Authenticity - Knowing What You Don't Know

Ellisland Farm near Dumfries

I've just finished an otherwise very good novel - a middle novel of a long, well reviewed series, and one I've enjoyed very much. I've loved the whole series. But right in the middle, something happened that pulled me right out of what my English lecturers, all those years ago, used to call a 'willing suspension of disbelief.' 

The novel, quite unexpectedly, shifted from its wonderful Canadian setting to Dumfries in Scotland, a town that happens to be less than a couple of hours drive from my house - a place I know well, and an area I have visited often. 

And that's when it happened. Within a few short pages, the author suddenly got everything wrong. A policeman talks about wanting a 'bacon butty' when in this part of the world he would almost certainly want a 'bacon roll'.  That probably wouldn't have bothered me, but there was a lot of business with somebody shooting hares that then turned out to be rabbits. I'm still not sure which the author meant, since the words seemed to be used interchangeably, but nobody in this rural part of the world ever confuses the two. There are lots of rabbits in our countryside (and they're not very welcome in our gardens!) but fewer hares. Hares are a completely different animal. Magical creatures. We know which is which. These are hares and they are in decline. They're not rabbits. 

Two snippets of conversation followed. And - aaargh - one of the Scottish characters talks about 'fall' when he means 'autumn' and although we're well aware what fall is, we would never use it. Finally, one of them uses a country specific (I assume) expression of sympathy -  'poor ones' - which I've never heard anyone say here, although we might well say 'poor souls'. 

All of these, within a few short pages, pulled this reader so far out of the story that it took a longish time to get back. And I've decided to take a break from the series and try something else, although I'll probably go back at some point. 

I'm not posting this to carp. (Well, I am a bit.) And I'm sure I've made similar mistakes because we all do. I'm not even blaming the writer. But this is definitely something an editor should have picked up on. This is, after all, a multi million selling author. Didn't it never occur to her publisher to check out the passages set in Scotland for authenticity? Or did they think it didn't matter?  

At a time when the industry in which we work has sensitivity readers, it seems like a no-brainer when a writer is moving beyond their comfort zone to check for authenticity. 

To Beta or not to Beta: That is the Question!

 

I've been working on a big research and writing project throughout Covid - a piece of narrative non-fiction that seems like a companion book to A Proper Person to be Detained. 

The Last Lancer is about the Polish side of my family, especially the grandfather I never knew - his background, his milieu and what became of him. It's a good story but it was probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to research and write. I now have a draft that I can send to my publisher. It will need more work, but I'm at the stage where I've done a lot of revision, but I don't know whether it's good or bad or indifferent. What I need now is time and distance and a fresh pair of eyes. 

Eyes I trust. 

When I was chatting about this on Facebook, somebody asked if I didn't use some kind of market research and let other people read it at this stage to judge the response. It's a fair question, because I know a number of writers who do just that and find it very useful. They call them Beta Readers, a select group of people who will give feedback on a reasonably early draft. 

The term originates with Beta Testers in the video games industry, although it's worth pointing out that Beta Testers aren't there to shape or question the essential idea and structure of the game, nor even its development. That is done by teams of professionals. They are there to discover annoying glitches in the almost ready project, and their parallel in the world of publishing is probably a copy editor - somebody who spots all your silly mistakes, the punctuation glitches, the names that change, the infelicities, the repeated words and so on. 

My gut response to that perfectly reasonable question was 'Noooo!' It surprised me that I had such a visceral reaction, but like many writers, I can hardly bear to talk in any detail about what I'm writing while I'm writing it, let alone allow anyone to read it. If I do that too soon, it so often melts away, like snow in sunshine, leaving a little puddle behind. I don't  even let my supportive husband read it at this stage. Not even when I've written it and done some revisions and have a decent early draft.  

All the same, you reach a point where you are too close to the wood to see the trees. At that stage you need to hand the manuscript over to some trusted individual, an editor, a publisher, an agent if you have one. 

I have many friends who are great readers, but I wouldn't want any of them to read an early draft of a book. 

Beta Readers may work well and if they work for you, that's fine. Every writer is different. But they're not for me. Partly it may be that I've taught creative writing to mixed groups who critiqued each other. Often, with the best will in the world, and often without knowing they're doing it, people will critique a piece of work according to the way they would have written it themselves, and that isn't always what's needed. Sometimes, too, a reader and a book are just not a good fit. Nothing wrong with the reader but nothing wrong with the book either. 

