19th October 2012
Colarado days like this one are called Blue Bird days with skies so blue, like a child took the bluest crayon and coloured it in thick and deep. You could lie on your back in the grass and look into a blue like this, broken only by the lazy flap of a raven, until you're abducted, not by aliens but by the sky. Snow has been creeping from the tops of the far peaks down the slopes, a little more each night, telling us we will wake one morning soon and find its footprints on the stark trees, on the wall that I put together round stone upon round stone, two sides coming together to lean upon each other and call themselves one wall, a Scottish wall under blue skies, shifting uneasily, robbed of its moss and lichen.
Last week I was about to embark on a few tips for aspiring writers, but I got waylaid in talking about why writing is a craft and why some writers are craftier than others.
Here are a couple of tips:
(1) FORGET THE AUDIENCE. I know you wouldn't be writing anything down at all if you weren't thinking some one else would read this some day (some writers are very dishonest about this fact.) So, acknowledge them, then turn out the theatre lights and go to your writing desk. The greatest hindrance to writing is the editor parrot perched on your shoulder. Just like you wouldn't invite anyone into your dressing room to watch you undress, keep those same people out of your writing space. You don't want to know what they think of your last sentence or your writing project. When I was co-chair of a writer's group, we'd often have people come in and read the one chapter they had written and then ask if anyone thought they should carry on with the project. That is not only listening to your editing parrot, but raising him to king. Shoo him off! The reason for your writing has to come from deep inside, not any place that ever sees the sun, or a Colorado blue sky, and especially not the opinion of others. You write because you can do no other. If there is any other reason, then maybe you should find a different outlet for your creative urge. Which takes me to Advice Number Two.
(2) FORGET THE FAME AND MONEY: The fame part is harder to let go of than the money, just because we really do write to be heard. Now, I know it happens now and agin that a writer strikes rich with half a book completed (like "Clan of the Cave Bears," for instance.) It happens, but not that often. If you're after riches, there are far straighter roads to that particular goal. I've yet to make any significant money from writing, and it has always been my sense that fame and riches could actually undermine the writing process. It was my goal from early on to have a collection of books before any one of mine was published, because I didn't want to end up a JD Salinger, a one-hit wonder (he still qualifies as that, even though he wrote other things.) I could see the danger of the success of a first novel and the pressures that are brought to bear on that author. So, I wrote a collection of five unrelated novels, and at that point felt able to start sending them out. To date I have about eight novel, which I think gives me a nice cushion for Blue Bird days and doing nothing but getting lost in the sky.
Next week's blog and the following one will be sent out from Scotland, home of my birth. I plan to make a mad dash down to the Emily Bronte Museum in Yorkshire, then back up to Alloway to the Robert Burns Museum, and finally to the Writer's Museum in Edinburgh.
I have many more writing tips, too, which I will get round to by and by.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Digesting writing
13th October 2012
The slender cottonwoods in my garden that take up the foreground of this view from my window are slowly denuding themselves. A crowd of smaller trees by the wall never got the memo and are still in coats of orange. But the clouds are low today, touching the hills with a lace of fog, as though the day has forgotten to wake up. The hours pass slowly on the grandfather clock downstairs, and I spend my day in a no-man's land between waking and sleeping. Der Tag will nicht erwachen.
Someone once gifted me what must have been a ten-year subscription to Writers' Digest magazine, so I flick through it when it arrives. I brew a steaming cup of tea and sit in the corner of my couch musing over its titles and advice.
One thing that comes up repeatedly, and not just in this publication, but wherever writer's discuss writerly things, is advice for aspiring writers. I went to a book launch lately where this was asked and the author said that the only qualification for being a writer was that you write. I spent a good ten years of my life attending and eventually chairing a writer's group, and I can't whole heartedly endorse that sentiment. I certainly wouldn't like to go to a doctor whose only qualification was that they practiced medecine. I would want to think that they had made their gruelling way through medical school. Not that I am proposing every writer should run off and join an MFA programme. Far from it. But writing is a craft, something that most writers put in their thousand hours over, something that you learn brick by brick along the way, and nothing that an education in literature or writing will necessarily furnish you with.
