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half-face illness

A bits and pieces sort of post this morning.  Brain is not cooperating fully and is demanding eggs and fruitcake.

Working on novel yesterday – not the ‘finished’ draft, but the half-written novel I abandoned in order to write the other novel. I was so incredibly stuck with it when I gave it up, and couldn’t see anything worthwhile in it at all. A few months later and I have somehow once again found the thread of story and interest in it. The lesson I’m taking from this is that sometimes, you just need to back off from things for a while. If something isn’t working, maybe it just needs time.

Also I’m happy to say that finishing a draft of my other novel has given me the confidence to believe that I can finish a draft of this novel. And I hope it will be a somewhat cleaner draft, although that might be wishing for too much.

Finished reading Book 2 of 1Q84 last night. I think I’ll finish Book 3 before I pass comment, but there were a couple of things I found hugely disappointing and definitely want to blog about.

I am still lurgified, but now I have this weird, half-face illness, in which half my face is ill (running nose, swollen glands, headache, earache) and the other half of my face is totally fine. Bored of being ill now.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something more interesting to say for myself. Am off to get breakfast and write more stuff.

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sympathy for the devil?

I think it is a very limited sort of person who can’t find compassion and forgiveness for ordinary human faults. We probably all know a difficult, demanding person who expects too much from people and has no time for normal human shortcomings. Is it a lack of imagination, or simply a deep self-centredness that makes such people so intolerant of others’ faults? I don’t know, but I do know that this, too, is an ordinary human flaw, and it is the sort of thing I can spend hours thinking about and discussing, in an attempt to see the truth underlying it all.

Compassion arises from and encourages understanding of what it is to be human. When we understand someone, it’s easier to have compassion for them, and if we strive to have compassion for someone, we begin to understand them. This is good stuff. And I believe that writers need to develop our capacity for understanding, because we are on a quest for meaning. Aren’t we?

But whilst I like the idea of compassion and forgiveness, and try to cultivate those qualities in myself, I think that they have their limits. There is no need, for example, to forgive those who have abused you, raped you, gained your trust and then betrayed you in terrible ways. The only reason to try to find compassion for these people is if it helps you to live your life better. It may help you more to stay angry, or deal with it in some other way, and I think that is perfectly legitimate, in real life.

But in writing? I’ve realised lately that the limits of my compassion and understanding are also the limits of my ability to write real, human characters. For example, I have a story I’ve been writing for a while, which is very nearly an excellent story. The problem is that there is this character who is a child abuser, and I hate him. No matter what I do, he comes across as a cardboard cut-out villain, and he turns my interesting, subtle story into a cartoon, because he has no depth or realness.

I know that the answer to this (and to almost every) story problem is to go deeper into character. To find his motives, his way of seeing the world, to understand what makes him tick. In other words, to understand and have compassion for him, to acknowledge his humanity. But I don’t want to.

I’m not sure I can properly articulate my thoughts about all this yet – I’m just exploring some ideas. What do you think? How do you go about writing believable villains? Do you have to love them, even though they are evil?

 

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mr white umbrella

I’ve got this story that I’ve been writing for about three years. It’s called Mr White Umbrella. It’s kind of a time travel story, it’s built around a paradox, and it’s pretty riddlesome. It has caused me an awful lot of headaches.

I’m pleased to report that Fantastique Unfettered have bought it for their next issue (which is going to be a good one, featuring Hal Duncan and Mike Allen, amongst others).  FU is a great zine, with an editor who actively seeks out new and interesting voices, and who has a great appreciation for the slipstream, interstitial and weird.  So I’m really happy to have a story of mine published there.

I’m extra pleased because it gives me a reason to stop writing the damn story! It’s basically a story that, because of it’s paradoxical nature, never ends. Which makes my job as a writer really difficult, because I could, in theory, keep writing and re-writing it forever. Which would probably drive me insane before too long.

Selling this story means that’s it, I can’t do anything else to it. I don’t think there are going to be any more edits from FU, because frankly, I don’t think they would know where to start. It’s a very difficult story. I’ve had a few reviews from readers on OWW, and whilst many of them were very positive, quite a number of reviews essentially said ‘Huh?’ Yes, it is confusing, and probably needs to be read at least twice in order to be fully understood. I’m sorry about that. I don’t normally make such massive demands on my readers.

I wanted to write a story based around a paradox, and I wanted it to be a kind of endless story, and in that sense, it is a success. Whether it works for readers is another matter. But please do get hold of a copy of FU when it comes out, and let me know what you think.

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er… thanks

Actually I’m a bit embarrassed by how kind and congratulatory people have been about the Bridport shortlist thingy. I was rather excited about it, it’s true. But in the cold light of day I see that all I really did was lose a competition and I’m not sure that this deserves as much praise as I’ve got. Although it is nice. Very nice. Thank you, nice people.

It has all made me think a bit, though. I think it was about 8 years ago that I wrote my first short story. By which I mean, a story that I drafted, revised, edited, completed, won a competition with and finally sold. (It was made into a short film – not a very good one.) Eight years is not that long, in writing terms. And a lot of that time I spent not really writing, or even trying to write. So, to put all this in perspective, I’m still just a beginner.

But I’m ready to start getting really serious now. What that means in terms of how I organise and plan my writing life, I’m not quite sure yet. But I’m feeling steely and determined, which will probably help me work it out.

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the joy of being a loser

So, there’s this major writing competition called the Bridport Prize. It happens every year, there are huge prizes, and the standard is absolutely immense. Thousands of writers, both established and emerging, enter. This year there were over 6000 entrants. I was one of them.

Guess what? I didn’t win.

