Laurie Graham's Blog, page 23

 Whenever I have a new book out I get a  welcome flurry of correspondence from readers and quite often they say something along the lines of, ‘I loved that bit where….’  Then, more often than not, I have to go rummaging through the book looking for the bit they loved but I have quite forgotten.  Shocking, I know, but my interest in a story last only as long as I’m writing it. Immediately it’s finished I have to turn my attention to the next project. I leave behind me a trail of abandoned literary offspring. Thank goodness somebody loves them.

Today a reader wrote to me about a line in The Grand Duchess of Nowhere that had particularly touched her.  My first thought was that she was mistaken. It was possible I’d written it  -  it sort of had my thumb print on it  – but I had no recollection of doing so.
It took ten minutes of speed-reading but I found it. My reader was spot on and an ember of memory began to glow. The scene was the deathbed of Ducky’s father and, as I recall, it was a late addition to the manuscript, put in during the second edit when I was nearing the ‘Oh God let it be over’ stage (of the rewriting, not the dying). A casual addendum that someone found moving. Well, well.

So three cheers for my readers, who are always generous with their time and praise. And nul points for a forgetful old scribbler.

So here she is, The Grand Duchess of Nowhere, published tomorrow. I love her jacket (book and clothing), but what I think when I look at the copy sitting on my desk is this: it represents a year of my life. Was it a year well spent? The reviewers will soon let me know. 

I never planned on becoming a long-distance runner. Actually I never planned on becoming anything much, except a mother. But the long haul has turned out to be my career groove. Two months of fevered research, eight months of writing, and then the slow ping-pong of edits, rewrites, long silences and urgent final tweaks. Do I feel a thrill when I hold a finished copy in my hands? Not really. More like relief.

I will be celebrating tomorrow. A half bottle of bubbly and a jar of salmon caviar nearing its eat-by date,  a little nod in the direction of the book’s strongly Russian theme.  There’ll be just one shadow hovering over the feast. My husband, always my most ardent champion, always the first to read a finished manuscript, can no longer manage more than a page or two of any book. That’s Alzheimer’s for you. It robs you of life’s little pleasures and it has robbed me of my greatest fan.

But on, on we go. And in the hope of tempting you to buy a copy and save me from the publishing industry’s knacker’s yard, let me introduce you to some of the cast. Who is the Grand Duchess? Princess Victoria Melita, Ducky to her friends.

Here she is on her (first) wedding day, aged seventeen and one of the glummest looking brides I’ve ever seen.  Royal gals had to be married young, before they got any big ideas of their own.

 

When I saw this picture I knew there had to be a story. The story was that Ducky was marrying Grand Duke Ernie Hesse (Grandma’s orders) when really she wanted to marry Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich Romanov.  All clear so far?  Ducky, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and of Tsar Alexander II, was related to just about every royal house in Europe, each of them equipped with a full complement of nitwits, oddballs and good, decent people.

Spoiler alert. If you think bare-knuckle Royal divorces are a recent thing, think again. Ducky does get her Romanov in the end.

The story of fall of the House of Romanov is well-known, and yet I felt it was always told from the same rather removed point of view. But this is recent history. We can look at photographs of all the key players.  We can hear a recording of Tsar Nicholas II’s voice. What I’ve hoped to achieve with Grand Duchess is a much stronger sense of the personalities behind those corseted, dickie-bird watching figures. And now, erk erk, the jury is out.

On second thoughts I may make that a full bottle of fizz.

 

 

     Someone asked me recently why I have a blog. My reply went something along the lines of: these days, if you’re a writer you have to. To not have a blog would be like omitting to put your trousers on before you walk down the street. Of course a surprising number of writers don’t even have a website which, to continue the analogy, is like never leaving the house, with or without trousers.

So, to blog or not to blog isn’t really the question. To blog frequently is important, nota bene Laurie Graham, who has just allowed two weeks to slip by, because otherwise readers lose interest or presume you’re dead. But another important factor is the length of a post.  I know people whose posts are novella-length. It’s a presumptuous attitude. Do they think we have all day? Generally, people who like the format follow several blogs. They need to be able to read them on the fly, while the kettle’s boiling, not get bogged down in something the length of a car rental contract. Whether their content is light or serious they must be a quick read.

Apart from my professional obligation to have a platform (yes, dear reader, that’s what it’s called) I have another reason for blogging. It’s a place where I can say what I want when I want and no-one can interfere with it.  I speak as a writer who just had a wrecking ball taken to a perfectly good piece of journalism. There are many things I’m no good at  -  too long a list for a blog  – but I do know how to knock out an 1800 word feature. Why must they fiddle? Why don’t they take their blue pencil and stick it where the sun don’t shine?

This blog is going dark again while a take a short holiday. I hesitate to call it a well-earned rest. That is for others to judge. But I do need to enter the Cone of Silence for a few days. No emails. No offers of toe nail fungus laser treatment. Just the sound of seagulls, crashing waves and, no doubt, a distant voice whining, ‘Hellfire, Lindy, they don’t even have Wi-Fi in this joint.’