My first forays into creative writing produced nothing that would give anybody else any joy or sense of accomplishment. I had mostly been involved in academic writing in what was then my short life, and my writing style was dense enough you had to pry every sentence from the next and from the paragraph as a whole with an exacto knife. In short, although the images were quite nice, nothing flowed. It was like handing a hungry restaurant patron a piece of overcooked steak. Still steak, still full of protein, but not exactly palatable.
It took years and years, for me to find the button that had "Let Go," printed on it in fine print. It was hiding all the while somewhere under the breastbone, but I didn't know that for a long time, certainly not at the beginning when I was trying so hard to be a writer. I had a few principles back then, all of which eventually had to be tossed, and one that said, "Writing in the first person is a cop-out." For me, finding that let-go button had to do in part with allowing myself the freedom to write in whatever voice came naturally. That turned out to be the first person, and just that little allowance unleashed a flood of creativity and gave me new channels to pour it into. (Aside: I still sort of believe that principle, so I'd like to get back to writing in the third person, but I'm not holding on to it in a death grip. It's more of a musing now.)
So, are you are a writer because you write? Are you a painter because you paint? Modern art says Yes. I want to say there is a whole lot more to it than that, something you'll discover if you commit to the craft and are open to learning it along the way.
I started this blog with the idea of giving a few guiding principles to aspring writers, but I've run out of space, and I'll do that next week. But for one to go on, you can't do better than the advice to write routinely and keep at it. It won't make you a writer right away, but it is to writing what a restaurant is to a cook. It's a very good place to start.
The slender cottonwoods in my garden that take up the foreground of this view from my window are slowly denuding themselves. A crowd of smaller trees by the wall never got the memo and are still in coats of orange. But the clouds are low today, touching the hills with a lace of fog, as though the day has forgotten to wake up. The hours pass slowly on the grandfather clock downstairs, and I spend my day in a no-man's land between waking and sleeping. Der Tag will nicht erwachen.
Someone once gifted me what must have been a ten-year subscription to Writers' Digest magazine, so I flick through it when it arrives. I brew a steaming cup of tea and sit in the corner of my couch musing over its titles and advice.
One thing that comes up repeatedly, and not just in this publication, but wherever writer's discuss writerly things, is advice for aspiring writers. I went to a book launch lately where this was asked and the author said that the only qualification for being a writer was that you write. I spent a good ten years of my life attending and eventually chairing a writer's group, and I can't whole heartedly endorse that sentiment. I certainly wouldn't like to go to a doctor whose only qualification was that they practiced medecine. I would want to think that they had made their gruelling way through medical school. Not that I am proposing every writer should run off and join an MFA programme. Far from it. But writing is a craft, something that most writers put in their thousand hours over, something that you learn brick by brick along the way, and nothing that an education in literature or writing will necessarily furnish you with.
My first forays into creative writing produced nothing that would give anybody else any joy or sense of accomplishment. I had mostly been involved in academic writing in what was then my short life, and my writing style was dense enough you had to pry every sentence from the next and from the paragraph as a whole with an exacto knife. In short, although the images were quite nice, nothing flowed. It was like handing a hungry restaurant patron a piece of overcooked steak. Still steak, still full of protein, but not exactly palatable.
It took years and years, for me to find the button that had "Let Go," printed on it in fine print. It was hiding all the while somewhere under the breastbone, but I didn't know that for a long time, certainly not at the beginning when I was trying so hard to be a writer. I had a few principles back then, all of which eventually had to be tossed, and one that said, "Writing in the first person is a cop-out." For me, finding that let-go button had to do in part with allowing myself the freedom to write in whatever voice came naturally. That turned out to be the first person, and just that little allowance unleashed a flood of creativity and gave me new channels to pour it into. (Aside: I still sort of believe that principle, so I'd like to get back to writing in the third person, but I'm not holding on to it in a death grip. It's more of a musing now.)
So, are you are a writer because you write? Are you a painter because you paint? Modern art says Yes. I want to say there is a whole lot more to it than that, something you'll discover if you commit to the craft and are open to learning it along the way.
