Tag: Writing

A little light reading

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We’ve just returned from a brilliant fortnight in France. We racked up 2,500 miles in a round trip that encompassed Ile de Noirmoutier, which is reached by a two-mile causeway at low tide; Rauzan, where we camped in the shadow of a ruined medieval castle; and Marais Poitevin. This last spot, nicknamed ‘Green Venice’, is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen. Centuries ago, it was a vast swamp, but Dutch settlers drained it with a labyrinth of canals and ditches, leaving hundreds of island pastures connected by causeways and bridges. The architecture is just as unique, with balconies and shutters adorning every house, and punts moored to jetties in gardens. Poplars and alders tower into the sky, the canals are thick with lurid green algae. Fat dragonflies zip and pop between shrubs and creepers, and the trees are alive with cicadas. Filtered through high branches and reflected from the water, the light itself is tinted green.

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It’s genuinely one of the most incredible landscapes I’ve experienced and, much like Grogport for Riptide, it’s been a real inspiration for my next novel. In the space of a few days, I filled an A4 pad with notes and dialogue, and I feel really excited about starting work. There’s still plenty to do before I can begin, but the foundations now feel firmly set.

The other great thing about the holiday was having time to read. I managed six books, which is no mean feat when juggling a toddler in a campsite. And I had a great run of books – not a single dud:

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht was bold and convincing, subtly switching a range of voices to make folk myths contemporary through personal memory. I enjoyed it a lot, but found it ever so slightly cold, and wasn’t as blown away as its reputation suggests.

Cumbrian Folk Tales by Taffy Thomas was a fascinating collection of the county’s legends and myths, made all the more immediate through its connections to a landscape I’m starting to know. It was amusing to recognise the names of not just local places, but also local people – people I’ve met, worked with, drunk with. The tales were strongest when connected to geography, giving meaning and history to a witch’s cauldron or a devil’s bridge.

I read The Blackhouse by Peter May – this was a present from Jane Wood, my publisher at Quercus. She thought I’d like a look because, like Riptide, it’s a crime story set in the Hebrides, though it doesn’t have the supernatural elements of my book. I enjoyed it a lot. The plot was dovetail-tight and engrossing, and the landscape was intoxicating.

Next up was I Love You When I’m Drunk by Empar Moliner, Spanish short stories in translation through the tremendous Comma Press. Despite some uncharacteristic typos from an excellent publisher, it’s a solid collection, each story exploring and exploding conceits of modern life. Some of the stories felt a bit like shooting fish in a barrel – taking aim at soft targets of liberal, middle-class pomp – but the writing was good throughout, and there were many outstanding moments.

Moliner’s collection was good, but the next book was astonishing – a class apart. The Dog Of The Marriage gathers Amy Hempel‘s four short story collections into a single volume, and they are consistently superb. There isn’t a single wrong note across dozens of stories. Hempel’s work is voiced through emotionally damaged or stunted narrators, trapped or somehow left behind in their lives, caught between stasis and decay. The stories are not without hope, though, and Hempel writes with unceasing, unfailing humanity. Her sentences and structure are scintillating. I cannot recommend this highly enough. This is the sort of book I buy two copies of, expecting to have one out on loan.

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Finally, I read Snake Ropes by Jess Richards. This was another corker. Alternate narrators explore life on a mysterious island, ‘just off the edge of the map’, eventually combining to bring the distinct halves of the story together around a single, long-forgotten trauma. This novel holds trade and barter at its heart, exploring themes of presence and absence, balance and weight; of exchange, and what it means to give and get. It’s a real triumph, made all the more masterful in how Richards weaves the fantastical through the fabric of base human instinct, conjuring talking keys, sentient trees, and a walking doll with a seashell for a heart:

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The last fortnight has reminded me, as stupid as it sounds, of how much I love to read, and made it painfully apparent how little reading time my regular schedule affords me. I’m determined – on top of carving out more writing time – to read more. I miss it.

This holiday has been essential. I’ve worked stupidly hard over the last two years without much of a break, and I’ve badly wanted some time off. Looking ahead, the next two months are going to be frantic – but I feel better for a break. I have my next novel blocked out and the sights and scents of a swamp fresh in my mind. One more draft of Riptide to go, and then I’ll be starting my new story.

Wino time

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‘Wino time’ is Beatnik slang for ‘Drunk & Disorderly’. I haven’t been arrested, but I am going on holiday for a couple of weeks, and I plan on drinking quite a lot of wine, so you never know. I’m taking books, notebooks and pens. See you in a couple of weeks, and thanks to everyone who’s stopped by in the first few months since I started this blog.

