I have no meaningful clue about where my characters are from. Beyond those authors who are working through serious relationship issues via prose, I have never met anyone who could describe the roots of characters without also becoming quite vague. We all have our ways of developing character, but their sources remain blurry. I feel characters and their worlds are also potentially as engaging and visceral as your childhood’s monsters, companionable toys and landscapes of adventure.
And this is where I’m supposed to deliver something technical, which will deliver your worlds and your characters to you. But how can I? The good news is, that’s what you do. It’s also the bad news, but not really – if we simply decide to be open to whatever might arrive, this will ensure that something does. No theft or patchwork necessary. Each piece of each piece will be bespoke, grown to fit its place and no other. And the joy of making something of nothing will be real. Along with – undoubtedly – its uncertainty and its fears. When I hear, ‘Yes, but . . . he must have been based on someone . . .’, I am listening to someone afraid of letting go and seeing what will happen, someone afraid of making things up, of something simple, child-like, immeasurably influential and a gift. We are dealing with belief here: scary, exposing, generous, extraordinary belief – if you like, professional belief. If you believe your material is there for you, it will be. You have another option, but why take it? Letting what you need come and find you isn’t easy, but it is lovely.
Onwards.
LIV
ONCE AGAIN, I must apologise for a long delay in blogging. Thank you if you’re still around to read this. My ulcer and my slowly returning schedule decided to engage each other in not altogether positive ways. On the one hand, I have been able to get out and about a little, and that initially cheered me. I took part in Budleigh Salterton’s literary festival, ate crab sandwiches and loosened my overcoat recklessly on the nudist beach. I was also allowed to present some excellent and charming people onstage at Cheltenham: James Rhodes, Mark Thomas and Richard Wiseman; and I had a chance to praise the work of Mervyn Peake in public. On the other hand, I spent more and more time lying down between excursions until gastric distress put paid to my gadding about entirely, and my days now navigate between Zantac and Gaviscon. I am the person you never want to casually ask, ‘How are you?’ I will tell you. At length.
There is, however, an aspect of this current self-inflicted woe which I have found intriguing. For reasons I can’t pinpoint – exhaustion, drug interaction, stress – I am no longer really experi-encing emotions. At its worst, this gave me the sensation of having died and being compelled to haunt myself, of floating three or four feet behind the action. I would hear sad news, I would learn bits of London were on fire, I would contemplate difficult tasks that were looming, if not in progress, and I would be mildly aware of breathing in and out – nothing more. If I remembered past events they would seem unconvincing, no longer having emotional colour attached. Drama with any kind of involving content irritated me and I slumped down into evenings spent watching American TV series that operate under initials: CSI, SVU, JAG, NCIS, OMG, BS, and so forth.
As it happened, the only writing required of me during August and September was factual, but I was aware that the usual background mumble of fiction ideas was completely stilled. The encouraging fragments I had set down in my notebook were perfectly legible, but they had no meaning. Likewise for the scribbles in my computer Prose file . . . Every time I tried to look inwards there was a blank – not uncomfortable, or scary, only impenetrable. The fact that I was unable to register this as a cause for concern simply underlined the problem. No emotions. And no fiction.
This is hardly surprising, of course. I have spent more than two decades talking to writers about the importance of emotion in our work. In the absence of feelings with which to identify, readers can remain unengaged. A shot may ring out in the required manner, a man may even walk in with a gun – if we aren’t somehow induced to care about the proceedings, he might as well walk in with a hamster or a bag of nuts. Fictional characters whose interior lives don’t hum and gurgle with this or that emotional tone can’t be expected to compete with the genuine and complex human beings against whom – at a certain level – they are constantly being measured. We expect readers to temporarily oust loved ones, pleasant memories, delightful anticipations and present concerns for the sake of our inventions – an emotional reality in our work can make our demands seem much less unreasonable.
Part of what is frightening about setting out to write is the more or less acute awareness that somehow we must access or tinker with our own emotions in order to portray something workable for others. This doesn’t mean, I sincerely hope, that we should weep along with Mrs Wiggins when we decide that her beloved guide dog must choke to death on a rat. But we do measure and remember and examine our feelings while we build our worlds and people them. The whole process can give the impression that it may expose us intimately. It needn’t actually do any such thing. We’re dealing with fiction here – unless the writer is a construct too postmodern to qualify for clothes and a mortgage, he or she will be out of place within it. Even if we include subtle blendings of autobiography and creation, effective writing will basically involve us in complex linguistic manipulations that we hope will provide the illusion of intimate exposure, or whatever other illusions we deem appropriate. We aren’t really experiencing anything with the reader – we aren’t there.
And our being harrowed or overjoyed whenever our characters have to would be a wearying distraction from all that multitasking. Readers – some of them reviewers and journalists – can sometimes assume that the writer has bled and sweated in the manner of his or her protagonists. This is gratifying in a way – it tends to mean that the piece has struck home to a degree. But writers mainly sweat and bleed in the manner of people trying to do something hideously difficult over and over until it’s okay. Saying this in public can seem weirdly heartless, but it’s true.
