Huge thanks to the lovely Lisa Goll,
who invited me to take part in this blog tour. Lisa runs the London Writers' Cafe, a London-based writing group I'm a member of and
which, if I'm honest, I would be quite lost without. It's a lively,
friendly community with regular meet-ups, events, guest speakers,
workshops, and if you are a writer who lives in (or near) London,
it's definitely worth checking out. You can read what Lisa had tosay about her own writing here, and now it's my turn to answer the
same questions.......
What am I working on?
I have a terrible tendency to flit
between lots of projects at once, which means that nothing ever gets
finished. So this year I'm trying to focus on just one of those
things and am compiling a collection of short stories. (Of course that
means I still get to flit between several different projects, just
much shorter ones. Sneaky, isn't it?) I'm working from a short-list of about fourteen
stories – some finished, others less so – but I'm not sure yet if
they'll all make the final cut.
How does my work differ from others
of its genre?
I think (or hope, at least) that I've
started to find a distinct voice. The stories I have gathered
together are all quite old fashioned in tone - they're generally
written in the third person, with a very distant narrator, and
although the settings are contemporary, the content is fairly old
fashioned too. They are full of love triangles and plucky underdogs
and people who are too proud or vain or selfish or so on getting
exactly what they deserve. I'm a bit nervous about using the term, but one way to describe them would be as modern day 'morality tales'. They are set (for the most part) in the
real world but it's a reality where slightly fantastical things
sometimes happen. Not quite often enough to be classed as magical
realism, probably, and I don't stray too far into the realms of the
supernatural (there are no goblins or dwarves), but I think it's fair to say that there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed sometimes.
Why do I write what I do?
It happened completely by accident.
When I first started writing I formed a writing group with some
friends I'd met through a creative writing class, and we would met
once a month or so to share our responses to a particular writing
prompt or task. The thing I struggle with the most is plot, so when
it was my turn to set the prompt I cheated and suggested that we all
try and write a modern version of a fairy tale. That way, I
reasoned, I wouldn't have to worry too much about a plot because I
could just pinch one.
The story I ended up with contains some
shoes, but apart from that it bears very little resemblance to
Cinderella, which it was going to be based on. I strayed completely
away from the original plot, and eventually wrangled one of my own
into submission instead. Writing a fairy tale didn't solve the
problem it was supposed to, but it gave me so much more than that. I discovered I loved playing with the form and found myself trying to sound like a
storyteller would, breaking away from the story every now and then to
make a wry observation or share a joke with the reader. That same
tone carried over into the next story I wrote (about a love triangle
which is resolved with the help of a terrible cup of coffee) and it
is something which has stuck with me ever since. It's a useful
excuse for a multitude of sins – I can be a bit wordy, for instance and get away
with telling instead of showing more often than I wouild otherwise. So I do have have to keep mysef in check occasionally and make sure I'm
breaking the rules for effect, rather than just being lazy. It' a
fine line, but one I really like trying to tread.
How does my writing process work?
Gosh. I've tried to write this down
before – one of my stories was published by Arachne Press a couple
of years ago in a collection called Stations, and I wrote this 2-part guest blog for their website, trying to capture the process I
went through to write that particular story. I'm not sure how well I succeeded.
Usually, I start with a tiny idea. This
might be a character or a place; a vauge concept, a snatch of
dialogue, or a situation..... just about anything really. Those ideas
can come from anywhere. I'm constantly eavesdropping on other
people's conversations, and scribbling down things which grab my
attention; I tear interesting looking articles from magazines and
newspapers and I borrow from other sources quite a lot. I've written
a story based on the classic 'Two Guards' puzzle (the one where one
guard always lies, and one tells the truth) for example, and another
where the main character's life is controlled entirely by Beatles
songs.
Once I have a vauge topic or idea I
often do some sort of research. The internet, of course, is great for
this - I've learned all sorts of things, from how lighthouses work
(it's quite complicated) to the best conditions for keeping jellyfish
(curved tanks, otherwise they get stuck in the corners). This part
is fun – I like finding things out, as a general rule, and I'm not
really looking for answers to specific questions, so I can read the
things I find interesting and ignore the things I don't. I also make
lists, and ask odd questions on Twitter -any kind of information
gathering which might help spark some ideas.
Then, at some point, I start to write
things down. Getting started is hard. Really, really, REALLY hard. I
have huge arguments with myself which go like this:
“But that's going to sound so
STUPID!”
“Well, write it anyway!”
“But I can't!” “Yes you can. Just
do five minutes.”
“Maybe I'll just clean the shower
first......”
“Hmmm.......”
“....and there's this ridiculously
complicated recipe I've been meaning to try.....”
“Really? You're going to cook that
NOW?”
“....and now there's all this washing
up.....”
“JUST START WRITING IT.”
“Fine. Oh, God, this is so awful I
think I'm going to DIE!”
“No it's not. You'll be fine.
Remember what Dave Eggers says.”
and so on.
I do start writing eventually though.
And more often than not, it's that pesky Dave Eggers quote which does
it. I keep it pinned above my desk, and what he says is this: “People can't read what's inside
your head. They can only read the words you put down, with great
love and care, on the page.” It's obvious, when you think about it, but it's painfully true.
I don't always start at the beginning,
and what I write down tends to be a mix of the actual words which
might eventually end up in the story, and notes about things which
might happen, which I need to go back and write. At this stage,
usually, I still don't know what the actual story is but there are
all sorts of ideas and bits and pieces swirling around in my head,
and those are what I'm trying to capture. So I just keep writing
little bits of scenes which might fit here or there, or even nowhere,
and moving them all around, and skipping over some bits while
rewriting others. This can take place over the course of several
days, or weeks, or even months and as I'm writing things I
notice or read or think about slip in as well and suddenly, before I
know it there are a few thousand words on the page.
Eventually, if I'm lucky, there is some
sort of shift. It's hard to explain what I mean by this; it's sort of
my 'Eureka' moment, except it's not quite as dramatic and it doesn't
often happen in the bath. But something suddenly falls into place and
I realise what it is I'm actually writing about. Once that happens I
can filter through everything I've got on the page and start making
decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of, and usually there are lots of gaps left to fill in. Then it's a case
of editing and polishing and tinkering around until I'm happy(ish)
with the result.
I write on a computer, usually, in boring old Word, but (and this is crucial) in a very specific font. I have no idea why - I guess it's the digital equivalent of always writing in green pen, or on a particular type of paper. I save as I go and if I've made major changes tend to save a new version, which means I end up with folders containing 20 or 30 'drafts'. That sounds like a lot, but those aren't full, finished versions – it's just whever I got to the day before, or the week before, or whenever I was last working.
So there's my process. Of course, that
'Eureka' moment doesn't always happen quickly. In fact, a lot of the
time it doesn't happen at all, which means I can spend ages working
on something which doesn't end up going anywhere. So it's not the
most efficient process.....but it's the one which works for me.
Sometimes.
And now it's time for me to pass on to
two other writers, who will tell you what works for them. Yakinamac and Mr Phipps who are both regulars at London Writers' Cafe, have agreed to take up the challenge, and their posts will be online next week.
