When I was a teenager I used to argue a great deal with my father. In fact that’s more or less all we ever did together. These arguments usually ended with me abruptly leaving the house and walking through the night-time streets of East London while a sense of injustice seethed within me.
More often than not I would end up at the same location – an ugly industrial refrigeration plan, which I called the Ice Factory. I had discovered this place by accident one evening and found myself immediately fascinated by the sound of the machinery. It was a mixture of industrial noises, oscillating within a narrow range, but somehow always sounding like it was building towards some awful climax. Standing by the metal fence that ringed the perimeter, listening to that sound, I used to enter a trance-like state.
After a few visits I began to develop a notion that the gates of Hell were located somewhere within that building. The idea just popped into my head one day and at first I was amused by it. It was no more than a flight of fancy, something to take my mind off the memory of the quarrel with my father.
But the more I visited the place, the stronger the idea became, and the more plausible it seemed, taking hold of my imagination with such force that even when I wasn’t physically there, when I was sitting at my school desk or lying in my bed at night, I found myself mentally revisiting the Ice Factory.
In time I began to indulge myself in a fantasy in which I climbed the perimeter fence, sneaking unobserved past the security barriers, making my way along corridors resonant with that unholy sound, descending through lower and lower levels until the walls around me changed from brick to rock and at last I found myself face to face with a pair of great bronze doors. I knew that I had only to put out my fist and knock, and the door would be opened to me.
That was forty years ago but I can still remember the anger I felt as I left my home and set out on one of my twilight visits to the Ice Factory; just as I can recall with perfect clarity how that ugly building sang my anger back to me. People sometimes ask me why I chose to write for teenagers, not for adults. I’m not sure I know the complete answer but I suspect that memory is part of it.
Monday, 31 August 2009
Thursday, 27 August 2009
If I Had Nothing But A Kitten
My mother was awarded the Fainne, a badge given to people who could speak the Irish language fluently. It was something that Irish people of her generation wore with a good deal of pride. Sadly, I don’t speak the language at all since there wasn’t a lot of call for it in East London where I grew up.
Recently I was looking through one of my mother’s school books, A First Course In Irish Composition, originally written in 1925, though my mother’s edition was published in 1941. Even a cursory glance shows clearly how the shape and structure of the Irish language affected the way that Irish people came to speak English.
Below are English translations of a number of Irish proverbs that appear in the book. Some of them are hilarious, some are mystifying and some are like zen koans.
If I had nothing but a kitten I would be in the middle of the fair with it.
He who walks a long road grinds both fine and coarse.
The biggest war that ever there was someone came safe out of it.
The beginning of a shower is mist, the end of a battle is strife.
Putting off a thing is a putting that the thing is not the better of.
And here are three for writers to consider:
His own story is everybody’s story.
It is a bad thing not to have a story on the tip of your tongue.
Don’t judge the first story till the second story reaches you.
Recently I was looking through one of my mother’s school books, A First Course In Irish Composition, originally written in 1925, though my mother’s edition was published in 1941. Even a cursory glance shows clearly how the shape and structure of the Irish language affected the way that Irish people came to speak English.
Below are English translations of a number of Irish proverbs that appear in the book. Some of them are hilarious, some are mystifying and some are like zen koans.
If I had nothing but a kitten I would be in the middle of the fair with it.
He who walks a long road grinds both fine and coarse.
The biggest war that ever there was someone came safe out of it.
The beginning of a shower is mist, the end of a battle is strife.
Putting off a thing is a putting that the thing is not the better of.
And here are three for writers to consider:
His own story is everybody’s story.
It is a bad thing not to have a story on the tip of your tongue.
Don’t judge the first story till the second story reaches you.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Plus Ca Change, Plus C'est La Meme Chose
Well my Italian dream is over and I’m back in London. One thing I won’t miss is The Great Anointing which I went through every morning. Since, genetically, I am really designed for the mild, wet climate of the west of Ireland, I had to start every day by coating myself with vast quantities of sun block which had the effect of making me look even whiter than I am. This, coupled with my Marks and Spencers hat marked me out as a tourist as effectively as if I’d had ‘Englishman on holiday’ tattooed across my forehead.
As a result, waiters and shopkeepers invariably spoke to me in English, despite my best efforts to talk to them in their native language. I did get a few opportunities to speak Italian however, including one whole afternoon when I had lunch with an Italian friend and was even obliged a couple of times to use the subjunctive. My Italian teacher, whose name is Laura, would have been extremely pleased. She is very strict about the subjunctive.