The other difficulty is that at this stage, too many different opinions may be problematic. One or two trusted professionals - that's fine. But even then, I've experienced two different agents reading the same novel and recommending that I remove a third of it. One was certain it should be the first third and one the last third. (I did neither although there were significant edits!) On another occasion, a young intern at an agency read a book called The Physic Garden, later beautifully published by Saraband, and said that it was 'just an old man telling his story'! I don't blame her. It simply wasn't for her. And it is a bit of a Marmite of a book. When people love it they really love it, but a few readers dislike the narrator (the old man telling his story) and tell me so. That's fine. He's crabbit. I'm very fond of him. 

Then there was an early experience of a play developed over several weeks of rehearsal, about which - after a very successful production  - the director pointed out that I had been 'far too accommodating' with editorial suggestions. I should have fought more, he said and I think he was right. 

I wouldn't use Beta Readers myself, although I would use an experienced editor, one who would ask all the right questions. But I'm old and wise enough (I hope) to  know what works for me. 

Essentially, whatever works for you is good, but remember that not everyone will like your book or your characters. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong with them. 

Finally there is one bit of advice that may be useful. Beware of anyone attempting to rewrite for you. The best editors or directors or producers - in fact anyone who comments on your work - will never attempt to do this, although they may point out sentences or even paragraphs that are unclear or don't work effectively. What they will do is query and question you intensively, these days using Track Changes software, so that you can have an online conversation about the manuscript. The best editors will look at structural problems if there are any. Then they will hone in on those parts of the book or play that you have been most uncertain about - and there will be many uncertainties, if you're honest with yourself. He or she will ask the right difficult questions and in finding the answers to these questions, you'll make the piece of work better.  

This is a difficult, professional job. Choose your help wisely. 

Writing Advice: Getting the Details Right

This isn't really a 'how to write' blog. But I've been writing in so many different media for so many years now, that occasionally things occur to me that may be useful for people who are just starting out on the long road to publication or production. I used to teach Creative Writing for various organisations, so I have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. For the New Year I've dug out my big folder of 'how to' notes and I'll be including an occasional post with what I hope may be useful advice. Some of it should be self evident - but isn't always. 

I've been reading a contemporary thriller. I won't name it, even though it's a very good read. It fairly gallops along with plenty of surprises along the way, although less than half way through, I've guessed at least part of the ending. That, though, is more my problem than the writer's. The more you write yourself, the more you tend to be able to guess what's going to happen next. 

No. The niggling irritation involved a garden. 

The story is set in spring (I think) a warm late spring, in the South of England. The house has a big garden. Early on, we're told that it is full of wild garlic and lavender. Now, although wild garlic flowers and scents the air with its wonderful pungency through the spring of the year, it tends to be found more in ancient woodlands, bluebell woods in particular, flowering from April to June after which it is masked by other growth. By May, the scent of bluebells usually takes over. Lavender stays green throughout the year in mild climates, so that's fine. Although it wouldn't be all mixed up with the garlic. Later though, that same day, we're told that the garden is miraculously full of flowers including foxgloves, night-scented stock, hyacinth? As any gardener, even the most amateur among us, knows, your foxgloves and night scented stock are summer flowers. Hyacinths? Not so much. Not even bluebells if that's what's meant. 

We all get details wrong. But it is this kind of precise detail that can pull the reader right out of the story, challenging her willing suspension of disbelief. On reflection, it's indicative of a wider problem, because I'm still not 100% sure at exactly what time of year the story is set. Sometimes it feels like summer but other details mean it must be spring. In which case, yay for the wild garlic and hyacinths. Not so much for the foxgloves and night scented stock.  

It shouldn't matter at all. But it sort of does. It irritates, because this is a much lauded traditionally published novel and it's exactly the kind of thing that a good editor should immediately pick up on, writing 'flowers? time of year?' in Track Changes. Then perhaps even extrapolating from that a question about timescales, the when of the story. That's what good editors do. They pick up on the small things with wider implications. They ask the right questions and in finding the answers, you, the writer, make the piece of work better. 

So much of writing involves finding exactly the right word. That goes for things as simple as garden flowers, as well as complex emotions. If you're not a gardener, then Google is your friend. 

 

The Amber Heart: The Long, Long Story of a Story

I've blogged about my Polish novel The Amber Heart on and off over the years, but I don't think I've ever told the full unredacted story  - and now seems like as good a time as any, with a brand new, edited version out on Kindle, and a paperback and other eBook versions planned for early in 2021.

Lucky me.

Once upon a time, when I was young and optimistic, my first full length adult novel, titled The Golden Apple, was accepted for publication by The Bodley Head, an old and distinguished publisher. To be clear, this wasn't my very first novel. There were others, tucked away in folders, never to see the light of day. Practice novels. And there was a young adult novel, published in Scotland, before young adult was even a thing. But this was my first grown up novel that was fit to be seen. 

