Words Unlimited

Anne Tyler on How to Start a Novel

Much on Twitter this last week about the excellent interview with novelist Anne Tyler at the Oxford Literary Festival. I picked up this audio snippet on how she starts a novel. Forget waiting for inspiration ... Listen, here. 

Fascinating. So, out with the notebooks, in with index cards to be kept in a box. Great idea. So often I can't remember in which notebook I wrote that fascinating overheard.

Anne Tyler is also the Winner of the 2012 Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.

Off to buy the new book, The Beginner's Goodbye, perfect Easter weekend reading.

Happy Birthday Dickens

Two-hundred and still very much alive through the energy of his writing.  Claire Tomalin's wonderful biography reveals the many facets of the man behind the books. If you haven't read it yet, I'd say it's a must for any writer.

This video will give you a taster - Dickens walking to sort out his ideas, Dickens performing, acting, being his characters.

More on bicentenary events, here.

 

 

Finish That Book!

Posting this as a note-to-self but I'm sure it's going to strike a chord for others. I'm definitely at the 'muddle in the middle' stage with current WIP so was pleased to come across this on YouTube. Worth saving. I love this straightforward, uncomplicated wisdom.

 

 

One Thing At A Time - The Bigger Picture

It's always interesting to reflect on writing by listening in to a practitioner in another art form discuss their creative process. Martin Gayford's interviews with David Hockney are full of gems.

For those days when the draft of the next chapter of your novel looks rather too sketchy, consider what Hockney does when working on a large, complex picture.  Think of your draft in terms of the painter’s charcoal sketch. The outlines might be there but what about the layers of colour, the detail of the brushstrokes?

David Hockney talks about painting from memory. In his case, the Yorkshire landscape. He’s observed and sketched it but back in the studio is working on a vast painting from memory.  He isolates a detail:

‘You decide: I shall go and look at this aspect this morning. If you don’t have a question in mind, there’s far too much to look at … Depending on what you decide, that’s what you see – and you ignore a lot of other things … How do you really see the clouds reflected in the water?’

In your sketchy draft what interests you most? What is your chapter's equivalent of clouds reflected in water? Ask a question. Look closer at the details. Start to build up the layers of colour.

More on the Gayford/Hockney book, here.

 

Words Unlimited in 2012

Now that my new novel project is humming along I’ll be posting regularly again – Quotes, literary events, Book of The Month and Author Interviews. Coming shortly there’s an interview with Sara Grant, graduate of the MA in Creative & Life Writing, who publishes Dark Parties, her first novel for young adults next week.

I’m starting a couple of new categories - Jottings from My Notebook and Pictures from my Phone.

In the annual must-clear-the-shelves-before-I-can-write moment, I’ve been flicking through my many notebooks.  It’s great to find stuff that surprises me. Similarly, uploading photos from my phone, I’ve found images that could trigger poems or stories. Putting some of the most potent – for me – up here means I can flick through them all in one place. I hope some might work for you too or inspire you to make more of your own notebooks and gatherings.

Happy New Year!

On getting back into writing after the festive season ...

I’ve been absent from Words Unlimited these last few months for the best of reasons - I'm writing a new novel and it’s taken me over. It seems to be writing me!

A research trip in November took me away from my desk with a chance to gather information about my main character's location, and much else. Back from the trip I let it all sit in a heap on the shelf. Trawling through it, as I get back to writing this first week of the New Year, I find I’m buzzing with new scenes and ways to develop my character.

It reminds me, yet again, [why is it that so much of writing is about re-inventing the wheel?] that research always leads somewhere. If you’re wondering how to get back to a project after the holidays is it because you need to do some research?

The thing to remember is that you’re not researching as if for a PhD, you need only to find nuggets that trigger the imagination and help you to grow authentic scenes. Instead of sitting there staring at a blank screen why not visit your location – actually or virtually [Googlemaps/Earth?].

Is there one tiny detail you didn’t see before? How might your character respond to that?

On my trip, I was able to photocopy a detailed street map from the Thirties which now means I have an accurate sense of my main character's world - the streets I need for my book were demolished in the 1960s.

