March 2010 Archives

Quarantine Project Day 28

The thing about this deep immersion is that it means everything else goes to hell.  The savages are starting to look at me with a wary eye.  Plus I spent most of yesterday catching up on administration.  I'm already notoriously bad at replying to emails and I'd pretty much ignored everything for a few weeks.  Then you suddenly hear the cock crowing in the farmyard, the cows lowing, the lambs bleating and the dogs barking.

"Hark at 'im now!  He were a coal miner last week and on the high seas the week afore that.  Now he's a ruddy farmer."

(Ruddy, is it?  Haven't heard that used in a long time.  And who is this crusty commentator who keeps popping up on this blog?)

But the amount of bureaucratic correspondence is incredible - quite apart from anything to do with writing.  You could spend your whole time just doing that.  Maybe I should hire an amanuensis.  He/she could write the novels while I cracked on with the admin.

Might then turn out more than Day 28's below par 1144 words

(For yesterday's blog in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 27

Day 27 was a teaching day and the whole day and evening was taken up with reading students' manuscripts and preparing my comments on their work, so no progress on the novel. I did have a little debate with myself about whether I could exclude teaching days from the Quarantine Project in the same way as I exclude week-ends.  But then I quickly reminded myself - and with words of sharp reproach, dear reader - about how quite a few people reading this are trying to complete a novel at the same time as holding down a full-time or part-time job.  So it hardly seemed fair.

Fair?  Who says it has to be fair?  Whose Quarantine Project is this?  Don't I get to make up the rules?

Well, there are no rules, only word-counts.  And since I don't get home until late evening after teaching, I didn't have the trunk to do any writing.

BUT, while I was on the motorway driving home and exercising low-level road-rage at a middle-lane hogger, an appealing two-word title for the novel did ping into my head.  And, under Quarantine Project Rule 44 section C paragraph (ii)Exceptions To Titles delivered by Backbrain activity &  not hitherto committed by pen, typographical machine,  word-processing-device or other engine of inscription or lettering, I'm claiming it.  And no-one is going to stop me.

Day 27 then: 2 words.

(For yesterday's blog in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 26

Here's another Greater Crested Writing Twit for you.  See if you can guess the author:

"As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me:  grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall."

Heavens, they love that word gravid, don't they?  To misquote Herman Goring, "When I hear the word gravid I reach for my revolver."

 That sort of stuff knocks the poetry out of everything,  Faced with that, what can I say about Day 26?  I wrote some words.  Were they any good?  What a question.  I could stare at that question all day, shuttling between elation and despair.  So I'm not even going to ask.

2006 pendant, gravid words.  Ripe pears.  Virginia Woolf, you are such a sap.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 25

Keats said of writing something to the effect of, "if it doesn't come naturally like leaves to a tree then it were best it didn't come at all."   Unluckily for him he left his  manuscripts behind, where the heavy re-working is plain for all to see; so like so many other great poets he was caught out for being a shameless liar.

Especially about the craft of writing.

The writing craft is the victim of more self-serving and self-mythologising than any other business in the world.  Except acting.

Today was graft and as for Keats, well, I felt like I had to glue on every leaf.  There were 2175 of them.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 24

Of course you don't have to mess around with post-modernism.  You can sometimes adopt the ploy of sneaking up on yourself.  Tricking yourself back to work.

When having a difficult day in the word-mines, instead of resisting the temptation to Run Away From Writing you should just give in. 

Yes, give in.

But don't allow yourself to do anything remotely enjoyable, or any of the usual RAFW.   No hoovering, no looking out of the window, no making lists of potential titles.  You must give in and do something distasteful.  Cleaning out the oven.  Putting together that self-assembly wardrobe still in its boxes these last three months.  

That gets your word-count up.  Of course they're all white-hot oaths you can't use.  But when you have angry-red screwdriver palm and you're staring down at that utterly incomprehensible wardrobe diagram, then you imagine doping on this sort of work this every day.

And you're very glad to get back to your desk to re-start the engines and, whistling as you work, you turn in 2085 words.  And another of the savages has got somewhere to hang his clothes.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 23

Another day of busting coal.  I wonder if I doomed myself by saying it was coming out easy.

