Category: writing

And writers

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getting published Joshua Files writing

New Content? Did I say ‘New content’?

The comments on Joshua book 1 version 2.0 are in. After a lengthy meeting over fennel tea and swiss chocolates (aren’t we girly?), The Editor and I had a frank discussion of what still isn’t working as well as it could. And from this emerged, yesterday, my new draft of the plot for v3.0. The exciting part for me is that it calls for New Content.

Yesiree. Editing where you’re just cutting is no fun, not to me anyway. There’s a sort of masochistic pleasure to it. Ha! I’ll cut out my favourite chapter then, see if I care! That sort of thing. But adding in New Content is lovely. I wrote one new chapter for version 2.0 and writing that was the best bit.

But version 3.0 calls for the restoration – in suitable form – of two sequences which originally appeared in ‘Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist’, the oft-rejected ms which provided the central concept for ‘The Joshua Files’.

And they’re two really fun sequences, too. I’m relocating one to an even more evocative setting – originally set in a Cotswold village, it will now be set in Oxford’s-canal based neighbourhood, Jericho.

It’s my first experience of being edited, and I’m really impressed with the attention to detail in a second edit. Little things get picked up, like the consistency of a particular character’s diction.

I’m going to film myself writing one of these new chapters and put it on Youtube after the book is launched. I got the idea from my mate Noam, about whom I posted a few weeks back. I might even go to Jericho to write it, on my little red laptop.

Hmmmm.

(In an aside, Caitlin Moran writes in The Times Online:

“Big Brotherly love
Quick note to all those who are saying that they are “Not going to watch Big Brother this year, actually” – YOU ARE DELUSIONAL. Get out of denial and put the telly on.”

To which I say…Get behind me, Satan!

Oh help. It’s Friday night – eviction night. Must find salsa event to attend….)

Categories
writing

Left Brain, Right Brain

Beth, looking pretty much as she did 20 years ago… Full moon on the beach at Conil de la Frontera.

Well it’s a funny coincidence because after a discussion with an old friend last week during a moonlit, firelit beach party (with flamenco music) in Andalucia, the same topic came up in the latest Litopia podcast (005).

Beth, a Bostonian woman I hadn’t seen for 20 years since we briefly crossed paths at St Catz, Oxford, now works as the foreign media officer in a hospital in the US. She produces short movies about the hospitals healthcare offerings. She’d known me 20 years ago as a biochemist and was intrigued to hear that I was now going to be an author. “So you can do left brain stuff as well as right brain,” she said, fascinated.

I bet most of us can, although some scientists I know probably can’t. My brother-in-law, for example, who admits to ‘outsourcing’ all his emotions to my wonderfully sensitive, touchy-feely sister. (He won’t mind me saying this, but he might have to check with my sister if he’s supposed to be cross about it…)

I admitted to her that I have a very ‘left brain’ approach to writing, in that I’m massively structural. Beth seemed very surprised that it could work this way, so I explained.

Where did the ‘muse’ come into it, that’s what Beth wanted to know.

It’s an interesting question. I was reflecting with Agent Cox the other day that when I read back my writing, months later, I mean, I look at it in wonder and think, “Did I really write this?”

Not that I’m making a value judgement, just that all that time later, I can’t see what part of me those words came from. I’ve begun to think that some weird entity takes over me when I sit down to write. Now – the entity has its instructions – because the structure is all in place by the time I start to write. But aside from two or three lines dictating what must happen in the next 1500 words, the entity is free to get on with it, and it does, and I don’t seem to have a lot of conscious input. I guess that’s the right brain taking over. It’s verrrry strange.

Borges wrote this wonderful little essay ‘Borges and I’, in which he described how strange it felt to be the writer in this relationship with his famous self. There was the Borges who went and gave talks and was received over the world and lauded. Then there was he, Borges, who wrote the words that made that other Borges so famous. And the writer-Borges didn’t always feel that connected to the famous-Borges.

When I first thought about all this, I hadn’t thought of it in terms of left-brain/right-brain. (Well, duh, I am gradually becoming a hedonistic airhead, in case no-one had noticed). But I guess it kind of is.

Categories
writing

The Illustrated Ape is here!

