Fated to Create

This Week’s Bit of String: Catalog of catastrophe

At the start of this unending term, I changed my contract to leave school 2 hours early on Tuesdays. Just a couple extra hours a week, I hoped to use these as a springboard to cope with all the writing work and the household chores. 

Only it hasn’t quite worked out. Last Tuesday, I got some errands done but when stowing one of my purchases under my bed, I noticed a feather or two around my shoes. Then a few downy clumps further back. With growing unease, and knowing that Obie the Babycat in what is surely intense devotion sometimes brings his kills under my side of the bed, I emptied the entire space. 

But isn’t he a precious little cat?

It seemed to be carnage left from a week ago, when he brought a blackbird upstairs–trailing blood spatters over the pale-carpeted stairs and hallway which took me over an hour to scrub out, one speckle at a time. And it took me quite a while again, to sort out my shoes and bags, and hoover up all the feathers that had gotten inside them. 

Dinner was in the oven as I did this, the second night of a cauliflower cheese batch I’d prepared at the weekend. Super efficient, right? Except when I took it out of the oven, it was as cool as it could be on a 28-degree-Celsius day. The oven had died. I had to re-dish it, and microwave individual portions. 

We all have times when nothing seems to go smoothly, and circumstances keep us from our writing, or wear us out before we can get to it. To our dramatic writerly brains, it feels like a personal attack from the fates themselves. It’s easier to notice things that stop us from writing, than things that go right.

Could that be because, to an extent, writing is hard work and when life wears us down, we’re almost looking for an excuse not to?

The One and Only

Like many people, I project a grand authorship over life sometimes. I consider the what ifs: What if my husband had missed his train and we never met? What if our kiddo got into a different uni, one that looked after the students through covid so they didn’t have complete breakdowns, ultimately starting life over in another country? I don’t actively credit fate with these things, though. Mostly it’s myself and other people around (and the cat!) that affect my daily goings-on and beyond. 

Maybe someone else could do the history-making?

The problem with believing in fate or some sort of grand author means we might fall into thinking the full story’s written. This has been on my mind with the Presidential debate in my native USA. Political parties seem to think that just because a particular senior white guy won that one time, it absolutely must be him again. Note that the Republicans have done that with Trump–he won in 2016! (Popular vote, shmopular vote according to them)–He must have actually won in 2020 and will undoubtedly win in 2024. 

But was Biden really the only person who could have managed the 2020 Democratic victory against him? Surely anyone with empathy and discernment could do it? Given how life carries on, and the many variables of national and international politics, the aging process, the changes to media consumption… I’m not sure it’s fair to say that only one person out of the whole population could do even this unique and intimidating job.

Desire vs Destiny

Believing only one person is meant to do only one thing subtracts choice from the equation. I’ve looked at that in my novel about Eve. She and Adam were essentially created for each other–but would they choose each other? We’re better at something when we’ve chosen it, when we know we want it.

And sometimes, we will convince ourselves that what we want is what we should have. The friction between wants and needs is crucial in a character’s trajectory. How many people have run for president insisting that God told them to? I wonder how they rationalised it to themselves after it didn’t work out.

An alignment of stars

Being accustomed to treating my wants with skepticism and refraining from boasts, I’ve lately been researching the querying process for The Gospel of Eve, to make sure I get it right. Apparently we’re supposed to convince agents not just that our book has a market and is super relevant today, but also that it is uniquely ours. I’m supposed to explain, very efficiently and pithily of course, why I alone could write Eve’s story and provide an alternate view of the Creation myth.

Yikes. It’s taken me some time, and late night thought, to come round to this. Anyone could offer a take on humanity’s origins. But I’ve created Eve with warmth and wry humour, and as I worked on my cover letter, it occurred to me that the major beats of my life have orchestrated the book I’ve written. 

Growing up in an evangelical family in rural America, becoming a single mother and in a way, transferring my faith from religion to my new little family, then immigrating with my little Bear. I’m a combination of outsider and insider, able to balance questions with respect for those who love and depend on their God. 

And I’ve also actually written the thing, and rewritten, and edited, and edited. I created a brand new version of an ancient epic–at just 340 pages, in fact–and plenty of times it felt as if the world were conspiring to exhaust me. Maybe it does take more than just wanting something, choosing it, to manage such a challenge.

What do you think? Are you particularly fated to create certain works?