I considered myself very lucky. My agent for fiction at the time was Pat Kavanagh, and she was a fine agent with a wonderful reputation. Among other things, and unlike almost all agents now, who will tell you that publishers are looking for an 'oven ready book' (and that's a direct quote from one of my subsequent agents) she didn't consider it her job to edit. That was the publisher's job. If a book was good enough, she would sell it. Beyond that, the editorial relationship was with the publisher.

Not so lucky after all.

Half way through the publishing process, the Bodley Head was taken over by what was then Century, an imprint of mega conglomerate Random House. What had been a thoughtful Bodley Head style novel, about a cross cultural marriage, was published as a beach bonkbuster and sank without trace. It was an early lesson in the power of branding. And the disaster of the wrong branding. My editor at the time, with whom I had no quarrel, wrote to me later to say that she felt guilty about what had happened to my novel, and the knock on effect on my career. 

Still, with Pat's encouragement, I embarked on a new project. 

Back on cloud nine.

That novel was - in essence - The Amber Heart. It wasn't titled that back then. I think it was called Noon Ghosts. It was an epic and passionate love story, a family saga, very loosely inspired by what I knew of episodes from my own family history, not least a somewhat scandalous liaison between an aristocratic forebear and her estate manager. 

To my relief, Pat loved it. She quickly sent it out and the response was wonderful. She related some of the reader and editor comments to me. 'I literally could not put this book down,' one of them said. 'I read it through the night and wept buckets at the end.'

There were lots in the same vein. They loved it and said so. Cloud nine loomed.

Pat couldn't sell it. 

Too foreign.

You know what the stumbling block was? 

It was the Polish setting. 

It always fell at the last editorial hurdle. The consensus in every publishing house she tried (and there were already diminishing numbers of possibilities what with all the corporate takeovers) was that nobody would want to read a piece of historical fiction set in Poland, especially one that was aimed at a largely female readership, never mind that some of those same readers had compared it to a Polish Gone with the Wind, never mind that it was a big, sexy, enticing love story.  It was too foreign and that was that.

Years later, Pat told me how frustrated she had been that she couldn't sell the novel. For her too, it was the 'one that got away'. 

Sadly, she died far too young. I put the manuscript away, stored all the research in a big box under the bed, and got on with other writing. 

A compulsive teller of tales.

I forged a pretty successful career as a playwright. But simultaneously, I was working on more novels, finding the pull of fiction irresistible. Many have now been published - beautifully - by Saraband. But I'm a compulsive teller of tales, so I finished up with more novels than Saraband could ever reasonably publish. 

Three in particular fell through the cracks in the publishing business: Ice Dancing, Bird of Passage (of which more in another post) and The Amber Heart. 

Curiously, and rather sadly, I think these three are among the best things I've ever written, and I don't say that lightly. Other people have told me so too. But of these, Bird of Passage and The Amber Heart are big novels and not just in terms of length. Of everything I've written, these three books have never been close to being published in traditional form. Bird of Passage and Ice Dancing haven't even been read by traditional publishers. 

Meanwhile, I had retyped the manuscript of The Amber Heart. You can tell how long this has been going on by the fact that its first faded incarnation was on that old fashioned perforated computer paper that ancient printers spat out in long reams. I expanded it, wondering if it would make a trilogy. Didn't like it at all as a trilogy. Filed it away on the computer, instead of in the box under the bed. Lost the file. Found it. Opened it up. Cut and edited it. A lot.

Pruning and shaping.

Throughout this time, I had several agents and lost them through no fault of my own. Two, at least, just left the business. All of them read The Amber Heart in its various incarnations, liked it very much, but still pointed out that nobody wanted to read a piece of fiction set in Poland. Two of them read it, praised it and told me that it needed pruning. They were right about that, at least, but the problem was that they recommended cutting quite different parts of the novel: one wanted me to lose the first third, while another wanted me to lose the last third. My very last agent was madly enthusiastic about it, but disappeared into the scenery before he could even send it out. 

I published it as an eBook with Amazon. That was about 2012. 

A few years later, I decided that it was indeed much too long. Unpublished it. Let it lie fallow while I wrote other things.

Most writers will have at least one book like this. I have several very early novels. I look at them from time to time and find them an interesting stage in my development, but - in the conventional words of the standard rejection letter these days - I don't love them. So why didn't I give up with this one? 

I've asked myself this more than once over the years. I suppose the answer came to me when, over this pandemic year, spent mostly at my desk, I realised that Pat and all those readers had been right. It is a good book. But the others were right too. It was much too long. Stodgy in places. Going back to it, years later, and with a lot more experience as a writer, I could see clearly enough that it needed pruning and rewriting. Just not the kind of pruning that destroys the whole tree. I took about fifteen thousand words out of it. Here, there and everywhere. I was drastic in places, but always careful not to destroy it completely. I killed a few darlings. I think now it's tighter, more readable, less verbose. More accessible. A better book.

