On Monday, I got a piece of shirt cardboard, glossy white on both sides, and divided it into twenty squares using the spine of a hardback book as a straight edge. Each square represents a chapter in my novel.
I learned this particular technique from a book called How to write and sell a synopsis by Stella Whitelaw. You write in each square what you want in each chapter. So it could read something like this :
Chapter Seven : Letter arrives-shock-Tina rings her sisters-Arguments-Car journey to Knightsbridge (describe streets)-Tina finds hotel(describe)-Brian is sitting in the lobby.
Ever since I read Stella Whitelaw's book, I've been itching to try. In fact, I had three sheets of shirt cardboard ready and waiting. You can create your own codes (I'm using A/D for Another Day), and you can even use different coloured felt-tips for different things, i.e.; yellow = describe, blue = establish mood, etc. In fact, it was probably the idea of using different colours which appealed to me in the first place.
This chapter breakdown wasn't for my Twelfth Night project. I haven't given up on that idea ; but day after day, I kept thinking that the Twelfth Night project simply wasn't what I wanted to write. Not yet, anyway. It didn't feel ready. This depressed me at the time. The Twelfth Night project was at least an idea. Without an idea, I'd be starting from scratch. But in the end, I put it aside.
Instead, I began writing practice again, filling up an A5 spiral notebook with any old junk I could think of. I'd write a subject at the top of the page, but wouldn't necessarily stick to it. I've been doing writing practice on and off ever since I read about it in Natalie Goldberg's Writing down the bones. It becomes almost meditation. You get to the point where your unconscious mind takes over. That's where all the goodies are.
And I filled a whole notebook. From beginning to end. Normally, I'd leave at least a few pages blank, but this time I made it to the end. What I wrote may or may not become seeds for future projects. The main thing for me, this time, was to let my mind go blank.
I felt like I was in the wilderness (although one of the benefits of writing practice was that I did feel like I was storytelling). But then I began daydreaming about some previous ideas I'd already had. One of them was the Twelfth Night project. Another one was about an unemployed school-leaver. So I looked again at the latter.
I often get cold feet when I begin a project. With this one, I'd had an idea, jotted down a few notes about it, got fed up with planning, started writing the actual draft, got scared that I hadn't planned it enough and then abandoned it. But clearly the passion hadn't gone. I must have still cared about it. (This will probably happen with my Twelfth Night project, too). So I began jotting down more notes. And so far, I've been sailing.
I wasn't really ready for the shirt cardboard. I began filling in the squares. The prologue and chapter one were easy enough, because I'd actually written those. But chapter two was sketchier, and I definitely wasn't ready for chapter three. Still, the cardboard is ready to fill in as soon as I feel I know the story.
I made two attempts at the chapter breakdown, with two pieces of shirt cardboard. The first one I divided into thirty squares, for thirty chapters. But after a while, I began wondering whether I had enough story for that. I'm making it a rule of thumb that the unemployed hero should argue with, or lie to somebody in each chapter. This isn't going to be a thriller, the hero's life isn't in jeopardy, so I cannot fill the chapters with physical hazards. So there has to be human drama instead - characters trying to change other characters' minds.
I didn't have thirty arguments/lies. And then it occurred to me that perhaps this isn't going to be a full-length novel anyway, but a thinner teenage novel. Hence the second piece of shirt cardboard, divided into twenty squares.
If you're still reading this, if I haven't lost you with all this talk of shirt cardboard and abandoned projects, all I can say is : I feel happy. I feel like I'm getting somewhere. I get up in the mornings knowing what I have to do to move the project along, and I can't wait. I just hope the feeling lasts, at least until I'm writing the actual text again. Perhaps if I bought some coloured felt-tips...
Thursday 15 April 2010
Tuesday 6 April 2010
Word detox
Last week was meant to be my week of non-reading, something Julia Cameron recommends in her book The Artists' Way. She recommends you take them about once a month, although of late I've been taking them for a couple of weeks in the year.
For a whole week, you're meant to do without the written word, plus television, radio, the cinema and the theatre. You don't even read a newspaper. You can write, you can have long chats, you can listen to instrumental music, you can do anything providing it doesn't involve literature or rehearsed speech.
It sounds severe, but I've found it helpful over the years for thinking, daydreaming, plotting through a project or even coming up with a brand new idea. Unfortunately, I can't seem to do it as completely as Julia Cameron. For a start, my day job involves reading. Secondly, my wife is addicted to three soap operas and the news. One of the drawbacks of Julia Cameron's books, and Natalie Goldberg's too, excellent though they are, is that they seem to be written for people who live on their own. If you want to keep any relationship going then having a notebook and flashlight at the side of your bed, so that you can jot down ideas in the middle of the night, is problematic. I would need to get out of bed and go into the living room, to avoid a kick in the shins.
Then there's the Artist's Date. Once a week, Julia Cameron tells you, you take off by yourself to do something you want to do. I only seem to be able to manage these after rows, by which time the attraction for them has severely waned.
It's hard for me to resist putting on a DVD when I've got the television to myself, which usually means the 15 minutes or so at bedtimes whilst I wait for the bathroom. I've had to watch whole films in 10 or 15 minute chunks because I so seldom get the set to myself.
Last week, though, I was good, and resisted another chunk of Van Helsing. I've been itching to watch certain programmes, and it's been driving me mad. I discovered that my favourite cop show, The Sweeney, is can be viewed via computer. Ten episodes from 1974 which I can barely remember, all waiting. But because I'd committed myself to this wordless week, I had to stick with it.
And so I played instrumentals as I made and ate my breakfasts. Autobahn by Kraftwerk (I suppose, strictly speaking, there are words in that, but sinced they are in German, which I can't speak, they don't count) . On the trains home, via an ancient CD Player, some new agey thing ith lots of whale cries in the background.
I always feel self conscious listening to the CD player. For one thing, everybody around me is listening to IPods or whatever they are, and I feel like I'm carrying around a wind-up gramophone. But also because you are, in effect, making yourself voluntarily deaf. Or at least you feel caught between two worlds - one a mundane, crowded, hot, sweaty train compartment and the other a celestial paradise where harps plink away. I've nodded off a few times when I've been able to get a seat.
But it's beginning to pay off dividends. Ideas are coming to me. I'm getting to work on time, because I'm not waiting to the very end of that sitcom episode before I get up and get ready (I even watch the end credits). And strangely enough, I'm beginning to feel better, more energetic. I should do this more often.
For a whole week, you're meant to do without the written word, plus television, radio, the cinema and the theatre. You don't even read a newspaper. You can write, you can have long chats, you can listen to instrumental music, you can do anything providing it doesn't involve literature or rehearsed speech.
It sounds severe, but I've found it helpful over the years for thinking, daydreaming, plotting through a project or even coming up with a brand new idea. Unfortunately, I can't seem to do it as completely as Julia Cameron. For a start, my day job involves reading. Secondly, my wife is addicted to three soap operas and the news. One of the drawbacks of Julia Cameron's books, and Natalie Goldberg's too, excellent though they are, is that they seem to be written for people who live on their own. If you want to keep any relationship going then having a notebook and flashlight at the side of your bed, so that you can jot down ideas in the middle of the night, is problematic. I would need to get out of bed and go into the living room, to avoid a kick in the shins.
Then there's the Artist's Date. Once a week, Julia Cameron tells you, you take off by yourself to do something you want to do. I only seem to be able to manage these after rows, by which time the attraction for them has severely waned.
It's hard for me to resist putting on a DVD when I've got the television to myself, which usually means the 15 minutes or so at bedtimes whilst I wait for the bathroom. I've had to watch whole films in 10 or 15 minute chunks because I so seldom get the set to myself.
Last week, though, I was good, and resisted another chunk of Van Helsing. I've been itching to watch certain programmes, and it's been driving me mad. I discovered that my favourite cop show, The Sweeney, is can be viewed via computer. Ten episodes from 1974 which I can barely remember, all waiting. But because I'd committed myself to this wordless week, I had to stick with it.
And so I played instrumentals as I made and ate my breakfasts. Autobahn by Kraftwerk (I suppose, strictly speaking, there are words in that, but sinced they are in German, which I can't speak, they don't count) . On the trains home, via an ancient CD Player, some new agey thing ith lots of whale cries in the background.
I always feel self conscious listening to the CD player. For one thing, everybody around me is listening to IPods or whatever they are, and I feel like I'm carrying around a wind-up gramophone. But also because you are, in effect, making yourself voluntarily deaf. Or at least you feel caught between two worlds - one a mundane, crowded, hot, sweaty train compartment and the other a celestial paradise where harps plink away. I've nodded off a few times when I've been able to get a seat.
But it's beginning to pay off dividends. Ideas are coming to me. I'm getting to work on time, because I'm not waiting to the very end of that sitcom episode before I get up and get ready (I even watch the end credits). And strangely enough, I'm beginning to feel better, more energetic. I should do this more often.
Sunday 14 March 2010
Read-through
Last Monday, my Writers' Group read the first draft of my stage play, The Eggs. It was nerve-wracking. I'd been trying to type up my handwritten first draft ever since I'd asked them to read it, three weeks earlier. I'm still not au fait with memory sticks or word processors.
I've still got an electric typewriter which my wife bought me, and which she couldn't really afford at the time. It was a touching gesture of faith in my abilities, and I've always felt guilty that I never used it that much. I was going through a prolonged writers' block, and simply didn't have anything to type. And now that I had something, I discovered that they no longer manufacture the ribbons for it.
I'd hald conceived this stage play as a way of winding up ny writers' group. They are a dry, dispassionate lot, mostly men, mostly into science fiction, mostly of a middle class outlook, and mostly atheist. They seem so bloodless and mechanical at times that I want to slap them ; but I must admit, they give good, fair advice on what is read to them.
But I wanted, with this play, to wake them up. Present them, in my two characters (Sue and Jackie) the world of two working-class women. I thought of it as an angry, Barrie Keeffe-type play, in the same vein as Gem or Gotcha. Instead, the two women reading the parts decided to send it up. Two working class women, after all, must be comic.