There are, naturally, times when I have cared for characters, but that care is primarily focused on portraying them in the way they deserve or, in collaborations, on defending them against odd direction, or poor performance.
I have no idea why my lack of emotion made creative writing impossible. Perhaps I lacked material from which to grow personalities and psychologies. Perhaps I believed I was no longer a safe pair of hands, given that I might not be able to give a toss about the quality of my work, or the well-being of my nascent people. Perhaps I was just very, very tired.
Embarrassingly, my emotions first re-emerged when I was told a disgustingly moving story about a compassionate horse and a child. (I know, I know . . .) Once I’d stopped weeping helplessly, I vaguely felt as if I vaguely felt. The situation is not yet quite as I would hope. Still, it wasn’t too much of a shock – well it couldn’t be, could it? – that my first short story in a long while nudged itself forward quietly as soon as my interior began to show one or two lights. The feeling at that point? Gratitude. Onwards.
LV
I FEEL I will disappoint regular readers if I don’t mention that I spent this morning having an endoscopy and biopsy. This is good news. This is very good news. It means that my health has recovered to such an extent that my doctor and I can now explore my interior with vigour and the assistance of the most vile topical anaesthetic I have ever tasted. He said it was meant to taste of bananas, but wouldn’t; and he did not lie. It would only have tasted of bananas if bananas tasted of arse. Sorry, but there it is. Or was. In my mouth. Had I been more media-savvy I would have asked for the whole Journey to the Centre of my Duodenum to be burned onto a DVD, and you could be viewing it now on the website or downloading it as a screensaver, but I decided simply to be happy that nothing untoward was found.
I declined the option of a sedative, because chemicals and I do not mix well. I also couldn’t have spent the rest of today being smashed because I have a huge pile of work to get through: partly to pay for the Unbanana Experience and
partly because work is arriving for assessment from the latest crop of Warwick Creative Writing students. Is it that time again?
As usual, I wonder where the new writers at Warwick get the courage to give work-in-progress to anyone, never mind someone who will comment upon it. I have also been moved to ponder just how any of us ever reaches the point at which it is possible to view our own work as clearly and dispassionately – we might even say diagnostically – as we could the work of some other writer.
It is hugely necessary, of course, that any writer should be able to examine what they produce in a creative, but critical manner. (When I write ‘critical’ I am remembering that it comes from the Greek word meaning ‘to look at closely’.) We can’t rewrite to any purpose without being able to find our faults and strengths, uncover passages and themes that could be expanded, dissect and then reconstruct our characters, tones, plots. But there are times – especially during our early days – when our attempts at explor-ation can seem as nasty and unhelpful as trying to shove a tiny camera down one’s own throat. It’s awkward. It’s alarming. It hurts.
But we have to know what’s there. We have to be able to look at our papery offspring as if they were not ours, to see them as horrified strangers might. And this is a clue to a way forward. If you’ve ever presented your real live children, or relatives, or loved ones to people whose opinion you respect, you’ll be familiar with the personal unease this can provoke. Oh, my God, I’ve produced the Antichrist – she’s so rude. And loud. I am a bad parent. She is the bad seed. Or else perhaps: Oh, my God, he needs a haircut. I think his dishevelment is cute, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t understand. I must kill her. Or at least never speak to her again. You need not present your work to others who are physically present – although it can provide a healthy pressure to improve – but you can always imagine doing so. This is often more convenient than announcing a flash-reading on Twitter at 3 a.m. and expecting anyone to turn up in order to help you with page sixteen.
Sometimes a change of medium will help. We all know that when we print out a piece which seemed acceptable onscreen we will usually find that it is somehow converted to inexcusable dross as soon as it hits the paper. But would reading the piece aloud help you, too? Would playing a tape of it back to yourself be informative? I have either internalised this process or always heard my writing in my head, and I’ve found it invaluable to switch from one form of voice to another. Would walking the piece through and changing direction at each piece of punctuation tell you something? What about running that otherwise pointless bit of software that tells you the key words of your piece, or picking out each verb, each noun, each adverb and adjective – is there something your piece is trying to tell you? Is it possible to let its true nature be announced?
Perhaps you have been advised to leave your work in a desk drawer for a week, six weeks, three years . . . That can work well, but what if you don’t have the time? What if you’re aiming for a deadline? In my opinion, as writers, we can and should be continually learning how our minds work and helping them to help us more. What do you respond to better: sight, sound, smell, touch? If you try picturing your work as a movie, does that help you? Can you summon up a detailed portrait photo of your protagonist, or an action shot, or a strip of snaps from a booth, maybe posing with their lover? Can you draw them? (If you can draw.) Does your text smell of anything – beyond a bitter lifetime of soured hope? If you trace your finger over your words, or write them out longhand, rather than using your computer, does anything new fire? I have sometimes played out scenes or sections of dialogue as comedy, then sci-fi, then tragedy, then sitcom. I don’t change the words, I just see what happens if the tone is altered. Or is the tone indelibly there? Do I have enough information already on the page to make that kind of assault impossible?