I'm still in love with my main characters. Still love the story. And I'm still quite proud of some of the writing in it. Especially the bit about the dangerous birth ...

Moving on.

My other reason for re-publishing this now is that I'm currently working on a piece of narrative non-fiction, in a similar vein to A Proper Person to be Detained, but this time about my Polish grandfather, his life and milieu. I'm deep into research and planning for a new book called The Last Lancer. And it seems relevant. I got the big box of pre-internet papers and letters and pictures out from under the bed. Pandora's box, in a way because this all feels very personal.

My last, my very, very last enquiry to an agent referencing this proposed new book (why on earth did I do it?) elicited the faintly bored response that there were so many similar stories out there. Since my grandfather was born in Poland in a sleigh, grew up to look like a bit like a younger version of Olivier's Maxim de Winter, was a cavalryman who drove a Lagonda and died young at Bukhara on the silk road, I suspect that there aren't all that many similar stories out there, but who knows? Maybe there are.

All the same, if I ever again publicly express a desire to find an agent, you will know that it's code for 'I've been kidnapped. Send help immediately.'

So there we are. And here it is. While I'm hard at work on the Last Lancer, if you like deeply romantic historical tales of love and loss (and cake. There's quite a lot of cake in this book), you could do worse than give The Amber Heart a try. 

It will be reduced to 99p here in the UK and also in the US from 21st December till 28th December, so grab a bargain, and escape into another time and place for a while!

Beware of Advice

From Wormwood, about Chernobyl, at the Traverse, 1979

While chatting on a professional Zoom meeting the other day, I found myself suddenly articulating something that has been growing on me for a number of years.

Looking back over a long switchback of a career as a novelist, non-fiction writer and playwright, I can now see that almost every piece of advice I've been given about what to write and how to write it has been wrong.

Let me clarify. I don't mean editing. In particular, I don't mean the intense editing that looks at style and structure. As a playwright and prose writer, I've had some wonderful directors, publishers and editors. (I've had a few appalling experiences too, but that's another story!)

We all need a fresh eye when we are too close to a project to see the wood for the trees. But the best of them shared a quality in common.

None of them told me exactly what to do.

Instead, they asked a series of tricky questions. They invariably honed in on aspects of a project where I felt uneasily that something wasn't right. 'What did you mean by this?' they would ask. And 'Can you clarify here?' and 'This seems somehow clumsy' and 'Can you look again at the structure here?'

In addressing these issues I always felt that I had made the piece of work better and I was grateful to them.

I don't mean practical advice either. We need to know about being self employed, using business bank accounts, budgeting, sorting out our taxes and a hundred other things.

So what kind of advice do I mean?

I mean advice about what to write. What to do and what not to do with that writing. How to shape a career. The sad thing is that writing is a lonely job. So we crave help and advice. I'm craving it now. We never learn. We expect too much. As William Goldman says in Adventures in the Screen Trade,  'Nobody knows anything.'

Many years ago, I had some success in a particular area of writing with what turned out to be a groundbreaking piece of work. And on the strength of it, I was approached by somebody in a related field, who wanted me to pick up that piece of work and run with it. Hesitant, suffering from imposter syndrome, I consulted a more senior colleague, who told me that it wasn't a good idea, pointing out all the drawbacks.

I took the advice and turned down the proposal. In retrospect, I can see that turning it down was entirely the wrong decision for me at that time. I was just too young and too easily swayed to see it.

I can think of many other occasions where professional people have confidently told me that 'nobody wants' this or that subject or theme or medium. They turned out to be not just wrong for me, but wrong in general too.

One of the very best things about the late, much missed David McLennan when he ran his A Play, a Pie and a Pint seasons at Glasgow's Oran Mor - and for whom I wrote three plays - was the way he responded to so many ideas with cheerful positivity. He would point out that success would be great, but failure would be OK too.

It was the trying, the experimenting, the exploration that mattered.

One Way To Write A Novel - Other Ways Are Available.

Writers who are just starting out sometimes ask me about the process of writing. There are so many advice blogs and books and websites out there that you don't really need another one. But just occasionally, I post something about my own experience. And that's the whole point: this is only my experience. Somebody else might have a totally different point of view, and that's fine. Do whatever works best for you.

The other day, a friend asked about writing software, on behalf of another (writer) friend. I can only say that I don't use anything but Word. I had a look at Scrivener, and decided it wasn't for me, but I also have a number of writer friends who swear by it, so the best advice I can give is to try it and see what you think - and you can try before you buy. I can imagine it would be very useful for complicated non-fiction in particular. It just doesn't suit my style. And I learned quite a while ago to discard anything that gets in the way of what suits me.

