Stories that make sense
Today I’ve been messing around with chapter headings, emailing people about ISBNs, and uploading the entire work to Lulu to see what would happen. (Nothing too terrifying, is the answer, but then it logged me out, and I took that as a sign that I should give up for the day.)
I’ve taken a very long nap, flailed around the sitting room to ABBA songs, and eaten some Christmas cake.
I’ve also put up an extract from the first chapter of Speak Its Name. Enjoy!
I promised you a publication date for Speak Its Name, and I’ve got one. It’s Tuesday 2nd February – just over a month away. That’s long enough for my army of editors to get back to me with any last nitpicks, and for me to wrestle the finished work into the desired format, but also gives me time before my day job (yes, I have one) starts getting really busy and devouring my brain at the end of February. In the liturgical calendar, 2nd February is the festival of Candlemas, which is an entirely appropriate day to decide that there’s been quite enough waiting around.
I’d therefore like to invite you to join me on this blog from around 7pm (GMT) on Tuesday 2nd February, and I will press the magic button that makes the book available, and tell you how to get hold of it. I will have prosecco, but I think that’s one thing that can’t be shared via wi-fi.
In the meantime, I’ll be over here, moaning about the horrors of formatting, and sharing extracts and pictures of the cover. The end is in sight, but I can’t quite believe it…
Experience has taught me that I simply cannot start at the beginning of a story and go on until I get to the end and then stop. I have remarked before that my writing process is less like laying a road than it is like connecting up islands of an archipelago. I start with two or three very definite pictures or ideas in my head, and usually have a basic idea of their position in relation to one another. Writing those down will induce five or six other islands to erupt from the seabed. And they drag more up behind them. After that it’s a matter of building bridges, or causeways, perhaps throwing in an artificial island, perhaps bypassing three or four of the early ones, after all.
It implies a phenomenal amount of rewriting, to ensure that character development and such things are consistent. But that’s probably good for me, and anyway, it’s the only way that I can do it.
I have discovered that, even if I plot the whole thing out in advance, some scene that’s meant to happen two thirds of the way through catches my imagination and refuses to let anything else past until I’ve written it. I then say ‘sod it’, and continue writing the bits that happen to catch my fancy at that moment.
Perhaps island-hopping just suits me.
I saw this floating around Twitter a few days ago:
The hard truth: self-published books are often bad because the writer couldn’t face 3rd-party scrutiny. A good editor makes the book better.
— Jo Bell (@Jo_Bell) November 11, 2015
It made me wince in recognition. I have seen some truly terrible self-published books. (I have also seen some truly terrible traditionally published books, and in most cases I muttered, ‘Get a proper editor!’ and in one I appended, ‘And make it someone who knows that low-church bishops don’t wear soutanes, or at least don’t call them that!’)
It made me smile. On this count, at least, I have nothing for which to reproach myself, except perhaps for only paying my army of editors in promises of gin.
At present Speak Its Name is with five different people. Two of them are looking at overall language and structure and hunting plot holes. Another two are nitpicking: searching for errors in my portrayal of the High and Low Church wings of university Christianity respectively (though the word ‘soutane’ is not used in my book).
And the fifth is telling me where things just don’t make sense. He opened his critique with the words ‘I am probably one of the most critical people you will meet’, so I was expecting it to be dire; in actual fact it was rather like being savaged by a very fluffy kitten, particularly after the first general editor had suggested I cut half the first chapter. Having said that, I’d cut forty thousand words off my own bat, before any of this crowd got to look at it, because I knew those bits just didn’t work.
I’m working on incorporating all those people’s suggestions into my text. I’m waiting on some of their suggestions; these are all people who have day jobs and/or children, and I’m only paying them in gin! I’m also glumly aware that I need to standardise my inverted commas, some of which are straight and some of which are curly, depending on which program I was using when I wrote the scene in question. I’ve already fixed all the en dashes that should have been em dashes.
The inverted commas are going to be tedious, but they’ve got to be done. It’s all got to be done. In a little while – perhaps a month, perhaps longer – people will start reading it, not because they are kindly pulling it to pieces for me, but because they want to read it. Now, that’s scary.
(Very quick post, as I should really be getting dressed and leaving for work)
I’m really pleased. This is a thing that has been needed for so long, and now it’s going to exist.
I was talking to one of my former colleagues the other day.
‘Kathleen,’ he said, ‘you read a lot. Have you ever thought about writing?’
‘Well, um, yes,’ I said. ‘In fact…’ And I went into the whole thing. Novel. Started out as Trollope-esque ecclesiastical comedy. Ended up as Christian lesbian coming-of-age. Written. Currently editing. Self-publishing. Likely to be read by all of seventeen people, but I don’t give a damn. And all the rest of it. This was a fairly significant conversation, because it was the first time I’d let on to anyone in the ‘real world’ about it.
As it turned out, he was about four thousand words into what sounds like a very interesting sci-fi thriller. I was impressed at his being willing to talk about it at such an early stage. I’ve been writing mine for years and am only just getting over the temptation to deny everything.
