Saturday 2 June 2012

Spirit of Summer Set Free

So, four days' creativity, no interruptions! Must get the plot for my 19th century novel down in scene-by-scene form. Britain is in the grip of a once-in-a-lifetime public holiday to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of HM the Queen; ideal opportunity for writers like me to shake off the cobwebs and get out on the streets.


Began with bed & breakfast in the seaside town of Margate. Ye Gods, Margate Old Town serves the largest breakfasts in the world. Hugely full but content, I sit down at my window overlooking the bay, to focus on my story's timeline. It's become a monster, like one of those dogs that has to have counselling because it's become pack leader in charge of the human family.

I tell it to sit, nicely, and divide it into the classic three parts: beginning, middle and end. Traditional model? Boring? Hope not. We expect to know where a novel begins.


 I come up with 20 first lines, each supposed to set the scene for my hero's knife-edge journey through the book. 'Thomas scraped the horse-shit from his coat', maybe not. 'His lawyer was drunk again, and in the gutter,' perhaps. 'He heard the elephant's ankle bells, and dragged his brief from the gutter,' now I'm getting there.



Not aiming for perfection yet - that can come later. Just brainstorming the different ways I can get an over-view. It's a waiting game, sitting it out on the cliff-tops of the imagination. Since the seagulls are screaming overhead, and I've had absolutely no exercise since I got here, decide to follow take the stiff climb to the old castle, for 'Jack in the Green'.

I join the crowds, albeit nervously, for this most traditional of ceremonies - the day the Spirit of Summer is set free. Morris Dancers everywhere.

Challenge myself to jot down at least five different scenes, with summaries. They might be included in the first act. They might not. The point at this stage is get a body of material down, being patient, stalking the tale. I look up, and see that Jack, the old green man of winter, is about to reach a bloody end.



Finally, the summoning. New life is on its way.



Like the Morris Dancers in Margate, I saved the summoning until everything was ready. On the train journey back to London I have two hours, one ham sandwich and three cappuccinos' worth of energy in which to explore my main man, Thomas Tarling, and his desperate bid to escape the law.

You can find Margate here:

 

Friday 6 April 2012

Passion on Good Friday

Been working every hour of the day on setting this week. I'm fascinated by the way mood in a story can be implied by the setting - that includes the season, the weather, the wildlife, the antics of the general public. As a Londoner born and bred, I love to be out and about in my beautiful, diverse city. It's like a character itself, with its many moods and changes. Today, on Good Friday, Trafalgar Square was sombre

Passion of the Christ, Trafalgar Square

and grey, as thousands gathered around Nelson's Column to watch a bloody but beautifully acted Passion of the Christ. It was a great moment to make notes for the lowest scenes in my current novel - the haunting, the despair, the bits where Thomas can see no way out.

It seems barely a couple of weeks, in fact it is barely a couple of weeks, since the same square was bright and full of laughter for Chinese New Year. On that occasion, too, I took my notebook and tried  to etch the details on my

Chines New Year Celebrations, Trafalgar Square

mind for use in some fictional scene or other. I think setting can be a brilliant way of implying everything without overstating it - remember Charles Dickens' character Miss Haversham and that house, all neglected and wild, just like the poor lady's mind?

The Fountains, Trafalgar Square

When summer comes, it'll be the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The crowds will come again but the fountains of Trafalgar Square will be a bright oasis in the heat.  It'll be a great space for writers like me to do timed writing exercises, make lists and dream of the happy ending - if I decide to let my Thomas Tarling have one, that is.

You can find Trafalgar Square here

Saturday 18 February 2012

Blowing Life into A Story

I've been working on the characters I need for my second novel. When I started my first book I knew nothing about planning a novel so I just launched in and typed away until I ran out of steam (around one and a half chapters in). I didn't want to be one of those ghastly people who say, at every social gathering, 'I've got one and a half chapters in my desk drawer but of course I've no time to finish them' so I joined a writing group.

One of the first things they taught me was how to make a character chart - by taking 10 or so names, and writing each at the head of a long column in your notebook. If, like me, you're comfortable with spreadsheets, then do it electronically. Then, you start to fill in the columns with names, characteristics, relationship to the others, jobs, and so forth. It's vital that you have this material noted down in order to avoid those awful mistakes, halfway through a novel or maybe in your third, when the blue-eyed boy becomes a brown-eyed charmer.

Some of my first characters had jobs I've never done or am likely to do, but I researched by reading first and then going to visit the places they might have worked. In order to find out about glassblowing, I went, one freezing cold morning, to watch how it was done. I chose a studio, Bath Aqua Glass, where glassblowing is still carried out in the traditional manner, albeit with the safety equipment my characters would not have had in 1826.

