Putting In The Hours

Naomi Alderman describes the process of writing a novel like this:

It's like waking up one morning in London and saying to yourself on a whim "hey, I know what'd be fun: walking to China! That sure would be a great place to walk to." And you sit down with your atlas and a ruler and you say "OK, so it's 5,057 miles to Beijing*, let's say I walk 8 miles a day, with one day off a week, that's 105 weeks, so I should be there in just about two years. Awesome!" And you pack up a bag and set off.

You can read the rest of the post here. It’s very funny and very true.

Well I’ve finally arrived in China and what a relief it is to be here Towards the end of a first draft I always feel like I’m holding a red hot poker in my hand and I can’t wait to put it down. It’s the tension that builds up inside me as the climax to the book approaches. I’m not exactly a relaxed man at the best of times, as anyone who knows me will testify. I spent several years doing yoga and meditation twice a day. I gave up coffeee and alcohol. It didn’t make a blind bit of difference. It’s me. I’m just like that. And when I’m getting to the end of a novel I’m me squared.

When I used to work in universities advising students about writing, they were always coming into my office and saying, with real surprise in their voices, ‘I find it so hard to write,’ and I would reply, possibly not very helpfully, ‘that’s because writing is hard.’ People often assume that just because they can speak and read, they ought to be able to write. But it’s not that simple.

Rosie, my wife, recently showed me some instructions on a Standard Assessment Test for primary school children. The test was intended to assess their level of written English but, as she pointed out, the instructions were hopelessly ambiguous. The educationalists setting the paper were no doubt convinced of their own ability to write well but the evidence suggested otherwise.

The fact is that writing simple unambiguous instructions is by no means easy. When I first started out as a professional writer I would take any job that paid me and I remember being commissioned to write a book of instructions for ball games and sports all over the world. It sounds easy enough but in fact it was an absolute nightmare because it had to be written in simple, accessible language but some of the rules required a high degree of technical specificity. That cured me of the notion that anyone can write a set of instructions.

Writing fiction presents different but equally challenging problems. There are so many things you have to get right technically but none of these must show in the final product. It’s got to seem to the reader as if the story is just unfolding in his or her imagination without any of the writer’s contrivances getting in the way.

People who dream of being writers always imagine that it’s a painless activity so much more pleasant than all the hassle they have to put up with in their nine-to-five jobs. That’s because they only think about it as something you do when you feel inspired. But that’s not how you write a novel. You write it every day whether you feel inspired or not because one of the things you learn very quickly when you start out trying to be a writer is that feeling inspired has nothing to do with the quality of the work you produce.

No, inspiration is like the myth of quality time. You know that phrase that got bandied about in the nineteen eighties by parents who were too busy with their own lives to look after their kids? ‘I don’t get a chance to spend much time with Josh,’ they used to say, ‘but when we are together, I always make sure it’s quality time.’ Yeah, right! Well writing is a lot like being a parent. Some days you feel you’re doing a good job. Some days you don’t. But you keep on doing it because you have to, and in the end it’s putting in the hours that counts.

Possessed

I'm a day (or possibly two) away from finishing the first draft of my latest novel and it's all I can think about. I can't sleep properly. I wake up every morning at half past five with my head full of details that need to be adjusted, plot lines that have to be kept on track, dialogue that needs to be fitted in, characters who have to be made ready for the final denoument. I turn on my computer at seven o'clock and stand there willing it to hurry up and boot and I do not bother to stop for lunch. I am simply consumed with the desire to finish this draft. Like a man who is possessed.

Hence no proper blogposts at the moment. But I will be back very soon, I promise.

Why I don't like literary parties

I remember the very first literary party I was invited to over twenty five years ago. I was very excited and rather intimidated to be introduced to a writer whose work I greatly admired and who was regarded with something akin to reverence by many critics. To my dismay I soon saw that he was extremely drunk and not at all in a pleasant way. In fact with his psychotic glare and pent up anger he was a distinctly frightening figure.

I quickly sought to make some excuse and disappear into the crowd but he would not hear of it, demanding to know what I thought about all sorts of topics and arguing furiously with any opinion I ventured to advance. But though my views appeared to infuriate him, he seemed to take an inordinate and irrational liking to me, insisting that I come to stay with him in his cottage in Dartmoor (an offer I never took up.)

To my relief, after about an hour of this, he lost interest in me and wandered over to the window. The party was being held in an elegant part of Oxford and we were on the first floor. A moment later I heard the sound of glass shattering. It soon transpired that the eminent author had decided to amuse himself by throwing empty beer bottles onto the paving stones below. Not long after this he was forcibly removed from the party.

‘Is he often like this?’ I asked the host.