This old school photo was a gem of a find. It helps re-build a crucial six months in my character’s past. I couldn’t copy it but I did photograph it in sections on my mobile phone –  the phone camera is fast becoming a ‘notebook’ for me. It's from 1930. Looking at it today, what interests me is the teacher, second from left, with her asymmetrical jacket and those square buttons. Also, the girl in the centre of the photo – she is the only one in about 500 girls with ringlets – I’d swear her hair is red … with just these few details I’m eager to get them into my story, to see these details through the eyes of my character.

In the fridge or on a cloud?

Where do you store your manuscript for safe keeping?

I think it was Alan Bennett who once said that when he went on holiday he would put his work-in-progress in the fridge for safe keeping. If the house burned down surely this metal cabinent would keep his manuscript unsinged?

Sounds to me as if the fridge option was from the days of the typewriter. Imagine - only one copy of your work-in-progress!

Now we're all digital, of course we all back up - daily? weekly? monthly? We have copies on memory sticks, external hard-drives, the CD you burned and sent to your mother.

Last week my computer was on the blink [best not to ask, something to do with RAM] so I started to back up frantically. I was appalled to see that I hadn't done a back-up to my external hard-drive for nearly a month.

On the same day I was willing my computer to survive until the man-who-comes-to-fix-it could get here I discovered Dropbox.

Dropbox is a virtual storage space located on a so-called 'cloud' ie it's somewhere in the ether, not subject to theft or fire [I don't think]. 

I immediately signed up. You get 2GB free - more than enough to store several novels worth of manuscripts, notes, work-in-progress. If you need more GB you pay a modest fee.

I dropped everything in my new Dropbox folder so that, had my computer crashed completely, I could have gone to any other computer - in the library, begged my son to take pity - signed onto my Dropbox account through the interent and accessed all my files. I could work on them and it would save all the changes in Dropbox and on my computer hard-drive.

Each time I work on a file in Dropbox it's always backing up as I go!

I've no idea what happens if the cloud bursts - don't ask!

Keep a hard copy in the fridge? Just in case ... Click here to find out more.

 

Helen Dunmore - A Fiction Masterclass

A novel gets written by accumulating thousands of tiny incements to build a scene and then another scene and so on ... shaping and revising ... seeing more with each draft. Perhaps not seeing the story in any logical order intially, simply following what tugs, what seems to want to get written

The best words come when you don't so much think of the words but instead write what you see on the 'film' that runs in your mind's eye. 

'Fiction involves so many thousands of subtle and delicate exchanges between reader and writer,' says Helen Dunmore in her Guardian Book Club article on the writing of The Seige.

Dunmore's piece takes you inside that process of writing the images that flicker in the mind - a fiction masterclass. Read it, here.

Atwood on the Terror of Writing

I’m at the stage with my fourth novel where I need to take stock. I need to read through what I've produced so far – where is this going? 

It’s a scary moment. What if it doesn’t add up?

Keeping going as a writer seems to have as much to do with managing the doubts as creating the stories.

Does being a global success over four decades help in the doubt department? Hear what Margaret Atwood says about that, and look what she does with the books [yes, plural] she abandons! 

You'll need to paste this into your bowser, it won't let me upload as a live link. http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/9503

 

 

Quote of The Week No 1

"Motivation follows action, not the other way round"

I found this in one of those what's-the-point-of-New-Year-Resolutions articles.

It's so true. And particularly in relation to writing.

After a break, it can be hard to get back into a novel you last looked at in December, or to find those notes you scribbled just before the snow came down - the notes that you were going to turn into a new short story. 

You've been thinking about it. You will get round to it soon ...  A part of your brain is waiting for the ideal day, the ideal conditions - a clear day with nothing else to do but write. It isn't going to happen.

What small action could you take to motivate you to start that project? The more resistance you have, the smaller the step ... Read through the last draft of Chapter 11 and jot down some notes for chapter 12? Too daunting? Why not at least get out the folder and put it on your desk?

Whatever you decide, make sure it involves action.

If you'd like to read the full article by Oliver Burkeman, from which I plucked the quote, it's here.