Persuading

This Week’s Bit of String: A particularly arduous apple pie

Who doesn’t like apple pie? My Year 10 student who was supposed to bake one for Hospitality and Catering, that’s who–or so he claimed. Much of the time, practical work is a fight with him, sometimes even more so than written work. Last week, we made pastry without too much bother, but he refused to make the filling and construct the pie the next day.

I tried impressing him by peeling one of the Bramleys in a mindblowingly long snake–must have been nearly two feet of apple peel. I pointed out that everyone else is doing the work, and he must do it too. I threatened him with workbook pages, and with his keyworker in all her high-heeled, jewelry-spangled, Welsh-accented glory. 

He in turn employed the persuasive techniques of emotive language, hyperbole, and sheer high-decibel whining. “I never get to do what I want! You can make me do this but I won’t enjoy it! You’re forcing me to do this, and now I guess I just won’t eat anything tonight.”

“What are you talking about? You’ll still get your dinner.”

Obie the kitten attempts to be persuasive about rummaging through bags of groceries

“Apple pie is so disgusting, I’ll lose my appetite forever!”

He realised I wouldn’t give in, so he helped chop the apples and then poured the sugar on and stirred. Then… “Miss, do you think I could taste one of those?”

Of course. He popped a bit of sugared, spiced apple in his mouth. The tension retreated from between his brows, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly. “Mmm!”

Every time, every bloody time. We fight, he finally does the thing, and then finds he likes the thing.

Effort, Innit?

I have to do a lot of convincing while at work. It often feels futile, fighting apathy with logic. “Yes, I know you’re tired. But we’re all tired and we’re all still here and the trick is not to expect that you won’t be tired, but to know how to keep going anyway.”

“It’s effort though.”

Secondary school students are taught persuasive techniques and even examined on them at the end of GCSEs. Some of them can rattle off HADAFOREST quite well (if you know, you know) but the linguistic devices don’t necessarily serve them as methods for getting out of work. 

I worry that one day my strength for the constant battling will dry up. One can hardly have an inexhaustible store of enthusiasm in the face of supreme reluctance–not that all my students are reluctant, nor that any one student is reluctant about everything. There are so many factors. 

But it can be draining, and then to come home and try to do writing work… Sometimes my mind starts sounding like one of the kids: “A synopsis, seriously? Ugh, that’s effort. I can’t be bothered.”

I do bother, of course. I love my book and I’ve worked so hard on it, I’m ready to start querying agents and I don’t want to back down now. I have synopses (longer version and shorter version depending on submission guidelines) which I don’t hate, in fact I even kinda like them (let’s not get carried away lest I overthink and question the whole thing). The Gospel of Eve is brilliant and funny and heartbreaking, and the pitch for my cover letters is fricking awesome.

Winning Hearts and Minds

Retelling the creation story from Eve’s point of view. I tell people what I’ve written and they say the pitch writes itself. There are plenty who want to hear fresh angles and to consider unheard motives. Retold myths is practically a whole genre now, with Jessie Burton’s Medusa on the Carnegie Award shortlist, and Madeline Miller’s Circe a massive hit from a few years ago. Natalie Haynes is an expert in this field, while Margaret Atwood and AS Byatt tried it out too. 

Even without fruit, trees are so inviting…

Comparative titles for my cover letter: boom! Done. 

It’s been handy to have widely-known source material to cite, but I can’t assume everyone knows about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or about Cain and Abel. All those things will be revealed in the flow of the plot, but my main focus is relationships, and reimagining the first ones. 

What would it be like the first time a baby was born, the first time people argued, the first glimpse at disability, the first non-heterosexual union?

That’s a lot of weight pressing down on one human. I’ve gone for a spirited, perhaps anachronistic tone though, with pithy observations and selection of detail that shows the light side of life as well. Eve has to persuade people all her long life, and humour is a great device. This is the story of her persuading her family to keep loving each other no matter what, and given that one of her first persuasive acts was inviting Adam to join her eating forbidden fruit, people aren’t always inclined to listen!

First woman, wife, mother, and sinner–supposedly. However, given that even a stroppy adolescent can’t resist tasting a bit of apple he claimed to despise… Mightn’t any one of us humans have stepped out of line if we were given the first opportunity to do so?

What persuasive devices do you use, on yourself or on others?

How Do They Get Away With It?

This Week’s Bit of String:

‘When he offers me a ring—any day now—it had better have a four-figure price tag. If it’s tacky or gold, I’m not touching it.’ The senior boasted to a couple of us freshmen, curling her lip as she watched her alleged almost-fiance bantering with the younger students.

