As I expected, I loved Writers and Readers week at the International Arts Festival in Wellington. Highlights? Kamila Shamsi, for one. She's Pakistani and writes about wars on terror as an ongoing historical phenomenon, and how fear leads to accepting anything in the name of safety and security. Her novel Burnt Shadows is stunning. Also Neil Gaiman and Margo Lanahan both of whose books have large fantasy elements which I have enjoyed a lot. Audrey Niffenegger was fun, too, talking about Highgate Cemetery and her latest book. Geoff Dyer said he can’t think of stories so his books don’t behave the way readers expect. He admires Allan Hollinghurst, who does tell stories. Dyer looks for “unmediated experience” and tries to reduce the the distance between what he is writing and how he is writing it. I do love listening to writers talking about writing, even if I don’t always understand everything they say. I take notes. Another highlight was Philip Hoare, historian of the decadence of the nineteen twenties and, more lately, his current passion, whales. A very entertaining eccentric.
On my daily tasks I am doing better on writing 250 words a day than I am on editing my book. The latter needs longer periods of time I think, and my days have been very full lately. I am surprising myself with what comes out of my mind in the daily writing. At the end of March, I have decided, I will print all to date - about 40 beginnings - and read them and see what I want to add to and what I can mine for other purposes and review the whole exercise. I’ll keep doing it, might just change the parameters. Or not. Will report.
I’m changing my editing plan to available half days, of which my diary indicates there are some ahead. Interesting how recording these activities makes them concrete.
March 22, 2010
March 5, 2010
Reading the web, new writing & revising
I’ve been looking at lists and blogs about writing and writers. The best general writing blogs are via literary publications, like the New Yorker’s Book Bench http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/?xrail and the blogs at the LA Times http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy and the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog. They all have links to other places and writers and act as useful filters (for me, anyway) so you can avoid spending hours trawling through individual author websites devoted mostly to bios and promoting their books, which is fair enough, but not what I want to read.
The New Yorker Book Bench is particularly good. It often links to non-nyer sites and, as is the nature of the internet beast, one thing leads to another. The trick is not to spend (waste?) too many hours on the intelligent musings of good writers. It can feel ‘educational’ but actually there is a law of diminishing returns. Lists of writing ‘rules’ and tips crop up often, some of them really useful, but in the end it’s each to her own. I really like to read what published writers say about their routines and habits, and there's plenty of that. Again, I look for the occasional tip that can be useful to me rather than rules to follow. For example, in spite of advice to the contrary I don’t plan to give up semi-colons altogether in favour of full-stops, but I might be more considered about where I use one. I might.
So, to create some discipline in my own writing I have set myself two daily tasks.
The first is to write 250 words of new fiction a day. This isn’t much, about two paragraphs, and can be done in fifteen or so minutes. I started about three weeks ago and so far have 21 short story beginnings. In a year I could have 365 short story beginnings. Yikes! Many of course will never go anywhere and I could try endings and middles in due course. Or even look back at earlier beginnings and add another 250 or so words. The word count is not exact, by the way, it’s not a matter of stopping at 250, it’s that once this number is reached I am ‘allowed’ to stop. It is interesting to have to dredge up an idea/ character/ bit of plot from scratch and get something on the page. Occasionally I surprise myself.
The other task I am setting myself is to spend at least an hour a day revising the novel I first-drafted last November. This is proving to be a major undertaking, which I am enjoying more than I expected. There have been lots of time and other detail issues to sort out, and now I am concentrating on tenses. I want to use present tense a lot and this is tricky. Will write more about this in a later post.
The New Yorker Book Bench is particularly good. It often links to non-nyer sites and, as is the nature of the internet beast, one thing leads to another. The trick is not to spend (waste?) too many hours on the intelligent musings of good writers. It can feel ‘educational’ but actually there is a law of diminishing returns. Lists of writing ‘rules’ and tips crop up often, some of them really useful, but in the end it’s each to her own. I really like to read what published writers say about their routines and habits, and there's plenty of that. Again, I look for the occasional tip that can be useful to me rather than rules to follow. For example, in spite of advice to the contrary I don’t plan to give up semi-colons altogether in favour of full-stops, but I might be more considered about where I use one. I might.
So, to create some discipline in my own writing I have set myself two daily tasks.