‘Oh yes,’ he replied, ‘all the time.’

The author in question has been dead for a number of years but I will not embarrass anyone, myself included, by naming names.

I should not have been surprised. An author and his work are two very different things and a beautiful and profound piece of work may be produced by an absolutely vile individual. This truism was brought home to me more recently when I attended another literary get together in a well-known club in Central London. I was standing in a corner, wondering why I had come since I dislike parties so much, when I was hailed by another author whom I had met before once or twice.

For a couple of reasons my heart sank. Firstly because she is infinitely more successful than I am. (Yes I know that’s not very noble but there you are). But mainly because she is one of the most tedious women ever to walk upon the face of the Earth. It is impossible to have a conversation with her because she does not talk to you, she talks at you and she has one topic and one topic only: herself.

This occasion was to prove no exception. I heard in great detail about how well she was doing and about her plans for doing even better in the years to come. I think if I had fallen to the floor with a heart attack she would not have noticed but would simply have carried on talking until the paramedics arrived and asked her to step aside.

This morning I was out shopping with my wife and, happening to pass a book store I popped inside and glanced about for one of her books. I didn’t have to look very hard. There was a whole shelf of them. ‘I bet they’re complete rubbish!’ I said to myself, picking one up and opening it at the first page. In fact, it was terrific. The conception of the story was intelligent and imaginative. The writing was crisp and robust. The plot moved at a cracking pace. Within a few lines I was utterly gripped. Indeed, I only just stopped myself from buying a copy!

When I went back outside and re-joined my wife she peered at me curiously.‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You look a bit pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ I told her. ‘Absolutely fine.’

I was lying, of course.

Don't Flirt, Don't Hurt

When I was a young man our family was registered with a group medical practice which meant we could be seen by any one of a number of doctors. I usually went to the same female doctor. I shall call her Dr Bregovic. She was about my own age, seemed very capable and efficient and was always prepared to give me time. My wife, Rosie, and our two daughters, however, had a somewhat lower opinion of her and invariably tried to get an appointment with one of the other doctors.

If my daughters were ill, Rosie usually took them to see the doctor. But not always. I remember one occasion in particular when Kathleen, my younger daughter, had some complaint and Rosie was not available. So I accompanied Kathleen to the surgery. I can’t remember how old she was at this time, a teenager perhaps or possibly pre-teen. Not yet old enough to be seen by herself, anyway.

To Kathleen’s annoyance, I had made an appointment with Dr Bregovic. When our turn came we went into the consulting room together and Dr Bregovic was her usual, attentive self. She listened to what Kathleen and I had to say, diagnosed the complaint and wrote out a prescription.

I thought the appointment went very well. But, as soon as we were outside the consulting room, Kathleen turned to me with an expression of scorn. ‘So that’s why you’re so keen on Dr Bregovic!’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, genuinely baffled.

‘For goodness sake, dad! She was flirting like mad with you.’

I honestly hadn’t been aware of it.

A similar kind of thing happens sometimes in my novels. Minor characters get introduced into the story. They have a job to do and they do it well. But as the narrative grows, I find myself getting to like them more and more. I become increasingly impressed with the manner in which they go about things, the way they seem to know what they’re doing in the story, the fact that they are always prepared to make time for me. Soon, without even realising it, I have moved them to the front of the narrative while the real protagonist languishes in some forgotten part of the plot.

Of course this is what people mean when they say that characters develop a life of their own. It’s considered to be one of the pleasures of writing and it’s true that it's very enjoyable when a character you have created from nothing starts coming to life with such undeniable vigour. But you do have to be aware what is happening, otherwise the arc of the story gets twisted out of your control, the whole thing starts going in the wrong direction and before long your novel has ground to a halt. When that happens you usually end up deleting a whole chapter, sometimes more. And there’s nothing worse than finding you’ve got less words at the end of the day than you started with.

Saturation Point

There comes a time in the writing of any book when reality become porous and the narrative begins to invade my dreams. I call that moment Saturation Point. It happened recently with the novel I’m currently working on. (I won ‘t say the title of it because I never like to do so until it’s finished.)

There are two characters in my book who until the other night were not particularly important. They didn’t even have names. They were just a pair of minor thugs. Then I went to sleep and found myself standing somewhere unspecified (it was outdoors, that’s all I can remember) and in the distance were two men who seemed vaguely familiar. They were looking intently in my direction and when they saw me notice them, they began walking purposefully and with astonishing speed in my direction.

Suddenly it dawned on me who they were – the characters from my story, except that now it wasn’t a story at all; it was real. In my dream this ominous couple had names, or at least a nickname – the Lily White Boys, on account of the fact that they both had unnaturally blond hair.

