Laurie Graham's Blog, page 21

No news is good news, so they say. Why do they say that? No news is, well… no news.

So as of 9am this morning I was still unemployed but hopeful. My proposal for a new novel was on my publisher’s desk and with every day that passed I had fallen more and more in love with the story. I wanted to start writing it but caution held me back. ‘Don’t set yourself up for disappointment,’ whispered the voice of Good Sense. ‘Keep busy. Dust the top of the wardrobe. Arrange your spice jars in alphabetical order.’

The shoe dropped just after lunch. Publisher doesn’t love my idea. As a matter of fact it doesn’t even tickle her with a passing fancy. She will expect me to come up with something much tastier to set before the accountants. And I suppose I will, mainly because I must. The alternative is to cut a deal with God, to give me an extra eight hours in every day in which I can write the book I really want to write, publish it myself and say, ‘ya booh sucks’ to publishing houses.

But right now I see a chasm opening beneath my feet.

    There are encouraging whispers about another book contract  –  calm down, that girl at the back. It’s not in the bag yet   –  but in the meanwhile I’m still rather conveniently in publishing limbo and therefore available to nurse my injured husband. And move furniture.

I’ve been in my current study for five years and  realised only recently that I was perching in it, like an office temp. It is the repository for all on-going (and half-abandoned) projects, and frankly it had become a dispiriting mess. I have written four books looking at the same wall and the same framed poster for a show I once directed.  A poster I didn’t even particularly like. So that got tossed earlier today and, stiffened by that small achievement, I began moving furniture.

The first thing I did was rotate my desk by 90 degrees. Window behind me, door in front of me, I’m sure a Feng Shui counsellor would be hugely impressed. I now await the arrival of one strapping son-in-law to carry upstairs my new chair  –  not really new at all but one of the nicest chairs in the house and yet rarely used. I’m on a roll. Who can say what creative juices this nesting flurry may release?

I find myself wondering why I didn’t do it sooner. Actually, I think I know the answer. I began my writing career at the corner of a kitchen table, competing for working space with the cold fish fingers and orphaned plimsolls familiar to every mother of four. I guess it just got to be a habit. To have a whole room to myself feels, even now, like a luxury. But don’t worry. I can get used to it. There is no turning back. The way things are set up now I could sit behind my desk and interview someone. Not sure what for, but still… Wellness Coach? Body Double? Someone to nip down to Spar when we run out of teabags? I’ll think of something.

Well not a terribly far shore, admittedly, but the wrong side of the Irish sea with a husband immobilised in a hospital bed. Fifteen years ago when he fell and sustained the very same injury he memorialised the calamity by fixing a small brass plaque at the San Toma’ vaporetto stop (downtown route). HIC IACET HOWARDUS it read (I think. I am no classicist) and there it stayed for many years, ignored by the city and the bus company and occasionally visited by kind friends carrying a can of Brasso and a cloth. When the embarcadero was revamped a couple of years ago it was torn up and no doubt now lies in some Italian landfill.

There will be no brass plaque this time. He fell in Marks & Spencer.

But I digress. I am in Leicester for longer than I intended to be and have had far too much time to watch television pundits and be infuriated by them. David Starkey is, of course, professionally obliged to be rude. I’m sure it’s in his brief whenever he’s interviewed. In the television coverage of the re-interment of King Richard  he was invited to air, once again, his famously low opinion of historical fiction. Philippa Gregory dismissed his insults with the kind of gesture you’d use to get rid of an annoying fly. The ‘Richard III Society loon’, aka Philippa Langley, treated his ad hominem remarks with the disdain they deserved.

Does Starkey have a point? I don’t think so. Historical fiction may be a creative interpretation of the known facts but so is history generally. A historian may be in possession of more footnote material than fiction scribblers but when all is said and done he too is just joining up the dots. A novelist aims to join those dots in an engaging and entertaining way. A historian might lack that skill. And what is the point of research if it isn’t accessible to the general reader?

Mingling with the Leicester crowds this past week I’ve been heartened by how well-informed and questioning people are. If they were more likely to have read Philippa Gregory than David Starkey it really didn’t show. And if it’s left up to the Ricardian matrons the cold case of the missing young princes will be reopened and Lady Margaret Beaufort may expect to be asked to help the police with their enquiries.