The first is to write 250 words of new fiction a day. This isn’t much, about two paragraphs, and can be done in fifteen or so minutes. I started about three weeks ago and so far have 21 short story beginnings. In a year I could have 365 short story beginnings. Yikes! Many of course will never go anywhere and I could try endings and middles in due course. Or even look back at earlier beginnings and add another 250 or so words. The word count is not exact, by the way, it’s not a matter of stopping at 250, it’s that once this number is reached I am ‘allowed’ to stop. It is interesting to have to dredge up an idea/ character/ bit of plot from scratch and get something on the page. Occasionally I surprise myself.
The other task I am setting myself is to spend at least an hour a day revising the novel I first-drafted last November. This is proving to be a major undertaking, which I am enjoying more than I expected. There have been lots of time and other detail issues to sort out, and now I am concentrating on tenses. I want to use present tense a lot and this is tricky. Will write more about this in a later post.
February 18, 2010
Plotting and Quoting
I like to write about someone in their life, the everyday, the quotidian to be pretentious. This means I think a lot about whether or not what I write is interesting enough. I also like to quote from other writers. Showing off? Maybe, depending on whether or not the quote arises from the story/character or I have put it in because and know and like it.
I’d like to quote Gertrude Stein all the time and mostly don’t because it’s self-indulgent to put “there’s no there, there” in every story I write. Another favourite from GS is “little by little we never met again.”
I am writing my fourth novel from the point of view of one protagonist, focusing on her “ordinary” life, which is similar to the approach of the previous three. Themes? How to live a worthwhile life, identity, relationships. This sounds, and sometimes feels, banal, as in why bother? Yet I do bother, I work at writing as well as I can, so I obviously think it’s worthwhile.
To illustrate what I have just said here’s the opening of the novel I am working on at the moment. It’s still a draft. Title? No, not yet. The working title, as they say, is Ann.
Chapter 1
She left. Just like that; announced her intention after lunch and was gone before dinner. Not that Ann wanted any.
“Yes, there is someone else,” she said. “Julie. Sutton.”
Shit. Julie was Ann’s friend. Emphasis on was.
“How long?” That was the wrong question but it was the one in Ann’s head.
“Six weeks.” She wouldn’t look at Ann. “Look, there’s nothing to talk about,” she said, “it just happened and I didn’t know how to tell you. You’ll get over it.” That’s when Ann got mad and shouted and cried for a long time, until her ex-partner — get used to it, Ann — picked up her bag — a small bag for fourteen years — and walked out, saying over her shoulder, “You can stay here for now. We’ll work out the rest later.”
“CAN!” Ann was yelling again. “I thought we were happy! Happy! Silly me!” Her only answer was a quietly closing door.
Ex's laptop was gone, of course. Bella the dog, Ex’s dog, remained.
“She’s abandoned us Bella, for pastures new. Don’t take it personally, but you’re going too. I will find someone to take you to her, and you and she will have a beautiful reunion. Until then, I’ll do my best, but we both know I am not a good dog mother.”
Ann experiences being left as banal. She thinks of an Edna St Vincent Millay poem.
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike
She finds a mutual friend to deliver Bella and takes advantage of her decade of lecturing a third-year paper on Romantic Literature to re-run last year's lectures and tutorials without revisions. Upheavals in the university, as funding cuts lead to restructurings lead to redundancies, pass her by as she struggles with rediscovering how to live on her own. Ex wants to talk about selling the house.
“You could buy me out,” she suggests cheerfully to Ann. “You earn plenty.”
Not that plenty! Ex will want full market value. Mind you, it's a buyer's market, and would make good financial sense, but Ann is not going to be obliging. Nor is she going to be talked to by Julie Sutton. Ever.
Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do.
On a dismal Sunday morning, in the house on her own,
And life goes on for ever like the gnawing of a mouse
Ann wanders through the rooms, feeling each one as a cloak, enveloping her. It's winter-cold, a brutal southerly wind whipping branches of the karaka tree against the side of the house. Her hand slides over the red formica of the kitchen table, built into an awkward space, its bench seating giving it the look of retro cafe in downtown Wellington. Ann never liked it much, Ex showed it off. The rest of the kitchen, their first renovation, was slick and modern, including an expensive toaster, for Ann, for whom multi-grain bread, toasted until crunchy at its edges, is a food group. She knows exactly which setting works best for each of her three favourite breads, the ones you can only buy uncut. She slices them herself, with an old, wide, bread-knife, freezes the slit loaf and eases off two slices at a time for breakfast or lunch or dinner; some of these days it's all three.
