Category: writing

And writers

Categories
writing

Should writers read ‘a lot’?

Well it’s a fairly commonly held assertion about writing. When asked for advice to an aspiring author, some respond with that: Read as much as you can.

But should you?

Meeting up with my old college pal Christian Pattison, one of the team behind punk-poetry-pop-art-literary magazine “The Illustrated Ape” (buy issue 24 – it has a story by me!) – we discussed whether or not we actually agreed with this.

We found that we didn’t.

“Writers in particular need to be very careful about what they read,” noted Christian. We were both commenting on how little we read these days, because of time constraints.

 In fact – I’d admit it – this year I’ve been working so hard on Joshua 2, Jaguar and the edit of Joshua 1 that I have read only 5 fiction books all year.

Harry Potter 7 by JK Rowling (juicy, satisfying conclusion to the series)
Darkside by Tom Becker (rollicking horror/adventure for children)
After Dark by Haruki Murakami (I love Haruki but this let me down…)
Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (beautiful, savage and sad…ahh, Gabo)
The Chase by Alejo Carpentier (terse yet densely descriptive also puzzling and evocative)

(I also re-read a few old favourites…)

Since what you read unquestionably influences how you write at the time, it’s important to choose carefully. Non-fiction is safer than fiction for a fiction writer. But once you’ve cracked the voice/style for your work in progress, you need to stay totally focused.

What we did agree was that writers need to have read a lot.

Christian and I both admitted to read nothing or close to nothing that is being currently written in English (as opposed to was written ages ago, or was written in another language and then translated). We agreed that if you’re serious about reading you should work your way through the great writers of the world, not just those who write in English. Mind you – easy for Christian to say – he’s got an degree in English Literature, so he’s read the canon, whereas I didn’t even do English Lit ‘A’ Level, so I haven’t…

I reminded Christian of the character in Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’ who refuses to read any book that isn’t still considered a classic twenty years after the author’s death. That’s a good method for reading only brilliant books!

Anyway, we agreed that fiction writers should read:

comic books & non-fiction (for ideas), poetry and song lyrics, fiction that hardly anyone else is reading, the occasional zeitgeist-grabbing mega-blockbuster

The books that are being published now are written for people who like to read. They are not written for writers. Writers need to come up with engaging,  original stuff. If you read what everyone else is writing you will likely produce something not a million miles from that.

If you can get over the fact that when the subject of conversation turns to ‘have you read…?’ you are going to have to say ‘no’ and look thick/ill-read/have no further contribution to the conversation…then how about letting go the urge to join in?

(Before you decide whether to follow this advice – there’s plenty of advice which says you should read lots of books esp in the marketplace you’re aiming for.)

Categories
writing

On Holiday

I’m finally on holiday – a holiday from writing but one that doesn’t also involve me spending 24/7 with my two attention-thirsty daughters. It’s amazing. I can feel myself unwinding mentally.

I have been mainly mooching with girlfriends in coffee shops, or watching movies. I plan to add reading some nice books into the mix but was badly disappointed by the latest work of a favourite author. I won’t say who…

So I’m going back to favourite author number five – the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. I’ve still a few of his to read. My neighbour Robin teaches Latin-American Literature at Oxford University and told me that “The Feast Of The Goat” ranks as one of the Great American Novels. It is a political thriller about the dictator Trujillo from the Dominican Republic. Robin warned me that there’s a very disturbing torture scene, which is why I’ve been holding off.

I guess I’ll close my eyes.

And I’ll be reading a couple of children’s books too! Kind Elv from Scholastic keeps giving me lovely books when I visit.

So if you spot me in Summertown Costa’s with a book, ignore me – let me read!

Categories
raves writing

Italo Calvino was a genius

This is the first of four posts about my favourite writers. About my four favourite writers. Seria A, you might say. Seria B has more than four.

I don’t write anything like any of my favourite writers; for one thing, it would be completely inappropriate for the people I write for i.e. children and young adults. But also because they are inimitable; true, blazing originals. They have influenced me though. I know exactly what little devices I borrow from them all.

How I was introduced to Italo Calvino’s writing 

Calvino was an Italian writer who died in 1985. That’s when I first heard about him as an undergraduate; I became dimly aware of people discussing his novel ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler’.

But only dimly aware because as a biochemistry student I didn’t pay a huge amount of attention to the literary world. One day I saw the book in a shop, remembered the enticing title and picked it up. The cover was unusual in that it consisted solely of text from the opening page. I was curious about Italian writers, but even more curious about postmodernism then because I’d been reading Umberto Eco’s essays in ‘Travels In Hyperreality’. So I bought it.

The novel was the most unusual book I’d ever read. I couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or dazzled. 

Here’s the opening:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice–they won’t hear you otherwise–“I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell; “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone.

It’s about a Reader (‘you’) who starts reading a book in a shop, gets into the story, only to discover that because of a printing error the story stops after one chapter. So You-the-Reader starts hunting down the rest of the story, and so begins a quest for this story. On the quest there are fellow travelers; other readers, academics, writers, who become involved with the Reader. Reader begins a series of novels which never fail to intrigue but which can never be continued – always for a different and perfectly good reason.

