Fiction is my raison d’etre but without precluding blogposts and progressively longer blogcomments. In everything I write I strive to be original or to package necessary banalities in an original way. The desire to write is never absent, even in oral conversation; my spoken sentences may be structured and over-elaborate and, to the annoyance of those listening, I often break off to issue an improved version.
Being original isn't necessarily an asset. An "original" note to someone bereaved may lack sympathy. Even worse, the seeming lack of sympathy may be intentional, trying to say something different.
In the Tesco café this morning I listened to a two-year-old girl shouting loudly. Surprised by the depth and richness of her voice; it sounded almost trained. A paradox to be included in some fictional passage as yet unconceived. Or perhaps not.
When I say I must write and that I relish this impulse, I mean I love the progress of writing. Being able to see the next ten words clearly, and to envisage - more vaguely - the shape of the sentence that follows. To live simultaneously in the present and the future.
When the piece is finished I return to the start relishing the conviction that stuff must be cut, rendering what remains as more efficient. Sometimes whole sentences. Does this mean I write inefficiently? Perhaps. But not if the stuff removed may be regarded as scaffolding, holding things together during assembly, then discarded.
Writing stays me in old age, unlike skiing and distance swimming. Dying will have started when I can no longer write – a health barometer and a compass.
I struggle in my own little way along the lines you describe, except that I shy away from fiction. I often have no preconceived idea how a blog piece will end and there is a kind of mystery about what develops along the way. I anticipate your reply: “and it shows!”
ReplyDeleteYour hint that the child incident may provide fodder for a creation in the near future reminds me of an incident with Mother. We were on a walk from our holiday caravan on the east coast. She found a discarded ( or lost) letter describing I think some tragic romantic situation - getting parted on a train and missing a boat to the other side of the world, or perhaps I have got two things mixed up but whatever, I think she used the material to write a story. I’m sure your memory and age advantage will recall all that more accurately. You may prefer to reply by email?
Sent from my iPhone
Sir Hugh: I used to interfere in your style of writing quite regularly; more recently not so. I have noticed some small improvements but in any case it really isn't my business to act the school-teacher in this way, especially since I do it in public. As Veronica would say: is it kind? To which I'd say probably not.
ReplyDeleteThe key issues are: (a) Do you sense that your style could be improved? and (b) Is it worth the effort?
Here's an example: The following two sentences:
In my Bannisdale walk a few days ago I mentioned discovering the Millers Way, a long distance path I had not previously heard of. It purportedly follows the route...
could be be reduced to
The Millers Way follows the route...
But to do so you'd have to test the stuff that's dropped. Is the cross-referencing necessary? And by what standards? Naturally I would say yes, because to do so brings Mr Carr and the walk itself into much sharper focus. But there's nothing grammatically or factually wrong with the piece as it stands, only stylistically. And style is not only a subjective matter it demands a special kind of awareness.
And there you have proof of my decision to stop acting the school-teacher.
I remember the letter. For some reason we were able to conclude that the recipient (a young man) had been using it as a bookmark. I have no idea how we managed this. As far as I remember the facts in the letter weren't the issue; Mother was more interested in the character of the writer, in that she (the writer, a young woman) was trying rather desperately to increase the recipient's interest in her. It was at this point that Mother made a judgment that I decided (despite or, possibly, because of my youth) was ill-conceived. The writer seemed to writing from an urban background whereas the recipient appeared to be striding about country lanes in a healthy way; from which Mother concluded he was more "worthwhile" than her. At the time I was merely uneasy about this. Now I would take a much stronger, pro-feminist view on it. You are quite within your rights to say this types me as a smug bastard.
You might (or not) like to go to Kipling's "Something of Myself" to read about his writing and reading over methods. here is a start though:
ReplyDeletehttp://tonyriches.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/rudyard-kiplings-writing-habits.html
RR - I deliberately wanted to use the 'purportedly" reference because who is to say what route was covered by Mr. Carr in 1831 since much of the infrastructure will have changed with the building of the modern road etc. I have now discovered that Margaret Forster wrote a biography of Mr Carr which I have ordered - that may be more specific about source material for the route taken - who knows?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you remembered the thing about the letter. At my young age I took on vibes that it caused Mother some anguish.
Avus: Handwriting was never goer; apart from the sheer physical effort it involves, I frequently had difficulty reading the result, especially when trying to assess the "flow" of, say, a couple of paragraphs. At school I was beaten for writing illegibly and it was an enormous relief to switch to typewriters, like everyone else, when I started work on the newspaper. One of the jobs I had to do, as a tea-boy, was to type out all the soccer fixtures - from the major leagues right down to the smallest teams (eg, United States Metallic Packing Company) - for use on Saturday afternoon when the evening paper published a sports edition. This encouraged me to become accurate and speedy.