I couldn't stop my feet twitching under my chair as they read their lines. The bad lines became glaringly obvious, and I cringed at them. But there were times when it seemed to be working, when the two readers realized that I had been attempting real characters rather than stereotypes.
I felt at first that they were laughing at these women because, in the play, they had mourned Lady Diana Spencer. The group was laughing at them, and by extension laughing at me because I cared about them. I realized the play's shortcomings all too clearly.
Yet when they came to the end (or, rather, got to the bit where I'd run out of time to type any more) they seemed sympathetic. Could it be that the message of the play had actually got through?
I am determined to write a second draft. Determined. Because I don't want this play to die. I want it to be performed. I feel jubilant as I write this. In a way, I've fulfilled what this blog set out to do : to see me through to the end of a project. So now I'm moving the goalposts. My mission now is to work with this first draft, improve it, and see it brought to life on stage.
I've still got an electric typewriter which my wife bought me, and which she couldn't really afford at the time. It was a touching gesture of faith in my abilities, and I've always felt guilty that I never used it that much. I was going through a prolonged writers' block, and simply didn't have anything to type. And now that I had something, I discovered that they no longer manufacture the ribbons for it.
I'd hald conceived this stage play as a way of winding up ny writers' group. They are a dry, dispassionate lot, mostly men, mostly into science fiction, mostly of a middle class outlook, and mostly atheist. They seem so bloodless and mechanical at times that I want to slap them ; but I must admit, they give good, fair advice on what is read to them.
But I wanted, with this play, to wake them up. Present them, in my two characters (Sue and Jackie) the world of two working-class women. I thought of it as an angry, Barrie Keeffe-type play, in the same vein as Gem or Gotcha. Instead, the two women reading the parts decided to send it up. Two working class women, after all, must be comic.
I couldn't stop my feet twitching under my chair as they read their lines. The bad lines became glaringly obvious, and I cringed at them. But there were times when it seemed to be working, when the two readers realized that I had been attempting real characters rather than stereotypes.
I felt at first that they were laughing at these women because, in the play, they had mourned Lady Diana Spencer. The group was laughing at them, and by extension laughing at me because I cared about them. I realized the play's shortcomings all too clearly.
Yet when they came to the end (or, rather, got to the bit where I'd run out of time to type any more) they seemed sympathetic. Could it be that the message of the play had actually got through?
I am determined to write a second draft. Determined. Because I don't want this play to die. I want it to be performed. I feel jubilant as I write this. In a way, I've fulfilled what this blog set out to do : to see me through to the end of a project. So now I'm moving the goalposts. My mission now is to work with this first draft, improve it, and see it brought to life on stage.
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Sick Note
Since my last post, I have done virtually no work on anything. Not this new Twelfth Night project, not my stage play, not writing practice, not even morning pages. I was off work for three days with a cold. You would think that, with all the free time, I could spare an hour here or there. But no. It was as much as I could do to put on a couple of James Bond films, and I even nodded off during those.
I haven't been reading, either. There's a stack of books on my bedside cabinet, but whenever I've picked one up I just haven't had the energy to read it.
This scared me. It was only a bit of a cold, wasn't it? And yet I had no energy to do anything, even enjoy myself.
On my last day at work, I felt bad. It was baking hot inside the building - the radiators were on full blast, nobody would open a window even a crack - but freezing outdoors. There were other problems, too, things which made me grit my teeth, clench my fists, moments of intense stupidity, when you feel like you're the last sane person on the planet. It was all I could do to stay at my post until I'd finished my shift, and even then one of my colleagues, God bless him, let me go early. The trains home were packed and stifling. I kept trying to read Feel the fear and do it anyway, but couldn't concentrate. I felt like kissing the ground when I got home to my wife.
I calmed down, bathed, changed. My wife cooked me a lovely meal and then later we watched Naked Gun 33 and a third. The Naked Gun films are sort of milestones for us. Not only do we find them hysterically funny ( even when we know which jokes are coming up ) but we're sentimentally attached to them. We saw the first Naked Gun film when we were courting, and we've seen it so often since then that I even know some of the dialogue off by heart.
My wife is more cultured than I am. She has passions for Tudor history and the paintings of Van Gogh. And yet the films we choose to see to remind us of oour early days include The Untouchables, the Lethal Weapon series and Robin Hood : Prince Of Thieves.
Even as I sat there with a blanket wrapped around me, laughing at lines such as : "Like a midget at a urinal, I knew I was gonna have to keep on my toes" I knew that I wasn't going in tomorrow.
And so three days passed. Three days when I feel like one of the homesteaders in a western murmuring feverishly by a log fire whilst the town's doctor looks over me and says : "He ain't gonna make it." On Saturday, I went back to work and very nearly walked off again. It was only until one o'clock, so I made myself stay ; but the same chaos was in place, and I dreaded to think what the week ahead was going to bring.
But I got an odd surprise. My boss, who is new, and about whom we have mixed feelings, had left me an email with a Stress Assessment form. He had spotted how anxious I was and had made the connection. I hadn't really thought of this myself - and this after years of Stress Management courses. I felt strangely uplifted by this. I was exhausted at one o'clock, and I coughed all the way home, but something made me feel good. I also nipped into the public library and borrowed two books : the complete works of Shakespeare, and Freda Warrington's unofficial Dracula sequel, Dracula : the undead. I started reading them on the trains home, and found myself enjoying them.
I'm not going to feel guilty about the writing I haven't done. I normally write a little bit each day, and there are days when you just can't force it. Things have got to be bad when I fall asleep during a Bond film, because I love those films.
But reading Twelfth Night on the way home, and then again in bed before I went to sleep, reading for pleasure, rediscovering what fiction is, what it does, I began to feel my mojo coming back.
I haven't been reading, either. There's a stack of books on my bedside cabinet, but whenever I've picked one up I just haven't had the energy to read it.
This scared me. It was only a bit of a cold, wasn't it? And yet I had no energy to do anything, even enjoy myself.
On my last day at work, I felt bad. It was baking hot inside the building - the radiators were on full blast, nobody would open a window even a crack - but freezing outdoors. There were other problems, too, things which made me grit my teeth, clench my fists, moments of intense stupidity, when you feel like you're the last sane person on the planet. It was all I could do to stay at my post until I'd finished my shift, and even then one of my colleagues, God bless him, let me go early. The trains home were packed and stifling. I kept trying to read Feel the fear and do it anyway, but couldn't concentrate. I felt like kissing the ground when I got home to my wife.
I calmed down, bathed, changed. My wife cooked me a lovely meal and then later we watched Naked Gun 33 and a third. The Naked Gun films are sort of milestones for us. Not only do we find them hysterically funny ( even when we know which jokes are coming up ) but we're sentimentally attached to them. We saw the first Naked Gun film when we were courting, and we've seen it so often since then that I even know some of the dialogue off by heart.
My wife is more cultured than I am. She has passions for Tudor history and the paintings of Van Gogh. And yet the films we choose to see to remind us of oour early days include The Untouchables, the Lethal Weapon series and Robin Hood : Prince Of Thieves.
Even as I sat there with a blanket wrapped around me, laughing at lines such as : "Like a midget at a urinal, I knew I was gonna have to keep on my toes" I knew that I wasn't going in tomorrow.
And so three days passed. Three days when I feel like one of the homesteaders in a western murmuring feverishly by a log fire whilst the town's doctor looks over me and says : "He ain't gonna make it." On Saturday, I went back to work and very nearly walked off again. It was only until one o'clock, so I made myself stay ; but the same chaos was in place, and I dreaded to think what the week ahead was going to bring.
But I got an odd surprise. My boss, who is new, and about whom we have mixed feelings, had left me an email with a Stress Assessment form. He had spotted how anxious I was and had made the connection. I hadn't really thought of this myself - and this after years of Stress Management courses. I felt strangely uplifted by this. I was exhausted at one o'clock, and I coughed all the way home, but something made me feel good. I also nipped into the public library and borrowed two books : the complete works of Shakespeare, and Freda Warrington's unofficial Dracula sequel, Dracula : the undead. I started reading them on the trains home, and found myself enjoying them.
I'm not going to feel guilty about the writing I haven't done. I normally write a little bit each day, and there are days when you just can't force it. Things have got to be bad when I fall asleep during a Bond film, because I love those films.
But reading Twelfth Night on the way home, and then again in bed before I went to sleep, reading for pleasure, rediscovering what fiction is, what it does, I began to feel my mojo coming back.
Monday 22 February 2010
Notebooks
Last Tuesday I bought two new A5 notebooks from the stationer's. I always feel a sense of hope when I buy a notebook, and I often begin a new one before I've finished the old one.
The thinner of the two is going to be used for writing practice, as propounded by Natalie Goldberg in Writing down the bones ( http://www.nataliegoldberg.com ). I will write, on the tube to work, about a subject which I've set myself, i.e.; Richmond Park, Alan Brown's mum, etc. And at the end of the session, as the train pulls in to the platform, I will jot down tomorrow's subject on the back page. In time to come, these timed pieces might turn out to be seeds for future projects. But just writing them, losing yourself in the writing, is wonderful. They are not for anyody else to read. You write them as quickly as possible, automatically if you can, without any thought for grammar, spelling, margins, to bypass your inner critic.
The fatter of the two notebooks...is for my new project. Which might lead you to conclude that I've finished the on-act stage play I've been telling you about. I haven't. I've written about nine tenths of it. But I felt bogged down.
I'm telling myself that I've finished the first draft. I've begun to type it up. I've promised my writing group that I will bring something in to read on 8th March. What I'm hoping is that, when I've got some feedback it will embolden me to start a second draft.
Have you ever seen the film Speed ? There's a bomb on a bus which will explode if the bus dips under 30 miles per hour. The authorities divert the bus onto a new, empty motorway, but they discover that there's a gap in the middle of a flyover. Sandra Bullock, who is at the wheel, has no choice but to put her foot down and hope that the bus will clear the gap.
That's how I fee typing up this stage play. As I get closer and closer to the last thing I wrote, I know that there's a piece missing before the curtain line.
