Zero words written, zero words to edit. Blank pages, finished pages. Zero is both the beginning point and the end point for me.
Nothing is more exciting (and slightly intimidating) than that blank page. Even more intimidating, a new notebook, perfect, like freshly fallen snow...if snow had faint parallel lines in it, anyway. I buy linen backed A5 notebooks from Paperchase - the paper is think enough not to bleed through and they stand well on the bookshelf. They are also packed with pages, so I don't have to replace them...going through that horrible moment of taking a new one off the shelf and spoiling it. The computer screen is neither so personal nor so permanent, and having a new story fermenting in my head makes me let it loose on the cyber page. I love starting things. I can write the first 10k of a novel over a frantic weekend.
Editing and rewriting is harder. At the moment I have, according to my agent, an excellent first 20 chapters and a lovely last 20 chapters. But the book has a sagging, lumpy middle (my words, not hers) that need a change. I've worked out where the problem is and am fixing it, but have to rewrite a number of bits. You move one thing, and everything moves. I've decided to bring the character in earlier and make him more prominent, so I'm having to check every scene he's in subsequently, or any scene where they meet him to make sure it still works. I printed off the hundred pages concerned, and am working through them, first with a red pen and next on the computer. When I get to zero pages, it's one more read through of the whole lot, and it's back to the agent. Beginnings and endings, the easy bits. The trick is to get better at the middles.
I started this A-Z thing on a whim, but I've really enjoyed it. I've read many many other blogs, learning a lot along the way, not just about writing but about place, lifestyle, people. All the things I have to write about. I've visited blogs in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Canada, Paris, Berlin, all over the UK and all over the States. I've been challenged, stretched and enchanted by poetry, fiction, whimsy, humour, art and opinions. I'll definitely be doing it again.
It's also really made me think about writing. I'm in the transition between being a hobby writer who dips in and out of writing (up to 5 years ago), learning about writing and trying out different styles and forms, (5 years ago until last September) and actually trying to create publishable work. Work being the operative word here. The A-Z has made me look at various aspects of writing, some that I might not have touched on otherwise, while my agent pushes the book into a leaner, more streamlined shape by dropping edits and ideas on me. These translate into big ideas and bigger edits, but the book has slimmed down and I understand the process of editing for publication more.
The A-Z has also helped me look at the last part of my MA. I have to write a fictional piece of text, 15-20k in length associated with a 3000 word rationale, explaining why I do things the way I do them. This blog has helped me focus on why I do something, not just following my intuition or the story. It's taught me a lot about how to take a first draft and turn it into a commercial proposition, with the invaluable help of my agent and other writers. So thank you to everyone that stopped to add your invaluable comments, I have considered and learned from them all.
There is an assumption that new writers are young. In fact, my university has just written a nice piece about me for a forthcoming magazine, and the author comes to the same conclusion, adding: 'The future looks bright for this young novelist and the MA Creative and Critical Writing course goes from strength to strength.' Young? I looked over my recent reading of debut novelists: Emma Darwin (over 40), Bernie McGill (over 40), and the competition winner, Rosie Garland, is my age.
Imaginatively, I can write from the perspective of man or woman, child or adult: hell, one of BT 2's characters is inanimate. But as I get older it is easier to write about things I remember, and when I was in my twenties I found it hard to imagine being older. I fell into stereotypes of older people because I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be, say, fifty. (I thought it would all be about teapots and slippers). There's a rash of books set in the sixties and seventies at the moment, and I wonder if it's because a lot of new writers grew up in those decades. Unlike that young me, I know what it's like to be young and middle-aged. I can see old age just ahead. And my writing, I'm glad to say, is getting better, partly because I have read so much more.
You don't have to be young to be a novelist, you have to imagine and write. I'm off to brew a pot of Earl Grey and snuggle into my slippers...
My maths is a bit crap, but x seems to be the unknown factor. When I write first drafts, XXX stands in for names and places I haven't yet decided on, or can't remember what I used earlier in the book. But I notice that the same first drafts have fairly simple characters at first, that slowly gather history and mystery as I write on. The main characters often end up quite different at the end of the draft than they started out. I find the mystery, and the second draft becomes a whole rewrite. Now I know them better they will behave differently, and possibly take the story in a completely new direction.