Whole grain bread and peanut butter together make a perfect protein. She forgets where she read this. A lettuce leaf or two, a tomato, a chunk of aging cucumber from the bottom of the fridge and she can convince herself she's having a balanced meal, never mind the two glasses of wine. Only once has she emptied the whole bottle, on her own, in an evening. Only once, truly.
They had cooked together a lot at first, then, increasingly, they took turns. A senior lecturer and a senior public servant had busy lives, worked long hours.
The dining room centre-piece is a long rimu table with eight matching chairs. They had fought over this table, one wanting it, the other not. Ann can't remember who was on which side. She likes it now, can see it with friends all around, eating, talking, drinking, laughing. The best of times. And meetings. Neighbourhood watch, until too many people moved and their replacements didn't opt in. Ex had tried very hard to keep that going. Occasional end-of-year afternoon teas with Ann's third-year students, never very many, most of them too involved with their own lives. Their book group — no, that met in the living room. Other meetings, she can't think what, but she thinks of this room, dominated by the table, as full of people.
Aah, the living room. Comfort. Big sofas, two. Big arm chairs, two. They'd got into habits, Ann on a sofa, feet up, Ex in one of the arm chairs using a squab as a footstool, watching their favourite television shows. Ann followed 24, which Ex hated. Ex was fixated on Lost, which Ann couldn't be bothered with. They both liked ER, and Outrageous Fortune. Now, Ann would sit on her sofa for an evening channel surfing and have forgotten everything she saw by the time she went to bed.
The bedroom. Theirs once. Hers now. Ann couldn't think about that. The office. A spare room, really, they both worked at home on their laptops, anywhere. Sometimes one of them would spread out papers all over the dining room table. They’d had a kind of two-day limit on that. Now that Ann could leave anything for as long as she wanted, she never used the big table for work. The cubbyhole in the kitchen suited her better; she didn't feel as lonely there.
There's this little street and this little house.
Except the house isn't little. There are two more rooms downstairs, a double garage — probably the only double garage in Wadestown, Ex used to say. But little describes Ann to herself today. Diminished. Bereft. “Oh, fuck it! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” She says — shouts — to the house. “Fuck OFF.”
“I have,” says the voice of Ex from somewhere in the back of Ann's mind.
“I mean FUCK OFF HOUSE!” Her mouth is still poised for words, loud words. The thought is somewhere else.
“She can buy me out. Or they. Ouch. Yes, they. She/they can buy me out and I can …” That's an idea with nowhere to go, Ann thinks, but she feels lighter. Ex can decide what to do with this and that. She, Ann, will float free. She spends the rest of Sunday making a list of what she wants to keep from the house and is surprised at how short it is. Monday and Tuesday evenings she makes another list, of chattels, things that they bought together, that she can get bought out of, too.
On Thursday she goes to see Jennifer Ryan, lawyer, who explains the legal situation, which Ann, unusually, doesn't bother to follow. She's still got that floating feeling, as though she was in a Chagall painting. Ann leaves the chattels list with Jennifer. She and Ex kept well organised accounts, so she has the date of purchase and the price they paid for every item.
“How are you?” asks Ex, sitting opposite her in Gotham Cafe, Chews Lane. Her voice is gentle, her eyes are soft.
“Not your business these days.” Ann likes her own reply. “You — and her if you like — can buy me out. Of the house. You always liked it more than me.” That's not true, but Ann doesn't care.
There's no reply, for a long time. Ex looks at the table. When she raises her face Ann can't read her expression. Maybe this is what Ex wanted. That doesn’t matter to Ann, it's what she herself wants now, and she's not going to go cheaply. She thinks of those divorce stories on television where one person tries to do the other down. That's not what she wants, she wants to be fair, but fair to herself as well.
“Well! That's caught me on the hop. I thought you’d want to stay there.”
“You buy me out or the house goes on the market. Soon. By the end of August.”
