Newcastle Writing Conference 2015

Just over a week ago, I attended the Newcastle Writing Conference 2015. Organised by New Writing North and hosted by Northumbria University, it was a thoroughly informative and inspiring event - one I have thinking about ever since.

The day kicked off with a storming key notes address from YA author Meg Rosoff, which was a great ice-breaker for the conference, mainly because Meg is such an entertaining speaker. She brought a lot of laughter to the lecture hall as she told us exactly why she hated her former profession of advertising (it involved instant tea granules), her habit of getting fired from almost every job she’s ever had, and how her first novel – a pony book – was rejected for containing too much sex.

The talk concluded with Meg urging us to think of our brains as colanders: almost everything slips through, but once in a while something especially memorable or interesting gets stuck. When writing, she advised us to consider the contents of our own individual colanders: ‘None of it is the same as anyone else’s,’ she said, ‘and that is your strength and your weapon.’

After a panel event about social media, we split off into breakout sessions. I had chosen How to Pitch Your Work with Steve Chambers, mainly because the idea of talking about my novel-to-be terrifies me. In fact, what I really liked about Steve was that he didn’t deny that pitching was an unpleasant business, though as he reminded us, ‘You don’t really have a choice.’

A few pieces of advice from that session that really stood out for me:

• Build your pitch around the main character – people are interested in people.
• Pitch it like you’re talking to a mate at the pub.
•  It isn’t about the novel’s themes or issues - or why you’re writing it - it’s about telling the story.
• Focus on what is unique about your story. 
•  Not everyone will like your ideas, and that’s okay.
•  Don’t lose confidence, and keep pitching – you will improve.

I also found that Steve, who is the Programme Leader of the Creative Writing MA at Northumbria University, had a lot of writing wisdom to share, not all of it related to pitching. In fact, my notes are full of his offhand little gems, one of my favourites being, ‘You can’t help the kind of writer you are, because who you are keeps coming out of your work, in your voice.’

In the afternoon, I opted to attend Meet the Agent with Jo Unwin. Much like my attitude to pitching, I find the prospect of one day attempting to find an agent rather intimidating - they are, after all, the gatekeepers of the publishing world. Fortunately, Jo turned out to be very friendly, eager to explain what her job entailed, and full of advice on how to approach an agent. Of course, a lot of information about submitting work can be found online – and it varies from agent to agent – but I thought I’d record just a few of Jo’s many wonderful tips below:

• The biggest agents in the business might not have space for new authors, but it’s a good idea to approach their assistants, who will be looking to expand their client list.
• Mention a personal connection to the agent if you have one. This might be meeting them in person, but could just as easily be watching them talk at events on YouTube etc.
•  Have a good sense of the book you’ve written. Pitch the nugget of your story in your covering letter – and be specific, so it’s memorable. ‘Don’t tell me it’s about innocence and loss,’ Jo advised. ‘Tell me it’s about a mother whose daughter was lost at sea.’
•  Your covering letter should be serious, demonstrating that you’re a ‘career writer’ – i.e. someone who has been writing for a long time and is committed to a future in the profession. 

The conference concluded with a fantastic panel event called What’s Hot and What’s Not with Jo Unwin, Francesca Main (Picador), Rachael Kerr (Unbound) and Anna James (The Bookseller). It was great to hear about these women’s respective roles in the publishing industry and their current projects, not to mention the many, many book recommendations they had (my bank balance is about to take a serious hit).

As for the question posed by the name of the panel, although the speakers could identify current themes in publishing (nature writing is ‘having a moment’, women’s voices are popular) they cautioned us against chasing trends, because tastes inevitably will have changed by the time a book has been written and published. Instead, we were simply urged to write the best, most important book we could.

I found this point - which had been repeated one way or another throughout the conference - oddly reassuring. Obviously, writing a high-quality novel is no easy task, but given that the rapidly-evolving publishing industry can sometimes seem like a confusing sort of place, it’s a clear objective – something to get on with. 

In fact, Meg Rosoff summed it up nicely right at the beginning of the day, when she related what her agent had once said to her: ‘Forget about being a good girl and doing it the right way, and [write a book] as fiercely as you can.’

An Update

I seem to have become rather lax about blogging lately so, without further ado, here is an update of my literary activities of the past few months... 