And then, of course, we can ask ourselves whose opinion we most respect and if they would like what we have done so far. (It will be informative if you discover that your own opinion is all that matters . . .) We may actually hand unfinished work to an editor, or a group, but I think it’s important to be able to take this power into ourselves, too. It’s perfectly possible to sit and imagine a wise chum, or a dear pal, or Antonin Artaud, or Captain Ahab, or Captain Scarlet, or Captain Haddock – whoever works for you – and to ask ourselves how satisfactory they would find our efforts.
If nothing has done the trick for you yet, don’t despair – it simply means that you have more investigations to pursue and a very real opportunity to discover what kind of author you are, with what kind of mind. Best of luck. Onwards.
LVI
HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all. 2011 has gone away at last and I can now solemnly reflect that it didn’t actually kill me. Beyond that, I have nothing good to say about it. Last year began with my being ill, kept on with my being iller, then I was unwell, followed by being poorly, with a tiny interlude of infirmity. Only in December did my bone marrow perk up, while my ulcer healed and the H. pylori admitted defeat. I finally had both the energy to cook a large curry and the ability to eat it. Despite having been advised by a friend to ‘Maybe go easy on the curry . . .’, I made up for eighteen spice-free months by downing nothing but curry for the best part of a week. Because I’m like that.
Of course, my health troubles could have been much worse and much more permanent. Any of you out there facing long-term or serious medical difficulties have my fullest sympathy. I am aware that offering sympathy is cheap, largely unhelpful and often irritating. I am aware that the NHS is increasingly unable to assist the sick, so sympathy may be all you’re getting. And I am aware that my own situation was not assisted by – as mentioned above – my personality, because I’m like that. As a properly guilty Scot, I am more than willing to accept responsibility for the inadequacies of the Versailles Treaty, the burning of the library at Alexandria and Ed Miliband’s suits – well, maybe not the suits – so it’s hardly surprising that I would feel my imperfect health was entirely my fault. It wasn’t. But my nature did play its part.
At some point during 1986 I made the decision to be a writer and to do so absolutely. Rather than having a go, or trying, or tiptoeing forward, I decided to write as well as I could. This was, in a way, an extreme decision and an open invitation to risk, because if I really threw everything I had into writing and got nowhere, then I would be definitively No Good At It. I hadn’t worked out that going halfway into writing (or any art, or anything else worthwhile) wouldn’t be safe, it would be a guarantee of failure. The joy and fear and work involved in writing have to be real and full to have meaning and to achieve anything. I didn’t know that, I was simply feeling useless in the midst of Margaret Thatcher’s recession with no proper job I could go to. So I wrote. I really wrote. And I was lucky. I got published – and therefore found a way of life and a profession and a love I could never have anticipated. The same drive that leads me into foolishness with curry means that I committed to an art and craft, and that it could commit to me.
It also means that – for better or worse – I can’t let a sentence rest. I’ll batter at words and syllables until they’re at least not offensive to me. The drive is what makes me do my best. My best may not be great and certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it is still my best, and why would I want to waste so much of my time over anything else? The artists I truly admire and am inspired by all harness the healthier aspects of perfectionism to keep learning and growing and to do good work. I know a pianist who will unashamedly obsess over a single moment in a two-hour concert. He’s a relatively young man, but he already hears in a way that I can’t. He has made himself somebody different, somebody more than he was. Because he’s like that.
I know a painter who has spent decades producing extraordinary work and who is still attentive to every hair: hungry for light, colour, exposure to new work, to photography, to the seen world and its suggestions of the unseen. He has made himself a master craftsman and is still learning, still looking at the world more than I can. Bec
ause he’s like that.
I know an actor who never fails to move me and who – I am happy to say – once consented to perform something I had written. He inserted an um where there had been no um and that’s the kind of thing I notice and usually – silently – deplore. But this was a good um. Because he understands timing and music – among other things – his um decision was perfect, was inevitable, was lovely. Again, he’s a person who never stops paying attention, is helplessly committed to staying interested and improving in his profession. He can generate levels of focus I cannot. Because he’s like that. In short, all these people have positively harnessed their drive.
Which is great for art, but may be difficult to balance with other considerations. I can get hung up on a syllable, but completely miss the early symptoms of illness. I can forget to follow up on doctors after they’ve taken tests, or to check the side-effects of medications. I self-maintain very badly, while travel-ling and working beyond what is reasonable, skipping meals, skipping sleep and generally ignoring things that just don’t seem as interesting as my work. I slap down advice in this column about tending yourself sensibly as a writer, feeding your inspirations, taking time out to have fun. I can look at newer writers and see that they need encouragement and kindness as well as discipline and interior fury. And yet I am often discourteous, if not threatening, as I continue to be a dreadful self-employer. Because I’m like that.
On Writing Page 21