Imagine - Ian Rankin

I’m still here and in the middle of editing. I haven’t blogged about it because it’s hard slog and I’m not sure there’s anything about it worth posting. I took great comfort, therefore, from a recent BBC documentary on Ian Rankin (for those in the UK it will be on I Player for a few more days). I don’t pretend to compare myself to him but it was good to know that successful writers also have ups and downs during the writing process.

The documentary included interviews, as well as recordings made by the author using a hand held camera. He was very honest and showed that it’s not as simple as sitting in a lovely study and drafting a polished novel in six months. I wanted to share a couple of quotes which held some resonance with me but please take a look at the programme if you can.

On the writing process, “It’s still a weird rollercoaster. One day I’m enjoying it, the next day I’m not. One day I think it’s ok, the next day I think it’s dreadful and it isn’t working.”

On the novel, “The real world is very messy and incomplete and often our questions aren’t answered and we can’t always make sense of things. What the novel does for me is that kind of therapeutic thing of giving a shape. Suddenly I can take all that mess, all these notes and clippings and give them a shape...an arc, make it into a story and that is very satisfying.”

Encouragement

I had a positive tutorial earlier this week. I submitted the first draft of chapters nineteen to thirty but also the first proper edit of chapters two and three. Good news re the latter – there were less comments in the margins and more ticks. The only issue is that in making my protagonist's desire clearer, she now comes across as rather selfish. Although we see her change dramatically by the end of the novel, few readers are going to find that out if they decide by chapter two that they don’t like her and put the book down. Fortunately, it’s a problem that can be easily fixed.

I started editing chapter six today. After the first read through I was appalled at how bad it is but thankfully I know why and what I need to do to fix it.

I hope to have a decent second draft of the novel by Christmas. After that, I’ll submit it to my tutor and prepare for the inevitable draft three. Yes, I know there will be a draft four, five, six... Writing a novel is not a quick, easy process. It is hard work, challenging and lonely but rewarding when those ticks appear in the margin.

Editing

I didn’t realise how long it’s been since I last posted; I’ve been lost in the world of editing. It’s a fascinating process and I’m learning a great deal. I’m taking a chapter at a time and reviewing structure, setting, character and style. It’s difficult not to address all these elements at once so I’m very strict with myself and take each in turn. Setting is turning out to be interesting – I did include it in the first draft but am now looking at it much more closely from my protagonists’ point of view. My favourite stage is the review of style. Knowing that I’m content (at the moment) with all the other elements I can focus on the sentence structure, vocabulary etc. It’s as if I am seeing the manuscript through a magnifying glass and all manner of mistakes appear. Editing is a very time consuming process and requires a structured approach, as well as patience. It’s worth it. Only twenty eight chapters to go.

The Last Chapter

Exciting news – I have finished the first draft of the novel. I am actually more emotional than I expected. It is a milestone that I have been doggedly working towards for eighteen months and I feel a certain amount of relief that I have finally got there.

That is the good news. However, there are still many, many hours of work. What I have produced (I think) is a strong outline. I now have to go back, take a chapter at a time and build on the character and description elements. This should hopefully be more freeing than the process so far which has been slowed by the significant amount of historical research that I’ve needed to do. A key element will be to feed the creative side of my brain and, as I have written here before, just have fun with it.

Oh yes, I also have to keep reading and researching for my thesis. I aim to take some time off at Christmas but until then it is heads down…

Other Voices, Other Times

I recently attended a one day symposium titled Other Voices, Other Times; the aim of which was to explore representation in historical and fantasy writing. It was a wonderful, if rather busy day at one of Bath Spa University’s beautiful campuses in Wiltshire. It began with the keynote speakers Ashley Pharoah (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes) and Professor Gerard Woodward on writing the seventies. It’s interesting that even when writing about a decade that many in the audience could remember, there are still debates to be had about what actually happened and what people remembered happening.
I then attended the ethical perspectives workshop which covered: the relationship between writing history and historical fiction (this was covered in depth at last years’ Institute of Historical Research conference); voices of the forgotten; and the question of authenticity (this kept cropping up during the day). A fascinating aspect was the role that creative writing is now taking in museums. Indeed, one of my favourite notes that I took of the day was ‘writer as curator.’
The second keynote speakers were Celia Brayfield (reading Fay Weldon’s paper as she was unable to attend) and Dr Ian Mortimer. The former suggesting that historical research need only be basic and the latter that there will always be a gap between the writing of history and historical fiction.
Finally, I went to a workshop that included a paper on one novelists’ experience of researching and writing a novel on the 1857 Indian Uprising. Although my novel is set in a different period, I could relate to the various issues and felt less alone. I came away from the day inspired and very enthusiastic about getting on with my novel (four chapters to go...).

