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how to write stuff and that

I have a confession to make. Actually, it’s kind of embarrassing. I’m making light of it, but it’s serious. I’m addicted to these:

Not just books in general, but books in particular. Books about writing, to be precise.

Last night, I counted. I have 37 books about writing, plus assorted reference books and works of criticism and theory. That’s a lot, right? That’s a crazy amount.

There are books on craft – plot, structure, character, point of view, genre… All these books say the exact same things, over and over until you basically want to kill yourself. Three and five act structure. Get to know your characters. Set the scene. Don’t overdo the exposition… blah blah blah let’s all die.

Then there are the big hitters: Story, by Robert McKee; Syd Field’s Screenwriting. Actually useful if you’re writing a film, although I do suggest getting the hardback edition of Story so that you can use it to beat yourself around the head when you finally watch Adaptation, and realise that some unspeakable genius has already processed the whole thing, turned it inside out, and written a film about it. And got Robert McKee to play himself in it, which is surely the icing on the cake of genius, and a good point at which to start beating yourself around the head.

There are books like Writing Down the Bones, which is perhaps the least helpful but most poetic book about writing ever written; books that polemicise and politicise the act of writing, like Carol Bly’s The Passionate, Accurate Story; and writers’ memoirs, such as Stephen King’s On Writing, which is full of great practical advice and is highly entertaining and readable, too.

The Queen of books about writing has to be The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. This is the book that shames, bullies and goads writers into actually sitting down and working – and laughs in the face of those who think buying/reading books about writing is anything other than procrastination and avoidance of work. I recommend it. It’s worked for me, you know?*

*I’ve totally given them up, honest I have. Well, except that Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook is coming out soon, and I have to see the story fish. But that’s completely different. Completely!

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questions about the death of the novel

There are writers who are still pissed off that the ebook ever happened. If you’re one of them, you probably shouldn’t read this post. It’ll only upset you. Because there are also writers who are already well over the ebook and looking for the next big thing. They think it’s our responsibility to find new and innovative ways to deliver fiction via digital platforms. These are the writers who say the novel is dying, and who want to be in the vanguard of the next big literary form.

See, for example, LitHacking, in which, potentially, a narrative is revealed to the reader via seemingly-genuine facebook updates, tweets, amazon reviews, the comments to blog posts and news articles, etc. See also The Silent History, which is advertised as ‘an entirely new kind of novel,’ though essentially, it’s just an ebook with optional ‘field reports’ that you can only release if you travel to the exact locations they’re set – in other words, an ordinary novel with some fancy/annoying add-ons.  And that’s about it, as far as examples go. And maybe that’s as far as they’ll ever go – but then again, maybe not.

Tech-savvy writers say the novel should be more interactive. (As if readers don’t already interact with novels.) But how interactive? When does a digital text stop being a story and start becoming a game? I would argue that LitHacking is a kind of game. The Silent History is a novel with a built-in game. And if that is where we’re heading, why this clinging to the old forms at all? Why not just say, the novel is dead – long live the computer game?

But there’s something else about these innovations that is less clearly understood, and that is how they blur the line between fiction and reality. Consider LitHacking. Not only does it create fake artefacts, but by doing so it calls into question the reality status of every other piece of text in its field. How would you know if a comment on a news article was a genuine opinion or a carefully placed clue in a puzzle? How would you interact with the internet if you were constantly unsure of the reality of what you were reading? LitHacking is ambitious, that’s for sure – take this logic to the extremes and you have a world wide web of fiction, with writers/hackers controlling everything from the sale of goods to the exchange of love letters.

A literary revolution, yes – perhaps more dramatic than any previously proposed. Its ultimate effect is to  make reality less trustworthy. In The Secret History, when you want to download a ‘field report’ you have to go to the exact location specified. You are physically completely interacting with the story in a real setting.This is not virtual reality. It’s difficult to know what’s real and what’s story if the story is taking place around you, outside your head and inside it at the same time.

And if that’s the case, how real are you, the reader? What happens to your ability to create and participate in the real world as a naive individual? When do you stop being a reader and start being a player? When do you start being a character? When does that begin to happen against your will? Or is it already happening? And what does that mean in terms of your capabilities and responsibilities?

But there’s something else that goes beyond this. Not only does this make reality less real, but by blurring the boundaries of story/reality, it makes fiction less fictional. The project of fiction has historically been to increase, deepen, intensify and enlighten reality. It has made us more human, connected us to the real world outside of our heads, shown us the reality of other humans who exist or existed before us. By forcing fiction into existing reality, do we run the risk of losing that expansionist vision of what stories are for? Do we ruin stories by making everything a story?