I started this blog with the idea of giving a few guiding principles to aspring writers, but I've run out of space, and I'll do that next week. But for one to go on, you can't do better than the advice to write routinely and keep at it. It won't make you a writer right away, but it is to writing what a restaurant is to a cook. It's a very good place to start.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Oliver Griggs
5th October, 2012
Somewhere in a graveyard in Liverpool there is a gravestone bearing the name of Eleanor Rigby. Paul McCartney doesn't believe he has ever seen it, but it gives me a nice seque into the question of where an author finds his or her characters. (By the way, just as an aside, I sometimes get introduced to people as an "authoress." It makes me want to reach out and clip that person around the earhole - as my aged aunt used to say - because it seems a bit diminutive. I remind myself that a lioness is no less of a lion, but somehow in the term "authoress" seems hidden some surprise that a woman should be writing at all. Like a fish riding a bicycle. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Anyway.)
I suppose characters come from all over the place, even graveyards, but my advice to anyone who knows an author (or authoress) well is to watch out. Snape, that infamous character in Harry Potter, was based on a mean-spirited teacher that JK Rowling once had (he says, "I knew I was strict, but not that bad" - the happy ending of that tale is that he cashed in on his infamy by writing a book about some of the places from JK Rowling's childhood. His name was John Nettleship, which is almost as good a name as Snape.)
So I am not the only authoress who gives in to the temptation to get back at some of the less savoury characters in her life. They just pop up whenever you reach for a name for an antagonist. Just saying. You know who you are, and you are invariably male and in a position of authority.
As for the good characters, the same probably applies. Beth in Little Women was based on a friend of Alcott's who was commonly know as "Elizabeth the Wise." Mark Twain based Huckleberry Finn on his childhood friend. It's just so much easier to write about someone you don't have to invent. Once you have tucked them into your story, they already have a personality, and you don't have to wonder how they would react in a given situation or how their face would look. In one of my books, I pretty much took a professor I had as an undergraduate (a nice one) and stuck him straight into the narrative wholesale. I made him more colourful, but he was already quite a personality in himself.
So far, I have rarely managed to create a protagonist who didn't think like me. I suppose I must not be very creative. I did try in my last novel, and even gave her the name of a childhood friend, but she didn't act like that friend or think like that friend. She didn't even really look like that friend (or me) but the things coming out of her mouth sounded like me. I don't know if every authoress (or author) has this problem, if it is a problem. I imagine that Kathy of Wuthering Heights was every bit like Emily Bronte, and Sylvia Plath bore a strict resemblance to her protagonist in The Bell Jar. We're exorcising our demons, I suppose.
But whatever the cause or result, I will probably keep on doing it. It's not a question of being lazy, more just what you do when you set out on a journey: sit down in the driver's seat and hand-pick a few friends (or not, as the case may be) to walk the path with you.
Somewhere in a graveyard in Liverpool there is a gravestone bearing the name of Eleanor Rigby. Paul McCartney doesn't believe he has ever seen it, but it gives me a nice seque into the question of where an author finds his or her characters. (By the way, just as an aside, I sometimes get introduced to people as an "authoress." It makes me want to reach out and clip that person around the earhole - as my aged aunt used to say - because it seems a bit diminutive. I remind myself that a lioness is no less of a lion, but somehow in the term "authoress" seems hidden some surprise that a woman should be writing at all. Like a fish riding a bicycle. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Anyway.)
I suppose characters come from all over the place, even graveyards, but my advice to anyone who knows an author (or authoress) well is to watch out. Snape, that infamous character in Harry Potter, was based on a mean-spirited teacher that JK Rowling once had (he says, "I knew I was strict, but not that bad" - the happy ending of that tale is that he cashed in on his infamy by writing a book about some of the places from JK Rowling's childhood. His name was John Nettleship, which is almost as good a name as Snape.)
So I am not the only authoress who gives in to the temptation to get back at some of the less savoury characters in her life. They just pop up whenever you reach for a name for an antagonist. Just saying. You know who you are, and you are invariably male and in a position of authority.