I mentioned this to a frighteningly intelligent friend of mine who has more degrees than a thermometer and writes books, the titles of which are completely beyond my comprehension. He frowned and said, ‘What’s the subjunctive?’ So, in case you share his grammatical blind spot, the subjunctive is a tense* that indicates doubt or hypothesis. The example commonly given is ‘If I were you’. Normally we don’t say ‘I were happy’, we say ‘I was happy’. So why do we say ‘If I were you’? Because we are using the subjunctive, of course.
Actually, nowadays, most people probably say ‘If I was you’ because, as Laura regularly points out with a curl of the lip, the use of the subjunctive in English is dying out. She clearly regards this as a sign of the degeneracy of the English language.
I don’t agree. I just see it as a sensible process of rationalisation. This is the way I look at it. If someone says to you…(Oh dear! Strictly speaking I should have written ‘If someone were to say to you’ since I am now hypothesising) – anyway, to hell with that. If someone says to you ‘If I were you’, there is no element of doubt, is there? You don’t think to yourself, ‘Gosh! Is he me? Am I really someone else?’ No, you understand that the person speaking is simply giving you a piece of advice. There’s no confusion; so why do you need to use a special tense?
The gradual disappearance of the subjunctive is one of the things that is often referred to as a kind of litmus test of grammatical awareness by people who complain about a decline in editing standards. Personally, I don’t think there’s been any such decline at all. My editor is prepared to accept ‘If I were you’ or ‘If I was you’. She knows the difference but accepts that the English language is in a constant state of change.
Since my return to England I have discovered that I am now in Wikipedia However, according to my entry I live in London with my wife and two daughters. This only goes to show what happens when there is no overall editorial control of a text. My daughters are in fact both married with homes of their own. Indeed, my elder daughter is thirty-one today. (Happy Birthday, Em!) Which is, coincidentally, about the age I feel inside.
Unfortunately my birth certificate is unequivocal on this point. I am, in reality, fifty-five and have been writing children’s books for more than a quarter of a century. If I delve into what Shakespeare called ‘the deep backward and abysm of time’ I can even remember one of the Great Milestones Of Publishing.
I had been invited to have lunch with my editor at Oxford University Press. We were just leaving the building for a restaurant when Ron, my editor, was hailed by another editor (whose name I never caught) but who was clearly enormously excited about something.
‘Look at this, Ron!’ the Other Editor said, taking a sheaf of paper out of a large brown envelope. ‘It’s just arrived from America.'
‘What is it?’ asked Ron. ‘A set of proofs?’
The Other Editor shook his head. ‘It’s a manuscript,’ he said.
‘But it’s practically perfect!’ exclaimed Ron in amazement. ‘You could publish it as it stands.’
‘I know,’ said the Other Editor. Speaking almost reverently he added, ‘It’s been done on a word processor.’
Ron thumbed through the manuscript in awed silence.
'This is the future,’ the Other Editor assured him. ‘They’ll all be like this soon.’
Ron shook his head in dismay. ‘Then we’ll be out of a job,’ he observed gloomily.
The Other Editor was right. Pretty soon every manuscript they received (including mine) was being produced on a computer. However, Ron’s gloomy prediction that there would be no more need for editors proved untrue. As in the English language, some things (like the subjunctive) change, but others remain the same.
Real editing, as opposed to straightforward copy editing, is about vision, about understanding the audience, about recognising a voice, developing a story, encouraging talent and fitting all this into the overall strategy of the publishing house. I think there are as many people who can do that today as there always have been.
* Of course strictly speaking it's a mood not a tense as I remembered after writing this but I'm afraid I'm not up to explaining the difference
As a result, waiters and shopkeepers invariably spoke to me in English, despite my best efforts to talk to them in their native language. I did get a few opportunities to speak Italian however, including one whole afternoon when I had lunch with an Italian friend and was even obliged a couple of times to use the subjunctive. My Italian teacher, whose name is Laura, would have been extremely pleased. She is very strict about the subjunctive.
I mentioned this to a frighteningly intelligent friend of mine who has more degrees than a thermometer and writes books, the titles of which are completely beyond my comprehension. He frowned and said, ‘What’s the subjunctive?’ So, in case you share his grammatical blind spot, the subjunctive is a tense* that indicates doubt or hypothesis. The example commonly given is ‘If I were you’. Normally we don’t say ‘I were happy’, we say ‘I was happy’. So why do we say ‘If I were you’? Because we are using the subjunctive, of course.