I'm telling myself that by typing up the play, I am working on it. But it feels more like stalling.
Meanwhile, I've begun making notes on this brand new project, the one I'm going to get right first time. As you may recall, I got the idea for this story from Twelfth Night ; and I'm thinking of it as The Twelfth Night project until I can think of a proper title.
The premise of the story is this :
Heroine falls in love with a married man whose wife has just thrown him out. Wife discovered that Married Man had had an affair (with a third, unrelated woman who doesn't appear in this story). Married Man is desperate to save his marriage ; so Heroine sets out to help him.
So far, I've been jotting down the ideas for this project that I've already had. Such as :
* Heroine is Married Man's boss
* Heroine is digusted by Married Man's conduct
* Heroine befriends Wife. Married Man discovers this, and asks Heroine to persuade Wife to take him back.
These notes have given me a great sense of momentum. After weeks of getting nowhere with a project, I now feel exhilarated.
But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And at some point, I will go back to my stage play and write a second draft, because you can't keep running away.
The thinner of the two is going to be used for writing practice, as propounded by Natalie Goldberg in Writing down the bones ( http://www.nataliegoldberg.com ). I will write, on the tube to work, about a subject which I've set myself, i.e.; Richmond Park, Alan Brown's mum, etc. And at the end of the session, as the train pulls in to the platform, I will jot down tomorrow's subject on the back page. In time to come, these timed pieces might turn out to be seeds for future projects. But just writing them, losing yourself in the writing, is wonderful. They are not for anyody else to read. You write them as quickly as possible, automatically if you can, without any thought for grammar, spelling, margins, to bypass your inner critic.
The fatter of the two notebooks...is for my new project. Which might lead you to conclude that I've finished the on-act stage play I've been telling you about. I haven't. I've written about nine tenths of it. But I felt bogged down.
I'm telling myself that I've finished the first draft. I've begun to type it up. I've promised my writing group that I will bring something in to read on 8th March. What I'm hoping is that, when I've got some feedback it will embolden me to start a second draft.
Have you ever seen the film Speed ? There's a bomb on a bus which will explode if the bus dips under 30 miles per hour. The authorities divert the bus onto a new, empty motorway, but they discover that there's a gap in the middle of a flyover. Sandra Bullock, who is at the wheel, has no choice but to put her foot down and hope that the bus will clear the gap.
That's how I fee typing up this stage play. As I get closer and closer to the last thing I wrote, I know that there's a piece missing before the curtain line.
I'm telling myself that by typing up the play, I am working on it. But it feels more like stalling.
Meanwhile, I've begun making notes on this brand new project, the one I'm going to get right first time. As you may recall, I got the idea for this story from Twelfth Night ; and I'm thinking of it as The Twelfth Night project until I can think of a proper title.
The premise of the story is this :
Heroine falls in love with a married man whose wife has just thrown him out. Wife discovered that Married Man had had an affair (with a third, unrelated woman who doesn't appear in this story). Married Man is desperate to save his marriage ; so Heroine sets out to help him.
So far, I've been jotting down the ideas for this project that I've already had. Such as :
* Heroine is Married Man's boss
* Heroine is digusted by Married Man's conduct
* Heroine befriends Wife. Married Man discovers this, and asks Heroine to persuade Wife to take him back.
These notes have given me a great sense of momentum. After weeks of getting nowhere with a project, I now feel exhilarated.
But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And at some point, I will go back to my stage play and write a second draft, because you can't keep running away.
Sunday 14 February 2010
Scratching the surface
Yesterday, I wrote dialogue. Actual dialogue. After a gap of one, maybe two weeks I was writing the text of my play. I can't tell you how absurdly, ridiculously grateful I felt to be telling my story again. And as I began writing, I felt like crying. My characters were arguing with each other, I felt their pain, I felt tears coming to my eyes.
I was in a cafe, at the time, which could have been embarrassing. I was on a tea break, across the road from my workplace, and such was my concentration that I was nearly late getting back.
The tears weren't because I thought my writing was so good but because I had lost my ego, temporarily. My characters had taken me over. That might sound creepy, but actually that's the reason I write : to try and lose myself. And I don't think I'm alone in that. John Braine ( I keep quoting him, but I find his How to write a novel more insightful all the time) says that a writer must try to lose himself.
I'm now in an odd position. I'm thinking of the first draft as finished, even though strictly speaking there are still a few lines to go. I've worked out the very last line of the play, which Jackie says to Sue as they exit the stage. (The line is : "Here, Mum : you and Dad can have omlettes tonight." It's not meant to be profound. Sue had bought a box of eggs with the idea of throwing them at Camilla Parker-Bowles. Jackie had found out about it, and crushed the eggs in order to stop her. The line is a joke, something to bring mother and daughter together again after a fierce argument, and hopefully to make the audience smile). But there's still a gap which needs to be filled before we get to that last line.
I'm itching to put this stage play away and get on with my next project. I promised the teacher of my writing class that I would bring it in on March 8th. And I've begun typing it up ( so far, I've been writing it longhand, in a notebook). The idea was, as I reached the last written line in my notebook and typed it up, I would think of a couple of lines to fill the gap between it and the omlettes line.
What I hadn't reckoned on was my characters coming deeper into focus. I'm beginning to understand them better, and I feel actually like I'm giving them short shrift. The physical stage business, the two women struggling with a box of eggs, might be over, but there is still a verbal argument to settle. Issues have come up which need to be properly examined. I have been moving Jackie and Sue about the stage like puppets, except they haven't stayed puppets. Like Pinnochio, they've become real. And I can't just have them leaving the stage with a glib joke. There's more work to be done.
There's a richer, deeper play here, if only I can be bothered to write it. Which is ironic because, when I embarked on this project, I told myself that I'd finish it quickly. It was only a one act stage play, a self-contained scene, it only had to last half an hour. It didn't need a plot. William Trevor - the finest short story writer I've ever come across - once said that a short story is closer to a poem than a novel ; and he went on to say : "A novel needs a plot. A short story needs a point." And I thought that this stage play would be the drama equivalent of a short story. Two characters come on, they argue, at least one of them is changed by the encounter, they exit.
Now I realize that I've only scratched the surface.I'm confronted with my own laziness. The character of Jackie, especially, is sketchy. She's been under Sue's thumb all her life. Now she needs to claim some independence. In fact the Camilla Parker-Bowles/eggs business might become less relevant, simply a device to get the two of them arguing.
The next project will simply have to wait.
I was in a cafe, at the time, which could have been embarrassing. I was on a tea break, across the road from my workplace, and such was my concentration that I was nearly late getting back.
The tears weren't because I thought my writing was so good but because I had lost my ego, temporarily. My characters had taken me over. That might sound creepy, but actually that's the reason I write : to try and lose myself. And I don't think I'm alone in that. John Braine ( I keep quoting him, but I find his How to write a novel more insightful all the time) says that a writer must try to lose himself.
I'm now in an odd position. I'm thinking of the first draft as finished, even though strictly speaking there are still a few lines to go. I've worked out the very last line of the play, which Jackie says to Sue as they exit the stage. (The line is : "Here, Mum : you and Dad can have omlettes tonight." It's not meant to be profound. Sue had bought a box of eggs with the idea of throwing them at Camilla Parker-Bowles. Jackie had found out about it, and crushed the eggs in order to stop her. The line is a joke, something to bring mother and daughter together again after a fierce argument, and hopefully to make the audience smile). But there's still a gap which needs to be filled before we get to that last line.
I'm itching to put this stage play away and get on with my next project. I promised the teacher of my writing class that I would bring it in on March 8th. And I've begun typing it up ( so far, I've been writing it longhand, in a notebook). The idea was, as I reached the last written line in my notebook and typed it up, I would think of a couple of lines to fill the gap between it and the omlettes line.
What I hadn't reckoned on was my characters coming deeper into focus. I'm beginning to understand them better, and I feel actually like I'm giving them short shrift. The physical stage business, the two women struggling with a box of eggs, might be over, but there is still a verbal argument to settle. Issues have come up which need to be properly examined. I have been moving Jackie and Sue about the stage like puppets, except they haven't stayed puppets. Like Pinnochio, they've become real. And I can't just have them leaving the stage with a glib joke. There's more work to be done.
There's a richer, deeper play here, if only I can be bothered to write it. Which is ironic because, when I embarked on this project, I told myself that I'd finish it quickly. It was only a one act stage play, a self-contained scene, it only had to last half an hour. It didn't need a plot. William Trevor - the finest short story writer I've ever come across - once said that a short story is closer to a poem than a novel ; and he went on to say : "A novel needs a plot. A short story needs a point." And I thought that this stage play would be the drama equivalent of a short story. Two characters come on, they argue, at least one of them is changed by the encounter, they exit.
Now I realize that I've only scratched the surface.I'm confronted with my own laziness. The character of Jackie, especially, is sketchy. She's been under Sue's thumb all her life. Now she needs to claim some independence. In fact the Camilla Parker-Bowles/eggs business might become less relevant, simply a device to get the two of them arguing.
The next project will simply have to wait.
Monday 8 February 2010
Manual landing
Yesterday, I was very good. I stopped myself buying a creative writing manual. My wife and I were browsing around the shops. We'd made up our argument. I felt jubilant. On top of the world. We were in a bookshop. Probably, unconsciously, I'd asked to look in there because I was determined to buy a book, any book, to celebrate the fact that we were talking again. And after a brief preamble amongst the self-help books, I decided that I was only putting off the ineveitable, and went over to the reference section (for some reason I've never worked out, bookshops always seem to place creative writing manuals next to books about making a wedding speech).
This item was actually a box set. Not just a book, but a pack of cards too. And the introduction to this book was by Natalie Goldberg, the author of Writing Down The Bones and other terrific books about writing ( http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/ ). A woman I trust. I sneaked a look at the introduction, and Natalie Goldberg praised this book to the skies. I was shaking, sweating. I wanted to buy this book. This book was going to change my life. This book was going to show me where I've been going wrong, and launch me onto the road to fame and success.