August in Edinburgh is, of course, totally dominated by the festivals, and it’s an amazing time to be in the city – let alone live in it. The highlight for me is always The Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF), which never fails to attract world-class authors, and this year was no different. Below are a few of my highlights:

• Patrick Ness is basically the king of YA fiction at the moment - and deservedly so. In person too, Ness is funny, engaging, and has a lovely rapport with his audience. I also appreciated the fact that he spoke a lot about writing as a process, and the following are just a few things he said that stayed with me:

On not having time to write: 'Writers don't write, they write anyway. You find ways to write.' 

On self-belief: ‘You can be a writer - no one ever told me that.’ 

On how his stories take shape: ‘I'm a great believer in if an idea's good enough, wait and things will stick to it’

• Sarah Maitland and Kirsty Logan write original fairy tales, Maitland fusing hers with scientific theory in her book Moss Witch, and Logan creating her own lyrical, sensual fiction in The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales. Given that I frequently use traditional stories in my own work, I really enjoyed hearing about their different approaches to this kind of writing.

• I have never read any of Lydia Davis’ fiction, but her event (chaired by a delightful Ali Smith, whose work I love) made me realise what an oversight that has been, for Davis is truly a master of the short story form (an excellent example of her newer work is Letter to a Frozen Peas Manufacturer). 

• The wise and witty Sarah Waters talked mainly about her new novel, The Paying Guests, and I was particularly interested when she discussed how her historical fiction develops: she reads extensively around the time period she wants to write about, and then lets the story emerge from her research. Also, her event’s chair, Muriel Gray, was fabulous (‘Sarah, this book kept getting me all hot and bothered. I had to think of Jeremy Clarkson to calm myself down.’).

• Haruki Murakami was one of the biggest names at this year’s EIBF. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him, though having read three of his books I should have guessed: Murakami was quirky, witty, with a mischievous streak - he had his audience in the palm of his hand.

Meeting him after the event was even better. For privacy, he was signing books behind a strange arrangement of sheets, rather like a blanket fort. My partner (a highly reluctant reader on whom Murakami has somehow worked his magic) and I queued for a good hour to see the author, and then simultaneously froze when we ducked into all the linen and came face-to-face with him. Unfazed by our silence, Murakami chuckled, ‘I am looking forward to a beer after this,’ and – finding our voices at last – we hastily encouraged him in this endeavour. 

Banter about beer with Haruki Murakami? We felt like the coolest people on the planet.

After all that excitement, September had a distinctly back-to-school vibe, especially following the fun of the festival, and I enforced a strict ‘new term’ routine on myself. Each weekday since then, I’ve been trying to finish my freelance ghostwriting by lunchtime, so in the afternoon I can spend a couple of hours on my novel, short stories, or writing admin (ie tasks like trawling the internet for competitions or sending stories off to anthologies). Unless a pesky deadline comes up, it’s not a bad system, so I’m going to try and stick to it for the foreseeable future.

October was dominated by one of the aforementioned pesky deadlines, and most of the writing month was spent pulling my hair out over perhaps the most difficult short story I’ve ever written. Hopefully I will be able to find it a home one of these days...

And finally, November, which I will remember as the Month of the Novel. First of all, I finished my second full-length ghostwritten book. Obviously, I can’t talk about it too much, but it’s been a very enjoyable project, and working on it every day has given me some much-needed structure since returning from my travels, so I will miss it a fair bit.

In terms of my own writing, this was also a big month for my novel-to-be. A while ago, I realised my old draft simply wasn’t working, and therefore much of ‘new term’ has been spent trying to rethink its structure, plot, characters – most of it, really. I think November was the first time I felt like I was making progress with this often disheartening task, helped in no small part by Edinburgh City Council’s wonderful two-day writing course, 'Start Your First Novel'. Run by Alison Summers, the sessions were great for reviewing (and learning) the process of developing a novel from scratch, and so made it much easier for me to look at my new ideas from a fresh perspective. 

Ladies in Red: Rereading The Handmaid's Tale

It is 2002 and I am in my last year at school. I have dragged myself up several flights of stairs to the English classroom, the one right at the top of the building that becomes hot and stuffy in the summer, and I have thrown down my heavy rucksack, which is disfigured by Tipp-Ex eyes and yin yangs. The teacher is telling us that one of our A-level texts is to be The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I have never heard of it, or of her, and I’m not particularly bothered: the books we read at school are never as exciting as the ones I read at home, about quests and dragons and magic.