“I'd have to agree to it going on the market, you couldn't just sell it. We do own it jointly, after all."
“I know that. I'm thinking you'll do what I want because you're guilty about dumping me. And guilty about being a coward and not telling me about you and — her.” Ann is pleased with herself for saying that.
“I'm not sure that Julie and I have much of a future.” Again, Ex can't look at her.
Ann throws back her head and laughs. And laughs. People look. Ex wipes away tears.
“Too late,” says Ann, “I’ve taken your advice and gotten over you and,” she pseudo-sings, “I’m mo-oving on,” then reverts to being crisp. “Let me know about buying the house. Here's my lawyer's card.” She tucks the card under the saucer of Ex's coffee cup.
Ex looks at Ann and says, “I miss Shirley and Keith.” She's still teary and Ann is still refusing to take notice and just looks back and waits, enjoying feeling cool and angry and detached. “I thought I might ring them,” Ex says eventually.
“They're my parents, not my children, you don’t need my permission to contact them. Ring, don't ring, it's your call.” Ann thinks she is enjoying this far too much.
“I thought they might be, you know, angry with me or something.” Ex is practically pleading to know what kind of reception she would get.
“We haven't actually been talking about you,” says Ann as she stands up. Which is nearly true, if you don't count her mother's, “How could she?” or her father's, “I always wondered if she could be trusted.”
Ann doesn't look back as she walks off. She feels tall again, as though she is taking up the right amount of space.
I’d like to quote Gertrude Stein all the time and mostly don’t because it’s self-indulgent to put “there’s no there, there” in every story I write. Another favourite from GS is “little by little we never met again.”
I am writing my fourth novel from the point of view of one protagonist, focusing on her “ordinary” life, which is similar to the approach of the previous three. Themes? How to live a worthwhile life, identity, relationships. This sounds, and sometimes feels, banal, as in why bother? Yet I do bother, I work at writing as well as I can, so I obviously think it’s worthwhile.
To illustrate what I have just said here’s the opening of the novel I am working on at the moment. It’s still a draft. Title? No, not yet. The working title, as they say, is Ann.
Chapter 1
She left. Just like that; announced her intention after lunch and was gone before dinner. Not that Ann wanted any.
“Yes, there is someone else,” she said. “Julie. Sutton.”
Shit. Julie was Ann’s friend. Emphasis on was.
“How long?” That was the wrong question but it was the one in Ann’s head.
“Six weeks.” She wouldn’t look at Ann. “Look, there’s nothing to talk about,” she said, “it just happened and I didn’t know how to tell you. You’ll get over it.” That’s when Ann got mad and shouted and cried for a long time, until her ex-partner — get used to it, Ann — picked up her bag — a small bag for fourteen years — and walked out, saying over her shoulder, “You can stay here for now. We’ll work out the rest later.”
“CAN!” Ann was yelling again. “I thought we were happy! Happy! Silly me!” Her only answer was a quietly closing door.
Ex's laptop was gone, of course. Bella the dog, Ex’s dog, remained.
“She’s abandoned us Bella, for pastures new. Don’t take it personally, but you’re going too. I will find someone to take you to her, and you and she will have a beautiful reunion. Until then, I’ll do my best, but we both know I am not a good dog mother.”
Ann experiences being left as banal. She thinks of an Edna St Vincent Millay poem.
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike
She finds a mutual friend to deliver Bella and takes advantage of her decade of lecturing a third-year paper on Romantic Literature to re-run last year's lectures and tutorials without revisions. Upheavals in the university, as funding cuts lead to restructurings lead to redundancies, pass her by as she struggles with rediscovering how to live on her own. Ex wants to talk about selling the house.
“You could buy me out,” she suggests cheerfully to Ann. “You earn plenty.”
Not that plenty! Ex will want full market value. Mind you, it's a buyer's market, and would make good financial sense, but Ann is not going to be obliging. Nor is she going to be talked to by Julie Sutton. Ever.
Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do.
