I am between books. I finished the first draft of my latest novel about a week ago. Now I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m not ready to start a new book yet but I’m used to working all day long at an extended narrative. So I wander about the house like someone suffering from unrequited love.
That’s what it’s like when you stop writing. A desperate kind of loneliness settles upon you, as if everybody else is out at a party, having the time of their lives, meeting new people, making plans, and you’re stuck at home flicking through the channels on the tv.
There is another book coming. I can hear it, like the vibrations along a railway track that tell you the train is half a mile down the line. But it isn’t here yet and so I keep glancing into the distance, willing it to appear. In the meantime, nothing else will content me.
My companion in this state of unfulfillment is a robin. In the afternoons I sit in my garden and he comes to perch on the little wicker table beside me, putting his head on one side and ever so gracefully begging. As gently as possible, I toss a crumb of bread in his direction. He picks it up in his beak and flies away to his nest to eat it in safety.
I am trying to adopt the same strategy with my new story. I open my mind just a little bit at a time to its unfolding narrative, trying to tempt it closer and closer. I never take too much notice lest the story fly away again. Pretend you’re not really bothered – that’s the trick.
But I am bothered. I am a writer and when I’m not writing, I’m not entirely convinced that I exist. In fact I think I'd better stop now. I have to go and check in the mirror. I’ve got a nasty feeling that my reflection is getting fainter.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Monday, 23 June 2008
All Souls Night
It was my mother who taught me to write. She did it by talking. She was a natural story teller and her stories were always about people, mostly our extended family in Ireland, often people who were long dead.
She was also a devout Catholic and the life of the church was intricately bound up with my childhood. I particularly remember the feast of All Souls. In those days the Catholic church taught that if you paid a visit to the church on All Souls Night and said certain prayers (one Our Father, three Hail Marys and a Glory Be) for the soul of someone who had died, then that person would was let off some of their time in Purgatory.
Purgatory, in case you don’t know, was the place where souls went that were not destined for hell but could not yet be allowed into heaven because they had not sufficiently atoned for their sins. It was a bit like a celestial waiting room.
As a child, I often accompanied my mother on her visits to the church on All Souls Night. I fervently believed that I was doing good but, more importantly, I enjoyed my mother’s company. She took the notion of a ‘visit’ very literally. So we would arrive at the church and my mother would say, ‘We are now going to pray for the soul of your Great Uncle Fergus’. (I don’t have a Great Uncle Fergus, actually, but even the dead deserve to have their reputations respected.) Then we would go inside the church, say the necessary prayers and go back outside. Then my mother would say something like, ‘You know your Great Uncle Fergus was a holy terror for the drink…’ and off she would go, telling me about his rise and fall, the people he had trusted who had let him down and the pitiful state he had ended up in.
At the end of this little story she would say, ‘Well now I think it’s time we paid another visit. We are now going to pray for the soul of your cousin Dermot. So back into the church we would go, say the necessary prayers, repair outside once more and the next little story would begin with, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time Dermot came to London and nearly got himself arrested.’
We might go in and out of the church half a dozen times that night. Each story my mother told would be short but perfectly constructed. Of course she wasn’t conscious that she was manipulating narrative. She just thought of herself as talking, filling in the space between our visits to the church.
Because of my mother I grew up with a pantheon of characters in my mind. I didn’t ever have to meet them to know all about them. And because of her, when I decided I wanted to be a writer, I instinctively understood that to create a story, you do not start with some concept or gimmick that you think might make you a millionaire. No, you start with the characters. Everything else flows from them. Get the characters right and you don’t even have to think about the plot, it writes itself while you are talking.
She was also a devout Catholic and the life of the church was intricately bound up with my childhood. I particularly remember the feast of All Souls. In those days the Catholic church taught that if you paid a visit to the church on All Souls Night and said certain prayers (one Our Father, three Hail Marys and a Glory Be) for the soul of someone who had died, then that person would was let off some of their time in Purgatory.
Purgatory, in case you don’t know, was the place where souls went that were not destined for hell but could not yet be allowed into heaven because they had not sufficiently atoned for their sins. It was a bit like a celestial waiting room.
As a child, I often accompanied my mother on her visits to the church on All Souls Night. I fervently believed that I was doing good but, more importantly, I enjoyed my mother’s company. She took the notion of a ‘visit’ very literally. So we would arrive at the church and my mother would say, ‘We are now going to pray for the soul of your Great Uncle Fergus’. (I don’t have a Great Uncle Fergus, actually, but even the dead deserve to have their reputations respected.) Then we would go inside the church, say the necessary prayers and go back outside. Then my mother would say something like, ‘You know your Great Uncle Fergus was a holy terror for the drink…’ and off she would go, telling me about his rise and fall, the people he had trusted who had let him down and the pitiful state he had ended up in.
At the end of this little story she would say, ‘Well now I think it’s time we paid another visit. We are now going to pray for the soul of your cousin Dermot. So back into the church we would go, say the necessary prayers, repair outside once more and the next little story would begin with, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time Dermot came to London and nearly got himself arrested.’
We might go in and out of the church half a dozen times that night. Each story my mother told would be short but perfectly constructed. Of course she wasn’t conscious that she was manipulating narrative. She just thought of herself as talking, filling in the space between our visits to the church.
Because of my mother I grew up with a pantheon of characters in my mind. I didn’t ever have to meet them to know all about them. And because of her, when I decided I wanted to be a writer, I instinctively understood that to create a story, you do not start with some concept or gimmick that you think might make you a millionaire. No, you start with the characters. Everything else flows from them. Get the characters right and you don’t even have to think about the plot, it writes itself while you are talking.
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