On Writing

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On Writing Page 10

by A. L. Kennedy


  In your spare moments you will be able to listen to the occupants of other rooms dying, shagging, throwing up, nursing vile diseases, arguing, running, laughing and occasionally playing musical instruments. Their televisions will interrupt your fitful slumbers, as will your own room’s heating and plumbing and the radio alarm that some malicious bastard set to go off at 4 a.m. and never cancelled.

  And when you’re not having all this fun? If you’re me (sorry to suggest such a thing) you’ll either be out with the general public, reading, or talking, or workshopping, or lecturing, or performing and trying to give a halfway convincing impression of being functionally human, or else you’ll be clattering away at your laptop, propped on pillows and contemplating the tiny pack of fruit-shortbread biscuits. Biscuits it is. Then earplugs and sleep. And then onwards . . .

  XXV

  THE NEXT BLOG was written in the immediate run-up to the 2010 general election that brought us the Cameron-Clegg coalition. Which is to say, this was written during the brief period in which Nick Clegg was regarded with some degree of respect/affection.

  Is it that time again? Am I really propped up on yet another hotel bed and nursing my bruised laptop into one of our usual time-delayed chats? Yes. Am I at another festival? Oh, yes. Am I in Galway, at the very lovely Cúirt Festival, surrounded by still-trembling and weeping participants who had to get here in the non-flying, convoluted, mind-crushing and spine-warping ways that I now take for granted as an inveterate airport avoider? Indeed. I am. And may I just mention that I have quite recently decided my accommodation should always feature a small chandelier and a Jacuzzi. I am very fond of my Jacuzzi, it is tender and true, and – in fact – should we grow any closer, I may have to marry it.

  I’ve already mentioned how nourishing it is to attend festivals and meet members of the public who care about books and who greet them with intelligent enthusiasm. It’s also great to be away from the hate-yourself-but-others-more-and-oh-look-an-election-ah-CLEGG UK media. And, naturally, it’s entirely pleasant to have a response to my work which arrives within seconds, rather than years, and to just generally spend time with people I didn’t have to invent and then sustain by force of will. (Obviously, I could be wrong about this last point and you may all be projections of my subconscious, but I’m choosing to hope this is not the case . . .)

  Festivals also provide an opportunity for writers to meet other writers and this can be a splendid thing. (Although we should always be prevented from breeding – the resultant impoverished gene-pools, interlocking autobiographies and romans-à-clef would be more horrible than we can imagine – and we can imagine a lot, as you know.) But there are always pitfalls when it comes to encountering writers, even if you are one yourself.

  For example – do you really want to say hello to X or Y author, whose every semi-colon has caused your tiny heart to flutter like a prayer flag in a breeze of pure delight? What if they turn out to be a twat? Then you’ll feel betrayed and unable to read them. Actually, it’s quite unlikely that someone whose work you really connect with won’t be someone with whom you would also get along – their work is of them and from them and will be dibbled all over with things that are, in various ways, highly characteristic of who they truly are. Like the fruit – enjoy the tree. But they may be having an off-day – or a divorce; writers are constantly getting divorced, it’s not unlikely. Be careful with yourself in this regard, perhaps observe your idol for a while before approaching and, should he or she cuff an old lady out of their way or step on a dog, then maybe allow them to retain their mystery. And bear in mind that, if you do approach them and interact, you will think that you know them already, even though you don’t. Writing and reading are intimate processes and so, in a way, you have been doing an intimate thing together, in your absence. This can be both unnerving and misleading. If you consider that even I – your humble, raddled, permanently weary and deeply unprepossessing author – have encountered a number of gentlemen who decided to be in love with me within moments, purely because my texts had previously interfered with them, then you can imagine what a minefield this becomes for people who are attractive and good at social contact. And, of course, I have fallen distantly and quietly in love with authors myself. It’s hard not to – their voice is already in your mind, the walls are breached. Best to run. I always do.

