writing life

Get Into the Groove

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I’ve been reading a dog training manual. I’ve been reading it as if it is the sole text on which I am to be examined for an life-changing certificate of achievement. It is 8 days until the puppy arrives and I am already starting to change my daily routines, to leave time for letting him out in the morning and for Andy to do the morning walk. I’m already planning to go to my office for two/three hours five times a week, rather than for six/eight hours twice a week.

Babies, whether human or canine, like routine. So does your writing.

When you set a regular writing time, something magical happens. All the ideas that come to you randomly (while in the middle of a busy supermarket, or just as you are about to pick up a friend to go out to dinner) begin to come to you during your writing time. It’s as if your muse learns when you will be available, and begins saving itself for when it has your full attention.

This means that your word count goes up; meaning that you have more to work with and to edit. You also begin to enjoy your writing time more;  because it’s not quite so painfully slow, it feels more like play. And all this means that you can finish earlier, and give yourself more time to, say, walk the dog, or go to the movies, or make something delicious to eat.  Your writing begins to work better in your life, then.

I’m not the first writer or writing coach to tell you this, I’ll bet. Flaubert advised being ‘regular and bourgeoise’ in your daily habits, Dorathea Brande talks about this extensively in her seminal 1930’s writing guide, and Stephen King, in his wonderful On Writing also encourages it. I think the reason we sometimes hold back is that we are culturally conditioned to think that regular writing is somehow of less value than spontaneous writing. If this is your fear, consider the words of Peter DeVries, ‘I only write when I’m inspired, and I make sure I’m inspired every morning at 9am.’

When’s the next time you’ll engage with your creative practice?

Adventures In Data Loss

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It’s not easy, sitting still and not looking while a nine-year-old paints your face. She’s not overly careful around the eye area and she tends to drip a bit… You have to just breathe out, close your eyes and enjoy the ride.

I’m not one of those Americans that thinks ‘it’s all good.’ I think the relentless positivism we’ve been asked to assume over the past few decades is actually harmful. Cancer patients that don’t get better can feel they’ve not been thinking the right way, or praying hard enough…people can be exploited and not have the language in which to express anger with the conditions in which they work… However, I don’t think there’s any point in being miserable, either. Sometimes you just can’t control things, or you let things slip out of your control.

I have a whole little lecture I give about data storage, about how to save daily iterations of your novel and how to back it up weekly both on a data key and by emailing the files to yourself. But, like anyone else, when I get terribly busy, I sometimes get lax. This week I lost 5,ooo words of my new book.

It happens.

It happened before computers. Hemingway’s wife was bringing his stories to him, as a nice surprise, when she left them on the train. Hemingway was still mourning those stories, some twenty years later, as the best things he’d written.

But I’m not so sure. My 5K took me through some very difficult technical things; another shift in time for the entire main section of the novel… a shift in my narrator’s voice, as she recalls things from two years earlier…an explanation as to how and why her community lives the way it does…  I’m dreading trying to write it again. It might very well be worse. But it might be better, too.

And anyway, I didn’t sign up to this kind of life with the idea that I would have everything under my own control. I became a writer, much like I sat down for my face painting, in a spirit of adventure.  I think my face turned out fine, for an evening at home making pizza. I think my writing life is more interesting and exciting than if I’d kept doing jobs I didn’t like. Hang on, we’re still moving, and who knows where we’ll go…

Here’s a soundtrack for the blog, since it’s Friday night. Click to hear it. Hope you like it…

 

For more about positivism and the harm it can do, read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Brightsided. 

 

A Bit About Failure and Rejection

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Here I am at my most vulnerable. No, not because it’s the first thing in the morning and I’m not wearing makeup. And not because I haven’t yet got up and found my dressing gown. Because I have a book going out to publishers.

Right now, people will be reading my work and deciding if they ‘love it enough’ to read the rest. Some will but some, inevitably, will decide they don’t…

Writers have to deal with rejection. If you write seriously, you have to come to terms with failure. You will, nearly always, and almost completely guaranteed, fail with your writing. You may start something and not finish it. You may finish it but not like it. You might like it, but not get an agent to like it. Your agent might like it, but no publishers do. One publisher might like it and give you a measly advance or maybe several publishers will like it and you’ll get a large advance…but not get good reviews. Or maybe you’ll get great reviews, but not win that year’s big prize. Or maybe you WILL win that year’s big prize, but you don’t get a movie deal. Or the movie never gets made. Or it does get made, but it doesn’t get good reviews. Or the movie gets great reviews but it doesn’t win an Oscar. Or it wins an Oscar but everyone says that the book it was based on was rubbish…

There is no end to the ways in which writers can fail.