As for the good characters, the same probably applies. Beth in Little Women was based on a friend of Alcott's who was commonly know as "Elizabeth the Wise." Mark Twain based Huckleberry Finn on his childhood friend. It's just so much easier to write about someone you don't have to invent. Once you have tucked them into your story, they already have a personality, and you don't have to wonder how they would react in a given situation or how their face would look. In one of my books, I pretty much took a professor I had as an undergraduate (a nice one) and stuck him straight into the narrative wholesale. I made him more colourful, but he was already quite a personality in himself.
So far, I have rarely managed to create a protagonist who didn't think like me. I suppose I must not be very creative. I did try in my last novel, and even gave her the name of a childhood friend, but she didn't act like that friend or think like that friend. She didn't even really look like that friend (or me) but the things coming out of her mouth sounded like me. I don't know if every authoress (or author) has this problem, if it is a problem. I imagine that Kathy of Wuthering Heights was every bit like Emily Bronte, and Sylvia Plath bore a strict resemblance to her protagonist in The Bell Jar. We're exorcising our demons, I suppose.
But whatever the cause or result, I will probably keep on doing it. It's not a question of being lazy, more just what you do when you set out on a journey: sit down in the driver's seat and hand-pick a few friends (or not, as the case may be) to walk the path with you.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
A Peculiar Music
28th September 2012
Through this whole process of publishing my book, I am slowly gleaning what the different steps are all about. Until now the editing I have been doing with Abby my editor has been "content editing" in that through the last few rounds we have been focusing more on the story and how it progresses. With the last edit, we moved to "line editing," which is, as it suggests, going through the manuscript line by line to see where it can run more smoothly. I turned that line-edit in at the beginning of the week, and my editor told me the next stage would be to move the manuscript on to "Production" (a different department) for copy-editing. I had to look this one up, but a copy editor does not concern themselves with re-writing, just with clarity and flow. Once in "production," the manuscript is going to be changed into what it will look like in the hands of the reader, e.g. how many words per page, where the page/paragraphs will break. They are dealing with the visual image, not the story anymore. Abby says the copy-editing will take about a month.
When I turned in the line-edit, I also forwarded my acknowledgement page and my dedication page, which Abby says will make the production team happy to have so early. Now I'm worried I should have held back and made sure I had included everyone in my acknowledgements. What if someone helps me in the meantime? As far as dedication goes, I made it go to my father who died when I was in my twenties and who was the ground I walked on. I have other novels that would be more appropriate to put his name to, but I figure I had better do it right away with this first (to be published) novel, just in case I never get another chance.
I was having thoughts this week about a sequel to "Veil of Time," called "Druid Hill," but I won't tell anyone about that.... I have only written two pages, and it may never happen, but if it were to come easily, it would give me something play with while I wait the torturous wait of an author-in-the-wings. Despite the torture, it is still very nice to be able answer people who ask me what I do that I am a writer. I am one. Unless Simon and Schuster goes down the drain.
People seem to like to stick articles under my nose about how book publishing is on its way out. I saw an interview with JK Rowling this week where she was asked about this question. She said she thought there would always be books, because reading a book is a whole body experience: the feel, the smell, the kinetic interaction with the book. She must be right - don't we all have books on our shelves that even the sight of can bring back a whole interlude in our lives. Take that book off the shelf and carress it, smell it, see the worn pages we went back to, and in a time-warp blitz, we are back there. A collection of Emily Bronte's poems called, "A Peculiar Music," given to me by my father when I was eighteen, does that for me. I took it to Germany for six months after I left high school, and opening it now takes me right back to pretzels with inch-thick butter and Kaffee and Kuchen at three o'clock in the afternoon. It makes me feel again how it was to be fumbling around in a foreign language and how my loneliness and hers mingled during that time and gave me something to cling to. Scrolling through a Kindle edition, is never going to be the same. I haven't even tried it, but I can imagine.
I am hoping that soon I will be able to post a chapter of "Veil of Time," on my website. So go there when you can, www.clairemcdougall.com and one day before too long you might be surprised.
