There’s no such thing as Writer’s Block

Posted on September 25, 2013 by literarylad

Does it count as writer’s block when you simply can’t find the time to write? I know what you’ll say – ‘if you really want to do something then you’ll find the time..’ It’s not that simple. When all of your time is taken up doing things you have to do, or at least, that you feel compelled to do – like earning a living – it’s not a case of finding the time, not if the time simply isn’t there.

There is some time available of course, but it comes in very short and infrequent parcels. A writer needs time to think – to daydream. Twenty minutes in the middle of the day when your head is swimming with the details of your daily life – what you’ve been doing and what yet needs to be done – isn’t enough. And at the end of the day, when exhaustion kicks in, and it’s late, and you know that the alarm will wake you up early the next morning…

Sometimes I can work under those conditions. When a story is running ahead of me, when I know what I want to write; when it’s all mapped out in my mind, it’s easier. Even then, when the opportunities to write are so short and so far apart, it’s difficult to avoid the writing becoming disjointed. Sometimes I’ll look at a short paragraph that, in a state of extreme tiredness, took me forty-five minutes, and wonder just how it can have taken so long when, revived by a good night’s sleep, I could have knocked off something much better in fifteen.

But it becomes really difficult when a story isn’t mapped out; when I’m uncertain what will come next, when I’ve reached a dilemma in the narrative. I’m there now. The two main characters of the book have just met, and I just can’t seem to decide how the initial stage of their relationship should go. If time were available I could work through my difficulties methodically. There are creative techniques that I could use. I could make notes on what I want to achieve. I could ‘brainstorm’ (vile description). I could start writing potential scenarios; one, two, three, or as many as it takes until I find one that works (persuading yourself that what you are writing is just an exercise, not the real thing, takes off the pressure). Most of all I could sit, walk or lie down, clear my mind of everything but the book, and simply think. Right now though, that’s a luxury I can’t afford.

Never mind. I expect I’ll find a way.
There’s no such thing as writer’s block… there’s no such thing as writer’s block… there’s no such thing as writer’s block… there’s no such thing as…zzzz
Goodnight all.

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Population Overload

Posted on September 6, 2013 by literarylad

Earlier this week it was reported that, as a result of a large rise in the birth rate over the past few years, the UK is desperately short of primary school places. For me, the most surprising and worrying aspect of this is that there was no discussion of what had caused this rise, and no suggestion that it might not be such a good thing.

Global human population has been steadily rising, and probably passed the level at which it is sustainable some years ago. The UK is one of the most heavily populated countries in the world. And yet it seems that no-one; particularly not politicians and the media, is prepared to even talk about the problem, let alone do anything about it. Wars, famine, disease, drought, the exhaustion of finite natural resources such as coal, gas and oil; pollution, imbalances in ecologies, climate change – all of the major problems facing humans across the globe are under-pinned by the background problem of over-population.

In the UK we long ago passed the point at which the land available for farming could produce sufficient food for our population, and we are reliant on imported food, which in turn deprives people in other regions. There’s not enough housing, too few jobs, and our transport systems are over-loaded. We talk about the need to preserve natural environments, such as rainforests, in other parts of the world, and yet we long ago destroyed our own forests, and the few fragments of ancient woodland that remain are under constant threat from developers, and from governments who put economic growth above the environment.

If we are struggling to support our current population, how will we cope in years to come when, according to predictions by climate change scientists, cities and farmland will have been swallowed up by the sea? Where will the displaced people go, and where will we grow food?

If a developed and supposedly sophisticated country such as the UK is unable to understand the need to control population at a level that can be realistically sustained with the resources available, without damaging our environment, what hope is there for the world?