ReplyDeleteLater when I moved to a district office as a reporter, I also worked for a weekly newspaper (Keighley News) where bulky articles were required. At my peak, working from shorthand notes taken at whatever event I'd covered, I reckoned I could compose/type at 1000 words an hour. Later, on magazines, this facility proved to be a handicap when writing quality became the dominant requirement.
Also when writing fiction. My first novel, dealing with National Service - what else?, was quickly despatched. I'd come home, eat my evening meal, go upstairs at 7.30 pm and return at 9.30 pm having churned out 2000 words. Since I was aiming at 80,000 words in total, it was all over in 40 evenings.
But typewriters had their drawbacks. An enormous amount of paper ended up on the floor in my attempts to achieve a satisfactorily styled initial paragraph. Also one didn't just feed in a single sheet of paper. This was long before photocopiers and that meant two sheets of MS paper with a sheet of carbon paper in between. Having only one copy of a novel - which others might need to read - was far too risky.
Word processing software was a gift from heaven.
All of which would be a nonsense to Kipling, even if WPs had been available. (You notice he distrusted his typewriter, said it wouldn't spell, and had his drafts typed by a typist. The draft would not be immediately available, also the process was risky due to misreading.) All those pen knibs! He wasn't the first author to become obsessively finicky about the writing process. Hemingway used to write standing up at a lectern, using a huge carpenter's pencil to "slow down his writing." He also used to break off at any point where he knew what he was about to write - actually not a bad idea.
Nevertheless there are quite a few authors who still use pens. It's up to them, but adding in new material caused by hindsight is a tedious and messy business. Me, it's always the computer. Even when writing verse. The most useful key on the keyboard is Delete. Might I accidentally chop out something I later wanted to use? So far, no.
Sir Hugh: Good luck reading about Mr Carr. Perhaps the story will be enlivened with revelations that he turned out to be a serial abuser of small children.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested - but not surprised - that you noticed Mother's anguish. I didn't but it was clear she was emotionally involved in the letter. As I was. It offered a dilemma: was the tone whingeing or poignant?
I don't care for the word "purportedly", it looks clumsy. And now I've looked up the definition it turns out not to have the meaning I suspect both of us imagined. "False intent" is involved. I came close to making a similar error yesterday regarding "avocation". I thought it meant, more or less, "vocation". It doesn't, it means "hobby" or "minor occupation".
Cleverness can often be ascribed to nothing more than a willingness to use the dictionary. To save time I frequently search online, but the definitions are pared-down and incomplete. A real dictionary often reveals many more subsidiary meanings.
Title of your National Service novel, please RR? I looked in Amazon to see if it was on Kindle but no result....................
ReplyDeleteYour passion for writing comes across loud and clear in your blog, and is much appreciated. I am reading your new book, and enjoying it very much.
ReplyDeleteAvus: I wrote the NS novel in the late fifties (so long ago I've forgotten the title). The typed MS is up in the attic and I'd be ashamed to expose it to anyone these days. My mother was one of the few people who did read it - she was a novelist herself and a published poet - and she was nice about it, as one is to a related absolute beginner. But it isn't to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteColette: Very nice of you. Any chance of you taking singing lessons?
Writers are all so different--I always wondered why anybody bothered who felt that writing was opening a vein... Why not be a gardener or a waiter or anything else? How do you feel about your finished projects?
ReplyDeleteYour typing comments are amusing. I am often told that I have beautiful handwriting (I had such wretched handwriting in third grade that I became the special project of our handwriting teacher, who visited weekly) now that nobody under forty knows cursive. I write on the computer and then blacken the pages by hand.
"Purportedly" is awkward. The first two syllables seem too similar and too plosive, set that closely together.
I did read your last set of comments-on-comments but felt rather empty-headed afterward. It's been a too-packed week, I suppose.
Marly: Forging through all those lengthy re-comments. Far too heroic, can't have you empty headed. Finished projects? - I re-read them obsessively and unobjectively, complimenting myself on the good bits, trying to ignore bad bits. I try to convince myself they represent a progression, that subsequent prose is subtler, more adult; this may be the case but it would take ages to convince anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI see a printed book as part of my life with the mess removed. Good or bad the book is clear, it is a starting point from which I may view myself without some of the usual distortions. Only I may see the intimacies it represents. I suspect that my relationship with my published books is unhealthy - too possessive.
Nothing is ever as radiant as I meant it to be, and I immediately dump my memories of the book and often forget the names of characters. My first agent would laugh at me for that...
ReplyDeleteMarly: My first novel intertwined the lives of two engineers: Clare and, best known by his surname, Hatch. Thereafter the central characters were all women: Jana, Francine, Judith and Lindsay. This desire to write about women had been born and grew stronger and stronger. Since it took on the nature of an obsession I'm not likely to forget their names.
ReplyDeleteOnce I wrote a short story where all five women met in a ski resort in later life. It was an utter failure, only I could decode it.