Which leads me to that question about process. How do I write? More particularly - how do I write a novel?

For what it's worth, here's what I do, especially with my historical novels.

I do plenty of research. Even when I'm already familiar with the time and place and period of the novel, I want to know more. The Physic Garden and the Jewel, although their stories were very different, were set at similar times, and both in lowland Scotland. The point of all this research isn't to show off your knowledge. It's to immerse yourself in a time and place so fully, that you can imagine what it was like to be there, to feel it, all while wearing your knowledge as lightly as possible. I always think that one of the big differences between fiction and non-fiction, even when the fiction involves real historical people, is that the novelist is always asking herself  'what did that feel like?'

The problem with research, though, is that it is potentially open ended and always fascinating. So you have to give yourself permission to stop. Or even force yourself to stop. And write the novel.

I do a very short plan or synopsis. A few pages at most. Often, I know the beginning and the end, but not how to get there. I write to find out. If I know too much detail before I begin, I get bored.

I begin at the beginning, and keep going till I reach the end, dividing into chapters as I go, feeling the weight of the words: one long document. This is a draft that nobody will see but me. I don't stop to revise. I don't stop for anything except sleeping and eating.

I let that first draft lie fallow for a while. The length of time depends on deadlines, but it should ideally be a few weeks at least. Meanwhile, because I've now discovered everything I didn't know, I permit myself to do some more research, to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

And then, after that, I spend a long time rewriting and restructuring, polishing and editing. I can never predict exactly how long this will take, but if I am working to a deadline - and I quite like deadlines - I will just work more intensively. I love this phase. Not everybody does.

Two things will also happen during that time.

Firstly, I will let somebody else - editor, publisher, agent when I had one (I haven't had an agent for a while) see what I think is a reasonable draft. Their response will be instructive. Sometimes, it can be as simple as a bunch of questions that hone in on exactly the parts of the book that I've been feeling most uneasy about. (The best editors don't rewrite, they query!) In answering the questions, I find out what needs changing and why.

Secondly, I will print a draft out, see and read  it on paper, and make more changes. Sometimes I will even do a literal cut and paste job, and then type up the changes. (This process is a lot faster than you might think.)

At that point, a copy editor will go through it looking for typos, infelicities and all the other little things that creep in, including favourite words that are overused. (One of mine is in fact 'little'. I have to go through manuscripts deleting it.)

This kind of editing should be done using 'track changes' so that you can see what's been done, agree with it, disagree with it, make changes of your own, and have productive 'conversations' with your editor until you've hammered out a good draft. I once had an editor who made extensive and not very useful changes without tracking any of them. It was a horrible experience, but it was, fortunately, a great many years ago - and such lack of professionalism is very rare.

And that's about it. When you're working with a publisher, and the proofs come along, even with two pairs of eyes or more checking the manuscript, there will always be the odd typo. If you write something and have the luxury (or misery) of leaving it for a number of years, you yourself will probably make quite big changes when you go back to it - but whether this will actually make it better or not is debatable.

You have to hammer out your own way of working. Advice is - you know - advisory. Nothing is set in stone. Find out what suits you best. We're all different. There are no hard and fast rules. The only two things I can say with absolute certainty are that in order to write, you should read a lot and write a lot. You might be surprised by how many people say they want to 'be a writer' but don't actually do much writing. Or reading.

And that's it, really. If you have questions, ask in the comments and I'll do my best to answer.

NaNoWriMo

It's national November novel writing month again. I'm not really taking part, even though I do have a new novel to write - well, actually, I have three - and I'll certainly be hustling to get that first draft of the first book onto the PC before Christmas.

If you're doing it, good luck. You're more than a quarter of the way through. If you're flagging, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going.

I was thinking about this last weekend at a small gathering of friends, most of whom also happen to be writers. One of them asked me if I was disciplined and wrote at a set time each day.  To which the answer is, no, I don't. But I do try to write almost every day. And if I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing, plotting and planning and getting to know my characters. But the truth is that some days, all kinds of other things get in the way. I find deadlines help. And when I have a fixed deadline, I find that my work rate escalates so that I might be writing for many hours in a day and half the night as well. Just not at the beginning. It all spirals upwards!

So why is this relevant to NaNoWriMo? Well, if you can do it, and stick to it, you'll get over the significant hurdle of the first draft, the horror of the blank screen. All writers work differently. Some of us are plotters and some pantsers - we write by the seat of our pants. That's me, more or less. I know the beginning and often the end, but a lot of the time I don't know how to get there. I write to find out. That's where the fascination lies. It's as though the characters have to tell me their story. On the few occasions where I've been persuaded to write more than two or three pages of a synopsis, I get bored and find myself writing something else. But not everyone works that way, and it's fine. We're all different.