This all seems very avant-garde, but advertisers already use the internet in much the same way that LitHackers propose writers should: creating fake reviews for books and products, using comments to push sales, creating youtube videos in the hope that they’ll go viral. What’s to stop advertisers intervening in LitHack narratives in order to promote their products? What’s to stop businesses setting up shop in the exact locations where readers congregate to download ‘field reports’? And when does this complicated exchange go too far? Will writers be pushed aside by salespeople? And is there anything in these new forms – any idea of artistry, politics, reality – that can protect us from that?

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rummaging around

The trouble with research is that EVERYTHING IS INTERESTING. I mean, everything is really interesting. I start off looking for stuff about sisters, and end up reading a mother’s account of how her son went crazy smoking too much weed. Or I try to find out about religious music, and end up reading about anchorites and tithes. (Actually, this latter is an abiding interest of mine, and there’s always a temptation to delve deeper.) I research strokes, and find out about painting. It’s a demonstration of how all knowledge is dependent upon all other knowledge. It’s fractal-shaped: you can start anywhere and travel a million miles along fronds and petals that replicate and spawn their own fronds and petals to investigate. (Fractals: I am also obsessed with fractals.)

I would like some kind of brain implant that allows me to upload the contents of books directly into my knowledge centres. Maybe this will be the next Kindle upgrade. It would certainly make everything quicker. Time is of the essence, because my schedule demands that I finish the first draft of this novel within the next few months. I can understand, though, why so many writers get stuck at this stage. There is no natural end point to researching a novel. You can just keep going. All you need is a library card and an open mind.

In the meantime, let me share a little gem from my current researches. This is from a book called ‘Shadows as Bright as Glass’ by Amy Ellis Nutt, which tells the story of Jon Sarkin’s massive, life-transforming stroke. She describes how in the 1930s a surgeon called Abse was rummaging around in someone’s brain, looking for a tumour, squeezing bits of brain tissue and prodding stuff (this is how those old-time surgeons rolled) when the patient, who was nearing death, suddenly became alert and called out: “You sod, leave my soul alone. Leave… my… soul… alone.”

Pretty freaky stuff.

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the flame alphabet

The Flame Alphabet may be the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. The fact that it is beautifully written only adds to the nasty queasy feeling one is left with at the end. The sense of being made complicit in a series of cruel acts. I’ve never read a book which contains so much that is wrong and off and weird in the most unpleasant ways. Oh, but it is brilliant.

The subject of the novel is language. When language becomes toxic and lethally unspeakable, unhearable, and unreadable, all relationships fall apart, and love itself becomes impossible. Society breaks down, and the post-apocalyptic world is characterised by an inhuman desperation to re-connect with one another. That’s a very basic summary of the plot. The strangeness of the setting, the twisted Heath Robinson-esque contraptions deployed by the narrator in his efforts to cure himself of language illness, the secret cult of the Forest Jews who listen to sermons through flesh-like ‘listeners’ attached to cables underneath the earth, the scripts and signs that are also diseased – this all makes for a very odd novel full of thematic richness. But the most disturbing elements of the book are to do with parenthood, with fatherhood, to be precise. And in many ways, the novel is traditional – it has a protagonist and a plot, a beginning, middle and end. Yet there is something absolutely surreal and estranging about the writing that washes you up somewhere very far from home.

This novel made me feel slightly sick, if I’m honest. I appreciate that this is a meta-message – language is toxic – but mainly, I just feel a bit ill.

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disturbed by her song

I am currently reading ‘Disturbed by Her Song’ by Tanith Lee ‘writing as and with Esther and Judas Garbah’. Beautiful, beautiful, as is so much of Lee’s writing. Why this woman doesn’t have a deal with a major publishing house is a total mystery. Thank goodness for small presses such as Lethe Press, who are publishing some of Lee’s considerable back catalogue.

This is the first work of Lee’s I’ve read where she claims to be channelling the stories of two other writers, who in fact are creations of her own imagination. I think this is a wonderful idea, and I’m wondering if I could steal it for my own writing.

What interests me is whether I could imagine or create a writer who is better than me. A writer who is more disciplined, more rigorous, more poetic, more talented than I am. A writer who never gets blocked would be good; someone who thinks nothing of churning out a thousand brilliant words every day. If I could create such a writer in my own imagination, could I then become that writer whenever I needed to? And if I could do that, would I be that writer all the time? Would I ever want to be the writer I am now?