Here's an interesting thing.  I very nearly got tempted today in the way of Post Modernism.  That is to say, I almost opted to write a chapter as a formal, professional account, offered in an appropriate bureaucratic register and presented as a facsimile report from one of the major characters.  But I rejected the idea for two reasons.

1)      I'm not attracted to post-modernism as a mode of storytelling or novel writing.  I have a post-modernist novel yellowing in a drawer somewhere, from the days before I was published.  PM was fascinating when it originally evolved some years back, but that was really only the shock of the new.  In many ways it's a specious form, with a lot of surface glitter and primarily a cerebral appeal.  But the intellectuality of post-modernism always acts as a brake on the emotional or visceral impact of a story.

2)      I quickly came to my senses when I realised I was tempted down this route simply because the going was hard.  That is to say, the post-modernist idea was just taking the easy way out.  A quick-fix word grab. Of course, you post-rationalise that this might be an interesting, lively and playful way forward...

Nah.

Get back to the Real Thing.  Lift that barge, tote that bail.  Anyway it was graft today, but at least I was rewarded for spurning the Post Modern demon with a light-of-foot 2209 words.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 22

After bragging about how well the mid-point was going recently, day 22 felt like busting coal.

You can tell you're in trouble when you suddenly feel the need to "research" this or that detail.  Yes, now is the time to read every paper written on psychological condition X - from which you hint (in the form of a shadow of a silhouette of a ghost of puppet) that one of your characters is suffering.

Why are some days easier? My dad told me that, back in the days when he started coal mining, you would only get paid for what you brought out.  Piece-mining it was called, before the fixed wage.  Some days it was blood sweat and tears and you'd come back with almost nothing but coal dust in the back of your throat.  Another day you would find a straw or a twig stuck in the coal face and you would tug it and the coal would just fall out at your feet.  You'd spend the day going tee-hee-hee shovelling it into the waiting trucks.

(Imagine your favourite writer. Now picture him or her shovelling anything and thinking it was tee-hee-hee work.)

I seemed to spend a lot of today looking out of the window at the birds in the trees.  I suppose you couldn't do that when down a coal mine.

Kind of ashamed of myself I made an early evening return, swung the pick and ended up with a respectable 2151words.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 21

Sex.  On a Monday morning when you are writing your novel and minding your own business.  Filth, as Mary Whitehouse used to say.  Filth from nowhere.

Of course at my age the only filth you get is when you write about it but I certainly don't look for opportunities to introduce filth into my novels.  Filth just finds its way in, and often when you're not expecting it.

If you want to be put off filth for life (and I'm talking about writing about it here, please, come along, do stay with it) you need look no further than literary writers.  Booker prize winners and the like.  How to write about sex is a vexed question, but there are plenty of examples of how not to do it. I mean, I challenge you to read the following without biting the pillow:

John Banville, master of lyrical bathos:  "he senses all the gravid tremulousness of her breasts" and "there is no mistaking that tang of fish-slime and sawdust - for he has no doubt that this is the mouth of a busy working girl"

Amos Oz: Arch-deacon of the strained metaphor: "he starts to steer her enjoyment like a ship towards its home port, to the deepest anchorage, right to the core of her pleasure."

Really, if our "best" authors are this bad, it makes a good case for welcoming the Taliban to a seat on the Arts Council.

Filth count today was 1989 words.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 20

This is the half-way bell.  20 days into the Quarantine Project and the overall wordcount takes me exactly where I would want to be.

Though the half-way point for me usually ushers in a multitude of demons because you are equidistant from the start and the finish and land is nowhere in sight.  The book is not making sense.  It has no shape.  You've lost any talent you had.  You picked the wrong project in the first place.  Quit now and don't expend any more time on it because you are throwing good wordcounts after bad.  You're an idiot and who said you were a writer anyway?  Etcetera.

The only thing that - or the important thing - that gets me out of a becalmed or demon-crusted middle is the fact that I have been here quite a few times before.  There is no option but to make movement, make splashes, avoid drowning.

In this case, though I'm not stuck.

This indicates either a) things are running better than usual and presages fair weather ahead or b) I'm fooling myself, and the fact that things are going well suggests only that another demon is hiding behind that tree or c) I haven't really reached the half-way point at all.