But I found out yesterday that I did get shortlisted! For some reason, they don’t tell entrants they’ve been shortlisted until after they’ve told the winners/runners-up that they’ve won/run-up. That’s probably a good thing in my case, as I would now be very disappointed to find out I had lost – as it is, I get the joy of knowing I was close. I have no idea how close – I guess there could be hundreds on the shortlist. But I don’t care about that. It means my story was of a high enough standard to be seriously considered. And I am well chuffed about that!

The Bridport Prize is the one competition I’ve had my eye on since I started writing seriously. This is a big deal. Here’s to next year!

 

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unnecessary wafflage

I abandoned writing yesterday in order to start reading 1Q84, which I am enjoying so far. It doesn’t have the immediacy and instant ahhh of his other novels (except for After Dark, which I loathed), but then again it is a MASSIVE book. I know this probably makes me sound shallow, but I do prefer a smaller novel. Under 100K suits me fine. Does this particular story need 900+ pages? Perhaps. But already I am seeing bits I think would benefit from the red pencil treatment.

However, I am reserving judgement until I get a bit further in. Perhaps those flabby bits of meandering detail will turn out to be vitally important to the plot.

Some writers overwrite, some underwrite. I am definitely one of the latter. I assume it must be easier to cut stuff out rather than try to shoehorn it in later on, when I’ve already found some elegantly economic way of saying what I mean – regardless of the fact that it’s so elliptical no one else has a chance of working out what I’m saying. Maybe blogging will help in that regard – I don’t seem to have any problem typing on and on and on…

Do you write too much or not enough? Do you suspect all long novels of self-indulgence and unnecessary wafflage? Discuss!

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stuff and things

Wrote 400 words of a new short story yesterday. (Go me!)

After the thoughtful discussions here and on facebook yesterday about settings in fiction, I found myself having a very clear idea of when and where these new characters were. It’s interesting to remind myself that the very fact of writing about a place adds an element of fiction to a realistic setting. This can play out in lots of ways. For example, in my story ‘A Rose is Rose’, I had the same setting twice – once as a fictionalised version of a real place, and then as a highly stylised fictionalised version of the same place, where the added fictional elements came from the imagination of the character in the ‘realistic’ setting.

Setting is endlessly interesting and, in my opinion, central to storytelling of all kinds.

I am currently reading ‘Baba Yaga Laid an Egg’, by Dubravka Ugrešić, which is not as good as I want it to be. But maybe I’m being a bit unfair – I’m waiting for my copy of 1Q84 to arrive, which I think is going to be awesome, and  I’m just passing time with this book until it arrives.

Am still lurgified. Dog is depressed because of the fireworks every night. I’m thinking about buying an early bird membership for WFC 2013 in Brighton.  Going to try to get a bit further with my new story today.

Until tomorrow, then!

 

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story: my grandmother is a haunted house

My grandmother is a haunted house. When she moves, she creaks like a stair. When she talks, her hands open wide like windows, letting in the lavender night. Shadows fall upon her arches and skylights.

Ghosts cloud her eyes and tremble her fingers. They turn the milk.  They pinch her handbag and her teacup. In her distant rooms, children play. If you want to hear them, you must cup an ear to her wall and be patient.

Someday, soon, all the doors will be pushed shut, and the windows veiled. Ivy will grow into the bricks. The curtains will fall, the carpets will rot, and the rooms will be perfumed with mildew, and silence.

 

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story: the hidden mother

When my mother goes to work on Saturday mornings, I open all the drawers in her nightstand. I crawl on my belly under her bed, and stand on a chair to pull down boxes from the top of her wardrobe. Inside the boxes are letters and tickets and pictures that I have seen a hundred times before. The boxes smell of beaches, hostels, moisturiser, tobacco, perfume.

I search everywhere in her room and never find anything. But one morning, she must have forgotten to hide it, because I find her secret past in the chest of drawers. It looks just like a pebble, but is much heavier than a pebble, and warm to the touch. I want to bring it up to my face and smell it, to taste it with the tip of my tongue. But instead I place the pebble back in the drawer, and tidy the room, so it looks like nothing ever happened.

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love medicine

I am lurgified. My head feels like it has been stuffed with bees. In case you are not sure, this is a bad thing. Please feel sorry for me.

Anyway. On with the blogathon.

Recently I read Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich. It is beautifully written. Her characters are so vividly realised that you can see them, hear them speak. They walk off the page and sit down next to you, telling their stories.  Not only that, but their homes, the towns in which they live, the shape of the reservations, are made utterly concrete and real through Erdrich’s prose.

It made me think about how good writers are detailed and authentic in their settings. I think setting is the most difficult thing for many writers to master. If you do not come from an interesting place, a strong culture, a turbulent history, how do you create deep, realistic settings in your stories?

I am pretty sure that this is one problem that drives many writers to fantasy and science fiction. Writing fantastical worlds is easier than making the truth of how we live now come to life on the page. Not that there is anything wrong with fantastic or futuristic settings – as long as they are well rendered (honest, plausible, detailed), they are a vital element of good storytelling. But isn’t it a little bit easier, when you can draw your own map of your own world?

I’ve travelled a little bit and lived in a few different places, and whilst that definitely feeds the imagination, there is also a lack of depth in my knowledge of places. I currently live in a city that is rather uninspiring to me, although I happen to know it extremely well. The ideal is probably to live in a place that you know deeply and which you also find inspiring. I think writers in such circumstances are lucky indeed!

The issue of setting comes up in my writing all the time, and it is what I struggle with probably more than any other aspect of my writing at present. Do you struggle with setting, or does it come easily to you? Which writers do you think handle setting well? And do you think I should move to another city in order to improve my writing?