However, I've tutored a lot of writers over the years and the single biggest problem for most them when it comes to making the leap from short fiction to novels, from one act plays to full scale dramas - seems to be in finishing the first draft of something so dauntingly long. The temptation to stop, revise, rewrite, change your mind, is almost overwhelming.

That's where something like NaNoWriMo comes in. My advice to most people starting out on a big project such as a novel, has always been to forge on. Don't worry if you find you have to leave gaps, miss out chapters, realise that there are gaping holes in the plot. Don't worry if you find yourself writing passages of what seems like gobbledegook. Just keep going, tell the story, get to the end. Nobody else is going to see this draft, warts and all unless you want them to. Nobody but me ever sees my first drafts.

But it's so much easier to revise and restructure a draft, however rough and ready, than it is to face the blank screen.

A couple of other useful tips.
Stop each day at a point where you really want to go on.  I wish I could remember who first told me this, because I bless them. That way, when you come back to the project the next day, and reread the last few pages, you'll get into the story a lot more quickly and easily than if you've stopped at a nice neat chapter ending.
The second thing to remember is that novels, like bread and beer and gardening, need time. Once you've got your first rough draft done, set it aside, don't be tempted to go back to it for several weeks. It's another reason why November is a good month for a first draft. You can enjoy Christmas with a clear conscience, and then get back to some serious editing in the New Year.

Good luck. And if you've any questions, add them to the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

Writing Historical Fiction - First Drafts, Editing, More Drafts, Crucial Dates.

Jean by John Moir, Rozelle House Galleries

I'm deep into a new novel about the life and times of Jean Armour, Robert Burns's wife, so my blog posts may be few and far between for the next few months although I'll post whenever I can. I'm at that stage where I've done masses of research - a whole year of it - and am now getting the first draft down and it's probably my least favourite part of the whole process. It's when I'm doing it that I always wonder why I chose this profession in the first place. ( Obsession, that's why. Can't not do it.)

I write my first drafts very quickly indeed, but they are awful. I almost never let anyone see them and if I do let somebody see short extracts, I do a certain amount of editing first. Getting to the end is the main aim of the first draft. I type very quickly, often with a complicated timeline beside me on my desk - not quite a plan, more of a skeleton, bones upon which the flesh of the novel must be hung -  and my aim is to tell the story, and let it assume the shape it wants to be. Let it tell me what it wants and needs to be. Let my characters speak.

My first draft is invariably shorter than the final draft because I skip over some bits or shorten them, knowing that if there are questions, the answers will become obvious later on. So a novel that may finish up at about 90,000 words will, in first draft, be more like 70,000 words. In fact it's in writing this first draft that I often find answers to questions, find out why some parts of the novel seem tricky, why something might have happened the way it did.

I'm deeply absorbed. The room can grow cold and dark and I don't notice it. I curse those recorded phone messages about eco friendly boilers or new kitchens, even though I don't answer the phone at all, I just leave the answering machine on. But it's still an interruption that pulls me out of the world of the book. The word count stacks up and I just forge on. Enjoying some of it but disliking quite a lot of the process whenever I become aware of it.

Editing though. Oh I love editing. That first draft is only the beginning. I'll finish it, leave it for a short while, no more than a week, go back to it and work my way through it, adding, extending, deepening all kinds of elements of it. This is a huge pleasure and I can't wait to tackle it. I can't let it alone. I work far into the night and sometimes get up and start early.

The book will now, almost certainly, be much too long. Maybe 10,000 words too long. Maybe more. So I leave it for another little while and then go over it again, pruning and polishing and tightening up and sometimes moving stuff around. Then I print it out. That's when I go through the whole thing with a fine tooth comb in the shape of a pen, and scribble all over it and sometimes even cut the pages up and paste them together elsewhere. That also tends to be when I see where things have gone wrong, and when I pick up lots of typos and infelicities.

Jean Burns's letter to Maria Riddell.

The next job is to type up all those corrections. In prospect I always think it will take forever, but in practice, it doesn't and I can usually do it within a day, two at the most.Then I'll read through it all over again making corrections here and there  - and at that point, it will be sent to my publisher if it's a traditional book and/or editor. If I'm self publishing, I'll set it aside for quite a long time. A couple of months. However it is, there will be a breathing space. And when I go back to it, I'll see everything else I got wrong.

For me, this is an intense process, but once I get going, I tackle each stage quite quickly with gaps in between. Oh, and I read lots of it out loud. Most of it, by the end of the project, but especially the dialogue.