On a dismal Sunday morning, in the house on her own,
And life goes on for ever like the gnawing of a mouse
Ann wanders through the rooms, feeling each one as a cloak, enveloping her. It's winter-cold, a brutal southerly wind whipping branches of the karaka tree against the side of the house. Her hand slides over the red formica of the kitchen table, built into an awkward space, its bench seating giving it the look of retro cafe in downtown Wellington. Ann never liked it much, Ex showed it off. The rest of the kitchen, their first renovation, was slick and modern, including an expensive toaster, for Ann, for whom multi-grain bread, toasted until crunchy at its edges, is a food group. She knows exactly which setting works best for each of her three favourite breads, the ones you can only buy uncut. She slices them herself, with an old, wide, bread-knife, freezes the slit loaf and eases off two slices at a time for breakfast or lunch or dinner; some of these days it's all three.
Whole grain bread and peanut butter together make a perfect protein. She forgets where she read this. A lettuce leaf or two, a tomato, a chunk of aging cucumber from the bottom of the fridge and she can convince herself she's having a balanced meal, never mind the two glasses of wine. Only once has she emptied the whole bottle, on her own, in an evening. Only once, truly.
They had cooked together a lot at first, then, increasingly, they took turns. A senior lecturer and a senior public servant had busy lives, worked long hours.
The dining room centre-piece is a long rimu table with eight matching chairs. They had fought over this table, one wanting it, the other not. Ann can't remember who was on which side. She likes it now, can see it with friends all around, eating, talking, drinking, laughing. The best of times. And meetings. Neighbourhood watch, until too many people moved and their replacements didn't opt in. Ex had tried very hard to keep that going. Occasional end-of-year afternoon teas with Ann's third-year students, never very many, most of them too involved with their own lives. Their book group — no, that met in the living room. Other meetings, she can't think what, but she thinks of this room, dominated by the table, as full of people.
Aah, the living room. Comfort. Big sofas, two. Big arm chairs, two. They'd got into habits, Ann on a sofa, feet up, Ex in one of the arm chairs using a squab as a footstool, watching their favourite television shows. Ann followed 24, which Ex hated. Ex was fixated on Lost, which Ann couldn't be bothered with. They both liked ER, and Outrageous Fortune. Now, Ann would sit on her sofa for an evening channel surfing and have forgotten everything she saw by the time she went to bed.
The bedroom. Theirs once. Hers now. Ann couldn't think about that. The office. A spare room, really, they both worked at home on their laptops, anywhere. Sometimes one of them would spread out papers all over the dining room table. They’d had a kind of two-day limit on that. Now that Ann could leave anything for as long as she wanted, she never used the big table for work. The cubbyhole in the kitchen suited her better; she didn't feel as lonely there.
There's this little street and this little house.
Except the house isn't little. There are two more rooms downstairs, a double garage — probably the only double garage in Wadestown, Ex used to say. But little describes Ann to herself today. Diminished. Bereft. “Oh, fuck it! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” She says — shouts — to the house. “Fuck OFF.”
“I have,” says the voice of Ex from somewhere in the back of Ann's mind.
“I mean FUCK OFF HOUSE!” Her mouth is still poised for words, loud words. The thought is somewhere else.
“She can buy me out. Or they. Ouch. Yes, they. She/they can buy me out and I can …” That's an idea with nowhere to go, Ann thinks, but she feels lighter. Ex can decide what to do with this and that. She, Ann, will float free. She spends the rest of Sunday making a list of what she wants to keep from the house and is surprised at how short it is. Monday and Tuesday evenings she makes another list, of chattels, things that they bought together, that she can get bought out of, too.
On Thursday she goes to see Jennifer Ryan, lawyer, who explains the legal situation, which Ann, unusually, doesn't bother to follow. She's still got that floating feeling, as though she was in a Chagall painting. Ann leaves the chattels list with Jennifer. She and Ex kept well organised accounts, so she has the date of purchase and the price they paid for every item.
“How are you?” asks Ex, sitting opposite her in Gotham Cafe, Chews Lane. Her voice is gentle, her eyes are soft.
“Not your business these days.” Ann likes her own reply. “You — and her if you like — can buy me out. Of the house. You always liked it more than me.” That's not true, but Ann doesn't care.
There's no reply, for a long time. Ex looks at the table. When she raises her face Ann can't read her expression. Maybe this is what Ex wanted. That doesn’t matter to Ann, it's what she herself wants now, and she's not going to go cheaply. She thinks of those divorce stories on television where one person tries to do the other down. That's not what she wants, she wants to be fair, but fair to herself as well.