But then I heard a little voice in my head say : "You don't need another creative writing manual." Because the truth is, I've read hundreds over the years. More, in fact, than novels, which I'm ashamed about. I've borrowed some from public libraries, but too often I've bought them.
I know why. When I first decided I wanted to be a writer - this was at the age of 12 or 13 - I only had to read a creative writing manual and I would get an idea. Sometimes, in fact, I would finish a whole script before I'd reached the end. And I began to think that it was the book itself which had given me the idea.
It was the same with school teachers. For some reason, I would write reams and reams during term-time. Although you couldn't admit this to your classmates, I used to look forward to the English homework when we would be told to write a story with the title "A stitch in time". But during the school holidays, when I desperately wanted to write, and had plenty of time to do it, I had no ideas. Or so I thought.
When I was about 16, I joined a playwrights' workshop which was attached to a fringe theatre. It was led by a wonderful director, Richard Shannon, who also wrote plays himself. Same problem again : when the worshops were running, I had idea after idea. When it took a break, and I wasn't seeing Richard, my ideas dried up.
To this day, I tend to get a lot of ideas around September, and I wonder if it's some hangover from the beginning of the school term. Some people hate the end of summer, but I actually thrive at the beginning of winter.
After I first got married, I became desperate for story ideas. They were going to lead me to writing a bestseller, which was going to get me out of my dead-end job. Money was tight, the usual end-of-honeymoon snags started biting, and I became more and more desperate to find something. Writing manuals seemed the only solution.
So I read them, hundreds of them. I borrowed some from public libraries, but too many I bought from shops. And bought during moments of tension, moments when I was depressed. When a project was going well, I used to attribute it to the manual I was reading. It seemed to act as a pep-talk. And yet, if I read the manual when things weren't going well, I couldn't understand it. It worked last time, didn't it?
I even read Writing Down The Bones at this time, but gave it up in frustration. It wasn't working quickly enough. All that writing practice - that was for amateurs. Today, I think every writer can benefit from writing practice. It lays down seeds for future projects. But back then, I didn't want seeds, I wanted fully-grown plants grown in the hothouse. The pupil wasn't ready.
When my marriage started to get better, I relaxed more. And then the ideas came. Long overdue, long needed. During this time, I read some wonderful creative writing manuals. But most importantly, I discovered that they don't really work until after you get your idea. There is often, in these books, a chapter on establishing a good work rate, a minimum number of words you write every day. And that's good once you've got an idea (an idea which excites you, that is). But if you're still searching, then those manuals just demoralize you. You are not a factory.
What happened on Sunday, in the bookshop, was this : I told myself no. You don't need any more creative writing manuals. Everything about the craft, you know already. And I walked on, with a sense of triumph.
Although before I left (because I was dying to buy a book of some kind) I went back to Personal Development and picked up Susan Jeffers' Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. Well, I'd worn out the other copy.
This item was actually a box set. Not just a book, but a pack of cards too. And the introduction to this book was by Natalie Goldberg, the author of Writing Down The Bones and other terrific books about writing ( http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/ ). A woman I trust. I sneaked a look at the introduction, and Natalie Goldberg praised this book to the skies. I was shaking, sweating. I wanted to buy this book. This book was going to change my life. This book was going to show me where I've been going wrong, and launch me onto the road to fame and success.
But then I heard a little voice in my head say : "You don't need another creative writing manual." Because the truth is, I've read hundreds over the years. More, in fact, than novels, which I'm ashamed about. I've borrowed some from public libraries, but too often I've bought them.
I know why. When I first decided I wanted to be a writer - this was at the age of 12 or 13 - I only had to read a creative writing manual and I would get an idea. Sometimes, in fact, I would finish a whole script before I'd reached the end. And I began to think that it was the book itself which had given me the idea.
It was the same with school teachers. For some reason, I would write reams and reams during term-time. Although you couldn't admit this to your classmates, I used to look forward to the English homework when we would be told to write a story with the title "A stitch in time". But during the school holidays, when I desperately wanted to write, and had plenty of time to do it, I had no ideas. Or so I thought.
When I was about 16, I joined a playwrights' workshop which was attached to a fringe theatre. It was led by a wonderful director, Richard Shannon, who also wrote plays himself. Same problem again : when the worshops were running, I had idea after idea. When it took a break, and I wasn't seeing Richard, my ideas dried up.
To this day, I tend to get a lot of ideas around September, and I wonder if it's some hangover from the beginning of the school term. Some people hate the end of summer, but I actually thrive at the beginning of winter.
After I first got married, I became desperate for story ideas. They were going to lead me to writing a bestseller, which was going to get me out of my dead-end job. Money was tight, the usual end-of-honeymoon snags started biting, and I became more and more desperate to find something. Writing manuals seemed the only solution.
So I read them, hundreds of them. I borrowed some from public libraries, but too many I bought from shops. And bought during moments of tension, moments when I was depressed. When a project was going well, I used to attribute it to the manual I was reading. It seemed to act as a pep-talk. And yet, if I read the manual when things weren't going well, I couldn't understand it. It worked last time, didn't it?
I even read Writing Down The Bones at this time, but gave it up in frustration. It wasn't working quickly enough. All that writing practice - that was for amateurs. Today, I think every writer can benefit from writing practice. It lays down seeds for future projects. But back then, I didn't want seeds, I wanted fully-grown plants grown in the hothouse. The pupil wasn't ready.
When my marriage started to get better, I relaxed more. And then the ideas came. Long overdue, long needed. During this time, I read some wonderful creative writing manuals. But most importantly, I discovered that they don't really work until after you get your idea. There is often, in these books, a chapter on establishing a good work rate, a minimum number of words you write every day. And that's good once you've got an idea (an idea which excites you, that is). But if you're still searching, then those manuals just demoralize you. You are not a factory.
What happened on Sunday, in the bookshop, was this : I told myself no. You don't need any more creative writing manuals. Everything about the craft, you know already. And I walked on, with a sense of triumph.
Although before I left (because I was dying to buy a book of some kind) I went back to Personal Development and picked up Susan Jeffers' Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. Well, I'd worn out the other copy.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Melting ice
I got a fantastic boost from Sarah Landry's blog ( http://sarah-writerinmaking.blogspot.com/ ). Welcome to all new visitors to this blog. I hope you find it entertaining, and perhaps even useful.
I never realized how bad January is regarded before now. Growing up, January was always January. Alright, Christmas Day was gone, your birthday was a few months off and you had to go back to school. But still, going through a January was better than not going through it. There was that song, "January/Sick and tired, you've been hanging 'round me", but I always assumed that the songwriter just put those words in to rhyme.
Over the last couple of years, though, I've begun hearing people say "I'll be glad when this month's over." News stories have started cropping up about the most depressing day of the year (in January, of course). And it struck me that January 2009 also became a bit fraught on the domestic front.
Sarah's boost came to me at the beginning of February. And as soon as I read it, I felt like jumping for joy. As far as I'm concerned, that was the beginning of spring. And as with spring, there's still a bit of ice about, but it's thawing. There are buds in the ground, even if they haven't opened yet. The sun is peeping through the grey clouds.
And I began daydreaming again about my stage play. As I wandered about, memories of what I'd already written came back. Some of it was good. I began thinking of my lead character, Sue. Her marriage. I began to see her husband. Her motivation started becoming clearer.
I was on the verge of giving up this stage play and going onto another writing project. Somebody once said, in a creative writing manual ( I think it was John Braine, in How To Write A Novel) that if you have two ideas at the same time, you should choose one as if you were deciding between two dinner inviations, i.e.; you go for the one which seems the most exciting. And the advice is good. Writing is a bit like sex : you can't do it well unless you've got passion. And the other project (which I call my Twelfth Night project) was giving me the come-hither eyes, whereas my stage play seemed rather cool.
I haven't done a stroke of work on my stage play for about a week. When I see that Sarah Landry has clocked up 51,000 words (all the while doing a medical course) I feel guilty. But Sarah is an inspiration, too. So, this morning, I will open my notebook again. I can't promise to write one more sentence of the actual play. But I will think about it, and daydream about it, and see which ideas bud through.
2010 might not be so bad after all.
I never realized how bad January is regarded before now. Growing up, January was always January. Alright, Christmas Day was gone, your birthday was a few months off and you had to go back to school. But still, going through a January was better than not going through it. There was that song, "January/Sick and tired, you've been hanging 'round me", but I always assumed that the songwriter just put those words in to rhyme.
Over the last couple of years, though, I've begun hearing people say "I'll be glad when this month's over." News stories have started cropping up about the most depressing day of the year (in January, of course). And it struck me that January 2009 also became a bit fraught on the domestic front.
Sarah's boost came to me at the beginning of February. And as soon as I read it, I felt like jumping for joy. As far as I'm concerned, that was the beginning of spring. And as with spring, there's still a bit of ice about, but it's thawing. There are buds in the ground, even if they haven't opened yet. The sun is peeping through the grey clouds.
And I began daydreaming again about my stage play. As I wandered about, memories of what I'd already written came back. Some of it was good. I began thinking of my lead character, Sue. Her marriage. I began to see her husband. Her motivation started becoming clearer.
I was on the verge of giving up this stage play and going onto another writing project. Somebody once said, in a creative writing manual ( I think it was John Braine, in How To Write A Novel) that if you have two ideas at the same time, you should choose one as if you were deciding between two dinner inviations, i.e.; you go for the one which seems the most exciting. And the advice is good. Writing is a bit like sex : you can't do it well unless you've got passion. And the other project (which I call my Twelfth Night project) was giving me the come-hither eyes, whereas my stage play seemed rather cool.
I haven't done a stroke of work on my stage play for about a week. When I see that Sarah Landry has clocked up 51,000 words (all the while doing a medical course) I feel guilty. But Sarah is an inspiration, too. So, this morning, I will open my notebook again. I can't promise to write one more sentence of the actual play. But I will think about it, and daydream about it, and see which ideas bud through.
2010 might not be so bad after all.
