Writing like a writer

NB: I’ll be reading an extract from the story I’m talking about in this blog post at The Midsummer Murder Mystery, this Sunday July 3rd at Cabaret Voltaire’s Speakeasy in Edinburgh. It begins at 8pm and is free entry. More information on the Facebook event page.

 

I spent the last three weeks behaving like a writer, more so than I ever have before.

After the kick up the bum that I needed from my tutor, I knuckled down and worked, worked, worked in the most functional way I’ve ever witnessed myself work.

At first, I had a character and a setting nestled at the back of my mind. Then I spent about four or five days researching around the subjects I thought were important to my germ of an idea, reading books and taking notes until ideas began to form. Slowly, I developed a list of five to ten scene ideas, pushing the story onwards.

I started to write, aiming for around 1000 words a day.

When I finished the first draft of each scene, I went back to the original scene summary idea and asked myself a few questions:

- How does this scene push the story forward?

- What does the reader discover through this scene?

- What questions are raised for the reader in this scene?

- Has this draft fulfilled the original aims from the summary?

Goodness, isn’t that functional?

As I continued writing, more scene ideas for further on in the piece emerged and I hurriedly wrote them down, until I had the bones of a  plot and a first draft which eventually reached the colossal heights of 14000 words. Goodness knows what that is: it’s not a short story and it’s certainly not a novella, but never mind.

Because I didn’t plan its structure meticulously before I started writing (and I’ve never written a piece of this length before), there are a few loose ends which need tying up, and one or two of the characters need to be given a firmer functionality in the plot as a whole to merit their inclusion in the story at all. But these issues are to be expected and I think (hope) those issues are nothing which can’t be solved by adding some new scenes here and there.

All in all, I’ve learnt a lot from this, and I’m really pleased with what I’ve done. It’s the longest piece I’ve ever written, and even if it doesn’t work out I know that I could do it again in the future.

I’m meeting with my supervisor tomorrow to discuss the piece. I really, really hope that I feel as positive after the meeting as I do now. Fingers crossed.

Breakthrough?

I’ve spent the last few weeks feeling like I didn’t have any ideas which were good enough to turn into a short story. But then my wonderful writer friend Louise wrote this excellent blog post about writing what you want to write about, and not worrying about what readers (or, more specifically in our case, what our tutors and markers) will think. In Louise’s comments, I began to write something like: ‘You’re right, and in that case, I should be writing a story about a serial killer and a derelict mental hosp –’

I stopped typing. Why wasn’t I writing this?

Over the past twelve hours, I have been questioning why I haven’t been exploring the things which most interest me, why I’ve decided that I need to ignore my morbid and strange side in an effort to write something conventional. You know, about real people and real life issues that could happen to anyone.

The answer I’ve come up with is that I subconsciously thought that writing about what interested me was too easy, and therefore not good enough. Because surely, your best work needs to be difficult to produce, otherwise it seems monotonous, repetitive or samey? Erm… this is quite possibly bollocks.

No wonder I have been having trouble (for a ridiculous amount of time: months) writing things I feel proud of. I am now entering into a new experiment: writing about what interests me.

Inside Your Head

While learning to write and soaking up every possible piece of advice anyone’s proffered (and then ignoring them if I fancy breaking a couple of rules), one of the nuggets which seems applicable again and again is “Show, don’t tell“. Much of the time, “Paula looked sad” becomes a lot more powerful when rewritten as “Paula’s whole body seemed to crumple and her cheeks were wet with tears”, for example.

I had a meeting with one of our course tutors yesterday which went very well. She said that the next step I need to take with my writing is to render the inner lives of characters more fully on the page. She gave me some reading recommendations of writers who do this well (Margaret Atwood and Edith Wharton, for example), and a handout which might help, but she said that this is generally something which can’t be taught.

She said also that she’s aware that this depiction of the inner lives of characters will seem a bit like it goes against the aforementioned ‘show, don’t tell’ rule.

She’s right: often when I’m writing, I try to depict a character’s thoughts through their actions instead of telling the reader how the character is feeling or what they’re thinking. Instead of telling the reader that my character feels frustrated, a character will take a sharp intake of breath or purse their lips. This probably comes from reading a bit too much early Raymond Carver when I first started writing. So maybe it’s better if that character not only purses their lips, but also thinks about their frustration, why it’s happened, how it makes them feel or what it makes them remember.

Perhaps it’s time now to slowly and delicately unravel my ingrained habits; to tell the reader what my characters might be thinking.

What do you lot  reckon?

The Ghost of William Shatner: Recordings

For those of you who couldn’t make it to the Ghost of William Shatner evening last week, Lets Get Lyrical have been kind enough to post the audio files online. You can now see for yourself whether the lyrics work without the music (and, as some of my friends have been asking me, judge whether George Formby was indeed a successful choice).

Here’s the link: http://letsgetlyrical.com/cata-news/audio-the-ghost-of-william-shatner/

The Ghost of William Shatner

This is going to be exciting, and I’ll be making a fool of myself alongside some pretty spectacular Edinburgh writers:

Underword is back for a special event in February 2011, as part of the City of Literature Let’s Get Lyrical campaign. 

A diverse line-up of readers will answer the question: can the lyrics work without the music? Each has chosen one song that means something special to them and will perform that song as spoken word. Will it be heartfelt? Angry? Ironic? Passionate? In “a funny voice”? Find out on Wednesday 23rd February, 8pm, at The Caves, Niddry Street South, Edinburgh.

The Ghost of William Shatner is a charity event in aid of Nerine Shatner Friendly House, a home for women in recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. Admittance is by donation (suggested £4).