  Above all, I avoid talking to other writers about writing. This seems counter-intuitive, but trust me – the last thing you want is to be discussing the thing you love doing most in the world, the thing that is woven up and down your arteries and in the marrow of your bones, and to find they don’t do it the same way. When you’re inexperienced, this dreadful revelation makes you feel you should give up at once because you’re an idiot. When you’re a little more grounded, it can lead you into terrible, never-speak-to-me-again arguments and, whatever else happens, it will be disturbing. Deeply.

  Let me put it this way: I have chums who are actors. They have to do actory things and this occasionally involves their being unclothed and simulating activities which would not normally involve a focus-puller and someone who powders your arse to stop it shining. (I don’t mean porn, I mean proper acting. I don’t know anyone who does porn. No harm to them, I just don’t.) Now, of my chums, some are happy with the whole – if the part requires it – naked and groaning thing and find they can think of it as something sculptural and interesting and they are, of course, meanwhile involved in working and concentrating and remembering what they should do and say, and so it’s really no big deal and they are wholly comfortable with the undertaking. (I would have to point out these are people who have relatively high self-esteem and with whom I have difficulty identifying.) Other chums are not happy – they worry that their physical manifestation is unsaveably awful from any and every angle and worry further that when they are pretending to do this, that and – most particularly – the other, there will be something fundamentally wrong with their presentation. Yes, they’re only acting, but somehow the way they are acting will let an entire stricken film crew and then generations of nauseated viewers know that, in their own personal lives, they are deeply peculiar and/or pathetic and/or borderline criminal.

  I, naturally, identify much more with these chums. And, for me, hearing a fellow-practitioner describe a writing process which is utterly and shakingly alien is always going to be very much like having the director faint and your collaborator throw up in a corner, simply because you’ve made the noises you always make at home and which seem perfectly normal to you, while going through moves which are the best representation of physical affection you can muster and – again – seem quite reasonable, and why are those guys laughing and why have they called the police?

  Humiliating, corrosive, bewildering – that kind of stuff can throw you off for months. I’m more than happy to accept that the multiplicity of writings and writers give rise to innumerable methodologies and there is no harm in this. It is sometimes hugely stimulating to learn from the differences, the conflicts in beliefs and approaches to a craft. But it may not be the best use of your time.

  When you meet someone who is in harmony with your aims and hopes, who’s up ahead, who’s tried things and been brave in places you haven’t imagined, who is like you, but bigger and better and finer – that’s when I find the real learning begins. Sometimes in a chance meeting over breakfast, sometimes during an event, sometimes as part of a correspondence – you never know when someone will make the whole thing five-dimensional, pressing, new. But you can hope for it, be ready, keep alert – as any writer probably should in general. And there’s always the option of reading, of dropping into the minds you admire. I am, for example, currently reading R.L. Stevenson’s essays on fiction and, once again, realising what an altogether excellent thing he was and – in the way of writers – still is.

  And the young writer will not so much be helped by genial pictures of what an art may aspire to at its highest, as by a true idea of what it must be on the lowest terms. The b
est that we can say to him is this: Let him choose a motive, whether of character or passion; carefully construct his plot so that every incident is an illustration of the motive, and every property employed shall bear to it a near relation of congruity or contrast; avoid a sub-plot unless, as sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or complement of the main intrigue; suffer not his style to flag below the level of the argument; pitch the key of the conversation, not with any thought of how men talk in parlours, but with a single eye to the degree of passion he may be called on to express; and allow neither himself in the narrative nor any character in the course of the dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part and parcel of the business of the story or the discussion of the problem involved.

  That’s from ‘A Humble Remonstrance’, Best Beloveds – something to read and inwardly digest. Onwards . . .

  XXVI

  THE POST BELOW was written on Guernsey, while en route to Sark.