In that classroom, we begin to read aloud great chunks of The Handmaid’s Tale, our teacher picking on whoever is paying the least attention for this happy task. She tells us to listen to what Atwood is doing with language. I haven’t thought much about the way in which novels are written before, only about the stories themselves, and I shiver when I realise that the name of the book’s rebel movement ‘Mayday’ derives (just like the emergency distress call) from the French M’aidez: ‘help me’.

Over the days, the weeks, I become used to the way Atwood jumps through time, or drip-feeds information, or causes me to question the reliability of her narrator. She is playing with me, I realise - and as a result I am being drawn further into the tale of Offred, the scarlet-clad titular character, and her struggle in the totalitarian, repressed state of Gilead. I am not even giggling when we encounter swearing or passages about sex. I’m too engrossed in the world, too eager to discover what happens next. I cannot believe it’s a schoolbook, this bold and brilliant novel. I can’t believe it’s a book at all. I’ve never read anything like it in my seventeen years, and it’s changing how I think about reading, about writing - and about telling stories.

*

Recently, I read The Handmaid’s Tale for the second time. I don’t usually return to books, but I nominated this one for The Geneva International Book Club, so I picked it up again - with some trepidation. Dystopian literature is so very fashionable right now, most notably in Young Adult fiction (think The Hunger Games, Divergent, How I Live Now etc.), but The Handmaid’s Tale was written almost thirty years ago – what if it had gone stale? Or what if it simply wasn’t as good as I remembered?

In Atwood I trust, I told myself, and on a trip to my parents’ house dug out my old book from school. It has a plastic cover that someone – the librarian, most probably – wrapped around the outside; it has St. Margaret’s School, Exeter stamped onto the title page; it has pencil notes in the margins, made by me, long ago. Now I write this, I wonder whether I was supposed to have kept it. I’m glad I did.

Last month, my secondary school closed its doors for good. A small, old-fashioned girls’ school, it sometimes seemed as though it belonged in a time gone by; that was no small part of its charm and - I suspect - its undoing. When I heard of its fate, I was sad, certainly, but I quickly pushed the news aside. I suppose that it all feels very far away from me here in Geneva, both in terms of physical distance and the fact that exactly a decade has now passed since I left. But then I opened up my old copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, and not only was I back in that story, I was back in that school as well.

We were (young) ladies in red too, we St. Margaret’s girls. ‘Cherry red,’ it was called; the colour of our jumpers, the stripes on our ties, the ribbon on our blazers. But the hue of our uniforms is where the similarities between we and the handmaids of Atwood’s novel end. They live in a stilted, subjugated society, whereas our red world was full of words and ideas and learning.

It was around the age I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, in the atmosphere of that school, that I started to consider what steps I should take, in order to make something out of all the stories that kept popping into my head. In fact, I remember telling anyone who’d listen, with all the swagger that comes with having absolutely no clue what the Big Wide World has in store, that I wanted to be a writer. And looking back, after a decade on this path, I don’t remember any of my teachers or friends telling me that it would be hard, that my bank statements would be laughable, that the whole thing was going to be - at times - frustrating and disheartening. What would have been the point? I was going to do it anyway. Funnily enough, for all its dated rules and uniform codes, St. Margaret’s was thoroughly modern in the way it filled us with ambition, and then let us speed off in any direction we chose.

It’s nostalgia I’m feeling, I know this. Rereading Atwood’s novel has taken me back to a happy, formative time and my brain has conveniently edited out all the bleak bits. But I think, given the recent closure of St. Margaret’s, I’m experiencing a little more than just wistful reflection on days’ past. That time is gone for me – that’s how growing up works – but the fact that that school, that environment, that place of possibilities has now gone too – that’s the part that stings.

I should say at this juncture that the book is still fantastic - of course it is. At the book club, it provoked some great discussion, not only on the story itself, but on wider issues that need and demand great discussion: women, religion, reproductive rights, to name but a few. It has also been a boon to my writing, as reading the masters always is, for it has forced me to try and raise my writing game a thousandfold. Most of all, it’s made me think of myself, at seventeen. Fiercely ambitious, hopelessly naïve, what would she say to me now, I wonder, that girl whose notes are pencilled in this old book? Finish your novel, I expect (it’s what I say to myself now).