Sunday 31 January 2010
Off the wagon
"A woman falls in love with a married man whose wife has just thrown him out. The wife discovered that he'd had an affair. The man is desperate to save his marriage ; so our heroine sets out to help him."
This is the basic idea for my next project. I've had it kicking around for ages. I got it whilst watching Twelfth Night (one thing I often do when I need a plot is to see/hear/read a Shakespeare play, and filch something from it).I've even described my idea as "Twelfth Night without the cross-dressing." I've put it to the back of my mind for various reasons. But recently, I read Cleaving, Julia Powell's follow-up to Julia and Julia (http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/) and it made me want to look at the issues of infidelity, trust, and marriages going wrong.
Cleaving wasn't an easy book to read. In it, Powell writes about an extra-marital affair she had, and it wasn't as genteel as Brief Encounter, either. When I heard about the book, I thought I might hate Julie Powell. I didn't. Although my heart went out to her husband, it went out to her as well. And I'm grateful to Cleaving for making me look at my Twelfth Night project again.
I've been telling myself that I'll start my Twelfth Night project just as soon as I've finished this one-act stage play. But I haven't done any work on my stage play for a few days, now ; and I've started to make notes about the Twelfth Night project. I feel like I'm being unfaithful to my stage play - the notes were even in the same notebook.
I've had another row with my wife. And again it seems like the end. And for some reason, I just couldn't face the stage play again. Why I should then look at a story about a marriage going wrong is a mystery to me.
But I don't want to give up on my stage play. For too long, I've been abandoning projects when the going has got heavy. And even though I don't feel this at the moment, I know that I'll never finish anything unless I stick with it.
This is the basic idea for my next project. I've had it kicking around for ages. I got it whilst watching Twelfth Night (one thing I often do when I need a plot is to see/hear/read a Shakespeare play, and filch something from it).I've even described my idea as "Twelfth Night without the cross-dressing." I've put it to the back of my mind for various reasons. But recently, I read Cleaving, Julia Powell's follow-up to Julia and Julia (http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/) and it made me want to look at the issues of infidelity, trust, and marriages going wrong.
Cleaving wasn't an easy book to read. In it, Powell writes about an extra-marital affair she had, and it wasn't as genteel as Brief Encounter, either. When I heard about the book, I thought I might hate Julie Powell. I didn't. Although my heart went out to her husband, it went out to her as well. And I'm grateful to Cleaving for making me look at my Twelfth Night project again.
I've been telling myself that I'll start my Twelfth Night project just as soon as I've finished this one-act stage play. But I haven't done any work on my stage play for a few days, now ; and I've started to make notes about the Twelfth Night project. I feel like I'm being unfaithful to my stage play - the notes were even in the same notebook.
I've had another row with my wife. And again it seems like the end. And for some reason, I just couldn't face the stage play again. Why I should then look at a story about a marriage going wrong is a mystery to me.
But I don't want to give up on my stage play. For too long, I've been abandoning projects when the going has got heavy. And even though I don't feel this at the moment, I know that I'll never finish anything unless I stick with it.
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Lotus-eating
One way which I've been getting back into my story each time is to reread what I've already written. But there has been a drawback. Sometimes, I open my notebook and my mind goes blank. It may have been two, three days since I last did any work on it. I struggle to remember what the project is. A stage play?One act? Two characters, both women, one of whom wants to throw an egg at Camilla Parker-Bowles as she passes.
So I turn the notebook pages back, and read what I've written so far. And I fall into the trap of admiring my own dialogue. Not bad, for me anyway. I get to the final line, and I spend minutes glowing in pride. Instead of writing the next line, following on from the last. Lotus eating.
The thing is, an individual line of dialogue might be good in it's own right, but still might have to go. If it's wrong for the character who's speaking it. If it doesn't add anything to the plot. If it slows the action down. If it's telling the audience something they already know.
And this is a piece which is going to need a lot of work in the successive drafts. As I've mentioned last time, as soon as I've finished the first draft, I'm going to write biographies for the two characters, Sue and Jackie Platt. One thing I can't quite decide is why Sue - the character who wants to throw the egg - feels so incensed at C B-P. I've got inklings : that Sue feels angry at the country in general, and feels that the establishment is to blame. She feels deserted by her youngest daughter, Sarah (who doesn't appear in the play), who went to university, married into a middle class family, and now feels ashamed of Sue. And Sue's husband, whom she loves, lost his job. Does that add up to a 60-year-old woman breaking the law, risking arrest and possibly getting shot by a police sniper? If not, I don't have a play.
It bothers me that I'm not thinking about this project throughout the day. I used to get consumed by my projects. There were times I couldn't think of anything else. These days, when I open the notebook, my mind goes a blank. It takes ages for me to get back into the story I'm telling - usually when my writing time is up, and I have to get ready and go to work.
These days, my thinking time is taken up by mundane matters like my job, my home and my marriage. But you can take this growing up thing too far...
So I turn the notebook pages back, and read what I've written so far. And I fall into the trap of admiring my own dialogue. Not bad, for me anyway. I get to the final line, and I spend minutes glowing in pride. Instead of writing the next line, following on from the last. Lotus eating.
The thing is, an individual line of dialogue might be good in it's own right, but still might have to go. If it's wrong for the character who's speaking it. If it doesn't add anything to the plot. If it slows the action down. If it's telling the audience something they already know.
And this is a piece which is going to need a lot of work in the successive drafts. As I've mentioned last time, as soon as I've finished the first draft, I'm going to write biographies for the two characters, Sue and Jackie Platt. One thing I can't quite decide is why Sue - the character who wants to throw the egg - feels so incensed at C B-P. I've got inklings : that Sue feels angry at the country in general, and feels that the establishment is to blame. She feels deserted by her youngest daughter, Sarah (who doesn't appear in the play), who went to university, married into a middle class family, and now feels ashamed of Sue. And Sue's husband, whom she loves, lost his job. Does that add up to a 60-year-old woman breaking the law, risking arrest and possibly getting shot by a police sniper? If not, I don't have a play.
It bothers me that I'm not thinking about this project throughout the day. I used to get consumed by my projects. There were times I couldn't think of anything else. These days, when I open the notebook, my mind goes a blank. It takes ages for me to get back into the story I'm telling - usually when my writing time is up, and I have to get ready and go to work.
These days, my thinking time is taken up by mundane matters like my job, my home and my marriage. But you can take this growing up thing too far...
Tuesday 19 January 2010
A question of character
One mistake I've made with this project is that I didn't write biographies for Sue and Jackie. Now, I find myself feeling that I don't know my characters. I promise, the very next project, I will write biographies of all the major characters in it before I write a word of the first draft.
Whenever I've written biographies, they have paid dividends when I began the actual writing. You get a sense of who they are and how they think. For me, a sign that I've got a living, breathing character is when I tell myself : "No, he wouldn't do that," or "That goes against her principles." That sounds like a nuisance, because you want to try and follow the plot. But it's really a blessing. I've found, over the years, that the best stories, the ones which the reader WANTS to read (or the audience WANT to see) are the ones where the characters are solid and real. Better to adjust your plot - perhaps have something or someone force the character to carry out the action reluctantly.
Over the years, I've created a blank form which would be the envy of Scotland Yard. It has spaces for the charcaters' hair colour, daily newspaper and voting tendencies. I can write down the character's life story from birth to the present day, inventing such milestones as the character's first job, first romantic encounters, and wedding anniversary. There's even a space for the character's pets. I also have spaces for Person Closest To and Spouse/Partner (in case they are not one and the same).
This blank form is an adaptation from similar forms found in Stella Whitelaw's "Writing a synopsis that sells" and Donna Levin's "Get that novel started". I've also found a useful character creation checklist on Holly Lisle's website:
http://hollylisle.com/
The reason I didn't do it this time (and lots of other times, when I should have known better) was because it seemed like a chore. It always does. I seem to have been
planning, planning, planning projects for 20-odd years and then abandoning them. I want to write again, I want to feel like a storyteller.
Before I found out about character biographies, I just used to sit down and write. At first, my characters bore strong resemblances to my favourite television characters. Later, as I grew more sophisticated, I just used real people, without any thought of disguising them. Until the real people (the ones I cared about)started to get annoyed.
The problem now is, I want to abandon this stage play and go onto the next project.
The one where I'll plan it all beforehand, and this time do it correctly.
But I've made myself a promise. I'm going to finish this play, however badly it turns out. Whatever is wrong in the first draft, I can make better in the next.
Whenever I've written biographies, they have paid dividends when I began the actual writing. You get a sense of who they are and how they think. For me, a sign that I've got a living, breathing character is when I tell myself : "No, he wouldn't do that," or "That goes against her principles." That sounds like a nuisance, because you want to try and follow the plot. But it's really a blessing. I've found, over the years, that the best stories, the ones which the reader WANTS to read (or the audience WANT to see) are the ones where the characters are solid and real. Better to adjust your plot - perhaps have something or someone force the character to carry out the action reluctantly.
Over the years, I've created a blank form which would be the envy of Scotland Yard. It has spaces for the charcaters' hair colour, daily newspaper and voting tendencies. I can write down the character's life story from birth to the present day, inventing such milestones as the character's first job, first romantic encounters, and wedding anniversary. There's even a space for the character's pets. I also have spaces for Person Closest To and Spouse/Partner (in case they are not one and the same).
This blank form is an adaptation from similar forms found in Stella Whitelaw's "Writing a synopsis that sells" and Donna Levin's "Get that novel started". I've also found a useful character creation checklist on Holly Lisle's website:
http://hollylisle.com/
The reason I didn't do it this time (and lots of other times, when I should have known better) was because it seemed like a chore. It always does. I seem to have been
planning, planning, planning projects for 20-odd years and then abandoning them. I want to write again, I want to feel like a storyteller.
Before I found out about character biographies, I just used to sit down and write. At first, my characters bore strong resemblances to my favourite television characters. Later, as I grew more sophisticated, I just used real people, without any thought of disguising them. Until the real people (the ones I cared about)started to get annoyed.
The problem now is, I want to abandon this stage play and go onto the next project.