Essentially, I’m wondering if I can create a brilliant writer to murder me and take my place.

Maybe I’m just having a weird day. You should go and buy all Tanith Lee’s books now.

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making strange

Reading Alan Garner’s The Stone Book Quartet was an incredible experience. I read it in an afternoon, sitting in the kitchen with the dog asleep at my feet, and rain beating against the window. Not that I was aware of my surroundings for long. The voices in those pages spoke directly to me, called me into their world, and I was drawn completely inside – or rather outside, or elsewhere: this beautiful dark rough nature.

This book is an evocation of feeling, it compels the reader to inhabit the language and be overtaken by it. Nothing happens for the sake of show in Garner’s writing, but each image is organic, profoundly simple, dense with meaning, mysterious, and true. His magic is steeped in physical history, in the landscape, in the intimate connection between humans and the land we live from. The knowledge passed down through generations, which encompasses the true nature of the material, and works with it in precise, sympathetic, patient, intuitive ways. Crafting yourself so you can do the work without fear.

Garner’s craft is fluid, natural, timeless. His craft is to find the seam of magic running deep under everything. His infallible mastery of language is necessary in order to bring these old true stories back from the mists of time.

In 1999, Garner gave a brilliant speech in which he talked about what language is for and how it works:

Unless words are metaphor, they are dead. You will find this wherever you come across a jargon, which is a valid construct stripped of ambiguity in order to communicate matters precisely, simply and beyond misunderstanding. The words are not elegant and have no literary value. They serve, but never dictate.

What we need to follow, then, is the ambiguous, the strange, the nonsensical. There is no urgent need to worry about making sense. What we must do is make strange.

A work of art is a dream. For all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is always ambiguous. A dream never says, “You must”, or, “This is truth”. It presents an image. To grasp its meaning, we must let it shape us as it shaped the writer. Then we also understand the nature of his experience. He has plunged into the healing and redeeming depths of the unconscious, where we are not lost in the isolation of consciousness, but where all are caught in a common rhythm that allows the individual to communicate feelings and strivings to mankind as a whole.

This connection to one another, deep in the heart of this dream, where all is strange and obscure — is where we find the hidden magic of our lives. And that’s what art is for, to serve that connection and to increase its vibrancy and power.

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they’d have to open a window, to let out all that light

Interesting times, my friends. Interesting times. The first few days of 2012 have been full on, to say the least. (And can we please call it twenty-twelve, rather than two thousand and twelve? This is the future, after all.)  I am here, as promised, fulfilling my blogging duties. This week I have four and a half mini reviews for you to ponder, and one long one linked at the end.

The first is a bit of a cheat, as it is a review of a story I wrote, which is published in Fantastique Unfettered 4. I don’t know if you can get this zine in the UK yet, but if you want a copy (why wouldn’t you?) let me know and I will see what the score is. (ETA: NO IT’S TRUE IT’S ON AMAZON, PEOPLE.) Lois Tilton reviews FU4 for Locus Online, calling the zine ‘a labour of love’ and generally showering it with (completely deserved) praise. Here’s part of what she wrote about my story:

Weird, fractured narrative may take some work to follow, but there is a real, nightmarish story here.

Okay, it’s not exactly effulgent praise, but compared to previous reviews I’ve had from this source, this is LOVE. Read the rest here.

So far this year, I’ve read three novels. The first of them was Genevieve Valentine’s steampunk-apocalypse-circus story, Mechanique.  It was strange in beautiful in all the right places. I loved it nearly as much as I loved her Circus Tresaulti spin-off short story in Fantasy Magazine last year – really, if you like fantasy/steampunk/sad beautiful things, you should read this writer.

Beside the Sea is a much hyped novella by Veronique Olmi.  I’m sorry to say I found it kind of grim – too much desperate sentiment and not enough real emotion. The translation seemed a bit dodgy in places. Some turns of phrases were awkward, idioms used incorrectly here and there – could have been intentional but I suspect not.

I enjoyed Next World Novella, by Matthias Politycki, very much. It was even amusing in places, which I did not expect. I did wonder what more he could have done with the material had he been willing to stray into fantasy a little more – something quite wonderful, I suspect. But the writing itself is beautiful. Consider this, from the opening paragraph:

From the far end of his room autumn sunlight came flooding in, bathing everything in a golden or russet glow – the chaise-longue in the corner was a patch of melting colour. They’d have to open a window to let out all that light later.

Even the author knows that’s a good line – he finds an echo for it later on. Gorgeous writing.