I don't know because I don't fully know what's coming.  The novel is taking shape, but I still don't know what it will look like at the end.  To switch from the nautical metaphor, it's like looking at a parachute coming closer as it descends.  You're not sure what load it carries.

But today's word-count was 2158, offering a half-way tally of 37,338, and if you'd asked me at the start I would have gladly taken that.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 18

Okay a complete wash-out for day 18 because I went to London for the British Sports Book Awards.  My book Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular was shortlisted.  I didn't win but I did enjoy the dinner and the company and a good few glasses of wine..

But since this blog is about the process of writing I can comment on one of the winning speeches, and safely declare what writing is not.   My book was in a different award section, but the Best Autobiography category was won by Andre Aggasi the tennis-knob.  We were offered a giant-screen acceptance speech from Andre, one that  drew gasps from the audience when he likened the process of writing this book to the experience of giving birth.  He developed the metaphor by referring to ultrasound scans and so on.  I was wincing, not only because of the laboured metaphor (haha!) but because he obviously hadn't ever seen anyone give birth, up close or otherwise.  Writing a book is nothing at all like a woman giving birth to a child.  Nothing whatsoever.  Just shaddup.

But quite apart from that, the book was ghost-written.  For heaven's sake!  Recounting your experiences as a tennis player to a ghost writer is not like giving birth.  It's like a having a chat and a cup of tea with someone.

We won't even mention how Best Autobiographies can be ghost written.  Maybe the category should be renamed Best Hagiography.  Aggi's Haggi.  Sort of thing.

The ball was definitely out.

This has been written with a hangover, which can only report an aspirin-sized wordcount: 0

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 17

The two fundamental building blocks for writing a novel are Scene and Summary.  All exposition is a kind of summary to get you from one scene to the next.  That's not to say the scenes are more important than the exposition, but they are somehow more vital, alive.  And this novel seems to want to tell itself through a great deal of Scene.

This is a variable.  Roddy Doyle often tells his novels exclusively through scenes.  I don't know whether to be concerned or not, and any imbalance will have to be rectified later, but that's how it's working out right now.

The nightmare is the reverse scenario, when your characters have nothing to say to each other.

Though I'm definitely of the school that says dialogue must move plot along.  The more "literary" novel might allow characters some languid chat.  La la la.  Nope.  Can't be bothered with all that la la la.  If I want la la la in my life I'll sit in a café wearing a beret, nursing an espresso and pretending to be a film-maker.

Today is a teaching day.  I'll be very strict with my students about la la la.

Short ante-meridian burst offers up a wordcount of 1020

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 16

That's the trouble with this blogging game.  You hit a smart 3000 words in one day, post the information here, and then you get people challenging you - nay taunting you - to see if it was a fluke.

            Day 16 started in sluggish style but gathered energy as the sun climbed higher.  I think time was wasted when I was suddenly hit by a perfect idea for a title for this book.  Titles are odd and I certainly don't spend too much time thinking about them (see RAFW No. 442).  Titles either emerge mysteriously during the process,  like a pirate's chest suddenly breaking free from the sea-mud and floating to the the surface, or you are reduced to making long, frustrating and dispiritng lists of candidates after the event.

            Anyway I had a marvellous aha-Jim-la!  moment early in the day, so pleasing and apropos that I almost abandoned writing for the day and climbed into those loose garments I mentioned earlier.  But a short while later I found myself trying to swat the buzzing sensed that the title had already been bucaneered.  A quick search on the interfangle confirmed that a Hollywood film had been made not so long ago with the same title.  My title.

            So back to work, ye dogs, ye lubbers.  No title and no sight o' land for the likes o' you just yet, so haul those sheets, ye less-than-men.

            Okay that's enough pirate talk, thanks.  Sometimes I have to click my fingers in front of my own face and say: you are now Graham Joyce again.

            Challenge me would you?  Today's wordcount tally is 3220.  How do you like that for a shanty?

Quarantine Project Day 15

Well I don't think it derailed me to take that break I was talking about yesterday - if giving a talk to 200 people can be described as a break.  Because today rolled out my best count yet.  In fact I can't remember when I last wrote over 3k in one day.