 

 

 

 

A bit late in the day but I feel I should sidle into the discussion initiated by Ian McEwan on lengthy novels. It is a topic close to my heart. I remember… cue nostalgic Hovis advert music… when a book was published on its merits, not on the distance between its covers. When I started out (more Hovis music) a 60,000 word novel was considered perfectly acceptable. Provided the writing wasn’t crap. Then things changed. No more Hovis music, I promise.

I don’t know who started it but about fifteen years ago publishers suddenly demanded 100,000 words at the very least. ‘More! And faster!’ they cried, cracking their whips like galley-slave masters. I have said this before but I think it bears repeating, that mainstream publishing is surprisingly herd-like in its mentality. You’d expect geysers of creativity but what you find are sheep. Some bellwether starts a trend   -  800 page novels, jackets with blue skies, vampire stories, whatever, and before you know it they’ve all joined the bleating stampede.

So anyway, I’m with Ian (not that he needs my support). Very few long novels earn their length. Writing long comes naturally to some writers. Lucky them. They find themselves in fashion at the moment. But many novelists, especially those who also wear journalist hats and have learned to practice concision, struggle to deliver big books. There is also the important question of weight. Many of us only get to read in bed and personally I do not want to work on my pecs just before I go to sleep. I have a book on my desk right now that I have very much looked forward to reading but it’s too damned heavy for a reclining read. Heaven knows when I shall get to it. However it is proving very useful for raising the height of my laptop.

An artist friend of mine tells me she’s up against a similar problem. Her small paintings are exquisite, but people demand big pictures. Art by the yard.

One other thing, before I move on to a far more urgent topic: Will Self. Is he a joke? His evident disdain for readers is jaw-dropping. Nearly a century since James Joyce tried moving the literary furniture is there really still any question that readers prefer books that are punctuated?

 

But now… just as I had settled the important question of what to wear to The Lady Literary Lunch (a pretty little summer dress with a forgiving waistline, thank you for asking) I had an argument with a step-ladder. Result:  Ladder, 1, Laurie, various shades of blood and bruise. This morning it was pretty evident that by next Tuesday my leg will be a stomach-churning shade of bile. So, back to the drawing board, or rather to the wardrobe. I’m not really a trouser person and I pray the Caledonian Club doesn’t have a Henley-standard dress code, but that leg has to be covered. Perhaps a floor-length paper bag.

I suppose you think a writer just has to sit at a desk all day and write? Ha!

 

 

    I heard a week or so ago that The Lady Literary Lunch on September 9th was already fully subscribed. It was an encouraging piece of news  - even if I must clearly share any credit with my two co-speakers, Lesley Pearse and Kate Williams  -  because this will be my only public appearance this year. Literary event organisers, where the heck are you? Was it something I said?

Today I received the running order for the Lady Lunch and was very happy to find that I’m on first, between the starter and the main course. There are pros and cons to any position on a shared platform. If you’re on last the meal passes you by in a fog of nerves, but you have the comfort of knowing that your audience will have sunk half a bottle of wine before you get to your feet. Some of them may even be asleep.

Going first gets it over and done with but your audience is alert. And hungry. Me too. I may have to slip away for a quick banana during the drinks’ reception, lest the rumbling of my stomach drown out my words of wit and wisdom.

So when my 15 minutes is up I’ll be ravenous for the poached salmon and by the time dessert is served I’ll be in state of post-performance mellowness. Bring on the Bendicks Bittermints.

And now the most serious element of any lady novelist’s Lit Lunch preparations must be addressed: earring selection.

Sometimes novel writing is like dressmaking. You assemble the pieces but then when you start stitching them together it doesn’t feel right. You try letting a bit out here or nipping a bit in there but you know in your heart it’s just not going to work. The only thing to do is take it all apart and start again. That was me last week.  I found I had the literary equivalent of a dress with three sleeves.


I couldn’t sleep. I dreaded going to work the next morning. And then, suddenly, after many nights tossing and turning and picturing myself joining a long line at the Job Centre, I saw a way of fixing it. Not major surgery (to leap with one bound from dressmaking imagery to medical ) but certainly requiring a scalpel and a waste bin.

I don’t know how many pages I’ve dumped. I prefer not to count. But I do know that I now feel  liberated from a ridiculous bind of plot and sequence. Also, a couple of characters have had to go. Dickens could manage a cast of thousands but I cannot. Writer, know thyself.   I don’t imagine for one minute this is the only mid-book wobble I’ll experience but I’m hoping I’m at least safe from creating another dress with three sleeves.

Actually, I used to have a dress with one sleeve, and very elegant it was too. I wonder what happened to it.

     Mid-August, when publishers begin to wipe the Ambre Solaire off their iPads and think about their autumn list.  The Grand Duchess of Nowhere is scheduled for publication on October 2nd. Is that good or bad? I have no idea. There’s probably some algorithm for working out your best chance of a major review in The Times but as I’m not consulted about pub dates I’ve never worried about them. Until today.