I am currently reading Visitation, by Jennifer Erpenbeck.  It’s so good. It’s hypnotic and brilliant. I love this novel. I wouldn’t normally recommend a book I hadn’t finished reading, but this is so good, even if the rest of the book is rubbish, it’s worth spending your cash for the first few chapters alone. They are exquisite.

Oh, and finally, here’s the review I wrote for The Future Fire of Maureen McHugh’s story collection After the Apocalypse.

I’ve started rewriting one of my novels from last year, so expect to hear a lot of moaning and complaining from me next time about how a writer’s life is so terrible and blah blah blah.

How’s your new year reading and writing going?

 

 

 

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dead girls don’t cry

I will say upfront that I’m not really a huge fan of ‘urban fantasy’ – that genre which mainly consists of sparky young heroines with tattoos going about their everyday business only to discover that their local cupcake parlour is run by a whimsical faery. Or something. Okay, I may be slightly prejudiced by a particularly awful example of the genre that it was my misfortune to read last year. But even so, fairies and cupcakes and elves and family prophecies and late-blooming magical powers? Not really my thing.

So it may be that I am entirely the wrong person to take on this subject, and perhaps in ‘urban fantasy world’, all of what I am about to say would be considered ridiculous nitpicking about nothing at all.

But.

If someone is dead – I mean, dead – If a character in a story dies and is dead, and the author kind of bangs on about how weird it is to be dead because you don’t have to / don’t want to / actually can’t:

a) sleep

b) eat

c) urinate

d) crave a crafty fag

If this is the basis on which a character is dead, then how the hell can said character have their breath knocked out of them? How can they cut themselves and BLEED? What the whatty-what, people?

I can just about suspend my disbelief to accept that a dead person could still have a body that is a projection of their spirit or a handy visual aid/symbol of their former life. It would be awkward to be dead, yet still be conscious, and unable to walk around and do novelly stuff. I guess I can accept (even if for no other reason than I’m a willing reader and literary convention demands it) that desire and fear and other basic, bodily emotions can survive in a person who no longer has a body with which to feel these things. It’s a bit rubbish, but if an author writes about someone’s spirit continuing and being able to feel emotions and think and stuff, I can go along with it for the sake of the story.

But don’t tell me, Charles de Lint, don’t tell me that a person has no need to eat, drink or do any of the other things that sustain a physical body, and yet that person can still somehow bleed. How is she bleeding? How is her body making fresh red blood, when she no longer eats or drinks? How is she breathless, when she no longer breathes? How does her body heal from the cut? How come she can feel pain, but not hunger? How does she make tears?

And this bleeding thing. It’s not like it was just some throwaway line I could ignore. It was the engine that powered the resolution of the entire plot.

‘The Mystery of Grace’ was certainly not the worst book I’ve ever read. In places it reminded me a bit of Jonathan Carroll’s writing. I kind of liked the sparky heroine with tattoos. And I’ll even admit that there was one hell of a good idea buried in there. But this dead people bleeding thing is just STUPID.

Am I wrong? Obviously not. But feel free to disagree if you can.

 

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the city and the city

For some reason, my book love has grown huge again of late. It may simply be a symptom of my gradual return to decent health after a few years of battling with various conditions that left me depressed, depleted and utterly exhausted. My brain has started to work a bit, my neurons are getting sparky, something is going on… and I have more excitement and enthusiasm about reading than I’ve had for years.

At the same time, some of the authors I’ve clung to with fierce loyalty over the years now seem a little… well… Dull. Jejune. Unoriginal. I’ve always read widely and in all genres, but it’s still been difficult at times to find books I really care about. Books that I want to live in and eat and make clothes out of. But right now (thanks to your recommendations) I’ve got a stack of eight new books in front of me and I’m excited about all of them.

One of them is  Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I have high hopes for this novel, mainly because I just finished reading The City and the City. Which blew my mind. Talk about a book I want to live in! I found it such a startling and remarkable idea, such an extraordinary metaphor for what it is to be human. How we unsee and unhear and unsense that which doesn’t fit comfortably with our understanding. How we live in fear of ‘breaching’ the standards of normal behaviour, going too far. And how almost everything interesting and meaningful in life happens in the interstices, the places inbetween. The setting is the story in this novel, in a very direct way, and if you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give too much away. But you must read it. It is wildly brilliant.

