No one else is going to write it for you.

January 27, 2014 / lynseywhite / 7 Comments

So, diet books, huh? (Don’t worry; you haven’t come to the wrong website.)

The Fast Diet. The 5:2 diet. The Super Juice Diet. The Atkins Diet. The New Atkins Diet. The H2O Diet (really?!?). The Lemon Detox (mm, tasty). And that’s leaving aside the more emotive titles: Slim to Win. Skinny Bitch. Clean and Lean… (Meaning what, exactly? That fat people are dirty?)

Business, of course, is booming. (I even own one of these books myself – although not the disturbingly-named ‘Skinny Bitch’, I hasten to add.) I’m not saying that diets don’t work, per se, I’m just asking – by show of hands – who here doesn’t already know exactly how to lose weight?

[Insert drumroll.] Yes, you guessed it! Healthy eating and exercise.

That’s not how we are, though, is it? We humans. We want to believe in magic, in miracles. Why – in today’s culture of instant gratification – would we want to eat more vegetables and fewer crisps when a nice man called Atkins is telling us, actually, we can shrink to the width of a Twiglet whilst stuffing our pie-holes with bacon all day?

Which brings me, at last, to the point of this blog.

Tap the phrase how to write a book into the Amazon search bar and what do you get? 14,784 results. There’s Novel Writing for Dummies, and How Not To Write a Novel (this one, to be fair, is quite funny), something (I haven’t read) with the frankly extraordinary title of Piss Or Get off the Pot: Time to Write Your Novel, and Louise Doughty’s rather good A Novel in a Year (which doesn’t really expect you to write your novel in a single year, but A Novel in Three to Four Years On Average would certainly be a less enticing title).

‘What’s that?’ says the author of A Novel In Six Months. ‘You’re going to waste a whole year on that shit? If you buy my book, you’ll be done in six months… then the other six months you’ll be sunning yourself in the Bahamas on the proceeds…’

‘Look, I don’t want to interrupt, but—’

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m the author of Book in a Month.’

‘Ah.’

You’ve got to love an optimist. (Actually, no you haven’t. I can’t bloody stand them myself.) These listings are full of them: ‘No Plot? No Problem!’ screams one. ‘Writing the Breakout Novel.’ ‘How to Write a Damn Good Novel.’ Best of all is: ‘Novel: Plan it, Write it, Sell it.’ I don’t know who author Lynne Barrett-Lee is but I probably need her to stand in my living room shouting at me. ‘But, Lynne, this character – I’m not really feeling him… and this scene, it’s not working somehow…’

To which Lynne would reply: ‘What are you whining about, you dick? I’ve told you everything already – just plan it, write it, sell it!’

At this point I should say: this is not, repeat not, a rant against books about writing. I’ll freely confess I own loads of the buggers myself. I’m a magpie for quotes about writing (I’ve gathered them into a Scrivener file) and, loathsome hypocrite that I am, I’d actually like to write one myself, one day, when I’ve earned the right to do so with a published book or two. I will also confess that I teach short story writing (hence the large collection of said books) so, clearly, my stall is already set out on this issue: many aspects of the craft of writing can be taught – or at least semaphored, for the eagle-eyed to pick up on – but it’s also time to admit to myself that the purchasing of a book entitled Nail Your Novel will not (and did not, in fact) enable me to nail my novel. Not that it wasn’t a sensible, thoughtful, insightful read: it’s just that these books are the literary version of The Lemon Detox and, while they might give you a shot in the arm on occasion – and frequently do – at their most basic level they’re cramming your pie-hole with bacon when really it’s cabbage and tap dance you need. By all means read a book on technique. Take a course. Get some practise. And never say never: it may be that 79.7% of published authors owe their success to Book in a Month, or Book in a Week, or Book in the First Seven Seconds of Post-Coital Bliss, in which case, yes, I’ll look foolish. But one of my loveliest former students (who’s recently tasted some much-deserved literary success) once told me the best piece of advice I gave her was this: ‘No one else is going to write it for you.’

The unpalatable truth is that catch-all solutions don’t exist: the fact that you’ve purchased Piss or Get off the Pot will ultimately make no difference. You may piss, yes. But, equally, and more likely, you’ll stagger off the pot – or remain there, trousers round your ankles, no closer to nailing, stapling, or building your novel from spare bits of string than you would have been sans pot-pissing guide. Any shot in the arm will have dwindled around page 12 – if you’re anything like me, that is – and you’ll face the cold, hard truth that no one (not even Lynne Barrett-Lee) is going to write the book for you. And even if she did, she’d be unlikely to finish it in a single frigging month. So step away from A Novel in Two-Eighths of a Nano-Second and welcome to the real world.