It is unsurprising perhaps, with all of this rattling around in my head, that in my reread of The Handmaid’s Tale, this passage stood out in particular:

We line up to get processed through the checkpoint, standing in our twos and twos and twos, like a private girls’ school that went for a walk and stayed out too long. Years and years too long, so that everything has become overgrown, legs, bodies, dresses all together. As if enchanted. A fairy tale, I’d like to believe.

Sometimes, when Real Life gets confusing or tough, I wonder whether maybe, like the Pevensie children, I’ll come tumbling out of the wardrobe, and find I’m still a young girl in a cherry red jumper, and that no time has passed at all. Only, that’s the wrong way round: St. Margaret’s is the fairy tale now, the lost place of our childhoods. We’re all grown up and can’t get back – and, sadly, neither can the children who were halfway through their studies this year, nor the teachers and other staff who dedicated so much of themselves to that school.

I hope it’s not forgotten. I think, after my strong reaction to rereading The Handmaid’s Tale, that’s the reason I started to write this: I want to remember. Memories, I believe, are important real stories that we have to recognise, learn from, laugh at, and - above all else - hold onto. In that way, I hope revisiting St. Margaret’s in the future will be as easy as revisiting a favourite novel: I hope I will return to it, unexpectedly, inevitably, over and over; that place and that time that made up so many chapters of the beginning of my story.

2012: The Writing Year in Numbers

Completing NaNoWriMo and pushing through the last few weeks of work before Christmas seem to have robbed me of all energy, therefore I present my review of the writing year mostly in numerical form:

2 novels undertaken, one for work, one for... fun(?)

3 competition successes: Cargo Publishing/Scottish Book Trust's twitter competition, Indigo Ink's Grimmoire Fairy Tales anthology, 5 Minute Fiction's Christmas competition

9 short stories completed: Something New of You, It'll All be Gone Tomorrow, The Gorgon and the Goddess, Ring-a-Roses, The Weeping Glen, Unnamed, Unsettled, The Visitor, The Queen and the Stag

12 blog posts (far better than last year's effort of 1)

63 short stories ghostwritten

179 tweets, mostly about writing

25, 432 words written for NaNoWriMo

77, 159 current length of the complete (in first draft) novel

And now for some New Year writing goals/projects in bullet point form:

• Rewrite novel

• Complete more stories for fairy tale anthology

• Enter more competitions

• Keep up the Pen Poppers (writers' group)

• Write more posts for Writers' Block (meta)

Think that's my lot for now. 2012, you've been awesome. 2013, I'll deal with you later.

Happy New Year!

NaNoWriMo 2012: The End

At this stage in the novelling game, I don't anticipate my last scene to be followed by the words 'The End'. It would certainly be nice and neat but, for a story about second chances, it wouldn't work to close with so much finality. Nevertheless, a few days ago, I was sorely tempted to write those two little words at the bottom of the page for, after a month of NaNoWriMo, I had reached The End.

Progress throughout the month: a little hit and miss

As can been seen above on the Bar Chart of Joy, this year's Nano has not been particularly smooth sailing. In fact, I became severely stranded on three occasions both for pleasant reasons - a trip to Amsterdam, the visit of a friend - and a thoroughly unpleasant one - being struck down by an evil time and energy-guzzling illness. Sabotaged by my own body! It was a bit of a struggle, more so than I anticipated, but I did manage to claw back my word count over the last few days and finally finish - hurrah!

Now, after a few days of hardly thinking about writing at all, I think a kind of debrief is probably due on the experience, for which I've come up with the following:

1) The first draft is complete
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, I have finished it, just like Joss Whedon told me to. It might be in a complete state, but it's all there, and therefore far easier to work with than a load of blank pages.

2) I have a better grip on the story
I have written this story over several years with months and months going by between bursts of activity. Returning to the plot in such a concentrated way has allowed me to see what works (the settings, for one) and what doesn't (the lack of emotional payoff at the end is currently my biggest concern), and therefore what I need to work on...

3) I have a plan
... Which leads me to the future of the book. I love to organise, and writing is one of those glorious activities that almost always benefits from a healthy dose of planning. It was always inevitable then, that as I was typing furiously to the deadline, my mind would be on the next stage of the process. I already know that the first thing I'm going to amend in the New Year is the opening of the story, which will take place in a completely different location (a wood) and then I'm going to tackle the rewrite chronologically, ie separating out my interlinking 2005/2010 timelines in the hope that I can smooth over all my plot holes and straighten out all my story arcs.

So finishing Nano is not an end - far, far from it. But the point is it's not a beginning either. To quote the mighty Joss once more:

Finishing [...]is first of all truly difficult, and secondly really liberating. Even if it’s not perfect, even if you know you’re gonna have to go back into it, type to the end. You have to have a little closure.

Which is why, to myself, and only in relation to the first draft, I think I can say it just this once:

The End.

This is the first and last time a post will feature
more than one graph. Promise.

NaNoWriMo 2012: Preparation

As of tomorrow, I'll be taking part in Nanowrimo. To prepare, I have done the following:

1) Read through the existing manuscript
As previously mentioned, my Nano challenge this year is to finish my incomplete novel, at least in first draft. In an attempt to try and remember what on earth was going on in the story, I recently skimmed through everything I had written so far. Surprisingly, I didn't hate it. I didn't exactly love it either, but that's okay.

2) Made a plan
I love planning. If I could get a job plotting books and not writing them, that would be marvellous. Recently, my Geneva writers' group indulged this perversion of mine by promising we could have a 'structure clinic' at some point in the near future, whereby we all help one another put our stories into some sort of order. For me, this is painfully exciting - sort of like a literary Christmas - although I have realised I should probably make a plan for my own Nano project, if I'm going to be bossy about everyone else's.

3) Signed up
Nano has an excellent website, featuring lots of tips and banter, where you can design yourself a fancy profile, with pictures and a novel synopsis and everything. Mine is now up and running here. My favourite thing by far on the Nano website is the Bar Chart of Joy. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than watching the bar chart of my word count go up and up during the month of November - just as nothing fills me with as much dread as getting behind and watching the projected word count get further and further out of reach.

My Novel profile as of 01/11/12 - featuring the Bar Chart of Joy

4) Spread the word
During previous Nanos, I've found it best to tell my nearest and dearest that I'm attempting a novel in thirty days, just so they know why I look so hollow-eyed/unwashed/confused by reality. Better yet is to get them to do it as well. Long ago (May) I made a pact with Miss Joely Badger that we would both do Nano this year. And then there's my Geneva writers' group, some of whom may be attempting it too. As I said in my previous post on collaborative writing: share the writing burden!

5) Tidied my flat
I am notoriously messy and will neglect housework for weeks and weeks on end if I can get away with it (considering my 'studio apartment' in Geneva is probably only slightly larger than a shoe box, this is rather shaming). But when one is in the throes of novel-writing, scrubbing the bathroom often begins to look like an appealing alternative to writing, so that particular procrastination path has been nipped in the bud.

6) Bought a lot of food

The 'Inspiration Station'
- complete with novelty lighting

I work long hours and the aforementioned minuscule apartment has a kitchen which is literally inside a cupboard. This makes me a very lazy cook. I don't even really try: pasta and pesto has become my go-to supper (and believe me, I go to it a lot). However, novelists need nourishment - and Nano novelists cannot afford to be wasting time wandering the supermarket aisles every day. Therefore I have bought myself all sorts of healthy food: smoothies! Bananas! Broccoli! I can't remember the last time I ate broccoli, and I'm not convinced I can recall what to do with it.

7) Bought a lot of booze
As above, but more so.

8) Got in the mood

I've been working on my poor nameless novel for a long time now. Almost five years, in fact. As such, I have a pretty good idea of who will star in the inevitable film adaptation (Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Julianne Moore), what the soundtrack will feature (Israel 'Iz' Kamakawiwo'Ole's Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Portishead's Numb, among others) and have even built up an 'Inspiration Station' of random pictures vaguely connected to the story, so I can't accidentally forget I'm supposed to be writing it. In addition to reading through the manuscript, I have revisited these bookish bonus features - and am now officially In The Mood To Write.

Soundtrack music: Israel 'Iz' Kamakawiwo'Ole's 

version of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'

Novel November

It's all Joss Whedon's fault.

I was just minding my own business on twitter last week, when up popped ‘Ten Writing Tips from Joss Whedon.' Now normally, I take these sorts of lists with a large pinch of salt - especially since I recently read one from a very respected publication that advised ‘always write short stories in the first person.’ Really? Always? However, Joss is different: Joss is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (if you’re eye-rolling, you know nothing and must order your boxset immediately), and Buffy taught me a hell of a lot about telling stories – not to mention fighting the forces of darkness – during my teenage years. So Joss, I would listen to.*

Eagerly, I clicked on the link. This was the first thing I read:

1. FINISH IT

Actually finishing it is what I’m gonna put in as step one. You may laugh at this, but it’s true. I have so many friends who have written two-thirds of a screenplay, and then re-written it for about three years. Finishing a screenplay is first of all truly difficult, and secondly really liberating. Even if it’s not perfect, even if you know you’re gonna have to go back into it, type to the end. You have to have a little closure.

I got no further through the list, as by this point I was experiencing a horrible gnawing sensation in my stomach: guilt. For although Joss was primarily advising screenwriters, I could not help but think of my own novel, languishing in a forgotten folder somewhere on my computer, so near yet frustratingly so far from being a complete manuscript. And the more I thought about it, that hateful work that I had banished from my mind for six months or more, the more I... Well, I kind of... missed it.

Oh, I admit it. I wanted it back. For a second, my subconscious went soft and ached to write it, to finish it - and that second was enough for the more businesslike side of my brain to seize upon its counterpart's weakness and go, "haha! Then write it and finish it, you wastrel!"

A timeline of 'the novel' (I hate calling it that, but all my working titles are, frankly, crap):

• Sometime in 2006: thinking idly about the lack of modern stories featuring fathers and daughters (as opposed to fairy tales, where they're all over the place), I come up with a vague idea about a teenage girl's madcap weekend in London with her estranged, unstable father. 
• April 2008: during my final term of the MSc, I decide it is an excellent idea to pen this emotionally complex plot - now set in my new home city of Edinburgh - as a novella in three months. Incidentally, it isn't a good idea and there are many tears. 
• November 2009: due to the MSc trauma, I don't look at the story again for over a year. Then for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I decided to rewrite the whole thing as a full-blown novel. In a month. Somewhat surprisingly, I achieve this - although because a 'Nano' novel is only 50,000 words, the manuscript is unfinished. 
• September 2010 - June 2011: I workshop a good chunk of the incomplete draft with my Edinburgh writers' group, WOW, until I move to Geneva.

But Joss is right, isn't he? Of course he is. I need closure. How can I edit the early part of the story if the end isn't even written? I need to finish it - and not just for the sake of it, but because over the years it's developed into a story I truly want - and think it's important - to tell:

Fifteen year-old Ruby Chase is devoted to her estranged father, the carefree and reckless Leo. But over the course of one weekend in Edinburgh, they are torn apart by his inability to control his bipolar disorder, and her inability to understand it.

Five years later, they are reunited at Ruby's grandmother’s funeral. The now medicated Leo is desperate to make amends for what happened in Edinburgh, but Ruby struggles to forgive him, caught now between the two Leos: the stable stranger who is offering her a father once more, and the adored, troubled dad she loved and lost.

Looking back at that timeline, it seems I've progressed the most with the novel under pressure: the MSc, Nano and WOW (acronyms seem to help). I was going to do Nano again with a new novel this November, but really what's the point when I have one already 70% finished? So instead, I've decided to come up with my own Nano-inspired challenge whereby I finish my novel in first/second draft. Then at least I'll have a manuscript. At least I'll be able to print it out, flick through it whilst laughing wildly, and scribble this is awful - cut, cut, CUT! all over it in green pen

So yes, exactly one month from today, it's not so much National Novel Writing Month as National Novel Finishing Month (NaNoFiMo? Sounds like some sort of Plasticine challenge). It's going to be difficult and it's going to be liberating. There will almost certainly be more tears.

And it's all Joss Whedon's fault.

Joss is Boss.

*If you need further proof of Joss' genius, watch the above and don't even try not to fist-pump.

New Projects

Autumn is a funny time. Yes, the leaves are pretty colours, we don’t have to worry about ugly men walking around topless anymore (in public!), and we have Halloween and fireworks soon – which are always jolly good fun. But none of this totally makes up for the fact that we’re simply too soon after the delights of summer and too far from the joys of Christmas for anything else to be truly delightful or joyous. These cold, darkening days render me decidedly fragile - and to think, I used to laugh at people who claimed they got Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) every winter. That was before I lived in Scotland.

I am trying to combat the autumnal blues, as well as my own wretchedness concerning my status as a useless unemployed person, with some writing projects. These are threefold:

1) Despite glaring continuity errors, erratic changes in plot/characterisation/time/logic, and whole sections missing where I have simply written ‘???’, I have decided that I have finished the first draft of my novel. Sort of. In lying to myself like this, I can move on and edit it, which I think is more productive than just hating its presence on my computer - and indeed, in my life.

2) I have set up a writers’ group. It is called WOW, which stands for Writers on Wine. I am proud of that acronym. The group is in its fledgling stages at the moment, but I am confident there will be much good writing and much good wine.

3) I have become a Literary Consultant.  

So the unemployment thing is not strictly true, although my bank balance would suggest otherwise. No, I have recently been appointed a Literary Consultant for a publishing company in Geneva.

This is not as grand as it sounds. It is actually a ghostwriting job. Back in May, I applied for a different role in a Geneva-based publishing company and - to cut a long story short - they offered me the Literary Consultant role instead. Getting the job was a rather long and ridiculous process, however the highlight of it all was being whisked off to Geneva for the day – the single most high-flying (no pun intended) moment in my laughably non-professional career.

Epic Fail

It’s July. It’s hot – even in Scotland. According to the Metro, that well-respected source of information, Britain could soon be facing a drought. A hosepipe-banning, bath-sharing drought. While I’m pretty sure that everyone’s favourite public transport rag is wildly exaggerating the matter, I can’t help but think that - in relation to my writing - some pathetic fallacy is going on here.

About a month and a half ago, I promised myself I would complete the first draft of my novel by 1st July. Considering that the thing is still mouldering away, neglected and unloved, on my hard drive, I would say that was a fail.

I could make excuses. I could cite all the hours I have worked recently (at the Edinburgh Book Festival Box Office, for just one more afternoon now). I could offer my crazed to-do lists for my forthcoming teaching stint in New York as proof of my industry (although however I dress that one up, going to New York always just sounds jammy). I could wring my hands about all the social, familial, televisual commitments I have had of late. But really, enough. There are no excuses.

Let us review the recent pledges I have made and their glorious outcomes:

I will finish the first draft of my novel by July – fail.

I will enter the Bridport Prize, as previously mentioned on this blog, this year – fail.

I will enter other short story competitions – fail.
 
In short - one epic fail.

How to pull myself from this rut? I enjoy writing. I enjoy telling stories. I sometimes think that I don’t even hate my novel that much, although those unsettling feelings usually pass. Perhaps New York will help. Maybe time away, when I’m not supposed to write will, perversely, make me want to start scribbling again. Or maybe I should take time off after the summer, lock myself in the flat, and not come out until I’ve finished the damn thing, even if it means being so poor and wretched that I’ll eat nothing but Riveta and talk to nobody but the woodlouse that has taken up in the bathroom.

There is also always the rain dance option. I could choreograph some sort of inspiration-seeking jig. However, considering the quality of my bog-standard boozy party dancing, this idea should be filed under ‘Last Resort.’

“We’re off to see the Wizard…”

I am currently experiencing something of an Oz obsession. Not for all things Australian, you understand, but for somewhere even further away: the fantasy land of Frank L Baum’s imagination.

I have always rather sniffed at The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Perhaps, having been brought up on a strict diet of Barrie, Carroll, Tolkein et al, I was snobby about the American Baum and his land of Oz. Indeed, I am still of the opinion that the plot – more the book’s than the film’s – is rather holey and not entirely deserving of its literary status. However, on revisiting both book and (superior) film, I have come to the conclusion that there are many aspects to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that are, well, wonderful.

Wonderful, and useful. A few months ago, I decided that there were rather a lot of nice parallels between Baum’s story and my own burgeoning novel: the importance of home versus whatever’s over the rainbow, a black and white world versus a technicolour one, plus storms and dreams and – most importantly – the idea of a seemingly great man who is not as quite as he appears. It all fits rather well into (the currently titled) Meeting in the Middle. So imagine my joy, on re-watching the film, of finding this little gem:

“The Great Oz has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

This is currently the new epitaph to my novel. This and some quotations from Hawthorne’s retelling of the Midas myth – Midas being another famously flawed man. Coming up with potential epitaphs is much more exciting than writing the thing.

(I have also recently seen Wicked in the West End and was very impressed. Aside from a fantastic production, I was very taken by/jealous of the story – what a fantastic idea Maguire had, to put a spin on the Wicked Witch of the West, who – as the musical so rightly points out – didn’t really do anything that wicked, apart from demand back the shoes of her dead squashed sister.)