“Well! That's caught me on the hop. I thought you’d want to stay there.”
“You buy me out or the house goes on the market. Soon. By the end of August.”
“I'd have to agree to it going on the market, you couldn't just sell it. We do own it jointly, after all."
“I know that. I'm thinking you'll do what I want because you're guilty about dumping me. And guilty about being a coward and not telling me about you and — her.” Ann is pleased with herself for saying that.
“I'm not sure that Julie and I have much of a future.” Again, Ex can't look at her.
Ann throws back her head and laughs. And laughs. People look. Ex wipes away tears.
“Too late,” says Ann, “I’ve taken your advice and gotten over you and,” she pseudo-sings, “I’m mo-oving on,” then reverts to being crisp. “Let me know about buying the house. Here's my lawyer's card.” She tucks the card under the saucer of Ex's coffee cup.
Ex looks at Ann and says, “I miss Shirley and Keith.” She's still teary and Ann is still refusing to take notice and just looks back and waits, enjoying feeling cool and angry and detached. “I thought I might ring them,” Ex says eventually.
“They're my parents, not my children, you don’t need my permission to contact them. Ring, don't ring, it's your call.” Ann thinks she is enjoying this far too much.
“I thought they might be, you know, angry with me or something.” Ex is practically pleading to know what kind of reception she would get.
“We haven't actually been talking about you,” says Ann as she stands up. Which is nearly true, if you don't count her mother's, “How could she?” or her father's, “I always wondered if she could be trusted.”
Ann doesn't look back as she walks off. She feels tall again, as though she is taking up the right amount of space.
February 4, 2010
Reading, Mostly
I am reading a book about blogging. That’s factual, not an ironic statement. I still learn much of what I know about computers from printed books. The rest comes from, firstly, Miraz's mactips, which I recommend accessing via her blog, http://knowit.co.nz/ which is about technology, science and wordpress, and well worth reading. Find mactips by scrolling down the sidebar on the left. My other source of information etc is welmac, the Wellington mac user's group. Check it out at http://www.welmac.org.nz. If you use a mac and live in the Wellington area it's worth the membership fee.
I understand the business of writing a blog, but not how one can ‘distribute’ it, if that is what one wants to do. Part of my problem with learning how to do this is no doubt my lack of conviction that I want to do that. I guess my question is still ‘What’s it for?’
I recently had a birthday and, as is usual, my partner gave me a great pile of books. Yum. I read Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal first because that’s the book our book group is reading this month. Then Kamila Shamsi’s Burnt Shadows, because she is coming to Writers and Readers week in Wellington next month. What a hard, and believable, ending this book has. I recommend it. Now I’m halfway through Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry, which I am liking more than I liked The Time Traveller’s Wife.
I also read the Millenium trilogy over a week. (One of them was in the birthday pile.) They are written by Steig Larsson, the first is called The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and they are best-sellers, in bookshops everywhere. Three long books! Gripping. The Swedish setting helped hold my interest, as did the two complex main characters, and the social context of the stories. The politics gets more depth as the stories develop and by the third questions like ‘What is democracy, and how much secrecy - for example in countering terrorism - is possible without undermining the whole ethos of democrary?’ are part of a series of thrillers. I didn’t like the movie, I thought it skated across the top of all the big ideas in the books and flattened out the two main characters.
And yes, I am still editing my novel. In between other things. I am beginning to wonder whether I should have a writing/editing schedule, like writing between the hours of x and y, but have never done this and am resistant to it. Most of my writing/editing gets done in the afternoons, a reversal of what many writers do. Does this matter, I wonder?
I understand the business of writing a blog, but not how one can ‘distribute’ it, if that is what one wants to do. Part of my problem with learning how to do this is no doubt my lack of conviction that I want to do that. I guess my question is still ‘What’s it for?’
I recently had a birthday and, as is usual, my partner gave me a great pile of books. Yum. I read Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal first because that’s the book our book group is reading this month. Then Kamila Shamsi’s Burnt Shadows, because she is coming to Writers and Readers week in Wellington next month. What a hard, and believable, ending this book has. I recommend it. Now I’m halfway through Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry, which I am liking more than I liked The Time Traveller’s Wife.