One thing that has fascinated me about this particular novel has been the importance of dates. There is something really intriguing about sorting out a timeline for various people and events in a piece of historical fiction and then realising why some things happened the way they did - purely because of the order in which certain things happened, and the way in which two events occurring at the same time, or within a few months of each other, suddenly make complete sense of why something else might have happened the way it did. I don't want to give anything away at this point, because everything in the novel is still in a state of first draft flux, but this is exactly what has happened with Jean's story - the sudden realisation of something that might have happened in a particular way, just because of what else may well have been going on at the same time.

Of course I'm writing a novel and not an academic text, so to some extent I'm free to make things up. It's just that when the known facts (in some cases little known facts, but facts all the same) back up your wild speculations as an author, there's something deeply satisfying about it all.

If you want to see one or two I did earlier, have a look at The Physic Garden or The Curiosity Cabinet or The Amber Heart - all historical novels where the research and the meticulous working out of certain timelines was important in - to some extent at least - shaping both plot and characters.

You notice I stress that this is the way I do it. Not all writers are the same. This is only one way of tackling it. I have friends who write meticulous first drafts and hate editing. Beware of anyone who tells you this is how it must be done. The only real way to learn how to write - or to learn what suits you - is to wade in there and do it. Several times over.

The City and The City - Miéville's Masterpiece

I've joined the Reading Between The Lines Review Collective and will be posting regular reviews here on my Wordarts blog of  'new books, old books, loved books, neglected books'. And if you remember where that quote comes from, you may well be even older than I am! I won't be discriminating against eBooks or self published books, but I'll be adding plenty of other books into the mix, and they won't all be new or even in print. In short, I'll only be reviewing what I like, when I like.

This week, I'm reviewing a book I like very much indeed.
I'm ashamed to say that the first time I became more than peripherally aware of China Miéville was when he delivered a keynote speech at last year's World Writers' Conference in Edinburgh, to which I was not invited, but a lot of which I followed online. You know how it is. You know about a writer, without knowing too much about what they write and keep adding them to the 'to be read' list.  If you want to know what he said about the future of the novel (raising a few elitist hackles in the process), you can still find it online here.

I loved what he said and have been quoting him ever since, especially this assertion: 'You don't have to think that writing is lever-pulling, that anyone could have written Jane Eyre or Notebook of a Return to my Native Land to think that the model of writers as the Elect is at best wrong, at worst, a bit slanderous to everyone else. We piss and moan about the terrible quality of self-published books, as if slews of god-awful crap weren't professionally expensively published every year.'

So after that, I just had to investigate his work. A younger friend and Miéville fan made some recommendations. The City and The City was my first taste of what he had to offer. It didn't disappoint. It is the most disturbing, exciting, moving and engrossing book I've read for a very long time, one of those magical novels that lodges itself in your mind and refuses to go away. One of those books you want to tell other people about, hoping against hope that they will appreciate it too.

Where to start?
It begins with a murder. The body of a young woman is discovered on a piece of waste land in the Eastern (ish) European city of Beszel. And you think it's going to be a detective story, a police procedural in an interesting foreign setting.
Well, it's that. But there's more. So very much more.

The narrator - we get to know him rather well and like him a lot as the novel progresses - is Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad of Beszel. He's thoughtful, intelligent, moral, attractive in the sense of being a character with whom you can identify. You find yourself liking him. And that's just as well, because he is about to be your guide through a thoroughly disturbing world. I don't want to give the game away. And please don't plough your way through all the multitude of reviews on Amazon, if you want to enjoy this in the way the writer clearly intended. Although some of them are excellent and illuminating. But read the book first. For this is a novel like no other. It will stretch your brain. I read it far into the night for several nights. It's a long book, fortunately, because I didn't want it to end. I dreamed about it a lot, bizarre, disturbing dreams. Not nightmares, just immensely complicated dreams, indicative of my brain's repeated attempts to come to terms with the world the author has created. I would wake up again in the early hours and carry on reading, anxious to get back to the story, but perhaps even more anxious to get back to the world of Beszel and its neighbouring city of Ul-Qoma.

Is this Science Fiction? I don't know. It seems real. Ordinary in the sense that it's easy to imagine yourself there. A real place. Or then again, perhaps not. There are frightening, possibly supernatural elements. But they too are utterly credible. Is it dystopian? Maybe. It's dark at times. But most of all, it's a stunning evocation of a world which is so believable, so firmly lodged in the realities with which we are familiar, so manipulative of language itself, utilising the 'almost familiar' to explain new concepts, that it defies any easy categorisation. I have never struggled so much to do justice to a book I loved.

