Laurie Graham's Blog, page 19

From February until September when, as you may remember, my publishers left me swinging in the breeze, I kept myself busy.  Ever one to try and improve the shining hour I organised my used plastic bags into size order, scrubbed the tile grouting in the bathroom and wrote a play. I used to write a lot of scripts but no-one asks me these days and I still have an unfulfilled ambition to achieve a professional performance of a full-length play. You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream…..

I have an agent, of course, but agents have to keep one bloodshot eye on the bottom line so generally speaking they’re not terribly interested in trying to place an original stage play which will earn them the thin end of bugger all. I decided to try a bit of private enterprise and so sent my script to the reading panel of a  provincial producing theatre. Who mislaid it, unread. It took them six months to lose it which is approximately the same length of time one should allow to get an unsolicited script read. Perhaps it’s propping up a wonky table leg somewhere.

Next stop was my agent. Oh, but first let me tell you about my play. It’s a comedy in two acts, for four actors, three of whom should be of advanced years. The setting is Lancashire, the set requirements are modest and it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell even of getting read because –  and now I’ll share with you the relevant words from my agent’s notes  –  because theatres today are looking for edgy, bold work that asks sharp questions about contemporary issues. And my little play is the kind of thing seniors’ would enjoy at a Scarborough matinee. Get the picture

Her other lukewarm suggestion was that I re-tailor my script for radio and try the BBC. And there was me thinking I was the comedy writer! The BBC!  Who haven’t employed me in ten years precisely because my themes lack edge and fail to address contemporary issues.  Exit Laurie Graham, stage right, to the sound of hollow laughter.

So, if you know of an amateur dramatic group looking for a play suitable for seniors, send them my way. There’s only ever one way to know whether a script works and that is to hear it read by actors.  Have script, will travel.

   Just a brief post.  Readers who claim my giveaways always offer to pay for postage, well-mannered gals that they are. I’d like them all to know that their continued efforts at spreading the word about my books is far, far more valuable to me than the price of a few stamps. Keep up the good work. Oh, and stop lending my books to your friends.  Please tell them they have to buy their own.

Roll up, roll up! Never to be repeated offer!  I’m giving away books. Again.

My dear husband and I are moving house and a ruthless book cull is about to commence.  A copy, (signed or not, as you wish) of any of my backlist to the first takers. Just send me a message. If you’re already the proud owner of the Complete Collected Works of Laurie Graham why not inflict me on your friends,  give a copy to a friend and introduce them to my work?

Please note that I’m excluding The Grand Duchess and Night in Question from this offer because I need you to pester your bookshop about those. Anything else, if I’ve got it you can have it. Think of it as Get OneFree, then Buy One.

James Joyce is famous for the wonderful liberties he took with the English language but the longer I live in Ireland the more I believe it’s a national trait. Almost every exchange contains some delightful little quirk of syntax or grammar.

‘Will I give ye a refund?’ asks the lady at Customer Services. I don’t know. Will she? Or should she?

‘Just looking, is it?’ asked the disdainful salesgirl in Claire’s Accessories. Don’t they train them to know that grannies sometimes need to enter such hell-holes of teenagery in order to find gifts for granddaughters? I suppose the correct answer to her question was, ‘It is.’

And my favourite, recently overheard, was a perfect example of the Hanging Conjunction.

Student No. 1:  How’s the new place, Gav?

Gav: Damp. Cold. And we’ve mice wearing concrete boots.’

Student No.1:  Terrible, that.

Gav: Yeah, terrible. We’ve two lawnmowers, but.

Do they do this anywhere else in the English-speaking world?

James Joyce, by the way, was born in a little house just round the corner from here. I suppose he must have been pushed past my window in his pram. Imagine.

A couple of nice reviews in the past few days. The Daily Mail  –  a new novel by Laurie Graham always quickens the pulse and this one does not disappoint,  and the Sunday Times  –  the sheer panache with which Graham conjures up the era’s music halls is particularly appealing. All very gratifying. The Saturday Times review was a bit begrudging but to get reviewed at all in this overcrowded pre-Christmas market is cause enough for celebration and anyway publishers are always prepared to do a little selective filleting of a review if it contains even one clause that can be recycled as praise. There is truly no such thing as bad publicity.  