Through this whole process of publishing my book, I am slowly gleaning what the different steps are all about. Until now the editing I have been doing with Abby my editor has been "content editing" in that through the last few rounds we have been focusing more on the story and how it progresses. With the last edit, we moved to "line editing," which is, as it suggests, going through the manuscript line by line to see where it can run more smoothly. I turned that line-edit in at the beginning of the week, and my editor told me the next stage would be to move the manuscript on to "Production" (a different department) for copy-editing. I had to look this one up, but a copy editor does not concern themselves with re-writing, just with clarity and flow. Once in "production," the manuscript is going to be changed into what it will look like in the hands of the reader, e.g. how many words per page, where the page/paragraphs will break. They are dealing with the visual image, not the story anymore. Abby says the copy-editing will take about a month.
When I turned in the line-edit, I also forwarded my acknowledgement page and my dedication page, which Abby says will make the production team happy to have so early. Now I'm worried I should have held back and made sure I had included everyone in my acknowledgements. What if someone helps me in the meantime? As far as dedication goes, I made it go to my father who died when I was in my twenties and who was the ground I walked on. I have other novels that would be more appropriate to put his name to, but I figure I had better do it right away with this first (to be published) novel, just in case I never get another chance.
I was having thoughts this week about a sequel to "Veil of Time," called "Druid Hill," but I won't tell anyone about that.... I have only written two pages, and it may never happen, but if it were to come easily, it would give me something play with while I wait the torturous wait of an author-in-the-wings. Despite the torture, it is still very nice to be able answer people who ask me what I do that I am a writer. I am one. Unless Simon and Schuster goes down the drain.
People seem to like to stick articles under my nose about how book publishing is on its way out. I saw an interview with JK Rowling this week where she was asked about this question. She said she thought there would always be books, because reading a book is a whole body experience: the feel, the smell, the kinetic interaction with the book. She must be right - don't we all have books on our shelves that even the sight of can bring back a whole interlude in our lives. Take that book off the shelf and carress it, smell it, see the worn pages we went back to, and in a time-warp blitz, we are back there. A collection of Emily Bronte's poems called, "A Peculiar Music," given to me by my father when I was eighteen, does that for me. I took it to Germany for six months after I left high school, and opening it now takes me right back to pretzels with inch-thick butter and Kaffee and Kuchen at three o'clock in the afternoon. It makes me feel again how it was to be fumbling around in a foreign language and how my loneliness and hers mingled during that time and gave me something to cling to. Scrolling through a Kindle edition, is never going to be the same. I haven't even tried it, but I can imagine.
I am hoping that soon I will be able to post a chapter of "Veil of Time," on my website. So go there when you can, www.clairemcdougall.com and one day before too long you might be surprised.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Hobos and Letter Boxes
21st September 2012
Leonard Cohen became an inductee into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame recently because his lyrics verge on poetry. In fact, he is the one songwriter that you can find among the pages of the Norton Anthology of Poetry:
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.
It sounds as if it comes from a much earlier era than own. It paints a mood simply and doesn't engage us in any intellectual acrobatics. Lyrics can't do that - the music keeps them from it, because on the spectrum from intellect to emotion, music is as far from intellect as you can go and still end up with any kind of form. At some point in the past, about the time poets started wearing dufflecoats and smoking pipes, intellect made inroads into all the arts and for a while has been dallying there. In the meantime, the visual arts have been making a curcuitous route back to a kind of representationalism, and poetry has gone uderground into song.
Leonard Cohen is a good example, but there are others: "Is a jewel just a pebble that found a way to shine? Is a hero's blood more righteous than a hobo's sip of wine?" Joe Henry there. "Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes, they call me on and on across the universe. Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box. They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe." Lennon. There are more, of course. Poetry is the nebulous art of capturing mood and thundering it into the soul of the reader. It almost entirely misses the intellect, as someone once said. It's a rape of sorts, but one that you feel better for.
