The Inspiration Hook.

Apologies for the lapse in posting, I’ve been wading my way through Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Mallory since the beginning of the month and only just finished it (keep an eye on Vulpes Libris).

But I haven’t just been holed up in my room, feverishly turning pages and untangling archaic language with a furrowed brow. Oh no. I’m ever so much cooler than that, my friends. In the last few weeks I’ve taken advantage of A Night Less Ordinary (a special thanks here to my “sis” who arranged the tickets on both occasions). For those that haven’t heard of it ANLO offers free theatre tickets for the under 26s. I’ve seen several plays thanks to this scheme and I recently saw Tiger Country at the Hampstead Theatre and Twisted Tales at the Hammersmith Lyric. 

I enjoyed Tiger Country while I was sat there watching it. I was engaged, but once we started talking about it on the way home, when I started thinking about in the days after, I realised that I was a little disappointed. Why? Because as an avid viewer of Holby City and an occasional viewer of Casualty, it was nothing I hadn’t seen before. We had the bossy female registrar, determined to succeed in spite of her race and her sex, ready to give up anything for it, ultimately redeemed by family love and loyalty. Then the good doctor, struck down by cancer, forced to become a patient. And of course, the idealistic junior, determined never to lose a patient, slowly coming to realise that her handsome boyfriend is not all she hoped, her head turned by her grumpy superior who is repressing his love for her. In long-running serials these clichés can be well-done, events, character and the sheer luxury of time can elevate them. But Tiger Country didn’t have the luxury of time and scuppered itself further by including too many characters, too many narrative threads. Yes, it gave a good sense of the fragmented life of a doctor, the unsociable hours, the hard work, the need for someone to understand. But I just felt that too much was going on and therefore it had to rely on stereotypes to tell the story. There were moments though that caught my attention – that snagged the part of my brain that stores away inspiration. It’s thanks to this play that a few more pages in my ideas notebook was filled.

Twisted Tales I loved from start, finish and homeward-bound dissection. The arrival of a chatty stranger into the daily commute of three reserved men sparks the play as he tells them several odd stories. It’s a strange piece, much as the stories themselves are. There’s the man who bets a young American that he can’t light his trusty lighter ten items in a row – he’ll wager his car if the young American will bet the little finger of his left hand. There’s the woman who receives a mink coat as a parting present from her lover and comes up with an elaborate ploy to keep it from her husband. Each story has a little twist that you don't always see coming. Nearly all of them make you squirm, laugh and slide to the edge of your seat. I think of all the stories there was only one where I knew what the twist would be. The staging, the company, all did a wonderful job at producing these savage little tales. I loved every single minute and determined to dive back into Dahl’s short stories which I haven’t read in years and can hardly remember.

While we left the Hammersmith Lyric bubbling with praise and chatter about the stories, my inspiration hook snoozed. It could not be tempted awake by murderous old ladies or bullying public schoolboys. Why? Why did something I think was bloody brilliant not inspire me the way something I thought was pretty flawed did?

Because there was no moment where I thought I could take it and run off in another direction with it. There was nothing I felt ought to have been done another way, a different road taken. Twisted Tales was such a complete piece, so neatly finished that it demanded to be admired, not improved. Tiger Country, with its mad spill of characters and half-finished scenarios presented more possibility for my discerning inspiration hook.

So you see, anything can be of benefit to you, nothing is ever wasted. Do I think that I could have written Tiger Country better? Certainly not. However, my brain cannot stop ticking over the tangent that I spotted that was left fluttering and unexplored, my inspiration hook demanded that I hang something on it…

[Sadly, ANLO is coming to an end very soon, due to cuts I believe. So I would urge everyone that is eligible to take advantage while they can.]

The vital ingredient.

Talent + Self-Belief x Hard Work (+ Luck) = SUCCESS.

We’re all agree that those are major components in the ongoing search for success, yes? And not just in writing, the same could be said of any industry from journalism to acting. It’s all pretty obvious – talent is nothing if you don’t put the work in and everyone could do with the good luck of being in the right place at the right time. But it’s the self-belief that actually makes you sit down day after day after day and face that blank screen or page.

But what makes self-belief? Where does it come from? Some people are just born with it, others have to acquire it along the way. Here’s what I think it is:

Support + Optimism.

Without optimism, that cheerful hope that one day it will all be worth it, why would you do it? If you sit down thinking “Well, this will never see the light of day,” why are you wasting your time? If it’s for sheer love of writing then I applaud you because although I love to write, I write with a view to sharing it. Even if it’s only ever seen by a family member or friend I work in the hope that something I write will make someone grin and say “I loved it!” Making it the best that it can possibly be for that shadowy future reader is what keeps me going. That and knowing that it’d smart to hear that something I’ve written is crap.

