Laurie Graham's Blog, page 29

I don’t much like writing about writing because it’s just something I do.  Nor do I especially seek the company of other writers although some of my best friends etc. etc.  The words ‘writers’ group’ bring me out in hives.   On the whole I feel writers need to leave the house on a regular basis and get a life. Otherwise to labour in silence and solitude.

All this is by way of prefacing a link to an excellent piece by George F. Will in today’s Washington Post.  It says a lot of things I’d have said myself if only I’d been smart enough, and has the added value of quoting Elmore Leonard and William Zinsser (pictured left), two sages before whom I genuflect.

Read and learn.

Another week has slipped by and I remain unemployed. The wheels of publishing grind slow. March. Normally by now I would be well into the first draft of a book. But we must enjoy what we’re given, not moither over what may be. I’m actually having fun making a pantomime cow.

So what to offer my best beloved readers? I thought I’d give you some Laurie

Graham dates for your diary.

April 23rd: birthday of Shakespeare and my Mum, and opening night of The Dress Circle in London.

May 9th:  Opening of The Dress Circle at the Brighton Fringe

August 29th: Publication of A Humble Companion as a mass market paperback.

October 10th: First publication of The Liar’s Daughter.

January 16th 2014: Opening of Jack and the Beanstalk, written and directed by yours truly, Teatro Avogaria, Dorsoduro, Venice.

Will that do you, for now?

    So here’s my morning so far. I walked to the post office to pick up a parcel which I eagerly anticipated was the cow hooves I’ve ordered from Texas. Whoa! I’m not importing animal parts. I’m not setting up a glue factory. These are  foam hooves for a cow costume. Yes, the panto wheels are creaking into motion for January 2014. But anyway, the parcel wasn’t my hooves. It was somebody’s novel, sent to me by the publisher in the hope of an endorsement.

Let me tell you my position on endorsements. I have, in my time, received generous ones from other writers. When it’s in my power to reciprocate  -  and I’m really talking here about finding the time to read a book I hadn’t planned on reading   -  I’m happy to do it.  However this particular author (and she’s not the first) had queered the pitch by inundating me, I mean bombarding me, with publication day messages.

I’ve been paddling in the social media shallows for about a year now and I’ve learned something. It is an effortlessly easy way to annoy people. I hope I haven’t annoyed anyone, but I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of saturation self-promotion. On one occasion, when I just couldn’t take it any more, I asked the author to stop. I was called ‘mean-spirited.’

I’m truly not.  But there’s such a want of self-awareness and good manners on Facebook and Twitter, such ruthless pushing and shouting, I’d dearly love to leave. Only I’m not allowed. Funnily enough my publishers just sent me a reminder that they’re running a seminar on social networking this very week. I’ve sent my regrets. Got to get to work on those cow ears.

The read-through of Dress Circle went very well. It was conducted in a deeply brown upper room, with the hum and clink of a public bar percolating up through the floor. Some of my lines caused spontaneous laughter, some fell flat. That’s the way it goes. The actress threatened to lose weight before April. I begged her not to. I was informed that Tarquin Olivier and Dame Janet Suzman have hinted they’ll come to a performance. Ooooh- err. And I now have to address the very serious matter of which earrings to wear for the Author Q&A session.  A writer’s life. I tell ya!

Next Wednesday we have the read-through of my script for The Dress Circle. The read-through is a kind of Waterloo for the script writer or at least, the night before Agincourt. The moment when you hear an actor speak the lines and sometimes, inevitably, think, ‘Well that’ll have to go.’

I always attend the read-through. It isn’t at all obligatory but if you’re a control freak, and I am, you don’t want anyone else fiddling with your work. It’s an exciting moment anyway, as well as stomach-churning. Plays need to be performed, not hugged to the writer’s perfectionist chest. I hear the lines as I write them and I have a pretty good ear, but the actor brings something else to the mix. We shall see. Or rather, we shall hear. It’s an exercise in listening.

There’s nothing much to see at a read-through. Just a bunch of people sitting around in some cold, grubby rehearsal room reading the lines at a good clip. No emoting, no stops or pauses, although spontaneous laughter is always appreciated. With radio drama you then go straight into the studio. With a stage play the party may disband for several weeks until rehearsals begin. Sometimes there’s coffee. Oftentimes you wish for strong drink. Professionals talk earnestly about The Business. Who’s up for what, and where, the jammy bastards. Amateurs tend to be more interested in their costumes. ’Can I show you what I picked up in Oxfam? ‘

It’s altogether a funny way to spend an evening. Beats watching the telly though.

   I just realised there’s something missing from my life. I don’t have a mission statement.  Yikes. How did I overlook that?

My attention was drawn to this  piece of 21st century bumfluff  communication jargon by the website for Derry  – City of Culture 2013. I’ve never been to Derry and thought this would be the year to go take a look, so I logged on to see what cultural goodies they’ve scheduled. By page 8 I still hadn’t got beyond the mission statements, at which point I thought, ‘Ah feck it, I don’t particularly want to go to Derry anyway. Miserable looking place.’

But it did make me realise I should get a mission statement. So here it is.

Laurie Graham is a cubicle monkey. Thinking is the only task she performs outside the box. Her primary focus is the harvest of the low-hanging fruit of humour, but she opens her kimono for no-one.  She has the capability to deliver product as soft copy, hard copy, illuminated script or knitted code. Her target for 2013 is to repurpose herself to the earning of huge amounts of money. She brings to the table the added value of vapid, wittering blogs, Daily Mail journalism and occasional face time with her public.

Wotcher reckon?