Right now, in the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, students are competing for the Janklow-Nesbit prize. It’s a prestigious award that can start a writer’s career with a catapult. And the ones who haven’t been shortlisted feel as if they’ve failed. They haven’t even BEGUN to truly fail as writers…that takes years…

And what if all this failure makes you stop writing fiction? Rachael Bloom was on the MA a few years ago, writing about a subject very close to her heart. Her novel never did do what she’d hoped, and, eventually, she founded a charity about the subject; the Rhett Syndrome Research Trust UK. It’s an amazing charity that has raised money for ground-breaking research. Rachael uses her writing skills in fundraising, pr, marketing, etc. There may soon be a cure for this dehabilitating disease that strikes women and girls, thanks to Rachael. Some failure, eh?

 

 

Getting Out There

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Well, it’s been an exciting week!

  1. My wonderful agent, Sophie Gorell-Barnes, is sending Hospital High  out to publishers,
  2. I met with my new writing group and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I feared, and
  3. I’m recording with BBC Radio Four this afternoon…something about writers and their love of stationery.

It feels like a proper writer’s week… Of course, I’m most comfortable in my dressing gown, typing away in my room. But that’s no way to run a whole career. Fine for a hobby, but not for a life…

I used to teach a class for my second years about how to get published. For a year, it was made compulsory, and as I was walking up the stairs I overheard one boy say to another, ‘I don’t want to learn this sh*t. I just want to write.’

When we got into class, I announced that I had overheard this conversation. The class was shocked and silent, rather fearful of my reaction. I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I don’t want to do this sh*t, either. I want to live in my room, write whatever I want and have money and food slid to me under the door. But that’s not going to happen for me and it’s not going to happen for you. So let’s get our pads and pencils out and learn how it really works.’

No matter what your creative endeavour, I urge you to get out and about a little this week. Go to a workshop or a fair. Talk to people about it a bit more. The rewards can be absolutely amazing, once you manage to get over the threshold of your room…

…even if it’s just to go over to someone else’s room!  (Thanks to Peter and his cat! For more about Peter’s wonderful nature and environmental writing, click on the photo.)

Sharing Work

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I had a bath before noon. That means it’s not a writing day – but I’m still working on my book… I’m going to my new writing group.

One of the great things about teaching is that you tend to grow your own friends. This group is, at its core, an extraordinarily good workshop class I taught a few years ago. Since I’m really having to stretch myself with this narrative voice, I’m eager to get ongoing feedback…the kind I can’t get from colleagues or my wonderful agent. So, I’m joining the group…taking advantage of the skills I helped them to learn.

Showing your work is always a bit frightening. What if you’ve fooled yourself, and it’s completely pants? So it’s good to work with people you trust. That trust is only built up over time…you can only tell if you can work with people once you’ve worked with them. The most important thing, I think, is finding people with whom you can communicate well. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing the same kind of thing, but it matters that you can understand each other and understand what each writer is trying to do.

You need to be fairly certain what you ARE trying to do, in the cut and thrust of workshopping. You have to be ready to learn whose advice is sound on what kinds of issues. You have to be prepared to continually evaluate what people say, and what you feel.

But the sense of camaraderie, the great relief of having someone to talk to about your daily work, the opportunity to have other people helping you with craft ideas…well, that’s such a great relief and benefit that I can’t wait to see them today.

I’d better go and dress.

Why Write?

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Why do we do it?

No, I’m serious, here. Why write full length fiction?

The drawbacks are immense… Unless you are very fortunate you will be underpaid and have to balance your writing life with another professional life, so you are working two jobs. Your entire life revolves around making things with words…so when you sleep/what you eat/what you drink etc., are all governed by your writing time. Your family must either be trained or escaped, and it puts a strain on all relationships…it takes very understanding friends to know that when you disappear for months on end, you still care for them but are only on a roll.  And then, at the end of all that, two words from a publisher or reviewer can make you feel it’s all been a waste of time and effort.

Life is a whole lot easier if you don’t write books.

Last week, I ran my ‘big ideas’ workshop for the redoubtable Alex and Jude’s Writing Events Bath. And as we talked about what a novel actually was, I felt the whole room’s desire to make one themselves. That desire hasn’t gone away in me, either. If anything, it’s gotten stronger with all the years and ups and downs.