I think he was quite impressed by my having a finished novel, and a little bit horrified by how much I’ve deleted. At present, Speak Its Name stands at just under 80,000 words. At one point it was over 115,000, and that doesn’t include the huge chunks of earlier drafts that I didn’t deem worthy of copy/pasting into ‘Speak Its Name FINAL’, ‘Speak Its Name FINAL 2’ or ‘Speak Its Name FINAL 3’.
(I really do hope FINAL 3 is the last one. I want it off my hands!)
‘So…’ he said, ‘if you had known, back when you started, that you’d be cutting all these words, that you’d be self-publishing, would you still have written this book, as opposed to a different subject?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, because I needed to write it, because this needed writing about.’
And – I didn’t say – because I simply wouldn’t have believed it. Over the years I’ve read plenty of books, articles, blog posts, whatever, that told me how hard a writer has to work and how difficult it is to get published. I ignored all of them. If I went back to the October of 2007, found my twenty-two year old self sitting at her aunt’s dining table and writing detailed character profiles in colour-coded ink, and told her that she’d have to rewrite the whole thing from the perspective of somebody’s love interest, lose about 40,000 words in the process, and that even at the end of it she’d have to publish the thing herself, she’d have said, ‘Oh, really?’ and kept right on doing what she was doing.
Was it worth writing 40,000 words that will never see the light of day? Was it worth all that time, all that effort, writing a novel that I’m having to self-publish because it falls between several mutually exclusive genres?
Well, if nothing else, I’ve learned how to write a novel. I’ve learned how to combine characters and plot, and dialogue and description, and what needs to go in, and what needs to come out.
And I’ve learned by doing it for myself. I could have read the theory until I was blue in the face, but I wouldn’t have understood it at the level I do now. Those moments where I went, ‘oh, but Becky needs to be the one who sets this going’, or ‘well, how about I just take out everything that’s not from Lydia’s point of view and then see what’s missing?’, those moments of deep insight whose profundity I can’t put into words, would have been worth a very expensive creative writing course.
And writing this particular book was a lot more helpful than any counselling session, in working out how to be bisexual and Christian myself. (None of the characters are me, but most of them have at least one of my issues.)
And I’ve written a book that I’m proud of, that I think is worth putting out into the world.
And I’ve developed the confidence along the way to take responsibility for that myself and not give a damn what anyone else thinks.
Any one of those on its own would have meant I hadn’t wasted the past eight years. Combined – hell, yes, it was worth it.
So… the reason for the existence of this blog is this: the novel that I have been working on (and off) since 2007 has been sitting on my computer for long enough, and I am fed up with this state of affairs. It feels like high time it was published and read by people who are not me and who are not necessarily my friends.
I have tried to find a publisher and/or agent without success. The main reason, I think, is that even I don’t know what genre the dratted thing is. The best I can do is ‘modern-day University of Barchester, with same-sex relationships’. I don’t even know whether it should be shelved under ‘General Fiction’, ‘Teenage’ or ‘LGBT’. It’s fiction. I know that much at least.
Apart from that? Does the ghost of Section 28 still haunt us? (Yes, but this may or may not be the reason I can’t find a publisher.) Are student politics terminally boring? (Yes, which is why I have edited most of them out.) Are you just not allowed to have characters who are simultaneously queer and Christian? (Possibly, but I missed the memo if so.) Whatever. I believe that there are people out there who would be prepared to read Speak Its Name (for such is its, er, name) despite, or even because of, these reasons.
I am not particularly invested in the idea of being a super-high-powered-world-renowned-high-earning-genius-famous-prolific author – but I have put a lot of work into writing this particular book, and it would be a pity if somebody who would like to read it, or something like it, never got to because I was being too proud to put it out there under my own steam.
And so I am taking deliberate and considered steps towards self-publishing. (After all, if it’s good enough for my parents…) At the moment the novel is working its way around a list of kind but ruthless friends and their red pens, and I am hoping to make it available, probably via Lulu.com, by the end of November.
Permission to wish. Permission to really, really want something. I find this difficult. I have a superstitious conviction that letting myself really, really want something will alert some contrary-minded force to my desire, and I won’t get it.
It’s a defensive little monster in my mind, promising me that if I manage not to want something then I won’t be disappointed when I don’t get it. It’s first cousin to the Angel in the House (who has been quieter of late, but is still in there somewhere) who sits in my head telling me that whatever it is that I want cannot possibly be as important as whatever it is the other person wants, and that if I get it instead of the other person, it will all go wrong and will all be my fault.
Of course it doesn’t stop me wanting it. I catch myself thinking, ‘well, if I get it, I’ll…’ – or, more dangerously, ‘well, when I get it, I’ll…’ Wear this. Say that. Be able to do the other.
There’s nothing that I can do at this point to make it more or less likely to happen. These little mental tricks will make no difference to the outcome. All I can do is wait.
I tried forgetting about it, but it hasn’t worked. I’m still watching my emails, listening for the letterbox. (There’s a lot to hear from the letterbox at the moment, but it’s mostly Labour and the Lib Dems fighting for this marginal seat.)
Let’s try an experiment. There are ten days left of uncertainty. Let’s try really, really wanting it for those ten days, and risk the disappointment. Truth is, monster, I’ll be disappointed anyway.