Researching the Arts

This week I was allowed out from behind my desk to go to a Researching the Arts conference – research students from the School of Arts presenting papers and performing/reading. The creative part of the brain needs to be fed; this can mean pinning up inspiring pictures on the walls around your desk to visiting a museum. The conference was an excellent way of stimulating this creative side. The performances, whether they were readings from novels in progress or music composed on a laptop, were inspiring on their own. However, the accompanying papers made my brain work harder to find connections between the art forms. Two of the papers focussed on the relationship between music and visual arts. Again, I found myself wondering at just how different mediums allow us to express ideas so very differently. What would chapter six of my novel look like as a painting or a film? What would the accompanying musical score sound like? I hope to present at next year’s conference and am very much looking forward to it.  

The Last Push

I’ve been on my holidays and resumed writing last week. I’m now about to start Chapter 25. It’s so good to be able to type that. It was wonderful to have a complete break, particularly as the story is now taking place in a different country and the tone has changed. It also meant I could read novels that were nothing at all to do with my studies.

I’m now pushing really hard to get the final six chapters done (in first draft) by the end of July. I even found myself using a timer this week and aiming to get x number of words down in an hour. It does rather focus the mind and is working. When I did my BA I did a similar thing and rewarded myself with biscuits but I’m not sure I can do that anymore and get away with it. Of course, this is fine in a chapter that has not required so much micro research but it won’t be so easy when I get further along.

Romance of the Middle Ages

Yesterday I visited the Romance of the Middle Ages exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It uses manuscripts, printed books and art to explore the story of the romance from the Middle Ages to the present day. Exhibits range from a most incredibly illustrated copy of Le Roman de la Rose to a pen-and-ink drawing of a knight and lady by Edward Burne-Jones, a hand written page by Tolkien and a letter from the BBC to the Monty Python team regarding The Holy Grail.

There are many elements that I could write about here but the overwhelming feeling I came away with was my love for the physical book. This is beautifully illustrated (no pun intended) by an exhibit named A Shared Book. It a version of the poem Arthur and Merlin and is inscribed ‘This is Robert Jones his booke recorde of Steven Jones and of Robert Webbe and of Misteris Caterne Jones and of many mo good people in the parishe of Tolpudle’. I love the idea of it being passed around the village to be read and surviving to this day.

More on the exhibition can be found at http://medievalromance.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/romance-home

Plodding

I haven’t blogged for a while. The main reason is that I am going through a phase loosely titled ‘heads down and get on with it.’ The writing process is a little like a job at the moment. I sit down on my allocated study days, review my milestones and then keep writing. It’s a bit lonely sitting here in the office most days and self motivation cannot be underestimated. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying it but I just want to get to the end of the first draft so that I can go back and start having fun with it. I’ve now reached 80% of the novel although I expect that the estimated total word count will increase. There was a brief moment of panic a few weeks ago when I found a basic error when reading my research notes which rendered part of my novel plan useless. However, due to the joys of the excel spreadsheet I was able to move everything around and it’s actually much better.
Hopefully, by the summer I will have completed the draft. I will also be allowing myself out of the house to attend a couple of conferences.

Progression

The last few weeks have been very busy. I finished editing the first eighteen chapters of the novel, drafted a progress report and finalised my bibliography. What was the reason for this flurry of activity? This week I had a progression meeting at university to determine whether my work is of a suitable standard for ‘upgrade’ from MPhil to PhD. The good news is that I was successful. The feedback on the draft novel chapters was positive but I need to add another layer of detail in order to bring the characters to life. This didn’t come as a surprise and is a result of my annoying need to get the whole thing down before allowing myself to have fun with it.