Facebook event page here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131770870227121

Website here: http://underword.co.uk/

Text, Image and Collaboration

You  may have noticed it’s been pretty quiet around here. This isn’t because I’ve been out partying every night (honest, Dad! Well, maybe a bit…), but because this semester seems like a very busy time. Alongside our normal course workload, we’ve been working on a collaboration with the illustration students at the Edinburgh College of Art.

We paired up with an illustrator, and then we exchanged work: the writers respond to an image and the illustrators respond to a short piece of text. We now have two paired text-and-image pieces, one of which we get to choose for a book and an exhibition.

I’m really lucky, my collaboration partner is a fantastic artist, and she’s lovely too!

Events so far include an exhibition launch at the Forest Cafe on March 1st, and a book launch at the same venue on March 25th. There will be readings at both events. I’ll add more information as and when I know about it, but for now here’s the blog for the project: http://blog.eca.ac.uk/twointhebush/, which we have entitled Two in the Bush. (I know).

The Lucky Ones

My lovely writer-friend Louise’s Dad made a video of me reading a story at our Student Reading Party at the end of last term:

It was a great night, and there are bound to be more readings in the next couple of months. I will be more proactive in posting about them in advance next time, so those of you lucky enough to live in or near Edinburgh can come along and hear some of our MSc class read their (excellent) stories.

In other news, you can usually hear at least one or two of my classmates (and frequently me, too!) reading short five-minute pieces of prose at the monthly Inky Fingers Open Mic at the Forest Cafe. It’s always a fantastic evening, with very talented poets, prosers, and musicians.

No Place Like Home

I’ve lived all over the place: Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Birmingham, Texas, Ohio, and now Scotland. I wouldn’t change that for the world, but it does mean that I don’t feel like I know any particular place very thoroughly.

So where can I root my stories? I don’t feel like I know any particular place well enough to be able to describe the streets, the houses, the atmosphere or the accents.

For now, my stories tend to be set somewhere vague, somewhere anonymous. But I’m beginning to realise the importance of a concrete setting. The reader needs somewhere to latch on to, and I don’t feel that so far I have provided that very well.

How do you create a realistic setting for your stories?

Book Buying Etiquette for the 21st Century

I’ve been musing on this one for a while, and I wondered what everyone else thought about book buying etiquette for the 21st century. This is entirely my own musings, so please feel free to point out if I’m wrong, or if I’ve missed something glaringly obvious.

For the sake of this post, and because I know little about electronic books, lets pretend e-books and e-readers don’t exist, and we’re living in a non-virtual book-buying world. Today we are hypothetically going shopping for real life books, and there are a lot of considerations.

Support the Writer?

Firstly, one’s consideration might be Is the author still alive?

If the answer is yes, it might be nice to give them some money in the most direct way possible. Perhaps the best place to buy this book would be at a book signing, direct from their publisher, or from the author’s personal website. Next best might be from your local independent book shop.

Last resort: a supermarket. Tesco don’t need your money.

Support the Book Shop?

If the author is dead (and therefore not in need of your direct cash to supply their cups of tea and central heating), maybe it’s time to support your local independent or secondhand book shop.

Support the Environment?

If you don’t have a local secondhand or independent bookshop, as sadly is beginning to be more and more common, or if you’re unable to leave the house because two inches of snow fell over night and OH MY GOD I’M SNOWED IN, perhaps the internet could help.

Abe Books seems pretty good to get secondhand and low priced books, and similarly the Book Depository. Second hand books are in abundance, and I think buying secondhand is a form of recycling.

Support the Charity?

And here’s a question: what about charity shops? It’s very nice to be able to support a charity, and it’s great to be picking up books for anything from 50 pence to £4, but how are their low prices and abundant stock impacting the independent book selling market? I worry about this.

A question:

And what about Amazon? I get the feeling that bookshops are a bit cross with the behemoth of Amazon. Should we avoid book shopping with them? Should they be lumped in with supermarkets as a last resort?

Performance

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for so long that I thought I had actually written it already. We’re very lucky on our course because every couple of weeks a guest writer comes and reads some of their work and answers our (often inane) questions. We’ve had some absolutely fantastic writers this semester: Anne Donovan, Vicki Feaver, Les Murray, Alan Bissett, Brian McCabe, James Robertson, Tim Turnbull… I think we’re the luckiest writing students in the world.

As well as being fantastically entertaining and informative, seeing all of these fantastic professional writers has taught me something absolutely valuable, something which you can’t be told; you can only learn by observing: reading your work in public can, and possibly should, be a performance.

It’s all very well standing up in front of everyone and reading out loud, making sure to pause effectively between sentences and enunciate, reading slowly and clearly. Yes, all of that is important.

But if your narrator has a voice, use it. Speak in that voice. It might be difficult, it might be excruciating, but for that five or ten minutes, be that character.

I know, I know, you’re a writer. Not an actor. You like to be squirreled away behind a desk, wrapped in a blanket, drinking tea and not talking to people. The last thing you want is to stand up in front of a room of unimpressed faces and… well, basically strip your soul naked and invite them to laugh at you.

Here’s what I hope think: most people are nice and supportive. If they’re there watching you read, they’re probably on your side. They’re rooting for you and they’re hoping it goes well for you. They’ll clap and they’ll cheer, and if they’re nice they’ll come up to you at the end and tell you that you did well, because you did.

So get up there and read your work. Read it loudly and with confidence. Do it in an accent if you want. Move your hands around a bit. Use different tones of voice for dialogue. If your story is from the perspective of a bitter old lady, put that slight lemony pucker on your lips and hiss a little when you speak. If your story is from the perspective of a narcissistic pyromaniac,  there might be a manic grin creeping around the corners of your mouth while you read (ahem… I’ll post a video one day). If you do well, your friends might not leave you unattended near an open flame ever again. And then you’ll know you performed, you didn’t just read.

Thoughts?