The end of March already, but if any companies are still casting for their next pantomime I suggest they consider David Starkey. I feel it may be his natural home.

      The indefatigable Fay Weldon has been opining again, dishing out advice to writers. She says we need to get with the program and write fast, page-turning reads because people nowadays are too busy for contemplative or demanding reading. There may be some commercial wisdom in what she’s saying but her reasoning is flawed. People don’t have less time these days, they have more time because they no longer have to polish the brasses, push sheets through a clothes-wringer, black-lead the grate, try to make something edible out of a sheep’s head, or walk ten miles to market to sell their eggs. People today have plenty of time to read if they really want to. If they choose to do other things should we writers chase after them? If we hope to continue earning a living perhaps we’ll have to. Or should we just pack it in, call it a day, try a new profession? I wonder if I could be a life-style mentor?

Fay, who knows a thing or two about this business, advises simplicity of plot and fast-paced action. Something you can wolf down while checking Facebook at the same time. Like a literary Pot Noodle.

At this rate the future seems to point to graphic novels.  You can already see it happening in bookshops. Like tattoos, what was, not so long ago, an embarrassing secret is now mainstream. A grown man reading a graphic novel is an unremarkable sight now. Depressing really.

On another, quite unconnected point however Fay and I are definitely on the same page: the best thing to do with a husband’s socks is just pick the feckin’ things up.

It isn’t the first time I’ve written on the topic of book overload but I’m hoping to turn things round this time and actually do something about it. I’m spring-cleaning, which is to say I’m dusting around the high-rise piles of Laurie Graham books. My study is starting to look like a Dubai skyline.

I tried the obvious (I thought) ploy of offering to donate pristine copies of my novels to budget-pinched libraries that have no money to buy new stock. To no avail. I was told that the time and cost of cataloguing donations was prohibitive. But I know there are librarians out there who would welcome donations and not find  the cataloguing an insuperable barrier. If you know any such treasures, please put them in touch with me.  I have hardbacks, I have paperbacks. I even have some audio books and large print editions, and I’m willing to bear the cost of mailing them. Anything, anything to get them off my shelves and into readers’ lives.

And so, back to the dusting….

  This has been a roller-coaster of a week. After nearly a month of waiting outside the Principal’s office (or as we say in the business, waiting for reactions to first draft) I heard first from my agent who, rather seriously, didn’t ‘get’ the book at all and predicted a considerable rewrite. Twenty four miserable hours later my editor’s email dropped into my Inbox. ‘Well, Laurie Graham,’ I thought, ‘Here we go. They’ve finally twigged that you can’t write. And so you face the final curtain.

But no! My editor loves it. LOVES IT! So, as my agent just sheepishly conceded, that told him. Of course he may be right. When the critics pan me or ignore me he may yet get to say, ‘told you so.’ But for now, for five minutes, my parade is rain-proofed.

I read somewhere recently that becoming a writer is the most frequent, unfulfilled ambition of almost everyone in the universe. Funny that. I dream of becoming a Kept Woman. Preferably somewhere with an idyllic climate.

 During these languorous days, the calm before the rewrite storm, I find myself (sometimes) thinking about the writing process. Generally, when I’m at work on a novel, I don’t give the process a second thought. Actually, I fear to do so. I’ve never taken a course. When I started writing I don’t think there were any courses. What if I did a course and discovered, erk, that I’ve been getting it wrong all those years? It might be like a swimming instructor trying to cure you of a corkscrew kick. Result: a sinking feeling.

What are my writing habits, good or bad? Well….. I make copious research notes and then allow them to fall off the back of my desk and gather dust. I also get ridiculously over-excited when I realise what my next book will be about. Like a kid on Christmas Eve. I can’t sleep. I want to get up and make copious research notes (which, see above). Another habit I have, if you can call it that, is to write in the First Person. This is apparently the tendency of novice writers. Then they grow up and use Third Person.

That’s a trend I’ve reversed. My first two novels had omniscient narrators. Since then I have always used First Person and to do otherwise would now feel very awkward. Like putting my shoes on the wrong feet. Agreed, First Person can have its drawbacks. It confines you as a writer. You have only one point of view. I like that. It draws you close to the story-teller.