‘The software of our minds’

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This is a fascinating article, examining the quasi-neurological process through which stories develop emotional punch. I’ve long believed that empathy is the quality a writer needs more than other; this article seems to give my belief a little foundation. Put simply, stories engage readers through exploiting our empathy with the character and their situation. Writers therefore need to assume the mantle of that empathy and project it onto their characters.

Read on:

Six Ways to Make Sure Your Reader’s Brain Syncs with Your Protagonist’s Brain.

Limppelty lobelty

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My reading lately has brought me to the Tiddy Mun. He’s a grumpy but rather sad spirit of the fenlands. There’s something very ancient and disconnected about him, as though he’s been left behind, and doesn’t entirely know why. People were actually quite fond of him, by all accounts, in the same way they’re fond of elderly and slightly addled relatives they see only every other Christmas.

Anyway. Tiddy Mun can summon water, mist and fevers from the marshes. He’s very much at home in the bogs, and he was incandescent about the draining of the fens by the Dutch. In his rage, he conjured pestilential swamp airs onto all Fenmen, and didn’t stop until everyone said they were sorry.

He sounds anachronistic even in the 1890s:

“He dwelt deep down in the green water holes, and came out at evenings when the mists rose. Then he came creeping out in the darklings, limppelty lobelty, like a dearie wee old granter, all matted and tangled, a long grey gown so that they could hardly see him in the dusk, but they could hear him whistling like the wind and laughing like a peewit. He was not wicked like the rest, but he was eerie enough, though the times were when he helped them. For on wet seasons when the water rose to their doorsteps, the whole family would go out together and shivering in the darkness they would call:

‘Tiddy Mun wi’out a name,
Tha watter thruff!’

They would call it till they heard a cry like a peewit across the marsh, and they’d go home. And next morning the waters would be down.”

I feel quite sorry for the Tiddy Mun. He seems lonely and lost and utterly out of place, but I think he might have a role to play in the new novel. I especially like the idea that he isn’t “wicked like the rest”…

Labour

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Physical work is a counterpart to writing. I wrote my first novel while working in a furniture workshop; I wrote dozens of short stories, and started Riptide, while making yurts for a carpenter.

As a teacher, my life is at once more manic and more sedentary, but my ongoing house restoration has provided frequent and occasionally brutal reminders of what it is to work with my hands. This weekend, it was the turn of the garden. Along with my dad and my father-in-law, I put up a fence, laid a patio, cut down two trees and cleared a ton of rubble. It’s been an exhausting, sweltering few days, and my hands and arms are riddled with scratches and grazes and splinters, but that seems a fair price to pay for the achievement.

Physical labour is good for my brain. It allows me to switch off, for a while, through either the concentration or monotony of the task, and the blank space it leaves allows the formation of thoughts. Climbing does the same trick. About halfway through the fencing, I had a mini-brainwave about my new novel. Two sequences quietly switched places, and the narrative opened up a little more. I’m coming closer to blocking out the plot all the time, just making notes and letting it simmer in the background. Even if my hands are cut to shreds, it’s healthy to remember how to use them for more than typing.

The Lion-tamer’s Daughter

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Back from a grand night at the Dentdale Beer & Music Festival, unpacked with a mild hangover, wrote a new short story about a lion tamer and completely rewrote an old story about a boy who climbs lampposts, then cut both stories into my flash fiction collection ‘Marrow’… which leaves me just about ready for a bruising week of marking, course planning, meetings, filming, editing and building a fence. See you on the other side. Hopefully.

To Do

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I haven’t been writing very much lately. I’ve been too busy with real life, scrapping my way through end-of-year marking for my film students and working on videos for Kendal College and Cumbria Wildlife Trust. I’ve still some way to go, and there’s plenty more to do – my Dad’s popping up to help me build a fence, and I need to build a log store. But hopefully the end is in sight. Most important, I should be getting Jane‘s notes for Riptide in the next few weeks, and then I need to work my way through that final draft.

For a bit of a change, I’ve been using the odd evening to (slowly) teach myself the basics of InDesign, trying to put together a booklet of my flash fiction. It’s no big deal – twenty-five stories between 50 and 500 words, provisionally entitled ‘Marrow’. I’ve also booked in my next two readings – first for the Spotlight open mic in Lancaster in July, and then as a support slot for Dreamfired in Brigsteer in October. And in the background, I’m reading and researching towards my next novel; quietly brewing on the story, blocking out the plot. I still have some narrative strands to tidy up, though I know where the book will finish emotionally.