Further information:
http://www.populationmatters.org/issues-solutions/
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/why-woods-matter/protection/ancient-woods/Pages/ancient-woods.aspx#.Uimb-XFwbIU

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Lad, interrupted…

Posted on July 22, 2013 by literarylad

Work on my second novel has temporarily stopped. At around 10,000 words I realised I had been for too long dancing around an incident that would not be explained until later on in the book, and of which, of course, I had only a sketchy idea. I had no choice but to jump forward and write the incident, so that I could continue with the story. I’ve found that writing a novel can involve a fair amount of virtual time travelling. After a great deal of vacillation as to exactly what form ‘the incident’ (as I refer to it) would take, I finally wrote a first draft. Which was progress, but at that point I realised that I’d lost control (as Ian Curtis used to sing). This is what happens when you’re writing in your spare time, with precious little of that available. Writing a novel is an intense experience and a feat of master planning. However well you document the plan and your progress (and I do pay a lot of attention to this) you really need to have the plan, the characters and their relationships clear in your mind all of the time. When you only have short periods of time in which to write (and indeed, to think) when there are too many other things in your life needing your attention, it’s easy to lose your grasp on the plan. It’s a bit like Cherie Booth juggling (or was it talking?) balls. I realised that I needed to stop, to read through what I’d written, and get everything clear in my mind again before continuing with the story.

Before doing this, I thought I would take the opportunity to work on an idea for a short story that came to me a few weeks ago whilst I was watching a natural history programme on Australia. What I’ve written is a rather bizarre story about a very familiar Australian animal. Part anthropomorphic fairy tale, part horror story, partly ironic, and quite blatantly allegorical; it’s the kind of thing you could only get away with in a short story! Which reminds me – I really must get around to making more of my short fiction available from the blog. Soon!

Anyway, this particular story has turned out to be a little longer than I’d expected (a bit of a shaggy Koala story, you could say). I’ve just started typing it up today (I always do my first drafts with pencil and paper) so I should hopefully be able to get back to the book soon. The process will be to familiarise myself with and consolidate what I’ve done so far, reconcile it with the overall plan, and then I can continue. I seem to remember that I’m heading towards the first (and last?) sex scene. At only ten to twelve thousand words in, does that make me a bit of a slut..?

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Publishers, publish us…

Posted on July 11, 2013 by literarylad

Having sent my novel to literary agents rather than publishers (as recommended in the Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book) without success, I decided I might just as well start sending it direct to publishers as well. I got nowhere with the literary agents. Over half of them didn’t even bother responding (despite the SAE’s) and those that did gave me no indication of why they didn’t want to represent me; why they didn’t want the book – leaving me with no idea of what I’m, doing wrong (if anything). The trouble is, they don’t give feedback. Why? Apparently they’re all far too busy (and important) to be able to spare a moment to let an aspiring (or is it expiring?) writer know how they’re doing.

This time, for the publishers, I thought I’d be clever. I put in a feedback card with four boxes (basically Good, Fair, Bad and Terrible) and asked if, should they not want to publish the book, they could tick the box that most closely corresponded to their view of my writing. I’ve just had my first reply. I opened it with trepidation – what if they’d given me a ‘bad’ or even a ‘terrible’? Guess what? they hadn’t ticked any of the boxes. Instead, they’d written a comment on the card (in a printed hand that a five-year-old wouldn’t be proud of) saying that they couldn’t make specific comments on their decision (they also sent a ‘not right for us at the present time’ compliments slip). I thought, ‘No – I’m not having that!’ So I rang them. The person who answered the phone said it was because they get so many submissions. I said, ‘does that mean that you wouldn’t have had time to read it then?’ ‘Oh, no; it would have been read.’ I made the point that it would actually have been quicker for them to put a tick in one of the boxes than to write a sentence saying that they don’t make comments!

I wasn’t asking for a full critique; just a rough idea of how the writing had seemed to them from the little of it they had read. They must have read enough to have made the decision that they didn’t want it, after all. Just what are they afraid of? Do they think I might fire-bomb their offices if they are critical of my writing?

I may not be a professional writer (yet!) but my approach is professional, which will have been clear from my submission. I think I’m a good writer. Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps I’m not very good at all, and when I send a submission to a publisher I’m wasting their time (as well as my own). Wouldn’t it be better for them to tell me? Otherwise I’m going to assume otherwise, take them literally when they say the submission is just ‘not right for them at the present time’ and continue sending it to other publishers. And if I have no joy, I’ll go through the same process with my next novel. And the one after that too. Until someone has the decency to say ‘Look, Graham, mate, I know you want to be a writer, but…’ Alternatively, if they tell me that my writing is good, but it just really isn’t what they’re looking for at the present time, I’ll know that I can send it elsewhere without wasting anyone’s time.