This week, in a haze of insomniac semi-consciousness, I tackled the line-edit of my novel "Veil of Time," (I keep hoping to find that title tripping off my tongue, but it hasn't yet.) I should line-edit the title: This would pack more punch if it were simply called Dunadd. I don't like the commercial feel of "Veil of Time," though, as my author friend Scott Lasser said to me, "I would trade commercial success over respect any day." So maybe I'll live with a commercial title. Anyway, the line-edit consists of a lot of replacing my English spelling with its American equivalent, a few suggestions as to how to make a sentence run more smoothly; a few small changes to a few scenes were also asked for. I have begun to panic about this being my last run-through, because if I get things chronologically out of sequence at this point, or if my foray into other languages has gone badly wrong, that's the way it will stay, unless the proof reader picks up on it down the line. Still, it's a small panic. As my friend Gail says, it's a high class problem.
Leonard Cohen became an inductee into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame recently because his lyrics verge on poetry. In fact, he is the one songwriter that you can find among the pages of the Norton Anthology of Poetry:
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.
It sounds as if it comes from a much earlier era than own. It paints a mood simply and doesn't engage us in any intellectual acrobatics. Lyrics can't do that - the music keeps them from it, because on the spectrum from intellect to emotion, music is as far from intellect as you can go and still end up with any kind of form. At some point in the past, about the time poets started wearing dufflecoats and smoking pipes, intellect made inroads into all the arts and for a while has been dallying there. In the meantime, the visual arts have been making a curcuitous route back to a kind of representationalism, and poetry has gone uderground into song.
Leonard Cohen is a good example, but there are others: "Is a jewel just a pebble that found a way to shine? Is a hero's blood more righteous than a hobo's sip of wine?" Joe Henry there. "Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes, they call me on and on across the universe. Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box. They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe." Lennon. There are more, of course. Poetry is the nebulous art of capturing mood and thundering it into the soul of the reader. It almost entirely misses the intellect, as someone once said. It's a rape of sorts, but one that you feel better for.
This week, in a haze of insomniac semi-consciousness, I tackled the line-edit of my novel "Veil of Time," (I keep hoping to find that title tripping off my tongue, but it hasn't yet.) I should line-edit the title: This would pack more punch if it were simply called Dunadd. I don't like the commercial feel of "Veil of Time," though, as my author friend Scott Lasser said to me, "I would trade commercial success over respect any day." So maybe I'll live with a commercial title. Anyway, the line-edit consists of a lot of replacing my English spelling with its American equivalent, a few suggestions as to how to make a sentence run more smoothly; a few small changes to a few scenes were also asked for. I have begun to panic about this being my last run-through, because if I get things chronologically out of sequence at this point, or if my foray into other languages has gone badly wrong, that's the way it will stay, unless the proof reader picks up on it down the line. Still, it's a small panic. As my friend Gail says, it's a high class problem.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Hen sure
14th Sept. 2012
Yeah, at long last, the postman (or at least the e-mail-man) brought my editor's response to my re-write sumitted at the end of June! And, glory be, we're onto "line editing," although she still wants me to beef up the start of the romance between my main characters a bit. No big scenes, just a "scenet," she says. Line editing, as far as I can gather, means fixing any grammatical errors, any sentences that don't quite read well. But you do it line by line, small change by small change. No big changes needed at this point, which makes my day all of a sudden very shiny indeed. I wasn't happy to find out that publication is scheduled for September of next year, but that is what it is. No point in fighting it. Abby, my editor, says that once I get the manuscript back to her, they can send it out for "blurbs," meaning, I suppose, send it out for people to read and give splendid (we hope) reviews. All systems go again makes me happy, makes me want to pull out the throttle and getting speeding down the tracks.
But I don't want to leave this week's blog without a mention of a special person who had a birthday this week. He was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire on September 11th, 1885, which I remind people of, just to show them that something good happened on this date once upon a time. He was, of course, Mr. David Herbert Lawrence, author and iconoclast of his day. In my youth, I couldn't get enough of his novels. Later I became engrossed in his essays and poems. "Lady Chatterly," is the best of his novels, though the re-write of that book published later under the title "John Thomas and Lady Jane," was better, and remains my favourite to this day. He gave women's liberation its best fundamental tenet, because, to use one of his distinctions, he understood that being "hen sure" was different than being "cock sure." If he were alive today, I think old D.H. might wonder if the women's movement hasn't confused these two things. As one woman once commented, " I don't support the women's movement, because I wouldn't want any man to think he was my equal." During his lifetime, Lawrence was embroiled in all kinds of law suits and arrests for boldly going where no novelist had gone before - into the realm of women's sexuality. Even though he had to self-puublish much of what he wrote, even though his books and paintings were banned and burned, he never wavered from what he believed and what he felt must be spoken. This is a great lesson for anyone in any walk of life, and one we brush past cockily at our peril. Rest in Peace, D.H. - you didn't get much in your lifetime.