He was a student himself, so how he managed to scrape enough funds for a ring, I’m not sure. I didn’t know either of them well. Maybe, friendly as he seemed, he’d let her down before, so she needed a deposit on her love. Or he could have had a hidden source of wealth–possibly something she’d helped him scheme to get, a Macbeth-type plot they both colluded in.

At the time, I was chronically single, and the girl’s demands rankled. Why did she have a partner when I did not? How did she get away with such an unyielding attitude?

I’ve been considering the balance of demands and the possible merits of being artistically unyielding as I query agents on behalf of my novel, The Wrong Ten Seconds. I’ve had kind, personal, so-close-but-not-quite rejections from very big agents. It’s nearly time to try a few more.

Before I do, I want to adjust the first couple of pages. We all know how important those are, and I’m not naive enough to think I can do whatever I like with them.

First Page Requirements

If you are also a writer, you’ve probably done a tonne of research on this already. Here are just a couple of sample blogs on how to, or how not to, write a great first page. Your story must feature in its opening:

*A sympathetic and intriguing protagonist

*No more than two characters; avoid overload.

*Unique voice

*Accessible, appealing style

*An indication of setting that is, again, simultaneously exciting yet familiar, clearly conveyed yet concisely described.

*At least a sense of the conflict or need driving the action. That’s the hook.

Statue of Lady Macbeth, trying to clean her soiled hands.
Lady Macbeth statue in Stratford-Upon-Avon. A ruthlessly unyielding but endlessly captivating character.

How do we perform that balancing act between introducing excitement yet setting the scene and not overwhelming the reader? How do we introduce something original while keeping it conventional enough so the agent spots its appeal to a wide market? What if, as in my novel, the inciting action takes place in a somewhat crowded place so you have to introduce a few characters while enabling it all to kick off in a timely fashion?

Honestly, I don’t know. We each have our own first pages we need to write; our own beloved characters and settings to sell, our own ever-evolving hooks and our own special styles and voices to develop. To get there, we practise constantly, and weigh every phrase.

At the point when this challenge feels more impossible than rewarding, I sometimes fall prey to some mental whining. I think about the many books I’ve read, classic or contemporary, which haven’t followed those rules and made excessive demands of the reader. Does that happen to anyone else?

Rule Breakers

When I pick up a book, I don’t expect to be gripped instantly. I know the story’s engine takes a few pages to go from naught to sixty. Apart from reading on my bus commute, my big reading time is on the treadmill, and I always ensure I’m a chapter or two in before I take a book running. Otherwise it will never take my mind off the Herculean effort I’m sweating out.

So why do other people expect instant gratification? And what about all those cases where it takes more than a page or two before anything really happens?

Pink toilet, basin, and bidet set offered free on a lawn
‘Good shit: FREE!’ Maybe I should use that in my query letter?

Looking at this sample roundup of great first lines, many of them are beautiful, or quirky, but not necessarily exciting. Great opening lines don’t have to be super suspenseful. I put Margaret Atwood and Louis de Bernieres in my list of most reliable openers. One of their books I could probably take on the treadmill from the first line (and Lee Child, but shh don’t tell).

These writers have proved their worth and can take as much time as they like to spin their tale. But what about novice ones that have hit it big? A few times I’ve picked up an acclaimed book only to find myself trudging through it. Even if the first sentence is interesting, the plot ends up creaking with excessive padding, as if it’s waddling forth in a sumo suit. Ahem, The Miniaturist…

The book may be so gritty it doesn’t offer a single tolerable character—Casual Vacancy, anyone? Or so edgy it’s almost unintelligible.

That last is my current problem. I’m reading A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear Mcbride, and I’m struggling. I like a challenge, and unique stylistic choices can be great. But usually there’s a reason for them, as in Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk, for example, where the switching between present and past tense narration is confidently, briefly alluded to in the narrator’s own self-analysis. But in the case of McBride’s prizewinning novel, the haphazard language and lack of complete sentences for 205 pages straight (I’m really counting them down) has no discernible link to the main character’s voice. If anyone else has spotted it, please do let me know.

This isn’t to say the book’s not effective. Sure, I’m a bit jealous, but I have to admire Ms. McBride for her unyielding loyalty to her ideas. She screwed her courage to the sticking post. And although I don’t think the inscrutable character or somewhat conventional plot will linger with me, the language. Does. Sharp pebbles river rolling through mind. Stale tired breath against.

Still, even if I wanted to attempt it—how would I ever get away with it?