I wonder if these people understand the amount of work that goes into preparing a submission (never mind the work involved in writing a novel). I’m sure they receive a lot that are nowhere near the required standard. I’m also sure that many of the authors on their books came through contacts rather than unsolicited submissions (Ah, nepotism – a game for all the family). But what’s the betting that somewhere in that slush pile each year is the next best-seller, along with two or three others that could also turn a good profit? Of course, it could be that publishers manage their slush piles better than I think, that they do find the best submissions from the pile, and make use of them. If so, it would be nice if they were then to give something back by finding the time to give some encouragement (or discouragement, if necessary) to those that don’t make the grade.

I know I’m cynical, but I imagine most publishers giving the submissions pile to the office trainee – straight out of university, no experience, no idea of how to tell good writing from bad, and more interest in texting their friends than doing any work. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the process isn’t:

– Take the submission out of the envelope
– Put it in the SAE with a copy of the standard letter of rejection
– Seal it and put it in the post.

But what do I know..?

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GM – Government Mad?

Posted on June 20, 2013 by literarylad

So the government are putting forward the case for relaxing the regulations on GM. When elected, they claimed they would be the ‘greenest’ government ever. A few years on and they’ve virtually abandoned sustainable energy in favour of coal and oil, changed the planning regulations to encourage building on green belt land, and are promoting the devastating ‘fracking’ extraction process as the answer to our energy problems. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they want GM too. Is it greed or stupidity, do you think? Are our politicians in the pockets of the huge multi-nationals responsible for GM, or are they really so ignorant as to believe the facile arguments in favour of GM?

There are two main problems with GM. The first is the potential danger. There are so many examples of the damage that can result from introducing species (and GM crops are effectively just that – new, introduced, species) into ecologies where they don’t belong. I could cite cane toads which, in Australia, together with foxes, cats, rabbits, and a wide range of introduced plants that have become invasive, have pushed an upsetting number of indigenous species to the brink of extinction. Cats, mink, Japanese Knotweed and Himalayan Balsam are just a small selection of introduced species that are having a similarly damaging effect on our environment here in the UK. Sometimes it’s possible to go back. In the UK, for example, we have had success eradicating mink. But the smaller the organism, the harder it becomes. How do you round up and destroy seeds, or pollen? We simply can’t be sure that a particular GM crop won’t turn out to have an unexpected and devastating effect on our environment, perhaps by adversely affecting an insect that turns out to be crucial to the food chain.

The second problem is with the potential benefits. The claim is that GM can increase crop yields to help feed an ever growing human population. But even the GM companies’ own figures, which they’ve failed to make good in practice, are relatively insignificant, and don’t justify the effort, expenditure and, most importantly, the risks. Various studies have shown that it takes more land to produce meat than to produce the same quantity of crops. Much more. I’ve seen figures of twenty-five times more. The effect of persuading people (in the developed world) to include less meat in their diet would render any benefits GM may (or may not!) give as insignificant. And then, of course, we could perhaps stop to think that maybe population growth isn’t an unalterable fact. We could start taking action not only to stop growth, but to begin slowly reducing world population to a more sustainable level.

It seems that our government are prepared to put all of this out of their minds, and why – could it be because there’s money to be made from GM?

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Manchester Green Spaces

Posted on May 28, 2013 by literarylad

Just what have Manchester City Council got against green spaces?
First there was Piccadilly Gardens. The only large park in the city itself. Decades of neglect turned it into a haven for drug dealers. Finally Manchester City Council decided to do something to stop the decay. What they did, was to sell half of the park to developers, who wasted no time building an office block on it. The remaining area was ‘re-developed’, which involved ninety percent hard landscaping. They paved it over, planted a handful of small trees through the paving, and laid a couple of tiny, forlorn patches of grass.
They had started with a basic structure of very beautiful, mature trees – some of the very few mature trees in the city. Not one remained. The council threw away decades, perhaps a century of growth and replaced it with the worst of examples of ‘landscape architecture’.
There was an area of land bordered by Whitworth, Princess and Canal Streets. I used to pass it every day on my way to work. It was just rough land, used as a car park. But it was bordered with rows of very beautiful trees. Again, the land was ‘developed’. The trees were destroyed, the whole area excavated to a great depth to provide a basement for an enormous building, to be mostly apartments, I believe. Work stopped – presumably they decided economic conditions weren’t right after all – and now we’re left with a huge building site, fenced off with hoardings decorated with images of the kind of people the developers imagined would live in the apartments (all young, all handsome, all wealthy and wrapped up in their own self-importance).