It made me think a lot about setting in story, something I’ve blogged about before. In The City and the City, the story could only happen in that particular setting. In other words, the setting is integral to the plot, characters and narrative, and provides much of the imagery and language of the novel. A genuinely well thought out setting can do all that and more. In this case, it delivers a profoundly satisfying and coherent narrative. Although I felt the novel had some faults, some boundaries it wouldn’t breach, so to speak, it still worked beautifully, meaningfully, on every level. I found myself thinking about it for days, captivated by the oddness of the ideas, and wondering how on earth it would unravel. That was all because of the extraordinary setting (and, of course, Mieville’s great skill and talent at putting it to work.)

I think that setting is a rather under-appreciated element of storytelling, and one that we ignore at our peril. I am inspired to try a story that depends on its setting for every aspect of plot, character and language. It’s something I’ve got close to before, but this time I will be making sure that the story is a direct product of the setting – something that could only happen then and there.

What about you? What are you reading at the moment, and what is it teaching you about your own writing/art/life?

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and how does that make you feel?

Of all the books people have raved to me about recently, the only one I really enjoyed was The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. What a great book that is! I like it a lot. A few years ago I wote a story called ‘Fucking Narnia’ that was pretty much based on the same idea, of adults from this world somehow accessing Narnia, and having to deal with it, as adults. My story really didn’t work (shame, because obviously it had a great title), but The Magicians would have blown it out of the water anyway, because it has such a well-realised setting, with proper characters and insane plotlines, which are nonetheless completely plausible within the logic of the world(s). I think the real genius of it was the way Grossman did the Harry Potter/Narnia mash-up thing. It’s the kind of story that could have been really-diculous, but ends up being just perfect.

(That reminds me of something Michel Gondry said about making art. It was something along the lines of, ‘you know you’ve got a good idea when it feels somewhat ridiculous.’ Furnish me with the actual quote, anyone? He said it in the DVD extras for The Science of Sleep, a film with the most beautiful fluffy animation and lovely multi-lingual appeal.)

Two of the other books that have been the subject of rave reviews lately are 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan.

1Q84, as I have written about here, I found extremely bland and, whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was boring, I would say it was flat and completely forgettable. For me, it had none of the impact of Murakami’s earlier work, none of the mysterious other-wordliness (despite being set in an actual Other World), and none of the emotional connection I’d been hoping for.

I finished A Visit from the Goon Squad last night, and was pretty disappointed with that, too. It’s well-written, no doubt about that. It’s very well written, indeed, so you hardly notice it flowing by. But again, it made very little impact on me. I felt that I’d seen it all before. Specifically, it reminded me of A M Homes’ writing, which, to be fair, I’d liked a lot a few years ago, but which now strikes me as a bit too self-consciously ‘literary’.

I mean, what’s wrong with a linear chronology, and one or two characters that you care about? That you feel something for? What is the purpose of writing, if not to connect you to other worlds and other people? For me, if a novel or story doesn’t provide that emotional connection, then I don’t care how clever or well written it is – it has failed in the fundamental task of all literature. One of my favourite writers of all time is Philip K Dick, because all his stories connect you emotionally to the rest of the world – to the universe – to PKD’s own messed-up head, if nothing else. Frightening, disturbing, even funny – but they never leave you feeling flat. Another writer I love is Rikki Ducornet. Her novel Gazelle is one of the most stunning books I have ever read. It made me feel a thousand things, stirred up memories and desires, and connected me to a place inside my own self, where I finally understood something (a particular, personal thing) more deeply than I ever had before.

Of course, this ’emotional connection’ is a subjective experience, and I’m sure I can find hundreds of people who were deeply moved by books that left me feeling nothing. To me, though, it all comes down to the characters. A novel doesn’t have to have a linear plot, but I do think a book has a better chance of connecting with a reader if it has strong characters, precise language, and concerns itself with fundamental conflicts of the human heart. Love, fear, death, betrayal, regret, pain.  Sometimes writers seem to forget this. They get lost in their quest to be brilliant, and end up producing convoluted books that don’t seem anything like storytelling to me.

When I was seventeen, I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles for the first time. I remember I stayed up until three a.m. finishing it, and when it was finished, I cried and held it to my heart. I felt bereft that the story was over. The characters and the conflicts they embodied seemed very real and powerful to me. I wanted to keep reading it forever.

It’s not often that I feel that way about a book these days, but I still long to encounter characters I believe in, who I care about, and who seem real to me. That is more important to me than making some clever statement about the state of politics or post-modern anxieties or the world after 9-11. I want to read books that make me feel something. That’s why, for me, The Magicians is a far better book than 1Q84.

What books have you enjoyed recently? What would you recommend to this jaded reader?