  This week the astonishing news that social media like Facebook and Instagram tempt people to make their lives seem more interesting than they truly are. Well Lordy, Lordy, who ever would have seen that coming?

Ten years ago it was quite cutting edge for a writer to have a website. A surprising number still don’t, and some acquire a domain name and then do nothing with it. A bit like buying a packet of beetroot seeds and leaving them in the kitchen drawer. Then about five years ago the whip started cracking for writers to really Put Themselves Out There. FB, Pinterest, Twitter, and a hundred and one online book-reading communities that we were exhorted to cultivate.

My first instinct was to resist. Even I, an antediluvian techno-twit could see the potential for becoming annoying or worse still, boring. I gave in, of course. Because when the accountants start looking at your sales’ figures with sorrowful eyes you want to have a leg to stand on. Or a platform. That’s what they call it. It means being all over the Internet like a persistent rash. In my heart of hearts, I think J D Salinger was on to something but anyway, here, for what it’s worth, is what I’ve been up to this week.

On Monday I opened my work-in-progress file, read a few pages, then my dear husband came home from a week in respite care so I spent the afternoon doing his laundry and generally facilitating his re-entry. Tuesday I thought I’d get my November post for The History Girls off my desk. It’s only a once a month commitment but I like to get it done ahead of time. I thought I’d write about history. Does the 20th century now count? Where do we draw the line? WW2? The Fifties?

Then I made lunch, and over lunch I thought, ‘Ah feck it, I’ll write about the 1916 Easter Rising instead.’ But before I could get back to that life got in the way. It’s Friday. I’ve written half a History Girls post, done a mountain of ironing, steered my husband through two doctors’ appointments and an MRI, spent far too long dithering over the purchase of a tablet, and failed to locate a lost bunch of keys.  Not much worth Tweeting about there, I think you’ll agree, but I just wanted you to know I’m still here. On my platform.

Would Henry James have had a platform, do you think? I bet Charles Dickens would have. You wouldn’t have had to wait two weeks for a blog post from Boz.

  Publication day, and a double at that!  The Night in Question is out today, as is the paperback edition of The Grand Duchess of Nowhere, and I’m on the wagon, dentist’s orders, until after tomorrow’s molar extraction. Never mind. The wait will make it  taste all the better. Uh-oh, I’m starting to sound like my mother.

I’m currently reading Anthony Holden’s excellent biography of Tchaikovsky and discovering what a neurotic wreck he was, not least about his compositions. As soon as a piece had been aired publicly he would be plagued by FUDs (fears, uncertainties, doubts). It is wonderfully comforting to learn that great geniuses suffer from FUDs just as much as us also-rans. This book (TNIQ) has seemed like a particularly long haul but I’m still happy with it. I think. So far.

And so to the celebratory lunch. My husband hasn’t yet twigged that he’s buying but with my nice glass of water I’ll be a cheap date.

So the decorators have finished. They’ve cleared away their ladders and buckets and left me with my lovely new Home Page. My website hit count will be up this week because I keep going to it myself, to admire the look of it.

During my down-time I’ve been thinking a lot about what people sometimes refer to as my ‘career choice’. ‘When did you decide to become a writer?’ they ask. Or, ‘Did you always want to be a writer?’

No. I wanted to be a ballet dancer, or a brain surgeon, or perhaps a ballet-dancing brain surgeon, but it never occurred to me to be a writer because I thought books fell, fully-formed from the heavens. I thought Enid Blyton pressed a button on her book-machine and, lo, another Malory Towers volume appeared.

Actually, I think writing chose me. A bit like a stray dog, the more you vow not to look at it the more persistently it nuzzles your hand and says, ‘Go on. Take me home. You know you want to.’ There can be no other explanation for it taking me until my late thirties to get started. I resisted. I didn’t know how to go about writing a book. And then one day it dawned on me that you probably just sat down with a note pad and a pencil and told a story. Duh!