  We can just take the whole hotel room, tiny biscuits, UHT milks, fighting with the dodgy Wi-Fi and eating out of carrier bags thing for granted now, can’t we? Although I will point out that I am currently On Holiday, rather than Working. Being On Holiday is something I am very bad at and rarely try. As far as I can tell, it involves not really knowing anyone, paying your own hotel bill and lying on a bed in the evening typing, just as you would at Work. So slightly annoying, really . . . Soon, I will get into the running-up-and-down-cliffs part of the proceedings and my physical exhaustion will cause what’s left of my brain to fail and that’ll be much more relaxing. (But I’ll still be typing. A bit. The novel will shout at me if I don’t. Or rather, the people in the novel will shout at me – which is a good, if exhausting, sign.) But now I must, of course, offer deep, head-holding, Brownian apologies to the respondent to the last blog who says I was rude to him at some point. I do, of course, always try not to be rude, but sometimes . . . well, let’s consider.

  Sometimes members of the public are themselves rude, or want something from me which I cannot provide. (And, Lord knows, that can cover a multitude of what many religions would actually regard as sins.) But this is very, very rare – and I’m sure doesn’t include the respondent. The vast majority of people who would bother coming up to an obscure scribbler are already self-selected for niceness. So we can proceed to possibilities A and B, both of which say a good deal about the writer’s life and the sad fact that – even if you are fantastically obscure – the usual rules of being recognised will apply: whatever you do or say will be taken as characteristic of your whole life and self, and filed away under your name with a number of cross-references and brought out in casual conversation as a Fact. This is not in any way the full-on horror of being well known and screamed at outside exclusive nightspots, or being asked to sign people’s genitals – it is more like wandering your local high street while vaguely under the impression that you should be on your best behaviour. Sort of like being at your scary Auntie’s – for ever and ever.

  So. Possibility A. I may have been interrupted by a perfectly pleasant member of the public while talking to someone I already know, or on my way to meet someone I already know. This seems innocuous enough and it is – or would be, if I didn’t spend most of my life in transit, and if even godchildren and dear friends are people I may see once a year if I’m very lucky, determined and ring-fence a dozen or so possibly compatible dates the preceding Christmas. It may look, to a casual and book-enthused observer, as if I’m just chatting, or strolling with determination in a fixed direction, but I may, in fact, be spending visibly dwindling minutes attempting to remind myself that I am a human being, that I like other human beings and bonding and hugs and mutual affection. (Within reason – obviously; it all gets claustrophobic after two or three hours . . . Ah, but those two or three hours are lovely and restorative.) I was watching Romeo and Juliet recently and caught myself thinking: Star-crossed? Star-crossed is easy. They get to dance, joke, flirt, chat, marry, shag, chat and then muck about in a crypt and even die together. Just about. Try Schedule-conflicted: that’d knacker the whole bloody play. ‘Well, Jules, I have a window in July. Maybe. But if the wind changes and the ash cloud relocates over Gatwick, then the Friar won’t get back in time for the ceremony – and the poison merchant’s stuck in Tuscany for some reason – can’t get him on his mobile . . .’ So, yes – I freely admit there have been times when I have been short with people under those circumstances and afterwards (once it has been too late) I have thought: Oops, that was a bit brisk. But by then the damage has been done and, meanwhile, I’m trying to catch up with news about children I last saw in rompers who now have tattoos and degrees in mechanical engineering, or illnesses and mishaps, or instances of serendipity, and impressive successions of husbands, wives, partners and flings, all of whom have come and gone (as it were) without my having met them. I’m still in the wrong, but it’s a kind of excuse.

  Possibility B. I may have been poorly/tired/poorly and tired. Given that the writer’s life is, in many ways, jam and then gravy and then more jam, not a lot is written about the physical demands of something which seems to involve (in a high percentage of cases) not even all the author’s fingers, never mind heavy lifting.