And then there’s self-belief, that tricky little bugger. When you stall at 10,000 words because you’ve written yourself into a corner or have happened across the single most clichéd line in the history of the written language (and ye gods, you’ve written it!) you have to have the gumption to open your eyes and face it. The “I can’t do this” attitude leads to Googling funny pictures of kittens (been there) instead of figuring out how to get your character out of that locked toilet.

If you write, you probably read a lot. I know I do. Perhaps your self-belief comes from having read something awful and just knowing that you can do better. The “If they can do it, so can I!” attitude. Or perhaps someone else believed in you so much that you thought that maybe then were onto something and that grew into believing in yourself and your own abilities. The latter is how it happened for me….

I always went crazy for writing in school. Especially when we got fountain pens. At least half the pleasure for me was the act of writing itself. Creating neat blue curly writing on smooth white paper. That’s something I still enjoy, the simple, sensual pleasure of writing something down.

But I also loved stories. As an only child I would chatter away to myself when I was playing. I once managed to convince myself there were wolves in the little wood next to the top field where our weekend caravan was. I’ve never run home so fast and I’ve never enjoyed gossip as much as I enjoyed describing that wild chase to my rapt family. Writing down my tall tales was just natural progression and sometimes I went a little overboard:

Year 7 History homework – Write a short story about how Mary Stuart felt after Darney’s death. Cue an 8pg response from me about her wig, her accent and – oh yes – her feelings.

Year 8 English homework – Write a short story about homelessness. A holiday project, which meant I produced a front cover, illustrations, the whole she-bang. A crush on the teacher probably helped that one along…

But then there was Year 9, which was the turning point for me. Our half-term project was to write our own whodunit. I wrote a story about a crime of passion in which you were supposed to side with the killer. I vividly remember the first Friday after half-term. English was the last lesson before lunch and everyone tore out to get their hands on chips, but I was asked to stay behind. I assumed the teacher had noticed me smuggling fingerfuls of muffin out of my bag. But apparently not. She said, “I read your story. I loved it. I’d like to put it in the school magazine.” Once more I’d made it up into a book, complete with illustrated front cover and here was my teacher, hugging it to her chest and telling me she wanted to publish it. None of my friends really got why that was a big deal for me, but I was lucky that my family always thought writing was a good thing. Not something that ought to make way for a proper job – like being an palaeontologist, which was my first ambition (I was going to write the seminal work on what wiped out the dinosaurs).

My Grandad was a stickler for spelling and grammar, to the extent that he bought be a pocket spell-checker. Because if you’re going to do something – do it properly. Mum just thinks everything I write it totally brilliant, which is great for when I need a boost. And Nan isn’t afraid to ask awkward questions or say if she thinks something doesn’t work.

So many times in this post I’ve started to write “I’m not published, but I think…” or “I’m not that good, but…” but why should I qualify my opinions? No, I’m not published, I’m not the world’s greatest, number one writer – these are just the facts. But I do write. But I do know what got me started and what keeps me going.

If you’re finding it a struggle to face the blank page, have a think about what you’re missing. It could just be the vital ingredient.

[Also, at the moment, Egypt is in the midst of a great turning point. The people are determined to see the back of Mubarak. You might want to read this post about it. Thanks.]

Exhaustion = Inspiration?

After an exhausting week I find myself facing a busy weekend. In fact, looking at my diary, not only am I working a 12 hour shift as well as my regular 10 hour shift next week, but I’m not due any down time until next weekend. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to that weekend. I can see it now: me, in my slanket, a book, a cup of tea, the sofa. I’m only leaving the house for jalapenos, black beans and a gentle little run (maybe). Because sometimes, I just need to recharge my batteries. So don’t even try to get me out and doing anything more energetic than a jog. It ain’t gonna happen.

I am gradually getting into the routine of my new – hopefully permanent – rota. So now I’m slowing adding to my week. This week I successfully added in the hours that I can collaborate with my script-writing partner (although that’ll take a battering this week with that big fat 12 HOUR SHIFT). This week’s challenge is to fit in at least three runs while figuring out how to work Run Keeper from my Android phone. This is possibly a challenge too far…

Still, despite the long hours at work and the hours wasted travelling there and back I am not lacking in inspiration. The strange thing with me is that when I have all the time in the world, words are not forthcoming as when I’m trudging to the train station at 7am with my flask in one hand and brolly in the other. It’s like they know I really ought to be making productive use of the day.

In fact I always found at uni that I was at my most productive and creative when it was term-time and I was juggling lectures, deadlines, reading and my part-time job. In the summer, when I always intended to write loads and steal a march on the upcoming year, I always ended up craving fiction. My brain just refused to produced – it wanted to consume. The same happens on my weeks off and during those vast sands of unemployment. What my brain demands is a rest from producing and thinking. What fiction is for me and my brain is grist to the meal because when I’m back at work or wading through a to-do list that reaches my belly-button, I’ll be musing vaguely on something I just read or watched and through a convoluted train of thought I’ll arrive at a spark of an idea.