I love Bucket Lists. All human life and folly is in them. A recent report I read suggested that the reasons most people realise only 10 percent of their ambitions are lack of time and fear of injury. To which I give the following soberly considered reply. BS.

Boil down any bucket list and you end up with two categories: things that require money and things that require dedication. And what has any of this to do with me? Well… writing a novel appears on many people’s lists, as does learning to play an instrument or speak a foreign language. These are all long-haul projects. Unlike visiting Harry Potter World or riding a Segway, two other equally popular bucket list items.

It unsettles me somewhat to find that my profession is the object of people’s dreams. Writing a novel is a pretty dull business, trust me. You don’t get out much. You develop shoulder hunch and hip spread. Adrenalin rush? Only when your publisher tells you how little you have to live on for the next year or an annoying reviewer gives away the entire plot in his review of your latest book.

My advice to anyone who has novel writing on their bucket list is to shut yourself away in a small soundproof cubicle and have meals delivered on a tray slid under the door. Otherwise just go bungee jumping. You get to tick the box much faster.

One item on a recent Top 50  that caught my eye was Travel Around New Zealand in a Winnebago. Weird. Isn’t that what old people do? Isn’t that like saying, ‘before I die I want to wear shoes with Velcro fasteners?’  I can only think this item cropped up because the list was compiled by a company that makes parkas. So there’s an item for my bucket list. I want to reach the end of my life without ever wearing a parka. No, not even a sequinned one. I don’t want to travel anywhere in a Winnebago either. Furthermore, I don’t want to bungee jump. I don’t need to. I’m self-employed. My life is already one gut-lurching leap into the abyss after another.

     Well, my revisions are done and back in my editor’s in-tray, so this week I turned my attention to… what next? I already have a bit of an idea, but a bit of an idea does not a novel make.

One of the things I do is to make wild research forays around the topic or the historical figure that interests me.  I end up with pages and pages of notes I’ll never use, but sometimes I stumble on something that gives me a hook or an angle. The world is full of great stories and unexpected connections. I try to keep my mind wide open at this point. It’s not a huge effort. I’m capable of prairie-sized open mindedness.  

All the while this is going on the essence of the new book eludes me. Like that sliver of soap in the bath tub that you know is there but keeps slipping out of your grasp. But today I had the feeling I was closing in on it. I woke at 6am and found I was trying out voices. This is a good sign. By Monday I may have a perfectly polished proposal to offer my publisher. Or a horrible sinking this-will-never-do feeling that I’ve frittered a week. Had great fun though.

If you haven’t had enough of me for the week you’ll find me on History Girls today, doing a bit of sheep counting.

 Christopher Sansom has recently published his latest novel, Dominion, which envisions a post-war Britain run by a Government of actual named politicians transformed into Nazi placemen. I must begin by saying I haven’t read the novel. But the  several reviews I’ve read touched a nerve, partly because I sometimes populate my own fiction with real people who once lived, and partly because Enoch Powell features in Mr Sansom’s collaborationist Cabinet.

I’ll deal with Enoch Powell first. His very name lights the touchpaper of left-wingers. His 1968 speech, slightly inaccurately known as the ’Rivers of Blood’ speech, has been described as an explosion of bigotry. Which I contest. Enoch Powell actually turned out to be rather prescient. If he got anything wrong  it was declaiming Virgil on a Saturday afternoon in Birmingham city centre. In that respect he misjudged his audience. But I see something mischievous in Sansom portraying Enoch Powell as a man who’d have been willing to work with Nazis. Even in a novel. And especially as Sean Russell, the IRA chief of staff who was an undoubted collaborator, is apparently cast in a favourable light. 

On the more general theme of fictionalising the dead, I must say this. While I can see the attraction, for a fiction writer, of playing ‘what if’ I personally would never populate a counter-factual novel with real figures. My own preference is to tell things as they happened (as far as we can possibly know) but perhaps not from the usual viewpoint. Below stairs can be a useful place for a novelist to stand. It’s perhaps not the greatest sin in the world to change the facts but it doesn’t seem fair to the dead who have no right of reply. But then, as Mr Powell’s widow generously remarked, Dominion  is only a novel.

I wouldn’t normally be working today, nor even blogging, New Year’s Day is when I make a morning-after breakfast for family, friends, blow-ins and remote acquaintances. But this year the ‘flu has flattened everyone in its path and I’m the last woman standing. Also the last woman eating. Which has left me with a long position on bacon, eggs and various other brunch-type ingredients.

Am I down-hearted? No. Actually I’m feeling rather pleased with something I just pulled out of my chef’s hat. Buttermilk banana pancakes served with grilled streaky bacon and a blueberry and raspberry kissl. Mr F, so weak he can barely lift a fork, managed to clean his plate.

The pancakes I owe to Nigella Lawson (the pre-Damascus, full-cream Nigella). Like Nigella I too often find myself with a banana de trop.  But no more. Farewell to worrisome banana glut. I’d venture to say these pancakes beat even my son’s much-praised Elvis Whopper (a bacon, peanut butter and banana triple-decker sandwich) as the perfect banana vehicle. 

I insist that the bacon be crispy. Take yer flabby pink Irish rashers away, if you please. They are not the right bedfellows for these pancakes.  And then the kissl. Easy with the sugar. Miserly, even. The slightly tongue-puckering tartness is what brings it all together. I’m not posting the recipe. This is a literary blog. Well, kind of, usually ….

If you want a recipe I’ll send you a recipe.

So that was my day so far. That and running down to the pharmacy for Benylin, Strepsils and a cheeky little starched white cap. But enough of my husband’s Barbara Stanwyck fantasies. Happy New Year.