The one where I'll plan it all beforehand, and this time do it correctly.
But I've made myself a promise. I'm going to finish this play, however badly it turns out. Whatever is wrong in the first draft, I can make better in the next.
Saturday 16 January 2010
Putting up shelves
It's the end of a long, stressful week in my private life, when I thought my marriage was going to end. I made a stupid, careless remark, my wife thought that I couldn't care less about my marriage, and I've spent all this time trying to say sorry. Perversely, my day job - which is normally stressful - became unusually calm, as if to compensate. But the upshot, as far as this blog is concerned, is that I had other things on my mind apart from writing. And when I did pick up my notebook, it was with a feeling of deep guilt.
To be honest, it's been a big problem ever since I got married. Because, when you're a writer, you have to carry a lot of stuff inside your head. You can't share it, at least until the first draft is written. I can't write if my wife is in the room, I have to put my notebooks and pens away. It is a secret, and that's not good.
My wife has never deliberately tried to stop me writing. On the contrary, she bought me an electric typewriter and a desk which she couldn't really afford. But people who don't want to write can't always understand people who can. And surely it borders on mental illness when you're thinking "How will this character react to this problem?" instead of worrying about your finances. But writers don't have the choice.
Incidentally, I made the mistake, a couple of times after I got married, of using things my wife had told me as the basis for stories. Sometimes, your loved ones don't mind "modelling" for you (sometimes, you'll even be approached by people who want to "model" for you, although I would suggest that you avoid those people). But my wife is a private person, and was furious with me.
I was younger, then. I learnt a hard lesson. If I could go back in time...
The only way I can create fictional characters is to first of all think of people whom I know in real life. Sorry, that's the way it is. You can take bits from two or three real people for your fictional character ; but those people need to be pretty similar to each other or the transplants will be rejected. It doesn't matter if you want to create a horrible character, and you base that character on somebody you don't like. But to create a likeable character, you start off thinking about a person whom you like. It's a dilemna.
I'm not the only writer with this problem. In fact, the only happily married writer I can think of is the late, great Jack Rosenthal. I wish I could ask his widow, the actress Maureen Lipman, what their secret was. I wish, too, that someone would write a manual for having a healthy relationship aimed at writers, or perhaps creative people in general.
Is it purely ego which makes us create? And is it any worse than the impulse to cook ? Is the man who thinks he can write worse than the man who thinks he can put up shelves?
Initially, I picked up my notebook again because I thought : Well, if we're getting divorced anyway...The dust has settled now, my wife is talking to me again. If I was sensible, if I had any choice in the matter, I would burn my notebook and concentrate purely on my marriage. Which would probably be happier if I was good at putting up shelves...
But no. The notebook has come out. Sentences have been written down. I need to do this, it goes beyond logic.
************************************************************************************
The trickle has been, for obvious reasons, slow this week, but it is coming. I've felt a renewed enthusiasm for the project. And that means a renewed enthusiasm for life in general. Life is never so good for me as when I've got a project underway, especially when I feel good about the project. I'm a better human being then ; nicer, happier, sometimes verging on intelligent.
I've read back some of my dialogue, and it's not bad (by my standards, anyway). A metaphor has emerged in the writing. I was thinking about certain pop songs. Pop music is a great inspiration for me, and sometimes, as I'm writing a piece, I ask myself : Which song would go over the final credits? What is the "theme tune" of this piece?
I started thinking about The Who's masterpiece I Can See For Miles. On the surface, it's a song about a man who's been betrayed by an unfaithful partner. But actually, it's a coded song (like that Irish folk song Four Green Fields). It's about betrayal in general. It comes to you when you've been sold out by governments and institutions as well.
And it occurred to me that Diana Spencer's funeral was a sort of equivalent to the song I Can See For Miles. The event was coded. That behind the grief was anger - and not just the normal anger you might feel at a loved one's funeral. Anger at EVERYTHING.
So, my character Jackie Platt now has a few lines comparing Diana's funeral to the song I Can See For Miles.
To be honest, it's been a big problem ever since I got married. Because, when you're a writer, you have to carry a lot of stuff inside your head. You can't share it, at least until the first draft is written. I can't write if my wife is in the room, I have to put my notebooks and pens away. It is a secret, and that's not good.
My wife has never deliberately tried to stop me writing. On the contrary, she bought me an electric typewriter and a desk which she couldn't really afford. But people who don't want to write can't always understand people who can. And surely it borders on mental illness when you're thinking "How will this character react to this problem?" instead of worrying about your finances. But writers don't have the choice.
Incidentally, I made the mistake, a couple of times after I got married, of using things my wife had told me as the basis for stories. Sometimes, your loved ones don't mind "modelling" for you (sometimes, you'll even be approached by people who want to "model" for you, although I would suggest that you avoid those people). But my wife is a private person, and was furious with me.
I was younger, then. I learnt a hard lesson. If I could go back in time...
The only way I can create fictional characters is to first of all think of people whom I know in real life. Sorry, that's the way it is. You can take bits from two or three real people for your fictional character ; but those people need to be pretty similar to each other or the transplants will be rejected. It doesn't matter if you want to create a horrible character, and you base that character on somebody you don't like. But to create a likeable character, you start off thinking about a person whom you like. It's a dilemna.
I'm not the only writer with this problem. In fact, the only happily married writer I can think of is the late, great Jack Rosenthal. I wish I could ask his widow, the actress Maureen Lipman, what their secret was. I wish, too, that someone would write a manual for having a healthy relationship aimed at writers, or perhaps creative people in general.
Is it purely ego which makes us create? And is it any worse than the impulse to cook ? Is the man who thinks he can write worse than the man who thinks he can put up shelves?
Initially, I picked up my notebook again because I thought : Well, if we're getting divorced anyway...The dust has settled now, my wife is talking to me again. If I was sensible, if I had any choice in the matter, I would burn my notebook and concentrate purely on my marriage. Which would probably be happier if I was good at putting up shelves...
But no. The notebook has come out. Sentences have been written down. I need to do this, it goes beyond logic.
************************************************************************************
The trickle has been, for obvious reasons, slow this week, but it is coming. I've felt a renewed enthusiasm for the project. And that means a renewed enthusiasm for life in general. Life is never so good for me as when I've got a project underway, especially when I feel good about the project. I'm a better human being then ; nicer, happier, sometimes verging on intelligent.
I've read back some of my dialogue, and it's not bad (by my standards, anyway). A metaphor has emerged in the writing. I was thinking about certain pop songs. Pop music is a great inspiration for me, and sometimes, as I'm writing a piece, I ask myself : Which song would go over the final credits? What is the "theme tune" of this piece?
I started thinking about The Who's masterpiece I Can See For Miles. On the surface, it's a song about a man who's been betrayed by an unfaithful partner. But actually, it's a coded song (like that Irish folk song Four Green Fields). It's about betrayal in general. It comes to you when you've been sold out by governments and institutions as well.
And it occurred to me that Diana Spencer's funeral was a sort of equivalent to the song I Can See For Miles. The event was coded. That behind the grief was anger - and not just the normal anger you might feel at a loved one's funeral. Anger at EVERYTHING.
So, my character Jackie Platt now has a few lines comparing Diana's funeral to the song I Can See For Miles.
Thursday 14 January 2010
Back in the saddle
I've started working on the play again. John Braine, in his book Writing A Novel, says that when you start writing, your heartache disappears ; and I can vouch for that. But this isn't writing, this is planning. This is the dangerous time for me, the time I could just say forget about it, roll the whole thing into a ball and throw it away. Luckily, I opened the notebook. I wrote one sentence, then another, ideas and lines of dialogue and questions and doubts and solutions coming to me with each word I wrote. At times like these, I tell myself : "Even one sentence can make a difference."I didn't write a great deal, but at least the project was going forward. And, as I worked, my heartache disappeared.
Whether I deserved to have my heartache to disappear is another matter...
Whether I deserved to have my heartache to disappear is another matter...
Monday 11 January 2010
Iceberg
I've been working on this project since Christmas, and I encountered many obstacles along the way. Sometimes, it seemed an obstacle every day. For instance :
1) The little voice in my head which kept telling me, "This is rubbish." I told myself, alright, then, I'll write rubbish. The voice then went on to tell me, more persuasively, "Alright, it's not bad, but it's flat. Victoria Wood and John Sullivan could have made a better job of it." To which I remembered a phrase (I think it was in Donna Levin's "Get That Novel Started") that Shakespeare wrote like Shakespeare because he didn't have Shakespeare to compare himself to. Meaning that you don't know if you can win the fight until you step into the ring. It's not up to me how good I am.
2) Being unable to get out of bed. I like to write first thing in the morning, early. I aim to be up by five o'clock, but often it's six. I aim to write three things each day. First of all, Morning Pages. This is something recommended by Julia Cameron in her creativity books, such as The Artists Way and The Sound Of Paper. For more information, go to:
www.theartistsway.com/
Morning Pages are flow-of-consciousness notes about anything which comes to mind, any worries, any ideas, anything at all. Julia Cameron suggests 3 sides of A4, but I normally write 2. Whatever I can do in half an hour, unless I'm going through a personal crisis, in which case the pages pile up. Morning Pages help me think about the day ahead, and often, solutions to problems - of any sort, not just about writing - come to me as I write them.
After Morning Pages, I like to work for half an hour on whichever project I've begun. Dorothea Brande, in her book Becoming A Writer, suggests you do this, and try not to read anything, or switch on the radio or television, while you are writing,lest you start imitating the style of someone else.
Lastly, on the tube to work (if I can get a seat) I do writing practice. This comes from Natalie Goldberg's books on creative writing, Writing Down The Bones, Wild Mind and Thunder And Lightning. Her website is :
www.nataliegoldberg.com/
Writing practice is similar to Morning Pages, but here you write on specific subjects, such as My Grandmother. You write about the subject as quickly and as frenziedly as possible, getting down everything which flashes through your mind (even if your Grandmother never even gets mentioned). This is a good seedbed for future projects.