And now it’s the Peace Gardens, in front of the library. The Peace Gardens were lovely – very small, but an oasis, a refuge, an unexpected natural area, where a path wound its way through grass, mature trees, hedges, flowers. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I went back to visit Manchester last month. It’s all gone now, apparently as part of another ‘regeneration’ scheme by the City Council.

There have been other atrocities, and still it continues. Apparently Alexandra Park is the latest casualty, with avenues of mature trees being ripped out, funded by lottery fund money.

How can these vandals in suits live with themselves? Is it corruption – are they being bought off by developers; brown envelopes changing hands, Council members sacrificing our green spaces to make themselves rich? Or is it lack of judgement – are they as soulless as the results of all this redevelopment? Cities need nature. They need trees and grass and plants to absorb pollution and exude fresh air for us all to breath. Some people say they prefer concrete and tarmac, but studies have shown that these things have a detrimental psychological effect on us all, whether we’re aware of it or not. Manchester City Council, hang your heads in shame.

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History – it’s the Future

Posted on May 14, 2013 by literarylad

Is it only me that gets irritated by television and radio presenters talking about historical characters in the present or, sometimes, the future tense? This seems to have been very fashionable for some time. I’m talking about commentary like:
“He’s just conducted his first successful military campaign, leading his forces to victory, and Henry VIII is at the peak of his regal career.” No, he’s not, that was centuries ago – he’s dead and buried. “He is soon to initiate a conflict with the church that will tear at the very fabric of the nation.” I think you’ll find that all took place a very long time ago…

Someone, some historian, probably a very clever and engaging historian, will have hit on the idea of relating historical events as if they were contemporary, as a way of making his or her lectures more interesting; different. It may have been very effective. It will have been taken up by others, once, twice; three times. Still it will have been different and interesting. And then it will have stopped being effective, because it became too common, expected; a cliché. Some presenters start off in the present tense and then get confused, slipping back into the past tense, before remembering that we don’t do that any more (it’s so passé) and moving forward once more to the present and the future. I wonder what will come next. Will historians mimic the first person narrative favoured by so many novelists (which I might also argue was once very effective but has now become a cliché)? Perhaps add in a bit of ‘street’ language to give it an even more contemporary feel?
“So I’ve been King for some time now. I’ve got a wife, but like, it ain’t a love match, if you know what I mean, and there’s this really hot chick at the court called Anne Boleyn, and man, is she getting me worked up an’ all…” You never know, it might even work.

More seriously, I do wonder what effect these kind of tricks will have on future historians. Imagine 200, 500, 1000 years from now, when society (if such a thing still exists) and language has changed almost beyond recognition, and only limited records of the past have survived. Will twentieth century descriptions of fifteenth century events, written in the present tense, cause thirty-first century historians to scratch their heads and wonder why they’re having such difficulty arranging events in the correct order?

Perhaps I’m just being uptight, but it’s one of those things that I find rather annoying. There are others. A few others. Well, actually, rather a lot of others. I may even share them with you at some point…