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For the moment: research. I wrote about rediscovering P.V. Glob’s The Bog People a few months ago, and I’ve finally had a chance to actually read the thing. For a 1970s archaeological review – even one designed for jumblies – it’s surprisingly well-written. Some of the bog bodies have held astonishing secrets in their graves. One poor woman was staked down with crooks and buried alive. A man was stabbed through the heart, smashed on the head and strangled. It’s all great stuff for the novel, generating context and building ideas. By happy coincidence, one of the jobs I’m doing for Cumbria Wildlife Trust is on wetland restoration, so I’ve been spending some time ankle deep in peatland. I need some more books, and I’d like to take trips to fen country at some point.

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It’s a thrilling stage, all the researching and blocking and plotting, preparing the ground before the hard work starts. I learned a lot from writing Riptide, and I’m excited to start work on a new book. Just need to clear away the hundred other things on my To Do list, first.

It hasn’t been all work. Friends Steve and Clare took us to Chester Zoo yesterday. We went straight to the orangutans, and spent a gloriously peaceful 20 minutes with them before a dozen school trips caught us up. Dora especially loved the bat enclosure, a vast warehouse where the bats swoop and skitter in artificial night. This morning we’re off to Dentdale Music & Beer festival, too. I’m going to take my story dice and drink ale.

Stephen King on writing

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I like this. I like this very much. Here’s an assembly of 20 quotes about writing from horror maestro Stephen King. I like the way he blends a wonder at the world with the coal face, roll your sleeves up, nuts and bolts of writing.

I read most of King’s work when I was 13 or 14, taking them three at a time from the mobile library that did the rounds outside Inverness. Cujo, Carrie, It and The Stand have all stuck in my mind; I recently found a copy of The Stand in a charity shop, and I’m looking forward to rereading it this summer. I’m not sure I could handle another bout of It.

Swamp Thing indahouse

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Friends Iona and Ali Shaw stayed with us this week. Ali and I studied English at Lancaster University, many moons ago, long before I started writing and when Ali was already laying the groundwork for his career. He’s a brilliant author, with novels The Girl With Glass Feet and The Man Who Rained winning awards and translations all over the place. I was privileged enough to read an early draft of Glass Feet, and Ali kindly took the time to read through my first draft of Riptide. His subsequent advice, notes and hour-long phonecalls were extremely helpful in shaping my third and final draft. Over the last few months, I’ve leaned heavily on Ali’s experience of being published, and his knowledge has helped me work out some of what I’m doing with the good people at Quercus Books.

Mon and I don’t get to see Ali and Iona very often, so it was fantastic to have a long overdue catch-up. We mostly nattered about babies, but we also discussed our current projects (his new book sounds AMAZING) and some wider publishing news. Ali recommended two things: firstly, that I try Scrivener. It’s a writing program dedicated towards managing large documents, with all kinds of bells and whistles for organising plots, characters, locations and notes. The various features sound extremely useful, and it’s available on a free 30-day trial, so I’ll definitely give it a go.

The second recommendation was for Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. I was describing my own new work, which is set in a maze of bogs and marshes, and Ali (who reads more graphic novels than me), thought Swamp Thing might be good for inspiration and ideas; another book on my birthday wishlist, then. I enjoy graphic novels, and own several of the real classics (Maus, Watchmen, From Hell, Ghost World, etc.) but seldom know where to begin with trying something new. Good stuff.

Les Malheureux in Kendal

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I popped out last night to see Les Malheureux (a.k.a writers Sarah-Clare Conlon and David Gaffney) performing at the Lakes Alive Mintfest fundraiser in Kendal Town Hall.

It was a brilliant little show, with Sarah-Clare reading flash fiction accompanied by David’s Wurlitzer-style noodlings and extremely funny PowerPoint presentations switching slides in the background. The stories were fantastic – by turns poignant, reflective and darkly comic.

I especially loved the story about Eggborough power station, where the narrator paints the chimney stacks – and ‘Little Jan’, which is a perfect slice of poisonous office politics.

It was also great to see Sarah-Clare and David so soon after Flashtag – with the swifts soaring overhead and the sunset tinged pink over the Lakes, we had a balmy chat about day jobs, notebooks, Italy, the amazing Scottish literary scene and the quest for decent pubs in Kendal. (If you want an answer to the last point, there are three: Burgundy’s, the Brewery, and the Rifleman’s Arms.)

Before they turned up, I sat scribbling in my notebook. After a mini-brainwave about the protagonist in my new novel, I now know what she’s called and what she does for a living; and that in turn revealed another layer to the story which I’m really excited about. I also worked through some potential titles, though nothing stuck. I’m going to be flat-out on film jobs and college for the next month, but I’m starting to assemble more notes and ideas all the time.