Yeah, at long last, the postman (or at least the e-mail-man) brought my editor's response to my re-write sumitted at the end of June! And, glory be, we're onto "line editing," although she still wants me to beef up the start of the romance between my main characters a bit. No big scenes, just a "scenet," she says. Line editing, as far as I can gather, means fixing any grammatical errors, any sentences that don't quite read well. But you do it line by line, small change by small change. No big changes needed at this point, which makes my day all of a sudden very shiny indeed. I wasn't happy to find out that publication is scheduled for September of next year, but that is what it is. No point in fighting it. Abby, my editor, says that once I get the manuscript back to her, they can send it out for "blurbs," meaning, I suppose, send it out for people to read and give splendid (we hope) reviews. All systems go again makes me happy, makes me want to pull out the throttle and getting speeding down the tracks.
But I don't want to leave this week's blog without a mention of a special person who had a birthday this week. He was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire on September 11th, 1885, which I remind people of, just to show them that something good happened on this date once upon a time. He was, of course, Mr. David Herbert Lawrence, author and iconoclast of his day. In my youth, I couldn't get enough of his novels. Later I became engrossed in his essays and poems. "Lady Chatterly," is the best of his novels, though the re-write of that book published later under the title "John Thomas and Lady Jane," was better, and remains my favourite to this day. He gave women's liberation its best fundamental tenet, because, to use one of his distinctions, he understood that being "hen sure" was different than being "cock sure." If he were alive today, I think old D.H. might wonder if the women's movement hasn't confused these two things. As one woman once commented, " I don't support the women's movement, because I wouldn't want any man to think he was my equal." During his lifetime, Lawrence was embroiled in all kinds of law suits and arrests for boldly going where no novelist had gone before - into the realm of women's sexuality. Even though he had to self-puublish much of what he wrote, even though his books and paintings were banned and burned, he never wavered from what he believed and what he felt must be spoken. This is a great lesson for anyone in any walk of life, and one we brush past cockily at our peril. Rest in Peace, D.H. - you didn't get much in your lifetime.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Clocks
September 7th, 2012
I was watching a Youtube interview with Pat Conroy, under which someone had commented, "I don't know about The Prince of Tides, more like The Prince of Comb-over." His hair-do does leave something to be desired, it is true, but his writing does not. One critic said about "Prince of Tides," that "Conroy has made the language sing and bleed at the same time." What author could hope for a better critique than that?
So, I am still mystified as to why his books have cheesy covers and are relegated to the book shop back rooms. I thought a lot about this while I was reading "The Prince of Tides," trying to locate the moments when he tripped up, almost wanting to find a reason why he just didn't make the mark. If his prose were pedestrian, I could understand it. Maybe if his dialogue were just awful. But his prose is wonderful, rich and full of humour. He describes his sister in terms of "the weightless harmonics of her madness." In a dying woman's house, "I could hear great clocks spooning out moments with metallic strokes, their long blades cutting through the silks of time. All the clocks struck nine in semi-darkness, and the sombre tolling of every clock in every room of the house disowned the hour in the dumbstruck language of bells. I wondered if it was just in the house of the dying that you became so acutely aware of the presence of clocks." And those kinds of sentences are not few and far between in Conroy. You're constantly stopping to go back and savour the last sentence. So, that's good writing. If I could fault him, it's on plot. It's a little "smack you between the eyes." A little. If I were pushed, I might say his drama slips sometimes into melodrama. But only if I were pushed. Also, in this book, the plot feels a little lobsided. There's a hell of a lot of flashback, to the extent that you feel like dragging the writer back to the present sometimes and asking him to get on with the story, which in this case is a love story. I wanted more of that to anchor those trips to the past. But I can't help thinking that was probably the fault of the editing. When Conroy turned "The Prince of Tides" in to his editor, it was twice as long, which would have been too long, but I think in the snipping and pasting the story probably lost a bit of balance. That said, it is still a delicious piece of writing, the kind of book you don't really want to end.