As they drew closer I was gripped by terror because I understood with complete certainly that they were gong to kill me and that I hadn’t a chance against them. They were skilled in violence, took pleasure in it, and were utterly inured to its consequences.

Now, in one of those scene-changes that are achieved so effortlessly in dreams, I was no longer outside but lying in bed, though still asleep and they were standing over me. This was it, I realised. This was how I was going to die. I screamed with all the force of my lungs.

The next thing I knew, Rosie was shaking me and saying. ‘Brian, for God’s sake, what’s the matter?’ I gazed around the room in bewilderment and mumbled incoherently about the Lily White Boys until gradually I understood that none of it was real.

‘Poor Rosie!’ I said, when I had finally come to my senses, gone downstairs and brought up two cups of tea. ‘I’m so sorry about that. It must be dreadful living with me’.

‘It could be worse,’ she said, philosophically. ‘At least you don’t see them when you’re awake.’

They Still Don't Get It

There is yet more fuss in the UK media about racist vocabulary being used by a public figure. In this case the culprit is Carol Thatcher, journalist and daughter of Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. She has fallen foul of the BBC for using the word ‘golliwog’ to refer to an unknown person in a private conversation.

Discussion in the media centres on the question of whether this matters since: (a) this was a private conversation; (b) it was a light-hearted remark made off the cuff and in jest; (c) for someone in their fifites a golliwog was a cuddly creature depicted on the side of a jam jar.

Of course it matters! None of these arguments hold water. So it was a private conversation. So what? Are we to allow a state-funded broadcaster recognised throughout the world as a representative of UK plc to institutionalise hypocrisy? Are we to say, it’s okay to think unpleasant thoughts about people from other cultures or other colours, just don’t give voice to those thoughts on air?

Okay, it probably was an ‘off the cuff’ remark and if Ms Thatcher had been slightly less relaxed, no doubt she would not have allowed us this glimpse of what really goes on inside her mind. What a good job then that Hospitality had done its work in loosening her up enough to show the state of wilful ignorance in which she has been prepared to remain while all around her the world has been changing.

I say wilful ignorance because that’s the only way I can describe the refusal by an articulate individual who works in the media and ought to understand the power of words, to take into account the effect such a term is likely to have on black people. Of course many of them will have have had to put up with a great deal worse in their lives but the fact remains that golliwog has been used as a term of abuse.

Moreover it’s been used as a term of abuse because the image itself derives from caricatures of black people perpetrated by a white slave-owning society which entertained itself with nigger-minstrel shows. Indeed, a version of just such an entertainment, The Black And White Minstrel Show, still survived as a popular television programme when I was growing up in Britain in the nineteen sixties.

Certainly it is the case that to white people in their fifties, the golliwog is a fondly-remembered, soft-hued image of a more innocent time gone by. My wife, Rosie had a golliwog soft-toy when she was growing up, and she loved it greatly. But Rosie now works an Ethnic Minority Achievement Manager. She understands that while the word golliwog brings back delightful memories of her childhood, for black children growing up at the same time, it may only recall the memory of taunts and bullying.

Am I making too much out of this? I don’t think so. Everyone knows the history of slavery; everyone is aware of the struggle of black people to achieve a measure of equality. Is it such a big deal, therefore, to ask that everyone make an effort in private as well as in public to avoid using words that might cause offence?

When The Bone Breaks

As I looked out of the window this morning at the canopy of snow that covered my garden, elmiminating almost every distinctive feature, it occurred to me that the most important part of my novel might also be in danger of disappearing beneath the thickly accumulating narrative.

As I’ve mentioned before, when my youngest daughter was being born I had a broken ankle and was forced to hover around the delivery room on crutches. This situation came about because the brakes on my car needed fixing and I was too poor to take it to the garage. So I was trying to fix it myself.

I had jacked it up and taken off one of the front wheels. But as I worked, the car became unstable. Realising that it was about to topple towards me, I put my foot against the bodywork, in a futile attempt to steady it. Of course it was much too heavy to be held in place like this and simply continued to topple forwards, bending my foot backwards until, with a sickening crunch, I felt the bone crack.

In every novel there is always a moment when the bone breaks, when a character’s eyes are opened, the truth becomes inescapably clear and events are changed irrevocably. Everything that happens afterwards is a direct result of that moment and though the bone may be mended, the memory of the fracture is imprinted on the character’s history.

It is with this moment that a novel generally begins in my head. The rest of the plot develops around it. This is true even if the story is light hearted and comical, even if it is a story about the birth of a child to two proud and happy parents. At some point the hero of the story must limp painfully into the kitchen, look white-faced and sheepishly at his wife, then order a taxi to take him to the hospital.