Actually, nowadays, most people probably say ‘If I was you’ because, as Laura regularly points out with a curl of the lip, the use of the subjunctive in English is dying out. She clearly regards this as a sign of the degeneracy of the English language.
I don’t agree. I just see it as a sensible process of rationalisation. This is the way I look at it. If someone says to you…(Oh dear! Strictly speaking I should have written ‘If someone were to say to you’ since I am now hypothesising) – anyway, to hell with that. If someone says to you ‘If I were you’, there is no element of doubt, is there? You don’t think to yourself, ‘Gosh! Is he me? Am I really someone else?’ No, you understand that the person speaking is simply giving you a piece of advice. There’s no confusion; so why do you need to use a special tense?
The gradual disappearance of the subjunctive is one of the things that is often referred to as a kind of litmus test of grammatical awareness by people who complain about a decline in editing standards. Personally, I don’t think there’s been any such decline at all. My editor is prepared to accept ‘If I were you’ or ‘If I was you’. She knows the difference but accepts that the English language is in a constant state of change.
Since my return to England I have discovered that I am now in Wikipedia However, according to my entry I live in London with my wife and two daughters. This only goes to show what happens when there is no overall editorial control of a text. My daughters are in fact both married with homes of their own. Indeed, my elder daughter is thirty-one today. (Happy Birthday, Em!) Which is, coincidentally, about the age I feel inside.
Unfortunately my birth certificate is unequivocal on this point. I am, in reality, fifty-five and have been writing children’s books for more than a quarter of a century. If I delve into what Shakespeare called ‘the deep backward and abysm of time’ I can even remember one of the Great Milestones Of Publishing.
I had been invited to have lunch with my editor at Oxford University Press. We were just leaving the building for a restaurant when Ron, my editor, was hailed by another editor (whose name I never caught) but who was clearly enormously excited about something.
‘Look at this, Ron!’ the Other Editor said, taking a sheaf of paper out of a large brown envelope. ‘It’s just arrived from America.'
‘What is it?’ asked Ron. ‘A set of proofs?’
The Other Editor shook his head. ‘It’s a manuscript,’ he said.
‘But it’s practically perfect!’ exclaimed Ron in amazement. ‘You could publish it as it stands.’
‘I know,’ said the Other Editor. Speaking almost reverently he added, ‘It’s been done on a word processor.’
Ron thumbed through the manuscript in awed silence.
'This is the future,’ the Other Editor assured him. ‘They’ll all be like this soon.’
Ron shook his head in dismay. ‘Then we’ll be out of a job,’ he observed gloomily.
The Other Editor was right. Pretty soon every manuscript they received (including mine) was being produced on a computer. However, Ron’s gloomy prediction that there would be no more need for editors proved untrue. As in the English language, some things (like the subjunctive) change, but others remain the same.
Real editing, as opposed to straightforward copy editing, is about vision, about understanding the audience, about recognising a voice, developing a story, encouraging talent and fitting all this into the overall strategy of the publishing house. I think there are as many people who can do that today as there always have been.
* Of course strictly speaking it's a mood not a tense as I remembered after writing this but I'm afraid I'm not up to explaining the difference
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
The Pleasure Of Reading
One of the delights of being on holiday is that you can gorge yourself on reading without feeling guilty about neglected chores. And that's exactly what I've been doing. I don't normally review books in this blog because I've got a Goodreads page where I do all that, but every now and then I read something that strikes me as so special I really must mention it. In this case it's The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. It's such an enormous pleasure to read, so solidly and carefully made, so emotionally involving that I feel quite reassured about the state of the contemporary British novel.
Perhaps that sounds silly but you read so much pompous twaddle like - well perhaps I'd better not say - and you think, 'God, is this the best we can do nowadays?' But then along comes Sarah Waters and you find yourself thinking, 'Bloody hell, this is like some hitherto undiscovered masterpiece by a classic nineteenth century author, except it's modern at the same time.'
Only a couple of days ago I said in a post that, as an author of whatever genre it's all too easy to be intimidated by master writers whether alive or dead. But Sarah Waters doesn't intimidate; there's nothing pretentious or showy about the writing. It's just an incredibly good piece of work. I know that when I get to the end I will be distraught that it's over but I still can't bear to put it down.