I also read the Millenium trilogy over a week. (One of them was in the birthday pile.) They are written by Steig Larsson, the first is called The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and they are best-sellers, in bookshops everywhere. Three long books! Gripping. The Swedish setting helped hold my interest, as did the two complex main characters, and the social context of the stories. The politics gets more depth as the stories develop and by the third questions like ‘What is democracy, and how much secrecy - for example in countering terrorism - is possible without undermining the whole ethos of democrary?’ are part of a series of thrillers. I didn’t like the movie, I thought it skated across the top of all the big ideas in the books and flattened out the two main characters.
And yes, I am still editing my novel. In between other things. I am beginning to wonder whether I should have a writing/editing schedule, like writing between the hours of x and y, but have never done this and am resistant to it. Most of my writing/editing gets done in the afternoons, a reversal of what many writers do. Does this matter, I wonder?
December 11, 2009
Second drafting
Less than two weeks after finishing the first draft of a possible novel during Nanowrimo (www.nanowrimo.org) I am wanting to start editing and researching it into a second draft.
There are some plot details to sort out, such as does my protagonist, Ann, have the right job at the beginning of the story? Having decided not, I have re-decided she does, as a lecturer in Romantic Literature. That gives some background for things that happen later in the story.
There is some research to do, in all those places where I wrote [CHECK] as I ploughed on, one word after another (which is what writing is!) chasing the 50,000 word count. I made it a couple of days early, with 50064 words. For some people, being unable to work right up to a deadline is a character flaw, for me it is the way I am and I live with it.
Then there is some awful writing, from those times when I was squeezing out words, even when I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not to mention changing my mind a couple of times about the time the story takes place. It started off having a beginning in mid 2009, then I pushed that back a year because the story was getting ahead of the real time I was writing in, now I have put it back to 2009, because by the time the story finishes, about the end of Jan 2010, that will be the actual time I am writing revisions in. As Ann spends Dec 2009 in London, I am drawing on friends who live there and buying the Guardian Weekly. There are a couple of useful weather websites, too.
On the reading front i am well into Orhan Pamuk’s latest, The Museum of Innocence, which was not liked by the reviewer on National Radio (NZ) whose name I forget. I think the reviewer missed the point of the book, which is an extended metaphor about Turkey trying to be both modern and traditional, which is what most of Pamuk’s books are about, one way or another. I love his books, but I think they may not be to everyone’s taste. His protagonists tend to be self-referential, somewhat neurotic, middle class, well-off men.
There are some plot details to sort out, such as does my protagonist, Ann, have the right job at the beginning of the story? Having decided not, I have re-decided she does, as a lecturer in Romantic Literature. That gives some background for things that happen later in the story.
There is some research to do, in all those places where I wrote [CHECK] as I ploughed on, one word after another (which is what writing is!) chasing the 50,000 word count. I made it a couple of days early, with 50064 words. For some people, being unable to work right up to a deadline is a character flaw, for me it is the way I am and I live with it.
Then there is some awful writing, from those times when I was squeezing out words, even when I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not to mention changing my mind a couple of times about the time the story takes place. It started off having a beginning in mid 2009, then I pushed that back a year because the story was getting ahead of the real time I was writing in, now I have put it back to 2009, because by the time the story finishes, about the end of Jan 2010, that will be the actual time I am writing revisions in. As Ann spends Dec 2009 in London, I am drawing on friends who live there and buying the Guardian Weekly. There are a couple of useful weather websites, too.
On the reading front i am well into Orhan Pamuk’s latest, The Museum of Innocence, which was not liked by the reviewer on National Radio (NZ) whose name I forget. I think the reviewer missed the point of the book, which is an extended metaphor about Turkey trying to be both modern and traditional, which is what most of Pamuk’s books are about, one way or another. I love his books, but I think they may not be to everyone’s taste. His protagonists tend to be self-referential, somewhat neurotic, middle class, well-off men.
November 28, 2009
Nobel Prize for Literature
Because she won the Nobel Prize for literature I got a book by Merta Muller from the excellent Wellington Public Library called The Appointment. I didn’t enjoy reading it on the whole, but once I had finished I started appreciating it.