  Then again, yes, of course, the writer is a pampered and lucky creature and we mustn’t forget that, but the occupation does bring with it physical perils beyond the usual self-inflicted overindulgences. Writers tend to be cerebral and not entirely excellent at expressing their emotions in a healthy manner. This may partly explain all that typing, but it may also give rise to tension – especially spinal tension. Add in poor posture, badly positioned screens and keyboards and unergonomic everything elses and you’ll find you have a profession full of people with more or less wrecked backs – a profession which expects its practitioners to travel, to sit on planes and trains and in ferries and cars and do, now that you mention it, a fair amount of heavy lifting. Unexcitingly strange beds, long hours, insane schedules (and – Christ! – German schedules . . .), jetlag, frequent-flyer’s lung, sketchy nutrition, sleep-deprivation and visibly frayed immune systems can swoop in to hammer a writer at any time. These sound like High-Class Problems – and they are. You have to be published and sort of at least making it as a writer a little to be seriously afflicted. But it’s less than joyful to find that serious illness halves your income, stops you travelling and punches a hole in your plans for sustainable self-employment, simply because you were in work and doing all the nonsenses that involved.

  The days of averagely successful writers being able to earn a living simply by writing have probably gone, if not for good, then for the foreseeable future. The tiny percentage at the top of the iceberg will be okay, everyone else will be cold, or cold and underwater, or cold and underwater and pale and bloated. This will mean more hours for huge numbers of writers, more work to subsidise the work you want to do and more risk of falling apart while you push yourself too hard to get that extra inch forward. Stress, unwise use of a laptop, over-long working hours and general lack of forethought left me with ten years of chronic back pain and the unpleasant impression that one decade would follow another until I just coiled into a knot like a worm left on hot crazy paving. Fortunately, I’m almost always pain-free now, but, all you fellow-writers out there: don’t let your love of the words drag you off into unsafe practices, strain and long-term damage. Spend a bit more for a decent keyboard, or a good chair, take breaks. Defend yourself. Make your boss look after you – you’re the only workforce he, or she, has got.

  Which is a long way of saying: I may have been rude because I was in pain and wanted to lie down in a darkened room with a TENS machine and some feeble over-the-counter pills, because ten years of effective pills would have been a problem in itself. And, if that’s the case, I may not even have noticed the incident and I probably didn’t regret it. I probably wanted to kill whoever else was involved for breathing too loudly, or looking healthy. Not nice, but true. Being unwell is shit – and I hope I never
forget it, partly so that I’ll look after myself and partly so that I’ll be vaguely tolerant with other people who aren’t well – even if their not-wellness is the long-winded and vaguely invisible sort.

  Hence the holiday. So I can be grateful that I can scale cliffs, so that I can actually stop for a bit, so that I can stroll back of an evening and enjoy the company of the imaginary people – or leave them to get impatient for a while. It may do them good. Onwards.

  XXVII

  OKAY, THOSE OF you out there who are kind and lovely – and that’s many of you – please either stop me from ever taking another holiday, or stop me from taking a holiday during an election which will unpredictably generate long hours of suddenly requested scribbling, or stop me from taking a holiday which involves cliff-scrambling all day and then typing all night in a warm Sarkese Hobbit hole and then feeling all wibbly and translucent through the complicated ferry and train wanderings to which we flight-phobics must submit in order to get home from anywhere. Because that kind of holiday makes me so tired that I eventually end up living entirely on Red Bull – which stops me sleeping – to get through the complicated, nervy days of doing vaguely media-related things – which means I need sleep – and the continuing novel-tinkering – which means I really need sleep . . . The media things may help my publisher remember who I am at the end of the year and treat my novel gently when I hand it in. Or at least it will mean the marketing people may know who I am, even though I can’t play football, have a tediously windswept sex life, couldn’t dance underwater for a place in a West End musical if you paid me and am highly unphotogenic. (All disadvantages for the modern novelist – Graham Greene never had these problems, you can bet . . .)

 

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