpence into the river, where the water was about two feet deep, to make us wet ourselves through in groping for it. Indeed, they were very generous when they wished to be amused; and every kind of offer was made to them which we thought suited to their tastes, or likely to extract money from their pockets.'

"Dip my head in the mud for sixpence, sir!" one of us would cry out; and then he would be outbid by another."Roll myself all over and over in the mud, face and all, sir - only give me sixpence!"


Next year, a different incarnation.

I have found my inner child.....

.....while crafting a snowman in the garden. Dishes piled in the sink, other monotonous jobs pushed from my mind. Packing snow with very cold fingers..three rather snow-phobic chickens at my ankles looking for grass and the odd frozen worm. They puzzled as this big white thing developing before them, especially Desdemona who has a particularly fear of all things white, including one of the other chickens, who she pecks regularly to keep her in place or perhaps to persuade herself that this girl is not a ghost, a phantom, a threat.

I shaped some boots for my man, because they never seem to have them. Usually snowmen erupt from the ground like fingers in a glove. I made these boots smooth, oh so very smooth. Handcrafted. Italian. The snow has to the packed so very tight, because I want him to be the last thing to melt when all the rest has dissolved to slush. Up up up he goes, spindly at first and then fatter. Bits of stone, grass and slate, speckling him so that he is not a plain creature, like an overweight aunt in Austen.

The snow is still falling and I have to catch some on my tongue, where it dissolves like sugar.

I have no idea of time as I work - it is like the best writing session, the ones where the flow is everything and the pleasure of watching something grow is organic, not laboured.

At the end I have a man. Controlled and created by me. Vulnerable to my destruction. The chickens stand back and cluck in some alarm, then run back into their enclosed pen where the man won't see them. But there he sits: comic, ridiculous in his awkward beauty.

If only a novel was a series of snowmen; each one a chapter - but with more complexity of course. For now though, I'll go with simplicity. The glow you get from building a snowman is like no other - it bridges the gap between the happy past and more difficult present.

Pure joy.