First of all I kept thinking of Kafka’s The Trial, though the woman in The Appointment did at least know why she was being interrogated, just not what was being gained by her being interrogated in the way she was. Romania under Ceausescu was clearly grim and bleak, the picture is one of stagnation. The protagonist looks out for chances of happiness. She is being interrogated, on random days, because she put a message saying 'marry me' in pockets of men's shirts going from the factory where she works to Italy.
It was shocking, in the context of New Zealand mores, that she found the fact of her and her friend Lilli having sex with father or step-father to be nothing much. Lilli said, “He never became repulsive to me … but in time he did come to seem ordinary. The fact that we’d be at it as soon as my mother left the house became more of a habit than using the door handle.” I found that shocking.
There is some lovely prose. “When I stepped outside everything was preparing for the night, the sun had already spread itself red across the sky, every shadow in town had lain down.” It’s a translation from the German, so there’s no way for me to know how well it conveys the original.
A friend who has lived in Germany for a long time admires Muller and the way she speaks out since she emigrated from Romania, which she had to do when she refused to spy on her fellow-workers.
First of all I kept thinking of Kafka’s The Trial, though the woman in The Appointment did at least know why she was being interrogated, just not what was being gained by her being interrogated in the way she was. Romania under Ceausescu was clearly grim and bleak, the picture is one of stagnation. The protagonist looks out for chances of happiness. She is being interrogated, on random days, because she put a message saying 'marry me' in pockets of men's shirts going from the factory where she works to Italy.
It was shocking, in the context of New Zealand mores, that she found the fact of her and her friend Lilli having sex with father or step-father to be nothing much. Lilli said, “He never became repulsive to me … but in time he did come to seem ordinary. The fact that we’d be at it as soon as my mother left the house became more of a habit than using the door handle.” I found that shocking.
There is some lovely prose. “When I stepped outside everything was preparing for the night, the sun had already spread itself red across the sky, every shadow in town had lain down.” It’s a translation from the German, so there’s no way for me to know how well it conveys the original.
A friend who has lived in Germany for a long time admires Muller and the way she speaks out since she emigrated from Romania, which she had to do when she refused to spy on her fellow-workers.
November 25, 2009
Write, write, I say
My excuse for not doing a weekly entry is the 'write a novel in a month' thing at www.nanawrimo.org. I just had 50064 words validated on the website. Now I can do something else, like update this blog.
Going to Melbourne slowed me at the beginning, but catching up wasn't so bad. Yesterday and today I was really fed up and wanted to get finished. I felt as though I had run out of plot again - this happened in the middle, too. The trick that worked for me was to make myself keep writing the most banal detail and drivel until some plot happened. Not quite as bad as, 'She got out of bed and put on her slippers, then washed her face and cleaned her teeth. The bed was soon made, the tidy way that she liked it and she went out into the cold morning to get the paper.' Not quite that bad, but nearly.
Now it's time for the big edit, which will involve some research. I'll wait a while before I start that, take a break from this thing that has gripped me by the throat.
What I found interesting about the process is that I was forced into whatever plot I could find in a corner of my brain and sometimes that worked well in terms of my overall themes for the story. I even ended up with a whole new character that I got to really like writing about.
I'm not sure I'll do it again, this is an annual event. The only way to write is to write, after all, and I can probably do that without a competition. Nonetheless, I was frustrated that I was not writing more and this certainly overcame that.
Going to Melbourne slowed me at the beginning, but catching up wasn't so bad. Yesterday and today I was really fed up and wanted to get finished. I felt as though I had run out of plot again - this happened in the middle, too. The trick that worked for me was to make myself keep writing the most banal detail and drivel until some plot happened. Not quite as bad as, 'She got out of bed and put on her slippers, then washed her face and cleaned her teeth. The bed was soon made, the tidy way that she liked it and she went out into the cold morning to get the paper.' Not quite that bad, but nearly.
Now it's time for the big edit, which will involve some research. I'll wait a while before I start that, take a break from this thing that has gripped me by the throat.
What I found interesting about the process is that I was forced into whatever plot I could find in a corner of my brain and sometimes that worked well in terms of my overall themes for the story. I even ended up with a whole new character that I got to really like writing about.
I'm not sure I'll do it again, this is an annual event. The only way to write is to write, after all, and I can probably do that without a competition. Nonetheless, I was frustrated that I was not writing more and this certainly overcame that.
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