What, my publicist asked me, did I think about waiting an extra week and being published on Super Thursday?  I didn’t have a ready answer because I live down a deep burrow and don’t know (or rather didn’t know) what Super Thursday is. Generally speaking though I’m allergic to anything with ‘super’ in its name.  I used to shop in Superquinn, Ireland’s equivalent of Sainsbury’s, because they sold good stuff but since they changed their name to Super Valu (sic) I can hardly bring myself to walk through their door.

But to get back to publishing, what I think about Super Thursday is that for a struggling mid-list novelist it would be madness, competing for review space and air time with all those sure-fire celebrity books that will go flying off the shelves for Christmas. Volume 13 of Katie Price’s autobiography. And no doubt offerings from all the National Treasures. Stephen Fry’s 10 Day Detox.  Michael Palin’s By Tricycle to Lakeside Shopping Centre.  Clare Balding’s Festive Flower Arrangements.  It will be, to quote my dear old Dad,  like peeing in a hurricane.

So I think, I hope what’s going to happen is that Grand Duchess will slip quietly into the world on October 2nd as originally planned, a few dear loyal readers will then buy it and life will trundle on.  Super.

       Any writer of historical fiction has to decide where to position themselves language-wise. I have never dared venture further back than the 18th century and even then I only permitted one ‘La!’ to escape (or should that be ‘scape??) from a maiden’s lips.  I still wonder if it was a mistake.  I’m already slightly regretting the use of ‘maiden’ in the preceding sentence.

But anyway, let’s talk about ‘ye’.  Ever wondered where it came from? Wonder no more.  In olden times, that is to say before them Normans invaded us and inflicted words like hors d’oeuvre upon us, the ‘th’ sound was represented in writing with a runic sign called ‘thorn’.     Here it is.

Scribes got tired fingers scribing away all day so sometimes, in haste, they wrote an approximate version of thorn which looked like a kind of Y, and then, because they were always looking for abbreviations, so they could knock off early and go to ye olde ale house for a pint, they quite often wrote ‘the’ to look like this:

Which practice kind of stuck when printing came in. Instead of making a font for thorn the printers thought ‘ah feck it’ and used the Y.

Thus ‘the’ became ‘ye’ and verily ye pestilence spread to tea shoppes and coaching innes throughout ye lande.

And frankly, I’m sick of it.

 

When I was younger and wasn’t so aware of time’s winged chariot forcing me onto the hard shoulder I would persevere with books I didn’t really like. I’d bought it so I was determined to finish it, as though some omniscient Library Monitor was waiting to stamp my card. Not any more. Let’s face it, there are some books that don’t deserve more than an hour of anyone’s time. Perhaps I’ve written some of them. If so I have every sympathy with any reader who consigns it to the bag of stuff intended for the church fete.

Recently I saw a list of books people buy but can’t get through. Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time was on there, a book I did actually finish although I could not now tell you a single fact I learned from it. Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, volume 17, also appeared on the list. I guess some people never learn. A more surprising entry was Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

Now here’s a very funny thing. For years and years Hilary Mantel wrote good novels that people enjoyed. She wasn’t in the Dan Brown league of commercial success but she had, deservedly, a following. Then she wrote Wolf Hall, a far more difficult book, and immediately scooped the Booker Prize. It says something about literary prize judges. I’m just not sure what. That they think the rest of us need to pull up our reading socks? That they think ‘difficult’ equals ‘worthy’? That their decisions are made under the influence of recreational drugs? Darned if I know. But Hillary, or at least, one of Hillary’s book elves, has definitely cranked out another one for the church fete.

And she isn’t even President yet.

 

 

 

 I don’t really like talking about money. I don’t even like thinking about it, which is perhaps one of the reasons I ended up in this profession. You might say I was saved from total penury by my inability to write poetry. But anyway, I was very happy to see two other writers going public on the M word recently: Val McDermid and Joanne Harris, both excellent and successful authors have spoken up on behalf of those of us lower down the food chain.

Harris made the point that the J.K. Rowling’s rags to riches story has given the public a very inaccurate idea of what a writer may expect to earn. £11,000 a year is apparently the average, which cheered me up no end. By a whisker I’m a, ahem, higher-earning author! I’m also a beneficiary of Ireland’s income tax exemption for artists whose earnings are below 40,000 Euro a year, a ceiling I avoid without even stooping.

McDermid addressed another difficulty faced by writers these days. Publishers have little patience with slow-burning careers. There was a time when you could depend on your publisher to stick with you through lean times. If they believed in you enough to publish you in the first place they kept the faith. No more. If your sales figures have been poor they put little or no money into publicising your books. So your sales figures continue to be poor. And then it’s goodbye.

This is now my waking thought each day. It’s only July but in January I’ll be out of contract, and January seems to be approaching at the speed of a bullet train. There is the electronic self-publishing option. I entertain it more seriously than I used to. There is the diversification option: I have writer friends who teach, or edit, or mentor (whatever the feck that is). Or I could start a completely different career, such as…. hmm, I’ll get back to you on that.  And in the meanwhile pray for a movie option. Just one little teensy-weensy movie option.