I also attended the research student poster conference at my university. I was inspired to submit my own next year and have already started to design it in my head.
So what next? Basically I am researching and writing the final eleven chapters and continuing to read a list of WW1 novels published post 1930. That should keep me busy for a while...

Tired

I have spent the last few weeks editing the first two thirds of the novel. I’m just over halfway there. I think that it’s been the most difficult time that I’ve had since commencing this project. The fact that there are 50,000 words is rather daunting in itself. In addition, I find it hard knowing that the remaining third is yet to be written. It’s as if I can’t sleep until I have an entire first draft. I have to get over that. The editing will need to be done at some point; it will require the same amount of time whenever I do it. If I get the first two thirds in better shape the drafting of the last ten chapters should be a little easier.

But it’s more than that. I found the first couple of weeks of the editing process very tiring. The problem wasn’t writers block; it was as if my mind didn’t want to do it. At times, I wasn’t sure that I even enjoyed what I was doing anymore. It was like being a child that doesn’t want to do their homework.

How have I dealt with it? I take a chapter, amend it according to my tutor’s comments and then start editing. The key is to approach it paragraph by paragraph. I literally make myself sit there until I enter that state which is difficult to describe; when the room around you disappears and you are in the world that you are writing about. There were a couple of occasions when I knew that it didn’t matter how much I pushed myself, I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. There are some days when you really can’t be creative. That’s when I got of the house and went for a run. It really helped.

Now as I compare the second draft to the first I do feel a sense of satisfaction. It’s a slow process but it’s making a difference. Writing is extremely hard work and requires a great deal of determination, self discipline and effort. Never mind the loneliness. I’m tired but the end is in sight and hopefully this will all be forgotten.

The Penny Has Dropped

My husband recently went away for two weeks so I took time off work (I work part-time) and dedicated the entire period to study. The aim was to draft ten thousand words. There was one point when I didn’t leave the house for three days but it was worth it and I achieved the word count.

Why did I want to do this? I wanted to get as much of the story down as possible (as well as the historical micro research that goes with it) so that I can then go back and focus on description, dialogue and character. This is just my way of working.

Character. Well the penny has finally dropped. I had another tutorial last week and I received the same feedback as usual – my protagonist is too distant. I was incredibly frustrated as I had really worked on this area. However, it’s all very well knowing there’s a problem but you need the tools to fix it. I clearly hadn’t got the right tools. There are reasons for this distance issue: my job requires very factual drafting with no emotion or bias; I spent last year reading 30+ novels which were mainly from an omniscient or distant third person point of view; and I naturally like to sketch in the story and then build layer upon layer of shadow and colour.

It’s all part of the learning process and I like a challenge. I went off to the library, took out every book I could find on the subject and read. My problem was understanding the difference between distant third person and close third person as well as everything in-between. For some reason I couldn’t see it from reading novels, I needed a detailed explanation. I now have it.

I am now going back through the first nineteen chapters and editing them with this in mind. I used to look at my writing but not see it. I found this frustrating because in my day job I could read a submission of my own and see a sentence or just a word that was incorrect because it didn’t follow the key principles behind that particular drafting style. Now I can see it with my creative writing. The thing I have to be careful with is how I move along the spectrum between close and distant; knowing when to do this and how.

How to be a Writer

Last night I went to the book launch of How to be a Writer by fellow student Sally O’Reilly. As the book description states “There are hundreds of books that will take you through the writing process or provide advice about how to get your work published, but none that explain how to transform your talent into a long-term career”. Sally offers practical advice, including case studies, on everything from using the Internet to how to find a day job. Even if you are not yet published, it is a valuable way of anticipating risks and finding ways to mitigate them. It also helps to manage expectations. Sally is a published author and Creative Writing tutor and so has a great deal of knowledge and experience.

The launch was held at the famous Groucho Club in London. It was a great night and it was lovely to see so many friends. Sally also read from her latest novel which I’m very much looking forward to reading when it’s published.

Sally blogs at http://how2beawriter.blogspot.com/