A friend asked if it doesn't make the act a little mechanical by counting up the words.  All I can say is that I've always done it.  Always.    I also suggested that you create the books with one part of your brain and count up the words with a completely different part. The two places don't speak to each other; don't use the same language; don't even know that the other sector exists.

            In fact it's even a useful act of decompression.  Something you can do while you are riding the lift or the cage back up to the surface. 

            Conrad Williams has taken up this novel-in-progress madness, and he reports that Graham Greene hated writing so much that he would count as he went along and stop as soon as he'd reached a magic tally of 500 words.

            We need different words for the act of writing, just as we do for reading.  I don't read a poem in the same way that I read a newspaper.  I don't write my novel in the same way I write a post-card.  (Postcard?  Do they still exist? Okay, email.)  But I daren't start thinking what those neologisms might be, even though it would be fun, because I wouldn't get back to working on my novel.  Would I? Those of you becoming expert at spotting RAFW (see earlier blogs) will admire the tempting powers of this demon. 

            Wordcount rings in at a tuneful 3161

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 14

So this promising run of verb-reckoning and noun-tallying had to come crashing down in a wrecked abacus, and day fourteen has nought to offer but a swan's nest with one egg in it.  There is however a good reason for the zero.

I was invited to give a Keynote Speech at the Writers Industries Conference.  So I dropped all work on the novel to focus on that.  The conference attracted a lot of writers, many known to me, many not, and I ended up spending quite a lot of time thinking about what I did - and didn't - want to say about the industry.  (The speech will shortly be available in a podcast soon for anyone who is interested in what I did say.)  The wordcount for the speech was 6000+ (not just done on this day) but I can't count it in the Quarantine Project.  Can I?  No, guess not.

The Conference came and went over the week-end.  There was a crackle of  energy at the event and I don't know about everyone else but it left me feeling optimistic.  Big thanks to Damien Walter and Aly Stoneman and their crew for organising a busy and compacted day.

So here's your first egg of the series.  Wordcount 0.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 12

Yesterday I was talking about time and timing.  The word time is the number one noun in terms of usage according to the Oxford English Dictionary.  That means the subject is on the human mind more than any other subject, discounting of course the ones which are limited by any kind of taboo.

There's an interesting thought for a writer.

Blogging like this is having a strange result.  It's surfacing some issues, doubts or challenges that I would normally keep the lid on.  I've already said I tend to hammer on until the end of the novel in the hope and expectation of fixing everything in a subsequent draft.  But these things are surfacing because I have to have something to talk about on this blog.

On the other hand, chalking up my word score every day has made me realise how Fatwatchers ^TM  works.  Public declaration is a great motivator.  And so far... so far.. it hasn't had any adverse effect on my output.

I do have a serious structural issue that may explain why I'm generating material quite well - material I may have to dump or rearrange later.  But I won't talk it about right now because I don't have the time.

And anyway today I can trumpet a musical 2066 words.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")

Quarantine Project Day 11

Day 11

Now there's a chronological issue that has popped up.  I've located an event when the bluebells are thick and strong and pungent, and that decision has clearly anchored the story in time.  If I don't conform exactly to my time-line now a copy-editor will pick up the inconsistency later and there will be swearing and wailing and gnashing of gums.

But there is also a pregnancy to reckon with.  I'd dearly love to make this pregnancy last a full year, but that doesn't seem fair on the mother, nor likely to slip past your average reader either.  Because time and its passage is a vital force in storytelling and in two different ways.  Firstly there is this question of sensible chronology.  Then there is time in a musical sense.

Often when people think about novel writing they imagine a kinship with the visual arts, because you can spend a lot of time visually describing a scene; similarly in screenwriting everything happens (unless you go in for voiceover) on the exterior.  But whether it's film or story, the art is temporal far more than it is visual.  Both in the selection of the mechanics of time and the fact that there is a drumbeat behind the story. 

Narrative is a temporal art like dance.  You can blow it by being out of step, or breaking the pace.  There are many moments when you need to be light of foot; scenes where you have to slow down and make rather obvious, heavy-steps; expository bits where you need a sudden acceleration.

Oh shaddup, you don't know the first thing about dancing.

Let's just say that this day offers a quickstepping 2066.

(For previous blogs in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")