Of course it’s essential that your narrator has a distinctive voice. For some writers this is a problem. They can give you 500 beautiful words on the landscape but they can’t write voice for toffee. Landscape is a problem for me, perhaps because I dislike its attendant dangers of adjective overload and simile incontinence. But voice, I love. ‘Beware,’ the on-line writing tutors warn. ‘A boring narrator will kill your story.’ Well, duh! What kind of idiot is willing to go to their desk every morning to be bored?

A voice, when it presents itself, is an unmistakeable thing. For me it’s a tiny bubble of excitement. A little bat-squeak that says, ‘Let me out. Go on. Chapter 1. You know you want to.’

I believe a bat may be about to squeak but this isn’t quite the moment to indulge it. While I wait to learn whether my publisher wants another book from me I need to distract myself with other activities. Such as retrieving from down the back of my desk the copious notes… (see above).

Now here’s a nice story. Twenty years ago I wrote a feature for Country Life magazine. It was probably called something like My Country Childhood  –  a bit of a stretch really because I was raised in suburbia and only sent to the country during school holidays in a misguided attempt to cure my asthma. But anyway, sent I was, and I have many happy memories of being off my usual short leash and allowed to go free-range by my enlightened  totally clueless grandparents. It was pretty much heaven, apart from the pollen and the animal hair.

The Country Life feature was illustrated with a photo of a very small me in a pig sty with an enormous black, recently-farrowed sow. Yep, we were defying all the health & safety boxes that day. Behind me, perched on a fence, sat a boy aged about ten. I would show you that picture if only I could find my own copy of it.

Dissolve to January 2015 when, to my delight and amazement, I received an email that said Just read your 1994 article. I was that boy. I mean it’s jaw-dropping to think of anyone keeping a magazine for twenty years, let alone picking it up and reading it. Incredible. So Jim (for it was he) and I have been wandering down a few cowpat-splattered memory lanes this week and one of the things I’ve learned is that the old horse I used to ride belonged to Jim’s uncle. Searching for Laurie in the Pig Sty I found Laurie aboard Dolly, black and white evidence of my short-lived career in the saddle. But how to send it to Jim electronically when I have failed for the past three years to get my scanner to speak to my computer?

Well, I thought, this is beyond ridiculous. What’s the point of having a machine if all it does is sit in the corner and sneer at you? Today’s mission was to tame the beast and, not having any pre-school grandchildren on hand to set me straight, I had to go solo. It has taken all afternoon  but I have succeeded. It’s a poor thing but it was all my own work. Now I suppose I’d better learn about photo-shopping.

   My list for today:

DELIVER FIRST DRAFT TO EDITOR     check

OPEN BOTTLE OF CAVA              check

DRINK  DEEPLY THEREOF          hic & check

EAT BLOW-OUT INDIAN              check

DECIDE WHAT TO DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE      pending

Unlike most of the Western world I’ve been back at work since December 28th, setting the bar a bit higher every day. Go on, woman, get on with it. Another 500 words before you put the kettle on. The end isn’t yet quite in sight but I know I can get there. In London Marathon terms I’m closer to Big Ben than I am to the Tower.

Tomorrow will be one of those significant moments in my working year when I print and bind what I’ve written so far and force myself to sit down and read it. With a big pink highlighter pen in my hand. By Wednesday I should have a clearer idea of what remains to be done. ‘Could do with a bit more sex,’ I hear my editor murmur. Oh God…. I know sex sells, but how many writers do it well? Write about it, I mean.

Which reminds me. Orgies. Anyone ever been to one? I ask because I’ve been watching, courtesy of a friend who thought I needed perking up with scenes of mindless violence and reckless quaffing, series 1 of Game of Thrones. What larks! I’ve especially enjoyed the perfect teeth. They’ve clearly all been using some Dark Ages equivalent of Pepsodent. But anyway, orgies… there was one in Episode 6, just before Drogo the Grunter had Viserys the Sulky Pants executed. I gathered it was an orgy because there was drumming and girls were running around sans thermal vests (even though they kept telling us winter was coming) and tossing their heads. Head-tossing signals animal abandon, I suppose. I don’t know. Nobody ever invited me to an orgy. But I’ve seen plenty in the movies and I think there was an important element missing from Drogo’s orgy: bunches of grapes. I’m pretty certain that one is supposed to cram grapes into one’s mouth and allow the juice to trickle suggestively down one’s thermal vest. I may drop a line to the script writers.

Is it possible the strain of delivering this novel on time is getting to me?