(photos a bit rubbishy cos I took them with my BlackBerry, but you get the idea; latest issue is North vs South. They put my story in with the Southerners! Me? A soft southerner? Eeee…)

Christian Pattison and I go way back to our first day at St Catz, when I was 18. I think I may even have met Christian before I met my husband, which happened on day 3.

He hasn’t changed much; still madly enthusiastic for art and culture in all its forms, still has the looks of a Panzer Fuhrer or a Nordic god, and the build of a muscle-bound, black-belt martial arts dude…which he actually is. By day he takes care of a severely disabled man, by night (and on his days off) he writes his novel on his iPaq and edits and co-runs The Illustrated Ape, one of the world’s leading fringe arts/literary magazine.

(website still under construction as I write, a big Ape party planned for when it launches)
Christian may not know it, but he had a big influence in inspiring me to write. He was in the Very Cool Arty Crowd at college, which you had to be studying English to be in, more or less. As a (northern) biochemist, I should have been beyond the pale but Christian always talked to me about art and literature as though I might actually have a clue (I didn’t and still don’t but he’s nice enough to act as though I do). He carried on talking to me years after we left college, both still living in Oxford. When he and a friend started Ape years ago, we bumped into each other and Christian enthused about getting me to write some graphic novel-style Blake’s 7 stories for Ape (which I did until the copyright holders had a stuff word after 3 issues…)
Anyway, I’m a big fan of Christian’s, can’t wait to read his finished novel and I hope he finds a publisher, and I hope The Illustrated Ape goes from strength to strength. It’s sold in over 150 outlets, and in 30 countries.

I’ve a short story published in the latest version. My first short story published under my own name! It’s illustrated by two guys from the Black Convoy urban graffiti guys. (Black Convoy are a a UK based multi-disciplined art/design collective.) The image at the top is from their brilliantly funky work on my story.
Buy The Illustrated Ape! It’s way, way cool.
P.S .At breakfast today Christian told me that he met Joseph Heller when Heller spent some time at St Catz, before he died. Heller told Christian that he never wrote more than 300 words a day. I’ve been trying to match Graham Greene’s manageable 500-words daily target. Now I feel like an overachiever. A smug one, at that.
Categories
cuba jaguar's realm other books salsa

Non-Stop Solemn Salsa

I have worked out…that from now to September, I’ll be attending a salsa event OR going on holiday every single week.

Including:

That should keep me very cheerful, all summer long! I’m a firm believer in the milestones-of-happiness approach.

I’ve dropped my writing target to a manageable 500 words per day. The plan is all done, in mega detail, so barring illness or other setbacks, I am aiming to finish a draft of ‘Jaguar’s Realm’ in time for my birthday at the end of August. That way I can have a joint celebration at…where else but Floridita. Yay!

Ah, the best laid plans…

Categories
nostalgia writing

Pie Season

There are fresh raspberries in the shops, and they’re not bad at all. Meanwhile, in the fields around Oxford, berries are ripening. The pick-your-owns will get going in about a month.

All of which signals the start of pie season. Thank goodness I had a fresh-baked apple and raspberry pie this weekend. We had an unexpected guest, a rather senior cleric, who was rightly put out at the misunderstanding that led to him arriving to an unprepared house. The pie, however, put a smile back on his face.

Mmm, mm. Yet another excuse for socialising. Yet another excuse not to write. Especially teenagers – they love apple pie. Whenever I bake for my daughter and her friends, it’s the pie they gobble first.

Pie…inevitably triggers a Seinfeld reference or three. There’s the episode ‘The Pie’ in which Jerry’s girlfriend refuses to share Jerry’s pie, and there’s ‘The Calzone’ where Kramer bakes a huckleberry pie (and so can’t use his oven to dry his pants)…and there’s ‘The Bubble Boy’ where they drive through what Kramer describes as ‘pie country’.

R1x really has me concerned with that whole Spidey 3 thing. Yes it was daft but I was SO entertained…which I can’t discount. I’m going through the story with a fine toothcomb trying to spot hideous errors that I missed due to chuckling and eating chocolate.

God help me, this blog has finally degenerated into a full-blown displacement activity.

But you know what? I’ve decided to think of it as ‘morning pages’.