You’re going to hate it.

Why writing is not the same as reading, and other painful truths.

January 25, 2014January 26, 2014 / lynseywhite / 2 Comments

Ah, reading.* How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

1) A nice chunky novel = soaking your brain in a long, hot bath. (Although anything by David Peace = an episode of tachycardia.)

‘The Bath of Knowledge’ designed by Vanessa Mancini.

2) A good short story = an invigorating dip in the North sea.

3) Most poetry = ten seconds of toe-tickling, or an accidental pinprick. (N.B. The very best poetry = blinding flash of glory, or leg mangled horribly in man-trap. Which brings me back to David Peace…)

Each experience may, of course, feel different for you. But the odds are, if you’re reading this post at all, that you somehow – in your own unique manner – derive at least a modicum of pleasure from the act of staring at words on a page. And if, like me, you attempt to place words on a page yourself there’s a fair chance you like it a helluva lot.

There’s an outside chance that you might even like reading about other people’s lives a little more (sometimes) than you enjoy living your own. But, ssh, we won’t go into that.

It’s important – if you’re one of these people, like me, who would shrivel and die without books – that you take a few moments to remind yourself of the following fact: Writing is Not the Same as Reading.

Well, duh, you might be thinking. But, actually, I’ve a theory that most of us – at least once in our writing ‘careers’ – have fallen prey to the following thought:

(S)he makes it look so easy.

From this thought we move rapidly to: (a) If it looks easy, it must be easy… (Reaching for laptop and/or pen and paper.) Closely followed, an hour or so later, by (b) What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? (In manner of Marlon Brando wailing, Stellaaaaa!)

I thought rocket science was hard. Then I tried writing!

The thing is, you see, the more you love reading – the more you equate it with soaking your brain in a long hot bath – the more likely it is that you’ll come to assume that writing is similarly pleasurable. And, yes, in its own twisted way it is pleasurable – very – and yes, you are right to assume they are sister activities (writing, for instance, should never be done without first having liberally steeped one’s brain in the bathtub of literature). But – and as I often say when catching sight of my rear end in a mirror, it is a big but(t) – if reading is the blue-eyed photogenic child with the nicely brushed hair who remembers her pleases and thank yous, then writing, I’m sorry to say, is the family’s black sheep that they generally keep locked away in a Mrs Rochester-style attic arrangement to wheel out, under duress, on special occasions.

That squeaking noise, yes, it’s the Bath Tub as Metaphor being dragged out again, and if writing a novel is in any way akin to the wallowy soak of reading one then you’re likely to find it’s a bath tub with horribly faulty taps that spurt cold water over your toes every time you relax, or a wobbly cat stalking perilously around the rim with its claws out, poised to fall in. Think this scene’s going well, do you, Lynsey? SPLASH. Think again.

As a reader you plunge yourself into a ready made world of another’s invention, and everything – if it’s done as it should be – feels wonderfully real. Organic, you might say. As if it just happened to bloom on the page, like a plant or a flower. As if there was never a poor fool, like you, fiddling endlessly (painfully, sometimes) with every last page. When you enter a room in a novel and marvel – oh look – at details they’ve chosen to etch in the scene (the frost-stars on a window; a sunrise of bright yellow wallpaper; a fly on a cobweb trapeze) just remember you’re only a guest. And, like guests in real houses, you won’t be obliged to take part in the manual labour of styling the place (anymore than your host would expect you to take out the rubbish or sweep up the gunk down the back of the oven).**

You know where I’m going with this… As a writer (and this is the painful bit) you’ll have to lay your own bloody floor before you can even set foot on it (let alone lay the carpets). A few leggy strides and, yup, you’ve run out of floor again: time to get down on your knees and build it. You strip off and dive in your bath tub – to find out (with chilling effect) that it hasn’t got taps yet.

So only know this: writing is locked in that attic for good reason. Forewarned is forearmed. Approach with caution.

I’ll leave you with this quote, from Jonathan Myerson in The Guardian, in the hope that it jollies you up as it did me (with its appreciation of the trickiness and slowness of it all): ‘good writing comes from someone sitting alone in a room, undergoing a distinctly unphotogenic process of self-discovery. Good writing comes from experimentation, word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, and thus it grows into something that probably even the author did not predict and could not have foreseen. The writer needs a chance to try again, fail again, fail better.’