Once I got into the studio and felt the heat of the glasshouse fires and the laughter and jokes of the men, I realised that I did have a stock of memories to give colour to my novel.

My own Grandfather was a surgical instrument maker, and I well remember him coming home from the forge, and what his hands were like, and what he ate, and his tales of the doings there. He had a passion for his work, and a joy in the artistry of it, which I saw again in the faces of the men in Bath. They told me about the history, and the dangers, and that arsenic oxide smells like coconut. This is how the novel has its first quickening, and shows the first tender signs of life.

Fill your paper with the writings of your heart - William Wordsworth

You can find Bath Aqua Glass here

Friday 27 January 2012

Public Rage, Secret Agendas

So, we're all getting hot under the collar about the bankers' bonuses which are, apparently, 'not even enough to brag about in a coffee bar'. You could buy five coffee bars of the kind I frequent for one banker's bonus, only we call them cafes out here.

Still, it's been a good week - lost 3lbs now, still amazed that Cheesy Wotsits are only 3 points but a nice piece of apple pie is 7. Where's the justice in that, eh?

Extended my work on plot to include 'setting' and this week I've been learning all about the secret agenda. Tried this exercise in which you describe a garden shed as seen by a man who's just lost his son in the war. You don't mention the son, or the war. Let it roll around in my subconscious while prowling about London until I came upon Covent Garden, the setting of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Eliza Doolittle - now there was a girl with a secret agenda.

I think of my almost-finished WIP, the one about the glassblower, and how those men slaved for fourteen hours a day, and died from the chemicals that pounded into their lungs. What must it have taken to get out, with a wife and six little uns in tow? Secret agenda.

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Stars Bright, Wikipedia Dim



So Wikipedia has gone dark but most of Britain are watching the stars with dishy Professor Brian Cox in any case. Meanwhile I've lost a pound on my Weightwatchers' diet, progressed to drinking two bottles of water a day and made pleasing progress with my outlining. I never realised it could be like this - usually I'm wrestling with the plot and the prose at one and the same time, and the plot points get all lost in the 80,000 words minimum it takes to write a novel.

I've been able to construct my plot using real details from actual crimes, as it's a mystery. That's stage 1. Then, of course, I'll be letting the creative voice take over, and the real work of fiction will begin - the true life crimes are just a beginning point. To use a real-life crime only barely disguised, especially when the many victims, including the family and friends of the deceased, are still alive - very poor, in my opinion.

Monday 16 January 2012

Blue Monday

The Nag's Head on Blue Monday, The Most Depressing Day of the Year

Today is 'Blue Monday' - supposedly the most depressing day of the year. Strange, because we had excellent meeting in the back room of The Nag's Head.

Amazing what four writers, who pay critical attention to one another's manuscripts, add a dash of love and a jolly good helping of freshly baked flat-breads and olives can achieve.

After years of being a pantser writer - ie one who launches in and wrestles a plot out of the skin of their pants - I've decided to try OUTLINING my next novel before I write it. Possible ways of outlining, so I gather, are the 'Structure Plus', the 'Signpost', the 'Notecard', the 'Spreadsheet' and the 'Flowchart'.

Decided to try the Spreadsheet because I ploughed through a Learn Direct course on spreadsheets - might as well put it to use. Always did hate Flowcharts. Returned home, counted Weightwatcher points - how can a Chai Latte possibly be ELEVEN points?

Sunday 8 January 2012

Doing It Like Priestley




Just got back from the Faversham Hops Festival - a glorious, English end to the summer indeed. Faversham is a lovely old town in the heart of the 'Garden of England', the county of Kent, and it took no more than a couple of hours to get there on a red London bus. To while away the journey I revisited J. B. Priestly's Good Companions, which I'd downloaded to my for the purpose.



The Good Companions has a fascinating history since Priestly wrote it at a time when he was worn down with tragedy - the effects of the First World War, the death of his young and beautiful wife from cancer and the loss of his Father, tragically early at the age of 56. A single dad, trying desperately to pay the bills and bring up two daughters alone, Priestly would not have been able to take the time out to write the book were it not for the supreme generosity of his friend Walpole. Walpole, knowing that Priestly would be too proud to accept a gift of a year's salary, although he was wealthy enough to give it, instead suggested they collaborate on a book. Priestly agreed, and on these terms, Walpole donated his share of the royalties as a gift so that The Good Companions could be written.



'The Good Companions' turned out to be the book that Priestly called 'the only one I could have written at the time'. He quite literally wrote himself out of misery, with this charming tale that breaks all the publishers' rules - much too long, multiple protagonists, long rambling plot, feel-good ending. Incidentally, Priestly's knowledge of the forgotten corners of England during the Great Depression of the 1930s, all to familiar in our current credit crisis, shines through.

I love it.

Thoroughly unflattering but an essential part of the day...

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break 
  William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew