The Writing Process – Page 6

Are We Having Fun Yet?

This Week’s Bit of String: Solitary bowling

Last week my office had a bowling night out. While we cheered our mostly lacklustre shots over cheesy chips and a vast range of alcoholic beverages, an older couple set up a few lanes along.

Only the woman bowled. She wore a bright pink skirt, a lycra team t-shirt, and a grave expression. She’d brought wristbands and kneestraps. Her husband recorded her work with a handheld, flip-out camera, I assume so she could critique herself later.

Before each play she communed briefly with the ball, hugging it to her chest, contemplating the long lonely expanse she was about to cast it into. I’m not sure what goes down between a bowler and the ball in those split seconds. My workmates and I tried mantras like, ‘I am one with the ball and the ball is with me,’ none of which worked any magic.

The pink-skirted woman threw fast, powerful shots and toppled most if not all her pins. But her expression never changed. Though her dedication and force impressed me, I couldn’t shake the feeling she’d leave the alley deeply dissatisfied.

It’s great to pursue a sport or a hobby, whatever it is, any avenue of self-improvement. Probably for those of you reading this blog, writing qualifies as such a pursuit.

And chances are, like me, you’re not exactly earning a living from it. It’s the beast you feed your spare time to, before going to the office and after the kids are in bed. Those precious slices of our day get devoured by building word count on new projects, editing older pieces, managing a social media network, critiquing friends’ work, researching agents and publications, promoting our gigs and releases, reading and research.

It’s a bit like having a second full-time job, isn’t it?

Work, Hobby, or Talent?

To check how it is for others, I polled Twitter on which term best describes writing in the respondents’ lives: work, hobby, or talent. (I included a disclaimer: I understand these words aren’t mutually exclusive, but I wanted to see what other writers viewed as most accurate.)

A much larger percentage chose hobby to describe writing. A fair few selected work, and only a small number said talent, which is understandable. We may have talent for writing but the term is insufficiently indicative of the conscious effort required.

Looking at the etymology of these terms, the word hobby derives from the word hobbyhorse, and the use in Morris dancing. This affiliation with pretending to do something puts me off a little; it links a hobby with a substitute; something not fully real or functional.

Rocking horse and doll's house in an antique shop Christmas window display — Even better than the real thing?

Regardless of what your hobby is, it’s real to you and it does serve a function, even if that function is to escape reality. Articles such as this one from Very Well Mind abound on the importance of hobbies to cut down on stress—and, where necessary, to provide eustress, ‘the healthy kind of stress that we all need to remain feeling excited about life.’

We can probably agree there is stress involved in writing. Even for those not wishing to publish or share, I imagine they still struggle with developing their stories or poems enough to please themselves. The challenges involved here, I believe (admittedly without absence of bias), equip us with resilience and empathy in other areas of our lives.

Partly because of this stress, I join those categorising it as work, if not the most profitable kind and certainly not the most unpleasant. By treating writing as another job, this legitimises time spent on it and shields us from some (certainly not all) encroachments. It keeps our morsels of time out of other greedy mouths.

Consider the definitions of work, which according to etymonline.com all date back to old English, around the start of the thirteenth century.

“To perform physical labor:” Well, mental labour certainly. And a bit of wrist strain on those rare occasions when the words are really flying over the keyboard.
“To ply one’s trade:” Yes, somewhat. Possibly many of us consider ourselves writers above whatever we happen to do to earn the bulk of our income.
“To exert creative power, be a creator.” Undoubtedly.
Finally, my favourite: the transitive sense “manipulate (physical substances) into a desired state or form.” Disregard the parenthetical and you bet your boots we manipulate, we manipulate words into desired form.

For the Love of Art

Writing is also, of course, an art. I deliberately withheld that option from the Twitter poll, but I imagine most would agree. And art is perhaps a more encompassing term than hobby. Did you know the word’s Latin root artem/ars is related to arma, the Latin word for weapons?

We are bearers of weapons, folks.

As we go into battle, as we get down to work, as we utilise our talents and pour time into our hobbies aiming for self-betterment, let’s make sure we still love it. Let’s make sure our faces don’t sag into chronic frowns as we hammer out plots and contemplate rejection letters. I keep thinking of the woman in the bowling alley and how joyless she looked. If you worry about burnout, here are some links to previous inspiring posts:

So what do you think? Work, hobby, talent, art?

Animals are Characters, Too

This Week’s Bit of String: Crying over cats

‘Miss?’ the Year Eleven boy asked me, tossing his carefully sleeked hair without looking up from the doodled serpents invading his Science BTEC exercise book. ‘Do you ever start randomly crying while you’re petting your cat, because you wish so much they could talk to you?’

I don’t think it’s ever brought me to tears, even when I was sixteen myself, but I definitely used to look in pet cats’ eyes and sense much present in them that we, their humans, missed.

The boy’s question brought to mind a passage from Muriel Barberry’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Renee refers to her ‘appreciation’ for her tenants’ cocker spaniel as: ‘that state of grace attained when one’s feelings are immediately accessible another creatures.’

Guinea pig terminally dissatisfied by food dish. — ‘Here goes nothing.’

We now have only guinea pigs as pets, but their feelings are pretty darn accessible. They’re an important if timid part of our family, an affectionate interest uniting us as our son gets older. And if anyone doubts that animals are sentient, I defy them to look at a guinea pig, any guinea pig, and not be struck by the chronic consternation on their faces. It’s as if they’re constantly in dire need of food but always expecting to be disappointed.

Since animals cause us to reflect on what makes us alive, what makes us sentient (to use a rather unattractive, clinical-sounding word), and they bring us joy and unity—isn’t it right they should feature in literature?

Animal Voices

It’s easy to find animals in the fantasy genre. The dragons of Pern, the owls and thestrals of Hogwarts, the daemons of Lyra’s Oxford, the Noisy animals of New World in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series (oh, Manchee!)

So too they should be present in mainstream literature, sincewhen we write we attempt to reflect and learn from real life. Certainly animals have served as set pieces and symbols in literature since Homer told of Circe’s pigs and Polyphemus’ sheep. But in using them only as such, do we devalue their contributions to our lives?

Pictures in Warner Bros Leavesden studios paying tribute to animal actors in the Harry Potter series — Unsung heroes of the Harry Potter films.

There’s the pigeon offering occasional commentary in Pigeon English, and the freed parrot in Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue. The parrot gets a chapter of his own: one long, continuous sentence. His thoughts fly free as he leaves the home he knew for decades, after his owner’s death. It’s nice to get these extra, imagined perspectives, but by making animal characters simply witnesses to the humans’ folly, they remain a little flat.

A great example of using animals realistically yet appreciatively is Marina Lewycka’s Two Caravans. Her novel about immigrants in the UK encompasses many points of view, including a dog. Different characters rate each other based on their respective reactions to Dog, and he leaps in to save the day at the end.

The novel also features scenes in a chicken-packing factory, which convinced me to buy only free-range products ever after. Her depiction linked callous attitudes about animals to abuse and exploitation of migrant workers. It should hardly have been surprising, but it had a somewhat revelatory effect on me.

Animal Roles

Cat posing in line with flowerpots. — Catmouflage: They see all and know all.

Although these authors have gone to great imaginary lengths to use animals as characters and assign voices to them, there are other ways to integrate our furry (or feathery or scaly) friends. Why is it so rare to encounter human characters who own pets? Allusions to a pet can serve as useful shortcuts establishing character. Are they a dog person, a cat person, a horse person, maybe something more unusual like a snake person?

In my novel The Wrong Ten Seconds, treatment of a dog catalyses the action. Pets are a central part of characters’ lives. Introducing one of the protagonists, Lydia, I described her car:

‘The cluttered Fiesta—Mabel—smelled of takeaway curry and chips, cat litter bought in bulk, and hand sanitiser.’

Beyond representing personality traits of their owners, including pets in stories gives humans opportunity for insight. Lydia is self-aware enough to know that she needs her cat, Slim Shady, more than he needs her. She recognises his purr doesn’t always convey happiness, but sometimes cloaks fear. The purr indicates to her:

‘You only get away with this because I in my benevolence allow it.’

Animals at the Beginning

In my current novel, about Eve and the (presumed) first family of humans, animals have an even bigger role. As much as Eve and Adam’s lives changed on their expulsion from Eden, think what it meant for the animals! Through no fault of their own, they had to leave paradise as well, and were thence forward seen as fair game. Literally.

Surely humans didn’t go straight from discovering wildlife wonders in Eden, to wearing animal hides and eating meat outside its walls. The sudden need to provide for themselves would change things, but it would not be a comfortable adjustment. Tension grows between Eve and Adam when he starts out eating fish:

‘What’s next, killing cows? Lions, lambs? You could roast one of the angels.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that, woman! I’m not the one who ever sought something I wasn’t supposed to take.’

The way each character relates to animals represents and colours the way they relate to others. Adam tells himself he has dominion over the animals, but in God’s curse on Eve, she’s been told her husband will have dominion over her. Does that make her equal to the animals? This is just one reason she has a keen interest in how he treats them.

Further, they have to wonder about God’s purpose in creating themselves and the animals (which, for this work, I’m imagining He did; see my previous post on working with incredible premises). If God is willing for them to dispatch with the animals so easily, what does this say about their own mortality?

It’s like Sirius Black said (somewhat ironically, given his later treatment of his own house-elf) in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, ‘If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.’

Playing God

This Week’s Bit of String: Tidying up the building materials

Once when my son was about six years old, I looked in on him during his evening tidy-up to see him gloomily tossing his Lego into their bucket, punctuating their impact with sighs. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m just…angry at God.’

He explained his grievance to me: ‘While we were eating dinner, I asked God really nicely if he would please tidy up my room for me.’ Another sigh. ‘But He didn’t.’

I’d seen him in a similar predicament with the magic wand he’d received for his birthday. And when he was a toddler, just learning his manners, there were those agonised epiphanies that saying please—‘the magic word’—won’t get you extra sweets or a later bedtime.

So it didn’t seem the time to put God’s existence under review, anymore than I would tell him there’s no such thing as magic. ‘Sorry, mate. I don’t think He works that way; He likes to make sure we know how to do things for ourselves.’

Losing My (Bias Against) Religion

Religion—and, well, not relying too exclusively on it—has enmeshed itself into a few of my stories. In Artefacts, the first novel I wrote, talking about God embarrasses the protagonist, ‘like talking about someone and suddenly realising they stood behind you.’

I feel that way, a bit, penning scenes with God in my current novel. As it’s Eve’s story, though, and her family’s, He plays a prominent role. I guess it’s the first time I’ve written about a recognisable figure, an entity Who might (who knows?) actually exist. That changes things, doesn’t it?

Carvings of God on His throne — Above the door at Notre Dame Cathedral. Can omnipotence and love really go hand in hand?

Last week I wrote about reimagining the first humans in the Bible, as well as the angels, trying to de-stigmatise as far as possible. These days, at least in our fast-paced, ‘enlightened’ society, it seems God too has become somewhat stigmatised, the focus of blame and skepticism rather than adoration. I don’t want to get caught up in that, even while sympathising with Eve and other characters He punished.

One has to wonder, if God does exist, and is by definition omnipotent and eternal, do all our pleas and tirades sound to Him like a child not wanting to pick up his own toys? I’m trying not to be restricted by pro-human bias in my view.

He’s Got the Look

So far I’ve not gone into great detail about God’s appearance. That’s not the done thing, is it? In our art we tend to come at physical description obliquely, if at all. Likewise with my re-invented angels, apart from the odd mention of their scales, wings, and fire. The humans in the story accept these beings and have no reason to overtly describe them.

Flaming orange sunrise over a hilltop — Like this, maybe. I’m just throwing around ideas here.

There’s mention of God’s immense size, and lack of clear outline. I mean, He’s God. We can be justified in thinking he has humanoid aspects (or commonly manifests them), because He does say He’s made people in His image. But I don’t think He’s just a muscly older man with a flowing white beard, the way Michelangelo depicted Him.

For one thing, He’s not going to have a corporeal body. He’s energy, and why He would choose to generally have a human form, I don’t know. I suppose it has its uses, a certain organisation and compactness. But in my work there’s a glow to Him and a deep, shifting substance that defies boundary. His eyes can turn into oceans, His smile into sunrise.

The King (of King)’s Speech

What I have God say in the book is far more important than how He looks. And I haven’t a whole lot of source material to base it on. I’m not on board with the whole divine scriptures idea. Sorry, I’m a writer myself. I know how easy it is to make stuff up and then it feels like canon in my mind. That doesn’t mean it is. That’s possibly my human bias talking, but for the purposes of this project, I’m going with it.

I’m drawing the line at accepting God’s actual words as relayed in Genesis—but weeding out ideas that are merely imputed to Him.

For example, when He punishes Cain for killing Abel, He says Cain is exiled and will lose his knack for growing crops. He never says Cain is banished from His presence (that would be admitting some limitation to His power). It’s Cain who moans that he’ll be out of God’s sight, and then the narrative picks it up.

Granted, He issues curses at key moments, but He doesn’t just pronounce judgment. He questions those involved, giving them a chance to explain themselves or at least ‘fess up—all the while opening Himself to even more disappointment as they flounder around pretending they didn’t do that thing they really weren’t supposed to do.

He strikes me as part Albus Dumbledore, part Atticus Finch, giving people space and a bit of prodding to see if they’ll figure things out for themselves. Here, Eve’s daughter Ana recounts to Cain how God encouraged her to start her own family, while admitting she too would carry her mother’s curse.

‘So I told Him: “I think You are a brutal Master.”’
Cain gave me one of his rare, full-on looks, allowing me to see the Mark. ‘Then what?’
‘He said, “Well, at least you believe I’m your Master.”
“What choice do I have?” I asked. ‘You gave my parents life out of dust and bone.’
“You have every choice, Ana. You and all your future children and grandchildren, you have a choice.” And His glow seemed to dim slightly. I almost felt sorry for him.’

After all, I feel a certain sympathy with Him, too. Creating people, letting them bumble off on their way doing what they like, forcing You to spring up obstacles in their path to slow them down and get them to look about themselves for once…Ahem. Yes. Perhaps God and us writers have a thing or two in common. What do you think?

Getting the Picture

This Week’s Bit of String: Racial bias in a dancing competition?

In December 2016, Ore Oduba won the glitter ball on Strictly Come Dancing. My son was quite excited about this, and admittedly I was too, enchanted by Ore and Joanne’s jive in Week 4.

But my son had been anxious as the final drew near. Historically, celebrities of colour get fewer votes from the audience, judging by the frequency they are in the bottom two. Often they dance perfectly well. They just don’t get the audience votes, and have to be ‘saved’ by the judges.

So every year there are concerned murmurs about whether the dancing show itself is racist, and then the requisite backlash from white people offended by the very suggestion.

Here’s the thing: there are more white people than not in this country, and there are probably more white people than not watching Strictly Come Dancing. Humans gravitate toward the familiar, the reflective, so the many white viewers may well vote for a white celebrity. Amongst very talented candidates, that tiny blip of recognition on the subconscious radars of thousands wields some influence.

It’s not overt racism, I think (I hope), but innate bias. We need to be aware of it. To probe our decisions a little, rather than huffily dismiss concerns others have about it.

I notice our gravitation toward the recognisable in other areas. My name, for example. People glance at it and assume it’s Natasha, although they’re neglecting an s and slapping an h in willy-nilly. People see what they’ve seen before.

Studies also show that babies are drawn to certain types of faces—after a few months. There’s an interesting article on that in Slate, here. As we develop (or supposedly develop), we suffer from ‘perceptual narrowing,’ as if our senses get stuck in a rut. If we’re not exposed to a broad range of sights, we will stop looking for them.

Re-Visualising History

With these biases and predilections in mind, I’ve been trying to get the right mental image for the protagonists in my novel about Eve.

Usually when we write a story, it plays vividly in our imaginations, a cinema multiplex in our brains open 24/7. The same is true for me now, but because this story has its basis in something other than my imagination, I have a distinct unease that the imagery is not my own.

Recall every classical painting or children’s Bible illustration you might have happened upon that depicts Adam and Eve. Flowing gold locks—maybe sometimes brown hair, but always porcelain skin, right? God would have been cruel to form such pasty creatures and pop them down under the Middle Eastern sun.

Selection of National Geographic magazines — I’ve been trawling through my best sources for portraits resembling early peoples of Southern Iraq/ North of the Persian Gulf.

Anthropology traces the first humans back to Africa. At some point we probably all had dark skin as a clever, preferable adaptation. One day that feature may well win out evolutionally again. For my work-in-progress I’m using a less scientific source, but even the Bible says Adam was created of the earth’s dust, and then Eve was formed of Adam— probably not lily white, then.

It might be unfair to say racism is behind all the whitewashing that Adam and Eve underwent over the centuries. But plenty of people have twisted passages from early Genesis to support racist ideologies.

For example, after Eve’s son Cain (also a major character in the book I’m working on, and quite fascinating to me) is ‘marked’ by God for committing fratricide, certain factions have said that mark was black skin. A curse justifying slavery and other cruel practices against millions of people. However, God marked Cain not as a curse, but a sign of guardianship, to show He would wreak vengeance upon anyone who, in turn, harmed Cain. In my book I’ve put it on Cain’s upper cheek, figuring it would have to be quite visible:

‘Against his dark skin it was blanched white as if God had seared through to his very bones.’

It’s still hard to conjure up the right image in my head. Not just because I’ve had years of the wrong images, but also because I’ve never known many people of Middle Eastern origin. I’ve unwittingly had my own perceptual narrowing of sorts.

I guess, though, that I don’t always see my characters when I’m writing a story. Most often I see scenes through the protagonists’ eyes: their surroundings, their loved ones and interests.

And I hear the voices. Dialogue—external and internal—scrolls constantly through my head, with or without a precise picture of who’s speaking the lines.

Here Be Dragons

Stitched emblem of a Chinese-style red and black dragon — Oh hey, Gabriel.

It’s been less challenging to picture Eden, the punishing land around it, and the angels charged with keeping the two separate. I decided a while back that our ideas of angels suffered a major perceptual narrowing.

Why are they always portrayed as looking human? There’s no indication they’d resemble us at all. The creation story says God made people ‘in His own image,’ which to me implies the angels weren’t made that way. Besides, if Lucifer, himself an angel, was the tempter in the Garden, he’s also described as a serpent. A serpent with arms and legs, that is, which in his case were struck off as punishment for that fruit episode.

So angels are serpents with arms and legs…how about they breathe fire, too? Yeah, I decided dragons are actually angels. Handy critters to know when outside the Garden Adam and Eve have to keep warm and cook food.

I’ve had Gabriel describe it thus:

‘The man and woman went forth and multiplied. That was the Boss’s only command they followed unerringly, although their kind bred division over the years, too. Their descendants assumed we, the Boss’s messengers, should be shaped like men, often slaying us when we appeared.’

So this book idea evolves to challenge old perceptions: white ancestors, humanoid angels…What will it take on next? Well, there’s God, obviously. Tune in next week to find out how He’ll look and sound.

What steps do you take to fight perceptual narrowing in your creative endeavours?

Love and Other Questions

This Week’s Bit of String: Saying good night at Grandma’s house

During a visit when I was eight, my Grandma came to tuck my sister and me in. She was a pre-school teacher, and as a matter of strict policy, she made a great deal of time for us and never got cross.

Granddad was different. He blustered rather than spoke, worked long past retirement rather than played. We were a bit scared of him. I’d watched Grandma sweetly placate him for my whole life, and it stumped me.

‘Grandma,’ I whispered as she kissed me goodnight, ‘Do you really love Granddad?’

How much choice do we have over who we open our hearts to?

She just laughed and left the room. Minutes later, Granddad himself appeared, giving his version of a chuckle, which still sounded blustery. ‘So you think your grandmother doesn’t love me?’

Like any of us, over the years I learned much more about the inexplicable, often unwelcome persistence of love. I watched Granddad lose Grandma to lung cancer a month before their golden wedding anniversary, and there was no mistaking she was loved in return. I’ve seen that reciprocation is often enough; that we can make ourselves settle when we choose to.

But I still wonder about it. Why do we love who we love? How is love sustained and and to what extent can it be manipulated or cajoled or banished entirely? Again, I suspect I’m not alone in wondering these things.

Opening Questions

When we start planning a novel, we’re told to start with a question, a predicament. That’s handy, as I’m writing about Eve and there’s a lot to question in the Biblical story of creation, of Eden and the fall and the alleged first generations of humanity.

Example: Adam and Eve have two boys, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel and gets exiled. At this point the Bible has named only 3 still-living humans on the entire planet.

Then it says Cain’s wife got pregnant (presumably a sister too lowly to be named) and has a son called Enoch. So now we have five people on the planet. Maybe a few other girls who the Author couldn’t be bothered to bring up.

THEN it says, when speaking of Enoch’s birth, ‘Cain was building a city at this time, and named the city for Enoch.’

Wait, what? Building a city for whom? Angels? Demons? Animals? Aliens?

Plenty of scope for the imagination, then. More questions in last week’s post about believing what we read. More questions, many questions.

The Overarching Question

But the one that interests me most of all in this story is love. Did Adam and Eve love each other? Can you truly love someone when there’s no other person in existence, so you haven’t chosen them as such? How can you keep loving each other after together, you brought curses down on all future generations?

I guess to me, these are the questions that matter most—more, as I discussed last week, than whether any of it is true or not. I suppose it’s because these are the questions that pop into my head in real life, and they’re the ones that led me to my first line of this story, and it spiralled from there:

‘You must understand, I was made to love your father. For that reason, I sometimes hate him.’

At the moment, I’m writing in first/second person point of view, as Eve addresses her lost favourite daughter—exiled with Cain. If we work with the scenario that Adam and Eve were the first and only humans, they’d have had to have quite a few kids, and to play matchmaker, convincing them to breed.

(Or maybe there would have been little persuasion required. Humans aren’t always fussy about that sort of thing, but let’s not go there for now.)

Given Eve’s own background—unnamed for the first 3 chapters of Genesis, so often referred to as simply ‘the woman’ or ‘Adam’s wife,’ how might she have felt about these pairings, and her role in orchestrating them?
So my novel’s overarching question is incorporated with the first line and the point of view.

Cosmic Questions

Beyond being reflected in the relationships of her children and other descendants, Eve’s feelings for Adam also, I think, are tangled up with spiritual questions.

Pondering the purposes of humans and angels

After everything, could Eve and God love each other? I’ve just written my first scene in which God appears—quite a challenge, playing God, which I’ll elaborate on in a later post. There’s the guilt over letting Him down in Eden—but also the struggle to understand why He allowed her to in the first place.

And she must have wondered, before any of us came along to wonder the same exact thing for centuries: What the hell are we for? For Eve, who knew God as her creator and as an actual physical presence, she must have wondered why He made her and Adam. Just to serve Him, like the angels did? Were they given free will so they could choose to love Him and therefore make their elective devotion more meaningful? I think she’d have mixed feelings on that theory, given everything she went through and all she lost.

Have you come to any conclusions on these matters? How do you set up characters to love each other, without making it look like a setup?

How’s Your Habit?

This Week’s Bit of String: Three sets of cutlery

When my son was six, I decided it was time he did a bit more around the house.

We started with laying the table. Three forks and three knives, maybe some help pouring drinks, that was all he had to do. It didn’t go over well.

‘If you EVER,’ a fork slams onto my place, ‘make me do this again,’ the knife slams onto the other side of the placemat, ‘I’m running away!’

It was a hardship, those six pieces of cutlery. But I persisted, explaining to him how much else Mummy had to do all the time, and he learned to live with it. Ten years later he still shows up, with minimal summoning and zero slamming, and he lays the table.

I also taught him to fold his own clothes then. We used to get compliments from the other mums at dance class: ‘How do you get him to fold his clothes so nicely?’

The answer to that was Top Trumps. He was enamoured with his Top Gear supercar Top Trumps cards assigning speed, coolness, and various other ratings to different cars.

Every night, he would fold his clothes, and I’d give him a rating. The more decimal places the better; he lived for numbers.

And so habits are formed, sometimes under duress, sometimes with bribery, always with a nod to the bigger picture and to one’s underlying interests.

I’ve just been doing a course from Writers HQ called 14 Days to a Solid Writing Habit. It was fun and invigorating, and also made me see that I hadn’t been doing too badly anyway.

Here’s a sum-up of how it enhances habits:

Focus on honest goals and motivations. This is where those underlying interests come in. You’re not going to stick with something if the fit isn’t right; if the goal is too far off or not worthwhile enough, or if you’re not secure in your reasons. Be honest about what you want from your writing, and cling to it.

The course creates a culture of encouragement rather than fear. If you miss a day, you haven’t thrown away your whole habit. Just keep going when you can. Slamming the silverware down is fine, as long as the table gets set in the end.

'Do you have the COURAGE to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say YES.' --Brene Brown — Inspiring poster my sister made for my writing corner.

Great tips for optimising that sometimes-elusive writing time. Because of these, I could sit down to the required 15, then 20, then 30, then 35 minutes of daily writing time and churn out a fantastic number of words. In those relatively small windows of time, I was accomplishing a lot. So even when I’m busy or tired, I’ve got proof right there that investing time is worth it.

Do you have habit-forming strategies to add? How do you stay motivated?

Here’s how the course made me realise I’m pretty lucky.

I already do have very clear goals, with multiple submission deadlines, and a healthy smattering of ideas to develop.

The course suggests we put non-writing time to use thinking through plot snags and daydreaming about characters. Believe me, I’ve got that covered. I often skip hours of sleep because I’d rather be blocking scenes in my head. (Who wouldn’t?)

Also, I can usually squeeze in writing time. I get a whole hour for lunch. I don’t drive, and relying on buses has disadvantages, but it does free me to read or scribble. My son is very independent (what with his longstanding table-setting skills and all), and even my husband is somewhat independent, so I can get away with the odd at-home writing session.

Finally, I am fortunate not to suffer from imposter syndrome. I know I’m a writer; I’ve been working at it since I was three years old. I luckily had one of the first stories I ever submitted published, and I’ve had just enough good fortune to sustain me since then. No, not only to sustain my own motivation, but also to justify to those around me the time and effort I spend on this.

Maybe I was naive not to realise how many writers struggle just to recognise themselves as writers. If that’s you (and even if it isn’t), go on and write anyway, every day if you can. Prove yourself and any other naysayers wrong. Once you’ve made a habit of writing, no one can stop you even if they try. Courage! Bring forth!

Seven Wanders of the Year

As important as it is to feed our writerly brains with books, fresh air and change of scenery are equally essential. Quite a few writers find that, right? I love a good hike to jostle my ideas around. Also to burn off some of the rubbish I eat when I’m stressed about writing (or, more likely, the tedious housework and the office craziness).

Here are my top expeditions of 2017, including my own humble phone photos.

Brighton It’s all here: seascapes, street art, interesting old buildings. We visited during Storm Brian this year, so the wind and waves were incredible. I can’t resist getting close to the sea, and I did get soaked. (Are there people who can? Who stand on the edge of cliffs and don’t ponder, just for a second, what it would be like to dive in?)

Brighton old pier, sunlight shining through stormclouds — Old Brighton Pier

Mural of girl with flowers and butterflies — Mural in a Brighton parking garage

Waves breaking on Brighton Harbour — Go for it, Storm Brian!

Lynmouth Another seaside town. We love this one for its little homes clinging to the coastal hills, and for the history. I’m intrigued by the stories of the deadly 1952 flood, and whenever we go I study the pictures of before and after: what bits were washed away, and what held on. The boulders by the shore still hide artefacts from the flood, and we always visit painter Maurice Bishop’s studio as well, to bring something home with us.

Maurice Bishop moonlit seaside painting, post-war spoon — Souvenir painting, plus a spoon I found at Lynmouth with George VI’s initials on.

Bristol/ Window Wanderland Possibly even more so than Brighton, Bristol is great for street art, being the original open air gallery of Banksy’s work. This year I encountered a heart-rending memorial mural to victims of the slave trade, the funds from which lined the pockets of Bristolian merchants and helped the city gain prominence and wealth.

Mural depicting a slave ship and the people victimised by the trade — By the River Avon, memorial to victims of the slave trade

Bristol Harbour: multi-coloured terraced houses, Lloyds Bank crescent, old sailing ship — Bristol Harbour

On a trip to the Bishopston area of North Bristol, very early in 2017, we found marvels in the more workaday bits of the city as well. A new movement called Window Wanderland encourages communities to choose a wintry weekend for decorating home windows with lovely displays for us all to wander round and look at. Bishopston families celebrated favourite cultural phenomena and beliefs, or showcased local events. Check out the Window Wanderland website to see if there are any happening near you!

Coloured papercuts showing hot air balloons and spectators — Three-storey display dedicated to Bristol Balloon Fiesta

Coloured papercuts showing Star Wars characters and action scenes — The Force is strong with this one…

London This was my first big city, and I practically lived there for a couple months as a student. I love the juxtapositions of different races, cultures, and time periods. Walking through it with my teenage son on our trip to see Tori Amos in October was a whole new treat.

Bright green parakeets in the trees of Hyde Park — Hyde Park: Spot the parakeets

Plaque honouring literary history — Saturated with history: Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle dined together here…

Giant face sculpture in front of posh townhouses — Sculpture display in Regent Park

Stockholm Being split between the US and the UK, we don’t get much time (or funds) to explore other countries. But we had a little getaway to Sweden at the end of August, and loved the waterways and old streets, plus the living museums like the Vasamuseet, showcasing an early 17th century warship, and Skansen, a conglomeration of buildings and workshops from different periods in Swedish history.

Stockholm boat with classic buildings in the background — View from Riddar-Holmen, one of the many Stockholm islands

Wheatfield and old church — At Skansen living museum, an old rural church, a wheatfield and a peacock right in the middle of the city

Stroudwater Canal This has been my year of discovering canals. Most Friday afternoons, when work lets us out an hour early, I take a 5-mile hike along the canal from the Wallbridge lock in the centre of Stroud, to just past Blunder Lock in Eastington. I learned to identify the different swan families along the way, and watched their cygnets grow with each passing week until they took flight. The fauna on the bank exploded from one Friday to the next, erupting pink with wildflowers in early June. Sticking to a regular, flat route allowed me to cover a fair bit of ground and also freed my mind develop stories, while at the same time drawing my attention to seasonal changes.

Swan and five young cygnets on the canal — The Eastington swan family

Pink blossoms similar to orchids — Part of the aforementioned pink explosion

Sunset over the restored mill buildings in Ebley — Ebley Mills on a wintry evening

Rusty bare willow branches reflected in the canal with a frosty field beyond. — Lunchtime walk on a frosty day

Mount Cardigan While visiting home at the end of May, I brought my husband up Cardigan, the small local mountain. The trail’s a mile and a half each way, leaping around stones and roots, climbing by rushing waterfalls (at least at that time of year when there’s still snowmelt to contend with), and then scrabbling over steeper rock face toward the top. I loved it, even though it was too foggy to see from the summit. It made me want to climb more, but it turns out that little mountain is taller than the highest peak in all England. Still, how awesome does it feel to say you’ve climbed a mountain?

Rocky, wooded path up the mountain — The trail.

Fiddlehead ferns sprouting along the path — Fit as a fiddlehead.

Mossy, jagged stump — Who’s the king or queen of the castle?

Waterfalls alongside the trail — Impromptu waterfalls–sometimes, that’s the best kind.

Where do you go for your best ideas? Whatever new adventures the new year holds, I hope your mountains will be rewarding.

2017 Writing Round-Up

Tomorrow We Will Run Faster…

Above anything else we are curators of people’s responses to us. I have a fine collection of reactions British people make when they learn I’m American. Students I worked with focused on food: ‘Do you like peanut butter then, Miss? Did you eat MacDonalds every day? Do you always have pancakes for breakfast?’

Adults generally look for the story: ‘What brings you here, then?’ It’s similar to the question I sometimes get asked at work when people find I’m a writer, as if there are certain boxes Americans and writers must fit in, and somehow I’m not in them.

But for writers, people most want to know if we’re successful. Have you found that? As with the kids asking about food, adults ask about the money. ‘So have you been published? Going to be as rich as JK Rowling?’

They’re not interested in what a story’s about, so long as they have a tangible way to compare our successes.

Nothing wrong with that; we totally do that to ourselves, especially at the end of another year. What have we got to show for it? How are we measuring up?

Before such introspection runs amok, I’m trying to tether my self-assessment to specific criteria (you can tell I’ve survived a few OFSTED inspections). Here they are, as reminders that it’s not all about money and publication:

Did we start new projects?
I ran with a few different ideas this year, from a Dissatisfied Relatively Privileged Middle Aged Person story (one could argue that pretty much defines contemporary literature), to a dystopian short story about detention camps for anyone foreign-born. I have two novel concepts to plot and write, and other unfinished bits and bobs, mostly in the literary genre but some historical and even science fiction. I’ll move further with these in the new year, but I’m glad I haven’t finished everything; it’s nice to start afresh with a few already-begun stories kicking around.

Noticeboard with assorted images for inspiration. — One of the Noticeboards of Wonder in my Room Where It Happens

Did we maintain (or, let’s be honest, start) good habits?
After getting some fantastic Twitter motivation a few weeks ago in a discussion about keeping the imagination fresh, I started getting up even earlier in the morning so I could scribble for fifteen minutes before my daily hike. By the end of the second week, branches of a new novel shot through my brain. Fifteen or even ten minutes without stopping can yield two or three notebook pages. If, like me, your will to write has dwindled while life is busy, try writing a little every day. Before you know it, you’ll be hooked again and you will find more time, because you’ll be hungry for it.

Did we explore new sources of motivation?
I discovered Writers HQ this year, and went to one of their workshops. This fabulous organisation, while never glossing over how hard writing can be, encourages participants relentlessly and ensures you keep going. I definitely will be using their services more in 2018, and I recommend checking out their website, if just for a giggle at their cheekiness.

Every year I seem to discover a new anthem to get me psyched to create. In 2017 it was pretty much the whole soundtrack of Hamilton. ‘I wrote my way out of Hell…I was louder than the crack in the bell.’ The crannies where we write are The Room Where It Happens, people.

Did we cultivate wonder?
We writers often find ourselves serving as essential conduits for the

Cam Peak in bluebell season. — Or, if you don’t live near mountains as such, climbing a bluebell-robed hill at sunset should do the trick.

suffering of the world. Sometimes it’s up to us to draw attention to it, and we risk getting cynical (even the Relatively Privileged Middle Aged among us). We can’t let negativity taint our writing. Whether it’s climbing a mountain, absorbing the camaraderie that develops among strangers on a bus commute, or revelling in a fellow writer’s impromptu recitation of Tennyson, we must remind ourselves of the beauty in the world.

Did we take in lots of voices?
This year I loved broadening my reading list following Women’s Writer School discussions on Women in Translation month and LGBTQ writers. Listening to panels on diversity at various literature festivals introduced me to the work of Reni Eddo-Lodge and Jess Hiles, as well as sign language poetry. I look forward to learning more, and supporting more diverse writers by purchasing their work in 2018. For anyone else interested, this reading challenge checklist from the Reading Women discussion group on Goodreads looks amazing.

Did we gulp our pride down and send our work into the world?
This might be the hardest part. I had a few successes this year—winning the Gloucestershire Writers Network prose prize and reading my story at the Cheltenham Literature Festival was a highlight—but with it have come a number of rejections as well.

And I’m proud of those rejections. I’m proud of the courage they represent. Rejections test us, tempt us to give up—but I’m certainly not going to, and I hope none of you will either.

How many people can do what we do? How many can haul an entire novel out of a brain already taxed by work, family, chores, life—and then ceaselessly chisel and gouge that vast, beloved creative work into something even better? How many can bravely place their art before the world, pace through weeks or months awaiting the results, only to meet with utter disappointment? And how many, after all that, will do the whole thing again—and again?

We are amazing.

You may recognise the quote in this post’s subtitle, from the end of The Great Gatsby. ‘It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning– So we beat on, boats against the current…’

I’m using it because of a passage in another book which quotes it, The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. The young writer character in this book says, ‘There’s no point in writing a book if you don’t think it can be as good as The Great Gatsby. I mean, it’s all right if you fail—if the finished book just isn’t, somehow, very good—but you have to believe it can be very good before you start.’

Writing, and any artistic pursuit, demand we surround ourselves with a supportive network that fortifies our hearts to believe, while feeding our minds to expand so our self-belief will not be unfounded. This checklist is designed to maintain that balance. Have you got anything to add?

Keeping the Daydream Alive

This Week’s Bit of String: Tiny pencil people

When I began writing my first ever novel at the age of eleven, I enacted it with an entire town’s worth of pencils.

Tall ones were adults, and smaller ones were kids. Yellow ones were men; coloured ones were women. You can see the sense in this, right?

I’d divided every shelf in my bedroom, one third of my drawers and the floor of my closet into little cubbies representing each building in the town, decorated with unique postage stamp pictures on the walls. The pencils had furniture—stub pencil babies slept in milkweed-pod cradles—and in some cases, even scraps of clothing sellotaped on.

An array of pencils — Who doesn’t love a bouquet of pencils?

For years pencils had been speaking their personalities to me. The chewed, battle-scarred ones and the prissy, fine-tipped ones and the fluorescent, too-trendy ones. Some of the citizens in my story-ville were carefully nursed survivors of first grade, when my little rural town sent us to a tottering two-room schoolhouse. We sat at ancient desks with ink pot holes in them, and the boy in front of me used to twist round and drop my beloved pencils through the hole. I sometimes wonder what happened to that boy. With the surname Dyke, he must have had an awful time in his later school years.

Even as adults, when we get swept up in a story idea, everything around us reflects aspects of it back at our infatuated brains. Have you ever noticed that? But I’ve been so busy lately, it’s been a while since I succumbed to such flights of fancy. I miss it. How do we ensure kid-high levels of imaginative activity when we’re getting a tonne of adulting done, too?

Twitter-pated

I turned to Twitter (which I’ve also been neglecting due to time constraints) for suggestions on maintaining good creative habits and keeping the dreams alive.

Some of these ideas overlap with the tips I gave back when I was adjusting to full-time work. Adjusting implies a process with an end, but I’m not sure I’ve completely figured out the balance. Does anybody? So reminders are all good.

Firstly, don’t stop writing. Even if we are taking a break between projects, we should keep scribbling observations and thoughts (bits of string…). Writer and editor Emma Cummins reminded me to make a habit of writing little and often. Because we all know what happens when we have a cool idea, and try to stash it in a corner of our ever-churning minds while we rush off to do the next thing.

You can find Emma’s website here–she particularly focuses on reviews of art and cinema, which is perfect because taking in aspects of culture outside our own creations helps us develop new ideas, too.

Gravestone reading: 1859 M.A.N. 1831. — Another intriguing gravestone, from Painswick. Who was MAN? And was he (or she), in fact, born more than twenty years after dying?

Where else can we find things to write down? Creative writing teacher Stephen Tuffin suggests hanging out in graveyards, or accompanying someone to the shops without shopping yourself. (For some of his other, uniquely flavourful thoughts on writing, check out his blog here.) I remember seeing a 19th century gravestone for a child, with the verse ‘God’s will be done’ carved on it. And I wondered, did the parents agree on that resigned sentiment? Was it someone else’s idea entirely? Did they argue over what their faith meant in the face of such terrible loss? Given that I encountered that ‘bit of string’ over a decade ago, I guess cemeteries can make quite a lasting impression on the imagination.

Or follow Stephanie Hutton’s lead and snap up some vintage postcards from eBay or even a charity shop. Not only do you have the pictures to prompt you with story ideas, but each postcard message opens worlds of possibilities, in what’s said and perhaps what’s not said. Stephanie is part of The Writing Kiln, which aims to inspire confidence in budding writers. Have a look at their website here.

Vlada Poladyan advises putting sleep to use, to mesmerise and spur the imagination. She cites Stephen King’s nonfiction book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft for teaching her a routine for creative sleep. It’s been several years since I read On Writing, and it’s clearly time to check it out again.

Finally, Shannon Ferretti points out, ‘Daydreaming is important and a good use of time, [so] I bury my worries way down and play in make-believe lands instead.’ Part of getting back our imaginations is giving ourselves permission to daydream. We must remember that as writers it’s kind of our job to fantasise and create.

But we also must avoid feeling that every daydream should serve a marketable storyline. That’s been my problem. Being short on time, I get to thinking every idea has to count toward some ultimate writerly goal. I need to remember that every bit of string has value, even if it doesn’t lead to a beginning, middle, and end.

Every random exchange witnessed, every anecdote passed on, better informs our sense of the world and humanity. And every silly idea can lift us beyond that. So that’s worthwhile, isn’t it?

Putting Flesh on the Bones

This Week’s Bit of String: ‘The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle’

Sweden, 1628. The country is at war with Poland, so King Gustavus Adolphus orders a mighty ship built, with holes for thirty-two cannons on each side. When each cannon hatch is opened, a carved lion’s head, mid-roar, glares out from the inside of the lifted door. The Vasa is fierce and ornate, and I can just imagine the king promising ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen before.’

But as the Vasa sets off for the very first time, the top-heavy ship starts to list, then sinks after a kilometre, dragging at least thirty to their deaths.

Over three hundred years later, the ship is located and, incredibly, salvaged. Piecing together all the bits that fell off takes twenty-five years, including twelve during which some experts focus on restoring original colours to the statues. The whole Vasa is now a museum in Stockholm.

The Vasa's ornately carved stern castle. — The top portion of the Vasa’s 18-metre stern castle

As breathtaking as the ship is, I am also fascinated by the process of its discovery and restoration. The Vasamuseet exhibits skeletons found on the ship, and details what scientists and historians have learned from them. They’ve created digital, 3D portraits of the Vasa’s victims, based on their skulls. Turns out skulls don’t all look the same (although I got the impression they did when I visited the Catacombs in Paris). Small differences in eye socket and mouth shape and position indicate not just where those features were, but also how facial muscles connected to them, and from there offer clues to flesh out the faces.

This all made me think about story development. (Come on, any writer would.) How do we flesh ideas out into full stories?

The Idea (Skeleton)

We get ideas (when we’re lucky). Those are just the bones, washed up from the relentless tide of busy everyday life.

An idea can be a name, a phrase, an image, a what if, a combination of these. At work we’re planning a trip to a Halloween ‘frightmare,’ and it made me wonder what it’s like for those people who are paid to jump out and scare you all night long. Does that have some kind of effect on the psyche? I don’t know what the story would look like, but the what if is not migrating from my brain.

The Questions (Muscles)

We then ask questions about our idea. It’s not an interrogation, but an investigation. It’s exciting, not demanding. This forms the foundation of plotting.

Rows of bones in the Catacombs, Paris — Catacombs. Imagine if they hired scarers to work here! Or, nearly as terrifying, imagine having THIS many ideas to flesh out…

The questions tell us how it all works, so they are the muscles driving this thing. Does someone choose to take a job scaring people? Why would they make this choice? What is their everyday life like? How will this job affect it?

I had a little Twitter discussion about story development. Children’s writer Michael Mahin pointed me to his great post on planning a story around a central question. This is your ultimate What If, a little like your hook.

It’s worth noting that a muscle-bound face (if that’s a thing) would not be particularly pleasant. Don’t overthink the plotting of your story. Plot needs to be an unfolding, not a firing off of facts. Asking why is at least as important as asking what happened.

Also, questions are a great facilitator of ideas, of digging up the bones in the first place. If you’re stuck at the first stage, here are tips from Helen Taylor to generate your own writing prompts.

The Connections (Tissue)

Once we know more about our idea, we have to fit together the beginning, middle, and end of what we’re actually going to tell. Now the planning really takes off.

Among the responses I had on Twitter, quite a few people mention Post-Its or outlining to keep track of these different points. I take down various scribbles myself.

We might use music to inspire us. Julie Rea, a Scottish Book Trust winner, described almost the exact process I tend to use in her tweet: ‘Jot idea down in a pad. Listen to music with the ‘feel’ of the story, jot down more ideas. Weeks could pass. Sketch a rough outline-write!’ (I insert a few hikes, and more than enough sleepy, jolty, subconscious-jabbing bus commutes.)

Flashers’ Club and Writers HQ Cheltenham guru Alex Clark tweets about longer works like novels, ‘Plotting happens in a very ploddy, non-magical way.’ I love this phrase and have found it to be pretty accurate.

Of course, the process totally varies. As a couple of people pointed out, the original idea will often be two-fold: image plus phrase, for example. And with short stories, it often just cascades into place. Whatever you’ve read recently, whatever you’ve seen and heard, the idea acts as a magnet and pulls the most salient bits into its field.

The Actual Writing (Skin)

Then we write, my friends. A fair number of us will write anyway, and structure afterwards, at least with short stories. This bit can feel like magic, actually. I’ve been working on a story this week from an idea that came to me at 4:30 Tuesday morning. I just started writing it, and the next bits continually feed themselves to the page.

These are the moments when I feel I must be doing something right. What comes out at the end will probably need a lot of contouring, cosmetics, maybe even plastic surgery. The resulting face may not be glamorous but hopefully there will be an authenticity and more than a spark of interest to it.