I remember having that feeling as a child, taking books home from the library and losing myself in them for days, getting to the end and feeling like I had lived part of somebody else's life. It's so good to recapture that.
Perhaps that sounds silly but you read so much pompous twaddle like - well perhaps I'd better not say - and you think, 'God, is this the best we can do nowadays?' But then along comes Sarah Waters and you find yourself thinking, 'Bloody hell, this is like some hitherto undiscovered masterpiece by a classic nineteenth century author, except it's modern at the same time.'
Only a couple of days ago I said in a post that, as an author of whatever genre it's all too easy to be intimidated by master writers whether alive or dead. But Sarah Waters doesn't intimidate; there's nothing pretentious or showy about the writing. It's just an incredibly good piece of work. I know that when I get to the end I will be distraught that it's over but I still can't bear to put it down.
I remember having that feeling as a child, taking books home from the library and losing myself in them for days, getting to the end and feeling like I had lived part of somebody else's life. It's so good to recapture that.
Monday, 10 August 2009
The Life Of A Writer
I am sitting at a table outside my villa in Tuscany eating ravioli with pear, walnut and pecorino salad and gazing out across the valley at a picturesque red-roofed town that perches elegantly on the opposite hillside. The highest point of that town is a fifteenth century tower from which is beamed the wireless internet signal that is making my stay here complete.
My wife and I get up early, go for a swim, then spend the day reading, talking and making simple meals. The ingredients here are so good you can't go wrong. In the evening we listen to the orioles singing and watch out for the bats before heading off for our final, twilight swim.
This is exactly how people imagine the life of a writer. It's what they mean when they say that they envy you. But of course it's just a holiday. In a week's time I'll be back in London. The real life of a writer is like everybody else's life; it has its glorious days but it also has its share of frustrations, disappointments, as well as lots and lots of pure hard work.
Non-writers never really want to hear this. When you try to tell them the truth, they just give you that look that means, 'Who do you think you're kidding? You want to try a real job.' Well, I have tried a real job. More than one, actually. But the one I stuck for the longest was teaching in an Inner London comprehensive school for ten years. So I know what hard work means.
The fact is that writing is all about creating illusions and the biggest illusion of all is the writer's life.
My wife and I get up early, go for a swim, then spend the day reading, talking and making simple meals. The ingredients here are so good you can't go wrong. In the evening we listen to the orioles singing and watch out for the bats before heading off for our final, twilight swim.
This is exactly how people imagine the life of a writer. It's what they mean when they say that they envy you. But of course it's just a holiday. In a week's time I'll be back in London. The real life of a writer is like everybody else's life; it has its glorious days but it also has its share of frustrations, disappointments, as well as lots and lots of pure hard work.
Non-writers never really want to hear this. When you try to tell them the truth, they just give you that look that means, 'Who do you think you're kidding? You want to try a real job.' Well, I have tried a real job. More than one, actually. But the one I stuck for the longest was teaching in an Inner London comprehensive school for ten years. So I know what hard work means.
The fact is that writing is all about creating illusions and the biggest illusion of all is the writer's life.
A Likely Story
On my last afternoon in Rome I was staring at the menu of a cafe not far from the Coloseum when I heard someone say, in English, 'I don't believe it!' I turned round and looked into the face of my friend, Vanessa with whom I had shared the post of Writing Fellow at the London College of Fashion a few years ago.
This was a real coincidence, but not one which I would easily get away with including in a novel. The last manuscript I sent to my publisher contained a scene which hinged upon a much less remarkable coincidence but it came back with a note from the editor to the effect that this particular episode was a bit hard to believe. I had no alternative but to change the plot slightly to accomodate my editor's scruples
Despite my editor's misgivings it's a fact that I have experienced several extraordinary coincidences in my life. For example when my wife and I were planning our wedding party thirty years ago we really wanted to include the friend who had first introduced us but we'd lost touch with him a couple of years earlier. We tried all sorts of ways to discover where he was living but gave up in the end. Then, on the afternoon preceeding the party, I was travelling to my parents' house on the other side of London when I walked right into him in the middle of Waterloo train station. It was as if I had called the meeting into being by sheer will power.
Now I am not suggesting that there was anything paranormal about either of these two meetings. On the contrary, all I'm saying is that unlikely coincidences do happen; but you can't put them in novels without people saying, 'Oh that's very convenient!'