But I went through a phase of being unable to drag myself out of bed. Work was horrible. The day ahead seemed flat, dull, unexciting. And so I would get out with just half an hour to spare, in which I wrote morning pages and nothing else.
To get around this, I bought myself an A5 notebook. Previously, I'd made notes on A4-sized sheets, and kept them in seperate pockets of a file-folder. But now I was going to work on the tube. I'm inordinately proud of my A5 notebook, actually, and I might write this way from now on. It allows you to write anywhere you can sit down. I write at the top of each page : Project Notes (any doubts about the project, ideas about the project, or tasks I have to do for the project, such as find out when Diana Spencer died), Text (the play itself - because I've begun to write the actual dialogue, to my own surprise) and Character Notes (anything which occurs to me about the characters themselves). In a way, I've combined the project-writing with writing practice. So I'm always doing something on it.
*************************************************************************************
I have batted away problem after problem. "Eggs", as I've provisionally called the one-act stage play I'm writing, was coming along nicely. I'd decided that the heroine, the Diana-mourner,
was a 62-year old called Sue Platt. The woman with her - who will eventually try to stop her throwing an egg at Camilla Parker-Bowles - is her daughter, Jackie. They're both Diana-mourners, but Jackie is calmer. They're both at a hospital (my local hospital has a food-only Marks and Spencers, where you can buy eggs), and C B-P will be arriving there to open a new ward.
It was going great guns. I even, as I said,began writing the actual dialogue. That felt incredible. I was a storyteller again, at last.
But now I've hit the iceberg. The problem I can't see my way out of.My wife and I argued over the weekend, and she told me a few home truths about myself. And now I don't feel like I can write. I shouldn't write. How can I write, how can I complain about the world, when I'm such a bad person? It goes deeper than writing. I'm finding it hard to do anything. I walk around feeling disembodied.My wife's comments keep coming back to me, I can't concentrate on anything else. Everything I do now just seems tainted. I don't know how I can get past this.
1) The little voice in my head which kept telling me, "This is rubbish." I told myself, alright, then, I'll write rubbish. The voice then went on to tell me, more persuasively, "Alright, it's not bad, but it's flat. Victoria Wood and John Sullivan could have made a better job of it." To which I remembered a phrase (I think it was in Donna Levin's "Get That Novel Started") that Shakespeare wrote like Shakespeare because he didn't have Shakespeare to compare himself to. Meaning that you don't know if you can win the fight until you step into the ring. It's not up to me how good I am.
2) Being unable to get out of bed. I like to write first thing in the morning, early. I aim to be up by five o'clock, but often it's six. I aim to write three things each day. First of all, Morning Pages. This is something recommended by Julia Cameron in her creativity books, such as The Artists Way and The Sound Of Paper. For more information, go to:
www.theartistsway.com/
Morning Pages are flow-of-consciousness notes about anything which comes to mind, any worries, any ideas, anything at all. Julia Cameron suggests 3 sides of A4, but I normally write 2. Whatever I can do in half an hour, unless I'm going through a personal crisis, in which case the pages pile up. Morning Pages help me think about the day ahead, and often, solutions to problems - of any sort, not just about writing - come to me as I write them.
After Morning Pages, I like to work for half an hour on whichever project I've begun. Dorothea Brande, in her book Becoming A Writer, suggests you do this, and try not to read anything, or switch on the radio or television, while you are writing,lest you start imitating the style of someone else.
Lastly, on the tube to work (if I can get a seat) I do writing practice. This comes from Natalie Goldberg's books on creative writing, Writing Down The Bones, Wild Mind and Thunder And Lightning. Her website is :
www.nataliegoldberg.com/
Writing practice is similar to Morning Pages, but here you write on specific subjects, such as My Grandmother. You write about the subject as quickly and as frenziedly as possible, getting down everything which flashes through your mind (even if your Grandmother never even gets mentioned). This is a good seedbed for future projects.
But I went through a phase of being unable to drag myself out of bed. Work was horrible. The day ahead seemed flat, dull, unexciting. And so I would get out with just half an hour to spare, in which I wrote morning pages and nothing else.
To get around this, I bought myself an A5 notebook. Previously, I'd made notes on A4-sized sheets, and kept them in seperate pockets of a file-folder. But now I was going to work on the tube. I'm inordinately proud of my A5 notebook, actually, and I might write this way from now on. It allows you to write anywhere you can sit down. I write at the top of each page : Project Notes (any doubts about the project, ideas about the project, or tasks I have to do for the project, such as find out when Diana Spencer died), Text (the play itself - because I've begun to write the actual dialogue, to my own surprise) and Character Notes (anything which occurs to me about the characters themselves). In a way, I've combined the project-writing with writing practice. So I'm always doing something on it.
*************************************************************************************
I have batted away problem after problem. "Eggs", as I've provisionally called the one-act stage play I'm writing, was coming along nicely. I'd decided that the heroine, the Diana-mourner,
was a 62-year old called Sue Platt. The woman with her - who will eventually try to stop her throwing an egg at Camilla Parker-Bowles - is her daughter, Jackie. They're both Diana-mourners, but Jackie is calmer. They're both at a hospital (my local hospital has a food-only Marks and Spencers, where you can buy eggs), and C B-P will be arriving there to open a new ward.
It was going great guns. I even, as I said,began writing the actual dialogue. That felt incredible. I was a storyteller again, at last.
But now I've hit the iceberg. The problem I can't see my way out of.My wife and I argued over the weekend, and she told me a few home truths about myself. And now I don't feel like I can write. I shouldn't write. How can I write, how can I complain about the world, when I'm such a bad person? It goes deeper than writing. I'm finding it hard to do anything. I walk around feeling disembodied.My wife's comments keep coming back to me, I can't concentrate on anything else. Everything I do now just seems tainted. I don't know how I can get past this.
Sunday 10 January 2010
A new hope
"A woman throws an egg at Camilla Parker-Bowles."
This is the image that I had, the starting point. C B-P, as you may know, is the woman Prince Charles is now married to, now known as the Duchess of Cornwall. The woman he was, apparently, in love with when he proposed to Diana Spencer, Lady Di, the Princess of Wales. The woman he made Diana's personal assistant so that, unknown to Diana, he could carry on the affair.
I was thinking about the death of Diana, and more importantly, the people who mourned her. I am against monarchies, actually. My politics are left of centre, and I hate the English class system. Nevertheless, even I felt disorientated by the death. Like Michael Jackson, her death didn't seem to be possible. It was as though you were hearing about the death of Mickey Mouse, a much-loved fictional character. I couldn't help but feel angry about the way she'd been treated. Most erring husbands, when they have been found out, at least apologize ; but Prince Charles simply decided that he was the Prince of Wales, his ancestors had done the same, and as far as he was concerned, he could do what he liked. I kept telling myslf "It's not real life, it's not real life," although I suppose it was somebody's life.
The reactions to Diana's death and funeral were interesting. The mourners were all assumed, by the hip, trendy intelligentsia, to be stupid (most of them, after all, were working class women). The far left took pot-shots at her. They even tried to invent Prince Charles as some sort of ant-authoritarian pioneer, a modern-day Marquis de Sade, railing against established morality. Living Marxism magazine even described him as likeable and blokeish. Diana, meanwhile, had been too emotional.
But the funeral itself was more than that. It was a focal point for a nation which was angry about the way the country was being run. It was, I felt, against royalty. It was also angry at the cynicism and greed of politicians and businessmen, rising debt, and the soullessness of modern living. But all that was ignored. The mood was exploited. The heritage industry cashed in on her name and celebrity. She became Royalty's greatest hit. Today, you can buy Diana Spencer souvenirs at any stately home gift-shop. In her death, she has made millions for her ex-husband and ex-in-laws, who weren't exactly poor to begin with.
My fiction, though, is concerned with s0-called ordinary people. I began thinking about the mourners, like my wife, my mother, my late mother-in-law. The people who laid wreaths outside public buildings, and lined up outside Westminster Abbey to see her coffin. Who went to Kensington Palace to see her collection of dresses, and who bought Elton John's new version of Candle In The Wind. I felt angry, and angry on behalf of somebody. And I have found, for me anyway, that that is the best starting point for fiction. You need a cause to fight.
I believe that all the best art is born of passion ; but for the fiction writer, that passion needs to be anger. Nigel Watts, in his book Teach Yourself how to write a novel, says that a writer without an idea is like a white knight on a charger, looking for a damself in distress to rescue. And Sheila Yegher, in The Sound of one hand clapping (her manual about writing for the stage), recommends that you start off with an image which has haunted you.
I remember once reading an interview with John Lennon, in which he spoke about the writing of his song How do you sleep (a bitter attack on his former Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney).Lennon said, in effect, that on the day he wrote it, he'd woken up feeling good, but then realized he had an album to make, so he cast around for suitable subjects. In other words, he whipped himself into a frenzy. Personally, I feel angry pretty much all the time about pretty much everything, although sometimes it takes me a while to realize what has made me angry and why.
So : a work of fiction about mourners of Diana. At the same time, I was thinking about writing about something shorter than a novel. But not a short story. I've tried to write short stories before, by they're too...well..short. I can't write short. I don't mean that I ramble, or I try not to. But to fit it all in to 2,000 words...that's clinical. I don't read a lot of short stories either. They seem to abrupt. The literary ones seem to have no plot, and the genre ones seem to have no characterization. The best short stories I've ever read are William Trevor's. And I believe, although I could be wrong, that the best short stories are by writers at the heights of their powers, who have honed their craft on larger works. Short stories are not the nursery slopes.
How about a one-act stage play? It wouldn't need a plot. Or much of one, anyway. You can get away with two characters trying to change each other's minds. I don't want to write a monologue, cheap as it might be to produce. I want the audience to see my characters arguing with each other, so that they can make their own makes up about the characters' veracities. The lowest number of one is two. Two characters.
Two women. Because I read somewhere that there is a scarcity of plays written just for actresses, even though more women that men enter show-business. Another cause to fight. (Also, if I'm honest, something of a marketing point).