Why write? Because you have to. Because you can’t stop. Because it’s the whole point of life.

 

 

Too Busy For Words

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Hi. How are you? Miss talking to you.

Book’s going okay. Shared it with my workshop group. Got some good feedback. Feel a lot more confident.

Still got 40K marking/second marking to do. House is filthy. Friend from Prague still with us, bless him. Going to Chicago soon and taking daughter. Got meetings almost every night this week and a todo list as long as my inseam.

Real busy. Crazy busy. Insanely, stupidly busy.

But I’m writing. Some days not showering (see side of hair, above). But writing.

I mean, we’re all here to do something, right? And that’s what I’m here to do. So I’m doing it. Hope you’re doing what you’re here to do, too.

Look, I gotta go. We must have a proper chat soon. I’ll ping you.

Big hug. Big kiss.

Mimi

 

 

 

 

Working Out

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Well, today I went to the coffee shop to write. It went well. I’ve always been able to ignore people, so that was okay, and I soon lost myself in my story. And I must not have been pulling too many funny faces, because nobody pointed or laughed.

My book has so many layers…it’s very complex. There’s the letter my heroine is writing to the bishop. There’s the traumatic memories that intrude on her concentration. There’s her own thoughts and purposeful recollections. And then there are the day to day interactions she has with her people, while she is working on this very important letter.

Fuelled by pots of tea and bananas, I’m negotiating how all of these will be signalled and formed so that the reader passes effortlessly from one to the other and can tell the difference between them all.

It’s terribly difficult to write – which is, of course, why I’m interested in writing it. And I don’t know if it was all the caffeine, or the fact that it seems to be working that made me rather dance out of the cafe in a feeling of heady excitement.

I bought an amazing dress right out of a second-hand shop’s window on the way home. It’s a bit short, but I decided I didn’t care. I’ll wear silver tights. I’ll dance in it all night. I’ll be able to write this book.

I will. I will.

Into the Wild

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A new year. Here, it’s a gale-force rain storm. I’d thought about writing in a local cafe today, but, after venturing forth to take my daughter’s huge homework project to school, ended up back on my bed.

As a family, our new year resolution is to get outside our comfort zone. Even our priest used those words in his New Year’s homily, urging us to become more saintly. Get out of your comfort zone. We seem to be hearing it everywhere.

There’s nothing comfortable about trying to write as well as you can. It doesn’t matter if I’m on my bed, on a  train, or in a car on the Palestine/Israel border (where I once wrote a very good poem)…I’m still taking risks.

A narrative is very revealing. It shows the limitations of your thoughts and your courage. It allows others to see the limitations of your character, of your very self.

And that’s only if you’ve done it WELL. If you’ve made a mess of it, it’s excruciatingly embarrassing.

Too, as Annie Dillard says, when you leave a manuscript alone for too long, it grows feral and wild. You have to ‘hack your way back into it.’

I have left my heroine like Sleeping Beauty; all alone in a tower over Christmas. Now, I’m going into the jungly brambles, to hack my way back to her. Yes, I’m working in bed. AGAIN. But it’s not exactly comfortable.

I wish you all the best fortune in the New Year. May it bring you happiness, wealth and lots and lots of discomfort.

Working Hard

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Here I am, hard at work. I know it doesn’t look like work. My work very seldom does.

I lay in bed,  my computer propped up on my knees, and write. Today, I’m writing about my narrator remembering something; a horrible memory of a time when her small community was starving and suffering from dysentery. I’m all cosy in bed and thinking about what I’ll eat for breakfast at 10:30. She’s haunted by the memory of trying to feed a dead person. I’m getting up soon…I can’t write this book for too long at a stretch.

I’ve been up once. I’ve made a party plate for my daughter to take to school, helped her style her hair, said goodbye to my husband and waved my daughter off to school on the taxi she shares with six other children. I’m sure, as I’m waving goodbye in my dressing gown, everyone in the street thinks I’m a terribly lazy mum. But I was working before six a.m.

At some point today, I may read a book or watch a film. That’s my work, too. I need to keep up with the narratives other people build. I need to have some concept of the context in which I work.  So, lying in bed and typing is work. Lying on the sofa and reading a novel is work. Sitting in the cineplex, watching a matinee is work.  Sitting on a plastic bag, watching the river rise in the rain; that’s work, too.

Sometimes (in fact, surprisingly often)  I even get paid.