The writing is dense, rich, intricate and occasionally ragged in no bad way. It has to be. He plays with words, with ideas. He plays with your mind. Reading The City and The City made me realise just how many modern novels are edited to within an inch of their lives. So many widely praised books these days seem to have been edited until they are thin.  I'm not talking about popular fiction here. I enjoy popular fiction a lot. At its best, it's a well made blueberry muffin, or a light-as-a-feather croissant with jam, and there are times when that's exactly what I want to eat. But there are other times when I fancy something much more rich and strange. Unfortunately, you get the feeling that so many novels which began as something complex and strange and rough around the edges in the mind of the author, have been processed smooth by assiduous editors until they all seem curiously similar: bland, correct, predictable mush. You finish them, and you think 'Is that it then?'
Whatever you feel about The City and The City, you won't feel that!

The unease begins early on. Tyador has been at the crime scene, discussing the case with a constable named Lizybet Corwi, and then speaking to a group of journalists gathered at the edge of the waste land where the body has been discovered. He turns away from them, and quite suddenly, there it is.
'As I turned, I saw past the edges of the estate to the end of GunterStrasz, between the dirty brick buildings. Trash moved in the wind. It might be anywhere. An elderly woman was walking slowly away from me in a shambling sway. She turned her head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion and I met her eyes. I wondered if she wanted to tell me something. In my glance, I took in her clothes, her way of walking, of holding herself and looking.
With a hard start I realised that she was not on GunterStrasz at all, and that I should not have seen her.'
At that point, with that small, seemingly unimportant - but oddly disturbing - encounter, you start to ask yourself why? Why should he not have seen her? Why was she not on GunterStrasz?

The answer - gradually revealed, always consistent - is complex and mind-bending: a realisation of the nature of the world in which Tyador lives and works. But not once, as I read this novel to its inevitable and satisfying, but unguessed, conclusion, did I ever stop believing in the truth of it, even while my brain struggled to encompass it. It's not an easy read. Don't blame me if you don't like it. Don't blame Miéville if you don't like it. Just acknowledge that it isn't for you. But if you do like it, you may also find that your perception of your own world won't ever be quite the same again. You'll dream about this book and go back to it, and be intrigued by it months later. I found myself desperately wanting to talk to people about it, which is why I'm reviewing it now. I've read very few novels in the last ten years which have filled me with such excitement - even in retrospect. I'd be interested to know what other readers think!

The City and The City was published by Pan in 2010 and is available on Kindle as well as in paperback.
You'll find it on Amazon UK and Amazon US.


Catherine is part of the Reading Between the Lines Review Collective a group of professional writers committed to writing good reviews about great books!

Dear Emily Bronte - How To Make Your Lovely Novel Better

Last Tuesday, I wrote a blog post for my regular slot on Authors Electric, titled Dear Emily. A 'previously undiscovered piece of literary correspondence', this was a letter from Humongous Publishing (look out for more from this unique company in due course!) asking for edits on Wuthering Heights. Today, checking the stats, I see that there have been more than 800 page views in that short time and a lot of interesting comments, many of them from writers saying the same thing: this was very funny, but all too horribly true.


It was all too horribly true, I suppose, because I lifted a surprising number of the comments directly from letters and emails I have received over half a lifetime of writing and submission. In fact I think I'm about to take a vow not to 'submit' anything - with its sense of relinquishing control to another - ever again. I always think of myself as a forgiving kind of a gal, so I was amazed how - once I began - all of them just came boiling to the surface. 

But it set me thinking. I've also had some good editors and artistic directors in my time, not one of whom would have written anything like this - so what was it about this string of  'helpful suggestions' which rang so many bells with so very many writers?

I think it's something that demonstrates a total misunderstanding of how the creative process works, but we all encounter it from time to time. Good editors will ask lots of difficult questions. But they will always be questioning the book you have written, the book (or play) that exists. They will be forcing you, the writer, to examine it more closely, to find out more, to tell the tale you want and need to tell. Or even more accurately, the tale that wants to be told.

As soon as somebody starts to suggest glib alternatives - why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Can't you make him or her do this? Or be like this? - the red mist descends. Or it does for me. Because I can't 'make' anything do or be what it doesn't want to be.  

When I was writing Bird of Passage, I spent months knowing that there was something in Finn's background about which he could neither speak, nor even think. It was something so traumatic that it must account for the way he was, in himself and in his relationship with Kirsty. The trouble was, I didn't know what it was and Finn couldn't remember. Some hypothetical editor might have said 'why don't you make it...' but I couldn't do that. I couldn't make it anything. Instead, I had to find it out. And I did. In the middle of the night. I woke up thinking 'oh - that's what it was. That was what happened to him!'

Strange as it may seem, it was as if the story had existed somewhere all along, as an entity outside myself. I don't know whether other writers feel this way, but I suspect a lot of them do. And I suspect that's why we find it so maddening when somebody else tries to manipulate our fictional reality with inappropriate suggestions.