Since before Christmas, I have been brewing this plot. I was hoping to have it finished by today. My writing class begins tonight, and I had visions of triumphantly handing around a complete first draft. It hasn't happened, but at the same time, I've been making progress. And there's no deadline for this, after all. And after months and months of no direction, months and months of barren-ness, to feel this charged about a project, to feel this excited...I feel like celebrating. It's almost beside the point how good the finished project is, just to feel a burning to tell a particular story (as opposed to any story at all) is enough. Although I also know, from experience, that if you enjoy writing a piece, there's a great chance that other people will enjoy it, too.
This is one mistake I've been making for years : trying to write something to somebody else's criteria. I've been starting off writing in my notebook "A romantic comedy","A low-budget hollywood film." Because I thought that would be saleable. I've also written "Sympathetic central character" and "happy ending." And one day, I hope to write a hollywood-style romantic comedy with a sympathetic hero and a heart-warming ending. Because I love a good film like that, I'll even sit through a mediocre one. But my approach wasn't bringing me anything meaningful. And it's become clear to me since that when Richard Curtis wrote Four Weddings and a funeral, he also had a message about the state of marriage; and when he wrote Notting Hill, he also wanted to say something about the nature of celebrity. Here, I told myself : the characters can be as unpleasant as possible. Or, rather, I would be objective about both of them. And the ending can be bleak and nihilistic. Whatever seems to fit. And that approach came up trumps.
So : two women characters. From somewhere, the image of a woman throwing an egg at Camilla Parker-Bowles has turned up. It's something many of Diana's mourners would like to do. In fact, they might use something harder than stones. There again, most people, even if they hated someone that strongly, wouldn't try to do anything. My character has got to do something. Throwing an egg...I think, unless events prove me wrong, that if the typical Diana-mourner were to throw something, it would be an egg. Something that would humiliate rather than kill.
One of my women characters, then, is a Diana-mourner. She's in the vicinity of Camilla Parker-Bowles, she has eggs ready, and she wants to throw one, for the memory of Diana Spencer, because she thought C P-B's conduct was wrong. A genteel Day of the Jackal.
Other questions come to me. Why is she in the vicinity of C B-P? Did she know C B-P was going to be there, and came along with eggs deliberately? No, that doesn't feel right (go with your instincts). She's arrived somewhere where C B-P happens to be visiting. An art gallery? Why would you take eggs to an art gallery (or where would you buy them inside an art gallery?)?
Meanwhile,who is the other woman character?A Complete stranger? No, that doesn't feel right. A complete stranger might see our heroine with the egg, and wrestle her to the ground, but that isn't drama, even if it is dramatic. That would just be two women wrestling with an egg on a stage - great for a stag night,possibly, but not for a play. Drama means dialogue, it means one character trying to change another character's mind, either by arguing or lying. And a stage play must be made up of drama, it's not built for anything else, and it doesn't want to do anything else. Because when you see a good play,live on stage, something that touches you, all the gunfights and car chases and collapsing buildings seem shallow, false, unimportant.
This is the image that I had, the starting point. C B-P, as you may know, is the woman Prince Charles is now married to, now known as the Duchess of Cornwall. The woman he was, apparently, in love with when he proposed to Diana Spencer, Lady Di, the Princess of Wales. The woman he made Diana's personal assistant so that, unknown to Diana, he could carry on the affair.
I was thinking about the death of Diana, and more importantly, the people who mourned her. I am against monarchies, actually. My politics are left of centre, and I hate the English class system. Nevertheless, even I felt disorientated by the death. Like Michael Jackson, her death didn't seem to be possible. It was as though you were hearing about the death of Mickey Mouse, a much-loved fictional character. I couldn't help but feel angry about the way she'd been treated. Most erring husbands, when they have been found out, at least apologize ; but Prince Charles simply decided that he was the Prince of Wales, his ancestors had done the same, and as far as he was concerned, he could do what he liked. I kept telling myslf "It's not real life, it's not real life," although I suppose it was somebody's life.
The reactions to Diana's death and funeral were interesting. The mourners were all assumed, by the hip, trendy intelligentsia, to be stupid (most of them, after all, were working class women). The far left took pot-shots at her. They even tried to invent Prince Charles as some sort of ant-authoritarian pioneer, a modern-day Marquis de Sade, railing against established morality. Living Marxism magazine even described him as likeable and blokeish. Diana, meanwhile, had been too emotional.
But the funeral itself was more than that. It was a focal point for a nation which was angry about the way the country was being run. It was, I felt, against royalty. It was also angry at the cynicism and greed of politicians and businessmen, rising debt, and the soullessness of modern living. But all that was ignored. The mood was exploited. The heritage industry cashed in on her name and celebrity. She became Royalty's greatest hit. Today, you can buy Diana Spencer souvenirs at any stately home gift-shop. In her death, she has made millions for her ex-husband and ex-in-laws, who weren't exactly poor to begin with.
My fiction, though, is concerned with s0-called ordinary people. I began thinking about the mourners, like my wife, my mother, my late mother-in-law. The people who laid wreaths outside public buildings, and lined up outside Westminster Abbey to see her coffin. Who went to Kensington Palace to see her collection of dresses, and who bought Elton John's new version of Candle In The Wind. I felt angry, and angry on behalf of somebody. And I have found, for me anyway, that that is the best starting point for fiction. You need a cause to fight.
I believe that all the best art is born of passion ; but for the fiction writer, that passion needs to be anger. Nigel Watts, in his book Teach Yourself how to write a novel, says that a writer without an idea is like a white knight on a charger, looking for a damself in distress to rescue. And Sheila Yegher, in The Sound of one hand clapping (her manual about writing for the stage), recommends that you start off with an image which has haunted you.
I remember once reading an interview with John Lennon, in which he spoke about the writing of his song How do you sleep (a bitter attack on his former Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney).Lennon said, in effect, that on the day he wrote it, he'd woken up feeling good, but then realized he had an album to make, so he cast around for suitable subjects. In other words, he whipped himself into a frenzy. Personally, I feel angry pretty much all the time about pretty much everything, although sometimes it takes me a while to realize what has made me angry and why.
So : a work of fiction about mourners of Diana. At the same time, I was thinking about writing about something shorter than a novel. But not a short story. I've tried to write short stories before, by they're too...well..short. I can't write short. I don't mean that I ramble, or I try not to. But to fit it all in to 2,000 words...that's clinical. I don't read a lot of short stories either. They seem to abrupt. The literary ones seem to have no plot, and the genre ones seem to have no characterization. The best short stories I've ever read are William Trevor's. And I believe, although I could be wrong, that the best short stories are by writers at the heights of their powers, who have honed their craft on larger works. Short stories are not the nursery slopes.
How about a one-act stage play? It wouldn't need a plot. Or much of one, anyway. You can get away with two characters trying to change each other's minds. I don't want to write a monologue, cheap as it might be to produce. I want the audience to see my characters arguing with each other, so that they can make their own makes up about the characters' veracities. The lowest number of one is two. Two characters.
Two women. Because I read somewhere that there is a scarcity of plays written just for actresses, even though more women that men enter show-business. Another cause to fight. (Also, if I'm honest, something of a marketing point).
Since before Christmas, I have been brewing this plot. I was hoping to have it finished by today. My writing class begins tonight, and I had visions of triumphantly handing around a complete first draft. It hasn't happened, but at the same time, I've been making progress. And there's no deadline for this, after all. And after months and months of no direction, months and months of barren-ness, to feel this charged about a project, to feel this excited...I feel like celebrating. It's almost beside the point how good the finished project is, just to feel a burning to tell a particular story (as opposed to any story at all) is enough. Although I also know, from experience, that if you enjoy writing a piece, there's a great chance that other people will enjoy it, too.
This is one mistake I've been making for years : trying to write something to somebody else's criteria. I've been starting off writing in my notebook "A romantic comedy","A low-budget hollywood film." Because I thought that would be saleable. I've also written "Sympathetic central character" and "happy ending." And one day, I hope to write a hollywood-style romantic comedy with a sympathetic hero and a heart-warming ending. Because I love a good film like that, I'll even sit through a mediocre one. But my approach wasn't bringing me anything meaningful. And it's become clear to me since that when Richard Curtis wrote Four Weddings and a funeral, he also had a message about the state of marriage; and when he wrote Notting Hill, he also wanted to say something about the nature of celebrity. Here, I told myself : the characters can be as unpleasant as possible. Or, rather, I would be objective about both of them. And the ending can be bleak and nihilistic. Whatever seems to fit. And that approach came up trumps.
So : two women characters. From somewhere, the image of a woman throwing an egg at Camilla Parker-Bowles has turned up. It's something many of Diana's mourners would like to do. In fact, they might use something harder than stones. There again, most people, even if they hated someone that strongly, wouldn't try to do anything. My character has got to do something. Throwing an egg...I think, unless events prove me wrong, that if the typical Diana-mourner were to throw something, it would be an egg. Something that would humiliate rather than kill.
One of my women characters, then, is a Diana-mourner. She's in the vicinity of Camilla Parker-Bowles, she has eggs ready, and she wants to throw one, for the memory of Diana Spencer, because she thought C P-B's conduct was wrong. A genteel Day of the Jackal.
Other questions come to me. Why is she in the vicinity of C B-P? Did she know C B-P was going to be there, and came along with eggs deliberately? No, that doesn't feel right (go with your instincts). She's arrived somewhere where C B-P happens to be visiting. An art gallery? Why would you take eggs to an art gallery (or where would you buy them inside an art gallery?)?
Meanwhile,who is the other woman character?A Complete stranger? No, that doesn't feel right. A complete stranger might see our heroine with the egg, and wrestle her to the ground, but that isn't drama, even if it is dramatic. That would just be two women wrestling with an egg on a stage - great for a stag night,possibly, but not for a play. Drama means dialogue, it means one character trying to change another character's mind, either by arguing or lying. And a stage play must be made up of drama, it's not built for anything else, and it doesn't want to do anything else. Because when you see a good play,live on stage, something that touches you, all the gunfights and car chases and collapsing buildings seem shallow, false, unimportant.
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