I like characters to be complex and involved, like real people. I used to meet people through my work at a hospice. These weren't people who would normally have counselling, but their bereavement was a stress so I would see them. Under the most conventional exterior you could find the broadest range of personal secrets, tastes, lifestyles and emotions. It all entered into my memory banks and sometimes (completely anonymised, of course) into notebooks. Out of that mass of observation come characters, sometimes so real to me they almost dictate the story.
I wonder how much of those 'real people' creep into the books, and whether they (or I) will recognise them.
I think one of the key traits of a writer is nosiness. Sorry, keen observational skills. Not to mention surreptitious note taking on napkins and receipts. I usually carry a notebook, and I find quick photos with the mobile phone also very helpful.
We were stuck at a service station a few weeks ago, in a Costa, having a tea break. A dapper man in his fifties or so came in with a younger woman, maybe early thirties. they were very affectionate and flirty. He was wearing a wedding ring, she wasn't. I could hardly sit down and ask them, in a non-judgemental, curious way, 'are you having an affair?' But I could shepherd my husband away from the inviting sofas and towards the hard backed chairs right behind them. Her name was Cheryl, I think, but it might have been Cherie for all I know. (Maybe he was French!) She just called him darling, about twice every sentence.
Anyway, being a bit road-dazed, it took the husband a while to realise what I was doing (I think my actually pulling out a notebook may have tipped him off.) But, so much research! He can't complain, he writes songs on the fly, and once wrote a love song that you realise slowly is a stalker talking about his victim. I think he got that off something written in the sand on the beach.
PS This is not an endorsement of Costa coffee or of affairs. I don't drink coffee, for a start.
Much is made on writing courses about developing your voice, your unique pattern of using dialogue, syntax, punctuation and vocabulary that is distinctively you. The problem is, we don't always hear our own voice, as distinct from our favourite writers, we just know we don't match up to them. We are influenced by them, but mostly unconsciously. I know if I read something like Emma Darwin's The Mathematics of Love (a five star read, by the way), I unconsciously pick up a little of her style and pace. It's like spending the weekend in Ireland, you come back with a trace of an accent. Then it fades and a new writer influences your voice. I can almost pick out what I was reading while I'm bombing through a first draft, where I listen to myself the least.
Then the characters have voices, too. My historical narrators speak to me the loudest, especially as two of them are first person narrators. Kelley's voice, in Borrowed Time, is so loud in my head I write him twice as fast as anyone else. I feel like I've found out about him as the chapters went on, a picture forming in my head that doesn't feel like all mine. Vincent's love for Viola, his brother's child, is so much that of a doting father it shines through his grumpiness. Somehow I have a grumpy old man lost in my head, who can be snappy. The one character who is quiet, is my main character Jack, who would probably not speak much anyway if she was real. She occasionally wanders into the study to stroke the cat, look at the books, and sit in the window looking over the garden.
I feel like an upstart, like I'm going to get found out at any moment. Upstart means suddenly thrust into a position of power or wealth from a humble position. I can't say I have any wealth, but suddenly I seem to have acquired some credibility with an agent etc. None of it seems real. Having spoken with my agent, I am sat surrounded by edits (mostly small) to do in a sensible, business-like manner, but I feel so overwhelmed with it all. What, me? You want me to edit this made up manuscript that I just wrote? So I printed out the pages and pretended they weren't mine.
Actually, those small edits are still quite tricky. Imagine you built a house, from scratch, it took you ages. You are then asked to remove that brick and that hinge, add three more bricks and change the shape of that window. It doesn't sound like much, but it's massive. You end up having to rebuild half the walls because if you take a brick out, there will be a hole, and maybe the bricks above it won't be supported. It isn't easy to turn around and say: 'I haven't done this before, I'm making it up as I go along.'
I don't feel prepared. I'm not a published author. I'm just finding my way, and I'm sure if I ever get a book deal I'll gradually get better at it all. After, say, a couple of decades. In the meantime, I feel a bit out of place.