It also helps that being busy, having a life beyond the tapping of keys and the glow of a computer screen brings you into contact with people, events, snippets of conversation… gossip basically. I have to admit to lapping up the tales my friends tell – everything from funny things that happened to them and stuff that happened to their friend’s-brother’s-cousin-in-law’s-wife.

And yes, I have to confess, some of those stories have made their way into my notebook.

Define thyself.

I’ve been AWOL for a bit due to more hours at work. It’s still not full time, but the travel and the early mornings (ergo, early nights) have meant that I haven’t fancied sitting down in the front of the computer more than I have to. I’ve also had less time for reading, but I will have a review up on VL this week. I’m also planning a big one for mid February – comparing a 15th century text with its modern-day counterpart. I shall say no more till then…

Apart from that, I’ve been wondering the last week or so about definitions. How do you define yourself? It’s pretty important really. Your definition of yourself affects how you approach the world. But who can define themselves in one word? There’s probably a handful of words that you would use to define yourself, to say “This is the person I am” – cheerful, ugly, intelligent, happy, pessimist, sexy, creative, lucky. But do you also define yourself by what you do, by your job?

When I was at uni, despite also working at least two days a week I defined myself as a “student” because that’s what I was. I was only working in retail because I was a student. As I’m currently working 4 days a week as a receptionist and my days of being a student are over, I’m wondering how I’d define myself now. Say I get talking to someone in a bar and they ask “And what do you do?” How would I respond? I would probably say, “I’m a receptionist,” because that’s what I am, that’s what I’m paid for. I’m also not very comfortable telling strangers “I’m a writer.” You inevitably face the “Have I read anything of yours then?” question which can be very embarrassing if, like me, you’ve only had a couple of short stories and poems published. The only person who has read my complete published works is my Mum. An unpublished novel is not half as impressive once people realise that it’s just unpublished, not unpublished-at-the-moment-but-it’s-due-out-in-March.

But in my heart, I don’t consider myself a receptionist. It’s what I do to earn money, to pay bills, buy clothes, books and paper. It is not who I am. In my heart I am a writer. I write every day, even it’s just my diary. No, I’m not a career writer. I don’t have things regularly published and it doesn’t pay my bills. But I think about it constantly. My characters live in my head. I will write on anything, including my arms, in the middle of the night when I can’t find my notebook (everyone knows when this has happened because it ends up on my face) When I’m in the bath, I chatter away into a Dictaphone (the best present ever for someone who narrates long passages when up to her neck in bubble bath and then can’t remember a word of it when she can touch her notebook without water logging it). I read books and have one of three reactions:

1. Here’s where I think they went wrong...

2. Hmmm, I would have done this… (believe it or not, but that’s the genesis of Novel Number 1).

3. That was brilliant, I wish I had written it.

Even if my published tally remains a couple of short stories and poems, I won’t stop writing. If you told me I’d never publish another word I’d still write because I wouldn’t know what to do with myself otherwise. I’d have to take up… oh, I don’t know. Oil painting. Dog breeding. Pottery.

So, should you ever meet me in a bar and I say I’m a receptionist, remember how I really define myself:

Londoner. Vegetarian. Optimist. Passionate. Writer.

Kill your darlings!

A little while ago I said that I was returning to my first novel because something that had been niggling at me suddenly made sense and I was embarking on changing that particular strand of the story. While I was at it I realised the death of another character felt a little off too. Not that she died, but the manner in which she died. So I've been thinking and thinking about that and I've come up with another way of killing her off that is much better. At the moment she dies of meningitis, which she catches while nursing a young soldier that reminds her of her son. I'm keeping the part where she nurses the boy soldier, but that's not what kills her in the end. So now there's no death-bed confession which I always felt was a little awkward. The death-bed confession is a bit of a cliché, but there were lines in her death scene that I loved so much I was loathe to cut it. I could hear my lecturers screaming "Kill your darlings!!" but I couldn't at that point. Now that I have the distance and am editing another element of it I'm able to look at it more objectively and see that what I'm planning to do now works a lot better. It creates a much more believable reason for her husband to be guilty which is very important to the story.

It really is amazing how much of a difference a break can make. I was working for about six month solid last year on actually writing and then I ploughed straight into editing. I know now that that was the wrong thing to do because I was very quickly bored. I'd been churning out on average 1,000 words a day and for that to come to an abrupt halt really didn't help the editing process, which is a frustrating, lengthy and quite boring process anyway. Next time I think I'll start on something else and get that going before I come to edit something. That way I've got something to write as a "reward" for doing some editing.