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How to write a novel…

Posted on May 4, 2013 by literarylad

For my first novel, and for the longer of the short stories, I generally began working with one or more ideas and developed them as I went along, rather than plotting out the whole thing right from the start. I’ve found that this works well for me. It’s often been said that there are only a limited number of possible storylines (the number seven comes to mind, though this doesn’t seem quite enough). If this is the case, then any ‘story-boarding’ I might devise for a book couldn’t be truly original, just a variation on one of these. I find this idea quite demoralising – how can you come up with an original idea? Then there’s the danger of the pursuit of originality causing you to make your plots ever more incredible and, therefore, lacking in credibility (which seems to happen in many long-running television series). To me, what’s really important, what makes a book original, is not the bald outline of the story – what happens, when, and to which characters – but what you put into it: how you describe the events, characters, emotions, thought-processes, etc. And putting the story across in an interesting way too, perhaps being oblique; allowing the reader to work out events for themselves, rather than being too clear. Done well, that can really make a book. And the language is critical too. People tend to draw a distinction between poetry and prose, but prose can be poetic, can flow and be beautiful in the pure sounds of the words heard in the mind or spoken out loud; beautiful like music, before the meaning of the words are even considered. Summarising the plot of a novel, stripping it down to a series of events, strips the magic out of it.
Rather than building the skeletal structure of a storyline, complete from the start, that can then be decorated and filled in, I tend to create a few inter-linked ideas and build out from them. I work on the plot as I go along, allowing it to develop naturally. I suspect this is much more interesting for the writer – the process of writing becomes almost like reading, because, like a reader, you don’t yet know what’s going to happen – so perhaps I’m just being selfish.
I’m following this process again for the second book. I started with a single idea; a snapshot of a character (a new character) at a moment in time – an idyllic moment; an idyllic lifestyle in an idyllic location. I’ve described this scenario, followed the character through a short period of their ideal lifestyle. But of course, nothing is really ideal – nothing is perfect – and so I’ve started to add a few cracks; suggestions that all is not quite as it seems. I think that my new character’s most prominent, most important personality trait is going to be a lack of realism. We shall see…

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The difficult second book…

Posted on April 26, 2013 by literarylad

I’ve started! Actually, I started some time ago, but progress is slow. It’s not that I’m lacking inspiration; it’s more a matter of time. I’d like nothing more than to be able to sit down and write for hours on end – I’ve got the motivation and I’m positively bursting with ideas – but just at the moment, I’m struggling to find the time to write. Other things keep getting in the way, and there’s always something else that needs to be done first.
I’ve been a bit cagey about it up until now, but I’m going to come clean and admit that I don’t make a living from my writing (not yet, at least; though I think it’s early days). I have a job. So writing must, for now, be a spare-time activity. And unfortunately there’s rather more going on in my life at the moment than I’ve got time to deal with, so I’m not finding much time for my writing. The blog isn’t exactly blameless. Setting it up, getting to grips with software, terminology, etiquette, and trying to develop social media skills (it would have helped if I had any social skills to start with) have proved quite time-consuming. And of course it’s a two-way process. It’s not uncommon for me to fire up the laptop with a view to making a quick post, only to find that an hour later all I’ve done is read other people’s blogs! I’m enjoying writing posts – I enjoy almost any kind of writing – but I am anxious to get on with the new book.
I suppose this has been a theme of my life; that there’s never enough time to do all the things I need and want to do. I’m sure it’s a common problem. There’s no point in me writing in isolation – the work needs to be shared in order for it to have purpose – so the blog is a necessity. I’ll just have to hope I can find more time for the novel from now on.
At least I’ve made a start. I’ll talk about what I’ve done so far and the writing process next time…

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Free short stories, and Manchester

Posted on April 15, 2013 by literarylad

I’ve put one of my short stories on the downloads page of the blog. Called ‘Outside’, it’s just over 5,000 words long and, like the novel (but not all my writing!) set in Manchester. Anyone who knows the city may have fun identifying the places the subject of the story passes on her journey, though bear in mind some may have changed, as I wrote it a few years ago. I hope to download more creative writing soon.

Talking of Manchester, I went back for a visit at the weekend (I’m living in South Wales at the moment). I had a good walk around and visited some of my favourite places, such as the art gallery. I was a bit upset to see that the central library refurbishment has extended to the destruction of the peace garden. If there is one thing Manchester lacks, it’s parks. The peace garden may have been very small, but it was one of the few green spaces left in the city. Perhaps it’s going to be rebuilt, but there was a road roller compacting a bed of hard-core over the entire area, so it doesn’t look promising. It’s looks like it’s Piccadilly Gardens all over again. I don’t understand how the Council can get away with such acts of vandalism!  The continuing recession/downturn (continuing everywhere but London, at least) has meant that many of the large building projects seem to still be on hold. In some respects, I think that may be a good thing, if it limits the excesses of the developers. I’m not sure when the library will be finished, but I hope it’s going to be worth it.

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