Clearly realism is not the same thing as verisimilitude. Fiction has to be sufficiently life-like to convince the reader that it's true. But it can't be exactly like life because life contains too many elements which are simply unbelievable.
This was a real coincidence, but not one which I would easily get away with including in a novel. The last manuscript I sent to my publisher contained a scene which hinged upon a much less remarkable coincidence but it came back with a note from the editor to the effect that this particular episode was a bit hard to believe. I had no alternative but to change the plot slightly to accomodate my editor's scruples
Despite my editor's misgivings it's a fact that I have experienced several extraordinary coincidences in my life. For example when my wife and I were planning our wedding party thirty years ago we really wanted to include the friend who had first introduced us but we'd lost touch with him a couple of years earlier. We tried all sorts of ways to discover where he was living but gave up in the end. Then, on the afternoon preceeding the party, I was travelling to my parents' house on the other side of London when I walked right into him in the middle of Waterloo train station. It was as if I had called the meeting into being by sheer will power.
Now I am not suggesting that there was anything paranormal about either of these two meetings. On the contrary, all I'm saying is that unlikely coincidences do happen; but you can't put them in novels without people saying, 'Oh that's very convenient!'
Clearly realism is not the same thing as verisimilitude. Fiction has to be sufficiently life-like to convince the reader that it's true. But it can't be exactly like life because life contains too many elements which are simply unbelievable.
Saturday, 8 August 2009
Reverence
I'm on holiday at the moment but that doesn't mean I have stopped writing. My netbook goes everywhere I go. I spent the last three days in Rome, a city which I absolutely adore and which I never visit without getting an idea for a story, in this case a significant new episode in the novel I'm currently working on.
The idea came from looking at a painting in the Palazzo Barberini. This makes it sound as if I'm a great art buff. Nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to art I'm a complete ignoramus and that's exactly why I find looking at paintings inspiring. Once I get to the point where I know quite a lot about something (or think I do), the subject in question automatically becomes dead as a source of inspiration. This was certainly my experience studying English Literature at university, a degree which I embarked on in the misguided belief that it would help me to become a writer.
There's nothing more stifling to writing than reverence for dead masters. Or even living masters, come to that. I had to spend years unlearning everything I'd soaked up during my degree and that bloody reverence was the last thing to go.
The idea came from looking at a painting in the Palazzo Barberini. This makes it sound as if I'm a great art buff. Nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to art I'm a complete ignoramus and that's exactly why I find looking at paintings inspiring. Once I get to the point where I know quite a lot about something (or think I do), the subject in question automatically becomes dead as a source of inspiration. This was certainly my experience studying English Literature at university, a degree which I embarked on in the misguided belief that it would help me to become a writer.
There's nothing more stifling to writing than reverence for dead masters. Or even living masters, come to that. I had to spend years unlearning everything I'd soaked up during my degree and that bloody reverence was the last thing to go.
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?
reading good fiction
reading bad fiction
reading non fiction
dreams
nightmares
watching films
random things that people say to me
overhearing snippets of conversation not meant for my ears
suddenly remembering something awful that happened to me
spontaneous flashes of story that appear without explanation in my head
going to new places
going on holiday
going to Ireland
visiting museums
visiting churches
having to do things that I don’t want to do
encountering anything that in any way reminds me of my childhood
bouts of self-hypnotism
talking to my wife
talking to my daughters
running a high temperature
being very frightened
random pop lyrics
long train journeys
Italian renaissance art
relics and reliquaries
wandering about London as if I’d never seen it before
staring at myself in the mirror
getting lost (happens a lot)
losing my dignity
losing my wallet
Greek and Roman mythology
Celtic mythology
anything to do with the Catholic church
cats
reading bad fiction
reading non fiction
dreams
nightmares
watching films
random things that people say to me
overhearing snippets of conversation not meant for my ears
suddenly remembering something awful that happened to me
spontaneous flashes of story that appear without explanation in my head
going to new places
going on holiday
going to Ireland
visiting museums
visiting churches
having to do things that I don’t want to do
encountering anything that in any way reminds me of my childhood
bouts of self-hypnotism
talking to my wife
talking to my daughters
running a high temperature
being very frightened
random pop lyrics
long train journeys
Italian renaissance art
relics and reliquaries
wandering about London as if I’d never seen it before
staring at myself in the mirror
getting lost (happens a lot)
losing my dignity
losing my wallet
Greek and Roman mythology
Celtic mythology
anything to do with the Catholic church
cats
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