Writing is a lovely profession because you can do it in your pyjamas. Also people admire it. There’s far more to admire in a brain surgeon or a ballet dancer but writing is like catnip to a lot of people. They long to do it themselves. They wonder if they dare. They go to classes. A parent asked me recently what I thought of his daughter’s intention to study Creative Writing in college. I could not tell a lie. I said, ‘Put on your sternest face and withold funding. Encourage her to study something else, anything else, then make her go out into the world and earn a living. If she’s going to be a writer she’ll be one anyway. She’ll start doing it on Sundays and on her lunch break and then, who knows?’

Earning a living as a writer is tough these days. I know of several published and proven writers who have either been let go or offered so little money that they’re need to retrench and rethink. No small matter when you’re approaching 70. But compared to some professions we have it easy. Musicians and artists have it much harder. A book, once it’s published, may have a long life. It may, years after being published, get optioned for a movie. Its earning power may outlive its author. But a musician is only ever as good as his latest performance. An artist can only make one painting or sculpture at a time. Little wonder many of them reach old age without a roof over their head. Yes, there are Benevolent Associations. Who the heck wants to be reduced to that? I may be hanging on by my finger nails but at least I’m clinging on.

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A reader asked me which author I turn to for pleasure and escape.  Elmore Leonard. There are other writers I re-read  –  Evelyn Waugh, for instance, but my admiration for him is tinged with envy of his skill as a writer and distaste for his famously obnoxious personality.  But an Elmore Leonard novel is always a joy.

Only twenty seven sleeps till publication day. Here’s the jacket, by the way. It’s very brown, as is only appropriate. Whitechapel in 1888 wouldn’t have been a riot of colour.

My husband, always the first to get his mitts on a bound proof copy, made a start reading it and soon complained that there was too much backstage theatre arcana which people wouldn’t understand. I think he was just trying to wind me up. He knows I hate subordinate, explanatory clauses.

‘Do you smell burning?’ asked the limeboy, a member of the theatre’s lighting team whose job it was to heat up the lime cylinder with a gas flame to produce its characteristically brilliant white light.

No, no, no. I told Mr F, my readers don’t need spoon-feeding. They know how to open a dictionary. They can find their way around Wikipedia.

Meanwhile I’m rather enjoying this sequel-writing lark. It’s so wonderful to hear old familiar voices. Of course ‘old’ is right in more than one sense. A friend asked me what on earth I could do with a bunch of characters who are now in their seventies and eighties.

She said, ‘I suppose there’ll be a lot of funerals.’

Not necessarily. I intend to keep the body count manageable. Nor will the story turn into an organ recital. Think of it as The Straight Story meets Advanced Style .

Finally, a warning that I’ll be off-line briefly later this month while my website gets a wash and brush up. I’m getting slider images on my Home Page, dear reader. No, I didn’t know what they were either but once I saw them I had to have them. Any day now….

   Well here I am again. Thank you for all your messages and good wishes.

A couple of weeks of enforced leisure  -if sitting under a fig tree getting water-pistolled by a grandchild counts as leisure   –  gave me time to scan this year’s accounts.  To date: six months of anxious unemployment; eight months of caring for an increasingly stroppy dementia sufferer; hospitalisation of the aforementioned with a serious leg injury; the subsequent cancellation of a much-needed holiday; and then a sudden death in the family. I think I got off lightly with nothing worse than a dose of shingles.

A little ad just popped up on my computer screen. It said KNOW MORE. DO MORE. DO BETTER.  Whatever they’re selling, no thanks. I’m planning on doing less. The only thing I’ll be doing more of is saying No. I have a book to write, yippee, a sequel to The Future Homemakers of America, and I have a house move to contemplate, to somewhere smaller and simpler, but all in good time. I may be feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed compared to two weeks ago but I’ve larned my lesson. Old rocking chair got me. Take it away, Mildred.