Growth

Stephen King considers The Shining to be his breakthrough novel. Instead of doing more of the same that had earned him fame and fortune, he consciously decided to make the Shining something more. The way he did it was to concentrate on the character of the father and his upbringing so that the demons that afflicted him later on in the book are as much internal ones as the result of supernatural forces. According to King, being propelled by some external irresistible force provides too much of a comfortable excuse and dilutes the power of the narrative.

I found this insight extremely valuable and it has changed the way in which I view my own writing. My crime fiction books are primarily plot driven. Fast paced, breathless even. I try to pack as much story into each paragraph as I can. There's nothing wrong with that. As Vonnegut advised, I try to spend  my reader's time as wisely as possible.

Lately, though, I've been working with my writing mentor on a project which is more an examination of character and relationships than whirlwind narrative. For me, it has been a completely new way of doing things. I'm a great proponent of the write the whole thing and don't look back until you've finished method. It has served me very well in the past and has the great merit of not having to make any judgements as I go along.

For this novel, and it's grown to novel proportions already, I'm constantly trying things out because I have the great benefit of someone I trust who can give me an opinion. There's been a lot of stuff that I've submitted which hasn't gone down at all well. Fortunately, I've sufficiently matured as a writer to view negative comments as even more valuable than positive ones. Sometimes I find it hard to agree with them but most of the time I'm able to reflect on the truth behind them and take them on board.

This has resulted in lots of rewrites, many versions of the same scene, drastic plot revisions galore. For example, an early version had the protagonist in a hospital bed paralysed apart from a couple of fingers on one hand which he used to type long accounts of early childhood. This might immediately seem cumbersome and overly melodramatic to you but it took me a while to get that myself.

I don't know if this will be my breakthrough novel and, quite honestly, it might not even see the light of publication. What matters is that I feel that I'm growing as a writer all the time and that's important.

photo credit: JoeInSouthernCA Vintage Movie Poster: "The Shining" via photopin (license)

An Encounter with Jenny Parker

I always get caught out by flight times. 8 am sounds like a reasonable time to fly but it's not. They say I have to be here two hours before, it takes an hour to drive and I need at least half an hour to shower and get ready. Counting back brings getting out of bed time to 4.30. Half past FOUR!
It's hardly worth going to bed.
Add in the stress of travelling, of tossing and turning in bed worrying about the trip, being scared that the alarm won't go off or the motorway will be closed.
They say to get here two hours before flight time and I always obey. There's an automatic response built into my emotional make up that gets very scared at the prospect of being even a few minutes shy of the deadline. As usual, though, I'm through security and waiting in the departure lounge wishing I'd used the 90 minutes I have to wait here for extra sleep. Six am would have been a much more civilised time to roll myself out of bed.
I sit on the hard seat wondering if my dignity would allow me to lie down and have a nap like many others have opted for. It won't. No surprise there.
A lady comes over and sits next to me. This is doubly disconcerting as there are lots of empty places where she could be in splendid isolation, as I hoped to be. She also looks a bit familiar, as if I should know who she is. I think hard but I can't pick her out from the checkout assistants and CBeebies presenters that spring to mind.
'You don't recognise me do you?' She says unhelpfully.
'Erm, it's early, I'm still half asleep.'
'That's no excuse,' she says, 'I'm Jenny Parker and you've written four books about me.'
'You can't be,' I say.
'Because I'm a fictional character?'
'Yes.'
'Because I'm the product of your imagination?'
'That's right.'
'So where does you imagination get its ideas?'
'I really have no idea. Thoughts just pop into my head and I write them down. Sometimes I don't even know what I've written until I read it back.'
Jenny smiles but it's not a warm kind of smile, more of a long-suffering kind. 'What makes you think that you're any more real than I am?'
That's a good question and not one that is easy to answer even for someone fully in possession of their faculties. 'I'm a writer, you're a character. You depend on me for your existence.'
'If I didn't exist then you'd have nothing to write. Then where would you be?'
I begin to think about the consequences of her turning up in the flesh. What if my so-called imagination is just recording something that's actually happening? I'm always telling people that my characters, especially Jenny, never seem to do what I intend. That they seem to have a will of their own. I can't help feeling responsible for the extremely hard time she's been having, though. 'Maybe I should write something good about you. Give you a nice easy life from here on in. Would that help?'
'It's a bit late for that now,' she says.
'What about I change the ending of the latest book?'
'That would only confuse matters. Why not just let things be as they are for a change? Leave me to get on with my life without all the dramatisation.'
She stands up, 'that's my flight,' she says. 'I don't want to miss it.' Then she merges into the crowd and disappears through Gate 27.
'You won't,' I say. I imagine she's going to London to negotiate a rather important deal involving Russian Oligarchs and the Italian Mafia. I do hope she keeps her wits about her.

Being Precious

If the world were perfect, this is what I'd look out upon from my writing desk.

In reality, it's more like this:

Waiting for things to become perfect before I write would mean waiting forever. The myth of that perfect time and place being out there is one that we writers often delude ourselves with. I know, because I do it all the time. In reality its just another way of putting off getting down to work. Because writing is hard work and none of us like hard work, do we?

I used to think that I couldn't possibly write anything meaningful until I was older. The age at which I would suddenly blossom into the next Vonnegut or Banks was always unspecified. My best option was to wait until I got there and then start writing otherwise what I wrote was bound to be rubbish.

I was, of course, deluding myself. Don't make the same mistake. Nor should you ever feel that life has passed you by and that starting now will be too late. These are only excuses for not writing so don't be taken in.

We are writers. We have to write in order to live our lives the way we are meant to. It doesn't matter one jot whether we are critically acclaimed or even read and enjoyed. These are bonuses that few of us are blessed with. What matters is that feeling we get when we've written something.

Off you go. Get writing. Don't let me distract you.
















photo credit: Sunset via photopin (license)

photo credit: 'Rainy Streets', United States, New York, New York City, East Village via photopin (license)

How to Write with Style

http://www.amazon.com/And-So-It-Goes-Vonnegut/dp/125001218X

Kurt Vonnegut is very special to me. I commend to you everything he has written. His life is also worth reading about and Shields' biography provides a very rich and detailed account.
If you've read anything by Vonnegut you'll know how special he is and if you haven't then, golly gosh, you've got a treat coming if you do. Start with Cat's Cradle. And do it right away, don't bother with the rest of this blog post. You can always return to it while you're waiting for the ebook to download.



For the rest of you, I'll mention some of the things Kurt had to say about the art of writing.
First up, he offered eight rules which are:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

From the preface to Vonnegut's short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.

My particular favourite is number 6. If you've read my Jenny Parker series, you'll know that I have very much taken that one to heart.

I also suggest that you read a short article he wrote on 'How to write with style,' the full text of which can be found through the link below.

How to write with style by Kurt Vonnegut

In summary, he suggests the following:

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have the guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean to say
7. Pity the readers
8. For really detailed advice read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

What I really love about Vonnegut is his ability to express the most complex sociological observations in a simple and engaging manner. When he urges us to keep it simple he shows us how it can work so beautifully.
I used to think that to be considered well written, a novel had to be constructed from long sentences using obscure words. Vonnegut, more than anyone else, showed me that using short, common and easily understood words is much more powerful and engaging for the reader. It also means that I can more easily sound like myself.
No matter how much I might try, I'll never be able to write like Vonnegut. That used to make me sad but now I'm happy to write like me.
Thanks, Kurt.
I'll finish with a quote from A Man without a Country
"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"