*This post is about the pursuit of reading, as opposed to the Berkshire city of Reading. (I did, however, have an excellent weekend at the Reading Festival in 1990. Just thought I’d mention.)

** My own personal house porn comes in A.S.Byatt’s Possession. Among the many (better known) delights of this novel, Byatt also Gives Great Room.

‘In quickness is truth’: blurting and the art of novel maintenance.

January 20, 2014 / lynseywhite / 12 Comments

In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

This quote comes from Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, and matches exactly the newest approach I’ve been taking to the Magnum Opus.

Like Bradbury, I’ll call this Blurting.

The things that I’m blurting won’t even be part of the book – they’re just backstory (just, she says: as if backstory wasn’t important) – but the thing is I’ve got myself stuck. I’m so deep in the mud of the middle (the ‘muddle’ we might as well call it) that only a radical tactic will save me.

And so – though I’m usually chained to my keyboard – I’m writing by hand, in an A4 pad full of bits of old lesson plans, notes for old stories, occasional shopping lists (Lynsey’s top tip: if your notebook’s too fancy or pricey or perfect you’ll find yourself frightened to write anything for the fear of spoiling it; drafts are best done in the tattiest book you can find). What you blurt should be legible – just – but don’t stop to find typos (writos?) or fill in missed words. There’s no need. All you’re catching I think, when you blurt, is the story. And stories are more than just words. (It is nice, though, when a character uses words you hadn’t thought of. Private proclivities, for instance. Scarpered. Specimens. A few of my favourites today.)

An excerpt from the Blurtings

It’s dangerous, though. Look closely at the picture above and you might spot a woman’s name: Dora. There’s no one in Madder Hall called Dora. Not yet… But the deeper I burrow, the closer I get to the core of it all: what’s been causing the muddle, I think, is the fact there are two diverse strands to my story – and, damn it, they just won’t join up. Every bone in my body is aching to MAKE THEM join up and get back to the novel already, for god’s sake (impatience turns quickly to panic); this draft should be finished by now – but these things can’t be rushed. ‘If poetry,’ said Keats, ‘comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.’ A novel needs rather more planning, of course, than a poem, but just like a poem a novel comes mainly – completely? – from the jolly old subconscious, and blurting allows the subconscious to speak.

I imagine my own as a kindly old lady, proffering tea. On a day like today there is cake as well. ‘You might want to sit down, dear,’ she says. ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is great news: you’re really immersed in this story. You’ve found all the voices, so well done, you.’ She puts a gloved hand on my knee. She’s called Babs. Or Val. ‘Here’s the bad news, dearie. Your two strands won’t ever join up. It’s beyond our abilities. See what this Dora character has to offer, why don’t you? What’s that, dear? Speak up, please. This isn’t the novel you wanted to write? Why no, dear, whoever said it should be? It’s the one I want to write. Let me cut you a slice of this cake…’

It’s raining stories. Hallelujah!

January 12, 2014January 12, 2014 / lynseywhite / 1 Comment

Something odd has been happening.

Elves have been taking the off-cuts from my novel and turning them into short stories.

The Elves and the Shoemaker: Lucy Crane’s illustration for the 1886 edition. I’m the one in the mob cap.

Short stories aren’t quite as useful as shoes, of course: nevertheless, I prefer them. Whether they’ll end up saleable is anyone’s guess. But that isn’t important. I woke up this morning to find that a story was writing itself in my head. It was all I could do to get up, have a wee, source some caffeine, and get myself back to the laptop in time to record it – like taking dictation – before it was gone.

It took less than an hour. For me, that’s unheard of. And yes, it was dreadfully written, with cliches and adverbs and notes to myself in the middle… but stories – whole stories – don’t land in my lap very often. I’ve waited my whole life long for my own little Ariel moment, when stories (or poems) fall out of the sky and you just have to catch them, and now (touching wood) here it is. Something pure, unselfconscious: not fussy, or tricksy, or technical. Nothing yet of the caliber of Tulips or The Moon and the Yew Tree or Lady Lazarus, but you know what they say about beggars and choosing.

So anyway, dear subconscious, I’m wearing a hard hat to bed tonight in case somehow, by magic, the rest of my novel falls out of the sky.