Essentially ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler’ is a novel about the 20th century novel. Not a novel about a writer (there are so many of those, how dreary they are), but a novel which puts the construction – and especially the opening – of novels at it’s very core. Characters are thinly drawn and serve mainly as literary devices. They feel real but it’s clear from the outset that this is all a game; a game the Reader is in on.

For me as a scientist the analytical, almost clinical approach to the construction of the novel was utterly fascinating. Unlike most writers I’ve met (and by now I’ve met a few), I didn’t study literature even to ‘A’ level, so I didn’t know about this stuff first-hand. Living with a mother who was writing a doctorate about Spanish and German Romanticism, however, I couldn’t help but be aware of some of the techniques of literary criticism. But this postmodern approach – fragmenting everything and looking at the granularity – was something I hadn’t come across. And for a while it really captivated me.

I bought the book for many friends, only to have most admit to me that they didn’t like it. Some found it pretentious or frustrating, others simply didn’t see the point. I admit that reading it now is quite diffcult. Now that I’ve got over my POMO kick, I want a proper story, with characters that evolve.

Calvino’s inventiveness and brilliance, however, cannot be denied. But his strength, I believe lies in his short stories.

(The truth is that I think short stories are the essence of writing. The novel is a very strange beast to me, and I say that as one who tries most days to write one. It defies natural story-telling; a story, surely, is something told by one person to another (0r others) at one sitting. But a novel goes on and on, beyond what is natural in oral storytelling, demanding an intense relationship between the reader and the characters.)

Calvino also wrote other experimental novels such as ‘Invisible Cities’ (yes, that’s the inspiration for the title of Joshua book 1) and ‘The Castle Of Crossed Destinies’. Those books make me tremble with admiration. But I love Calvino more for his often sublime stories in books like‘ Marcovaldo’, ‘Adam, One Afternoon’ and my very favourite collection, ‘Numbers In The Dark’.

(I don’t approve of his forays into science fiction – t-zero and Cosmicomics…Asimov did this stuff better in ‘The Gods Themselves’.)

When I was writing fan fiction about ten years ago it struck me that the world of fan fiction was itself a fascinating little world which might be explored using Calvino’s device from ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler’. So I did just that; I wrote a whole novel about the world of Blake’s 7 fan fiction in that same style. It was a terrific learning experience as a writer, I have to say. And my fellow Blake’s 7 fans seemed to enjoy it…

I re-read two or three Calvino books every year and I always learn something new.

A good source of Calvino stuff on the Web is Outside the town of Malbork.

Categories
writing

Advice to writers

I’m impressed by how many writers’ blogs are filled with valuable advice to other writers. It amazes me how self-aware some writers are; they apply their talent with the precision of a surgeon’s blade.

I’m not like that. I have no idea if what I’m writing is going to work until my agent and editor tell me. And when something works I have no idea why. I do structure a plot very carefully, according to certain principles. But when it comes to writing…meh, I just do it.

Hemingway said that a writer has to have a terrific bullshit detector. I agree. When I read back what I’ve written, it’s the single biggest skill I need. And that, I believe, comes from a huge amount of reading.

Stephen King says this too: writers must read a lot. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, however, qualifies this with what I would regard as the single bit of advice I would ever offer to another writer (and it isn’t even mine!).

Read only what bears re-reading.

Life is short and the writer’s training should begin early. I do believe, as does Philip Pullman, that to a large extent writing can’t be taught, and I believe it’s because the sense of story is somewhat innate. I see this with my own daughter, aged five. Her teacher tells me that she has more than once drawn a ‘book’ and then stood in front of the class to narrate the entire story, beginning, middle and end, to the astonishment of the other pupils and staff. No-one showed her how to do this. I used to do it to, apparently; dropped off aged four at the University where my grandfather worked I would entertain students with stories of Peter Pan.

Story sense needs to be honed and refined; this, you can study but your starting level probably needs to be pretty high.

But writing…you learn what is good writing from reading it, processing it, hearing the sound of a well-crafted phrase, metaphor or dialogue in your head. That’s why re-reading great works of literature is so useful.

I actually don’t read very widely. With many demands on my time I hardly read for entertainment. Everything should be educational, instructive. So, to be honest, I set a high bar. I don’t finish a book if it isn’t really great by page 50. What is good, I re-read.

And I’m constantly hungry for new talent to replace authors whose works I have read all the way through.

Will the next Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino please step forward?

Problem is, these days probably only the first two of those would get published…

Categories
agents Joshua Files videos

Animoto – “Invisible City” slideshow

My agent told me about this cool new site for creating animated slideshows… Animoto.

So naturally, I’ve been having a bit of a play…


Heh heh. That was fun…

Here’s another remix. This is just experimental…I may well sign up for the full $30 per year to get unlimited videos of longer than 30 secs.

The music is ‘Invisible City’ by Beight, on the album File In Rhythm purchased from Magnatune.