What I really would like to come to an end is the waiting for my turn on the runway. I was told a few weeks ago that take-off time would be after Labor Day weekend, but, alas, no word has slipped through into my e-mail box, which I compulsively check. I fret and worry that my publication date will be set back, and it is already a lifetime away. What if, in the meantime, the world makes a 2012 polar shift, and instead of living in the snowy mountains I find myself in a tropical forest, batting off tsetse flies instead of huddling under blankets at my computer?
I distract myself by working on the screenplay of the novel and have that nearly ready for some shaker or taker, preferably buyer. Preferably some director who values the role of the writer. Diana Gabaldon still hasn't released her film rights for "Outlander," because, so I hear, she can't think of an actor who would fit the part of her hero. More important to me would be finding a company who would work with me and not turn my opus into a piece of schlock. I am standing in the hallway, listening to sombre clocks spooning out moments.
I was watching a Youtube interview with Pat Conroy, under which someone had commented, "I don't know about The Prince of Tides, more like The Prince of Comb-over." His hair-do does leave something to be desired, it is true, but his writing does not. One critic said about "Prince of Tides," that "Conroy has made the language sing and bleed at the same time." What author could hope for a better critique than that?
So, I am still mystified as to why his books have cheesy covers and are relegated to the book shop back rooms. I thought a lot about this while I was reading "The Prince of Tides," trying to locate the moments when he tripped up, almost wanting to find a reason why he just didn't make the mark. If his prose were pedestrian, I could understand it. Maybe if his dialogue were just awful. But his prose is wonderful, rich and full of humour. He describes his sister in terms of "the weightless harmonics of her madness." In a dying woman's house, "I could hear great clocks spooning out moments with metallic strokes, their long blades cutting through the silks of time. All the clocks struck nine in semi-darkness, and the sombre tolling of every clock in every room of the house disowned the hour in the dumbstruck language of bells. I wondered if it was just in the house of the dying that you became so acutely aware of the presence of clocks." And those kinds of sentences are not few and far between in Conroy. You're constantly stopping to go back and savour the last sentence. So, that's good writing. If I could fault him, it's on plot. It's a little "smack you between the eyes." A little. If I were pushed, I might say his drama slips sometimes into melodrama. But only if I were pushed. Also, in this book, the plot feels a little lobsided. There's a hell of a lot of flashback, to the extent that you feel like dragging the writer back to the present sometimes and asking him to get on with the story, which in this case is a love story. I wanted more of that to anchor those trips to the past. But I can't help thinking that was probably the fault of the editing. When Conroy turned "The Prince of Tides" in to his editor, it was twice as long, which would have been too long, but I think in the snipping and pasting the story probably lost a bit of balance. That said, it is still a delicious piece of writing, the kind of book you don't really want to end.
What I really would like to come to an end is the waiting for my turn on the runway. I was told a few weeks ago that take-off time would be after Labor Day weekend, but, alas, no word has slipped through into my e-mail box, which I compulsively check. I fret and worry that my publication date will be set back, and it is already a lifetime away. What if, in the meantime, the world makes a 2012 polar shift, and instead of living in the snowy mountains I find myself in a tropical forest, batting off tsetse flies instead of huddling under blankets at my computer?
I distract myself by working on the screenplay of the novel and have that nearly ready for some shaker or taker, preferably buyer. Preferably some director who values the role of the writer. Diana Gabaldon still hasn't released her film rights for "Outlander," because, so I hear, she can't think of an actor who would fit the part of her hero. More important to me would be finding a company who would work with me and not turn my opus into a piece of schlock. I am standing in the hallway, listening to sombre clocks spooning out moments.
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