Very well, then. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I wish…
Just for a second, I manage to really, really want it.
Sometimes I wonder if I will ever… shh. Don’t wonder too hard. You’ll wake it, and it needs a rest. So do I. It’s asleep, curled up in a cave somewhere in the Mariana Trench. Don’t worry. It’ll come back when it’s ready.
We’re not talking about this today. We can talk in generalities.
Sometimes I wonder if I will ever make my living by writing – and then I realise very swiftly that I don’t want to.
Oh, I dream. I wander along the banks of the Cam and wonder which house would be the best to live and write in. I think of having a studio with a balcony and looking out at the swans and ducks and rowers. I imagine how my books will change people’s lives. I daydream about being interviewed in my beautiful home, and all that guff.
In the mean time, I write on the train to work.
Here’s a confession. Even in that dream life, I still go to work.
I was talking about other people’s expectations early in this round. I think there are just as many levied on artists, of whatever ilk, as there are on everyone else. Just as everybody assumes that the temp can’t be happy until they’ve found a real job, everybody assumes that the artist must really want to chuck in the real world and devote themself to art.
It’s the dream, isn’t it? Chucking in the [soulless bullshit job] and giving the whole to [one’s vocation]. But is it really the dream?
I have a friend who, in his forties, left the air conditioning trade and went to university (which is where I met him) to study French, with the ultimate aim of becoming a teacher. He tried teaching, hated it, and is now back in air conditioning, although with a life much improved (or so I believe) in other ways. Meanwhile, my uncle has left teaching to become a lorry driver. (He’s also an extremely accomplished musician and photographer.) Life is, as ever, more complicated than that. And people vary.
Personally (and I know I was ranting about the conflation of these concepts earlier in the round, as well) I would no more like to be a full time artist than I would a full time mother. I like my day job. I like getting out of the house and going to the big city. I like interacting with amusing, knowledgeable people. I like my forty-five minutes of writing time on the train. (Hush. Hush. It’s all right. Not you. I didn’t mean you. Nobody’s writing anything more on you at the moment.)
Even if there were a way to earn a living by writing without the nicotine and/or alcohol dependence and chronic financial insecurity that characterised the only household I knew where anyone tried it, would I want to? I don’t think so. I am learning to take better care of myself than that.
My great-grandmother, having introduced her former beau to a suitable young lady, was wont to say of the resulting offspring, ‘I feel I brought those children into the world’.
History does not record what the suitable young lady said about that.
Which is to say that birth as a metaphor for anything that is not birth has never worked very well for me. It somehow manages to diminish both birth and work, and I am really uncomfortable with using it of my own projects.
I am not entirely sure why that might be. It’s not as if I am particularly squicked by the concept of birth – I spent my teenage years as unofficial chief proofreader for Midwifery Matters, and as a result I probably know as much as anyone who hasn’t actually been there and done it about the physiological, practical and political aspects of birth. I can tell you what ‘O. P.’ stands for both in the Latin and the vulgar. I can explain why a common party balloon makes a reasonable model for the uterus. I can talk about the importance of continuous one-to-one midwifery care. What I absolutely cannot do is apply this to my own work.
Possibly I’m too much of a literalist. Take my long-going novel, for example. I resist applying the birth metaphor to that, because I am irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that the pregnancy has lasted seven years but nobody actually knows whether the conception was successful. I end up wandering through the animal kingdom (‘Well, horses and deer and things are born and then stand up within a few hours, while human infants need intensive nurturing for years before one can safely leave them to their own devices. Birds lay eggs – which is the nearest thing to birth – but then have to incubate them for weeks…’) and end up concluding that the current project is actually a marsupial.
And, jumping back behind the metaphor to what I think is the intention behind the prompt, my most recent project, into which I put a huge amount of work and of which I am extremely proud, has the unedifying title ‘Private Contractors Database’. One can’t talk about ‘birthing’ a ‘private contractors database’ without falling about laughing. At least, I can’t. The metaphors that do spring to mind are building (largely, of recent weeks, in the context of Rudyard Kipling’s If: ‘If you can see the things you gave your life to, broken/And stoop and build them up with Sharepoint 2013…’) and transformation.
The Private Contractors Database wasn’t my idea. It already existed, in an embryo (ha!) form. My role in bringing it to where it is now was more like this:
My manager: Well, we have six white mice and a pumpkin. We need a coach. I want you to look into coach-building possibilities.
Me: No problem; let me think about it.
Six months later, after a lot of hard work (important point! ‘hard work’ is often a translation of ‘magic’) we have a coach.
This is all very interesting, because I had thought that the part of me that was a fairy godmother had packed up and flown off when I stopped temping. I’d been looking after other people too much; it was time for me to look after myself. (I have a feeling I’ll be writing more about this soon…) But I look at the projects that I’m working on at the moment, and I see: one is a quilt for a baby. One is a necklace to surprise a friend.
Even the novel is a coming-of-age present for some imaginary godchild, to tell them that, whoever they are, they are turning out exactly as they should be.
Kathleen Jowitt 