I'm also only just really learning that the phrase "Kill your darlings" is totally true. The two plot strands that I'm changing - the marriage of the hero's lover and the death of his wife - were ones that I doggedly hung onto because they made the story go a certain way. A way I needed it to go for the rest of the story to happen. However, given time and space I've come up with much better ideas that avoid death-bed-confessional clichés, create more truth, are more believable and still drive my story in the direction I want. But much more smoothly than in it did in the original. I used to scoff at the phrase - they're my darlings for a reason. And this is my story and surely I know best?? But I know now that it's true - you can never be precious about anything in your novel because then you can't be ruthless enough to cut something that's dragging it down.

But that's not to say my darlings have gone completely. They've been re-homed in a "Scraps" file should a home become available.

Hello 2011!

Remember me saying that I was certain 2011 was going to be a great year? Well, I still think that but it didn’t get off to a flying start. I started to feel a little odd on Boxing Day and then the next day, I woke up feeling a little achy and thought I must have slept funny. By that evening though it was clear that I’d caught something. Turns out I got the norovirus! I popped out Monday before I got really ill and today was the first day out since then. Felt absolutely rotten and bored beyond all possible belief. I had such a great pile of books for Christmas (mindful of how many Arthurian books I’d taken out of the library, Mum got me a stash of my own!) and I couldn’t read one, just didn’t have the energy.

Mum also got me Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas for Christmas. I read it last year and thought it was wonderful. I read it when I was in my government-funded job and was feeling just as lost as Meg in the book. I reviewed it on Vulpes Libris and it was my pick for November’s book of the month at the Big Green Bookshop. So to ease me back into reading I’m re-reading it. I’m finding Thomas’s prose just as delicious the second time round, but I’m curious to see if I respond to it as enthusiastically now that I feel more settled and focused.

So my big New Year wasn’t the greatest party ever. I admit to sitting in bed, hugging a hot water bottle and scowling when I could hear all the fireworks and the laughing and singing. This virus made me lose 4lbs! I had a new dress! I was going to look great and have a great time! Still, there’s always next weekend. But I did manage my usual New Year ritual of having a clear out. I like to start the year with a clean slate.

I’m back to work tomorrow. I was very annoyed that I had to take Thursday and Friday off last week, given that I’ve only been there five minutes, so I’m glad to get back there. I’m also going to ease myself back into my running, that’s one of my resolutions and another one is to always carry my alcohol hand rub with me! I don’t want anymore viruses!

And last but by no means least, I was very sad to hear this morning that Pete Postlethwaite, “the best actor in the world” according to Steven Speilberg, died yesterday. I really admired this man, he seemed a genuinely good bloke and was a brilliant actor. I first saw him in Dragonheart, years ago and he never disappointed me. I have a list of actors I really rate and want to see live on stage and he was on that list. I’m sad that I’ll never see him on stage, but I’m just glad that he’s left behind such a wealth of great film and TV work. He will be very sadly missed.

So much to do, so little time!!

As it turns out I picked the best – and the worst – time of year to get a job. Best because it’s the priciest time of year, not only for gifts for Christmas but also because I’ve had to buy snow boots (the irony being that they won’t arrive any time soon because of the snow) and I’m having to think about a new coat that doesn’t just soak up the cold and wet. Worst because I’ve got about a gazillion things to do before Christmas and another gazillion to do before New Year. Made worse by the fact that I was going to get loads done this weekend, but snow ruined everything! I couldn’t meet my friends for present delivery, so that’s something to do this week. Then I spent three and a half hours trying to get home from Harrow on Saturday. It’s normally a 25minute journey!! We decided that as it wasn’t snowing, we’d go to get most of the food. Next thing we know – blizzard. Still, got a lot of reading done in those three and a half hours. Even if I couldn’t feel my fingers by the time I got home.

And I also have to work Christmas Eve, which I sort of don’t mind because I can go once the last person has been seen. There are no appointments available after 1pm so even if I’m there till the last appointment, it’s not too late. The problem I have is that I’m doing a late on Thursday and last Thursday I finished an hour later than I was supposed to. If that happens again and there’s travel chaos, I’m not going to get home until very late and I’ll have to be out at 6:30am the next day to get in on time. I also haven’t seen hide nor hair of a contract and no one seems bothered about asking for my bank details. I hate having to ask about that stuff because I can see how busy everyone is and I feel like I’m worrying them. But I’m going to have to ask today because it’s getting daft now. And I really would like to be paid at the end of the month.

And finally! My internet started playing up last night which somehow – don’t ask me how! – led to iPlayer deleting every download that I attempted to play. So I’ve lost the last episode of Live at the Apollo and the last two episodes of Holby City. No great loss I hear you cry – but it’s my guilty pleasure and I wanted to see the lead up to the great Connie Beauchamp’s departure!

To sum up: I am feeling very stressed right now. I can’t even think about that short story competition that I wanted to enter.