Readers’ reasons; writers’ reasons – do they ever agree?

I recently had an email from a friend who has a literature PhD. He had read My Memories of a Future Life and wrote me a long, detailed response. Eleven pages, actually, which was quite daunting to open. Somewhat nervously, I read it. I needn’t have worried. It was kind and appreciative.

Indeed, it seemed to give me credit for a number of clever effects that were mainly accidental, not deliberate as he seems to have imagined. 

For instance, my decision to give Gene Winter a leather bomber jacket. My faithful chronicler unpicked this as ‘bombing, linked to war – a sign that he will be destructive character’.

My actual reasons for Gene’s outfit were far more practical. I needed him to appear hunched, as if he was keeping the world out. A bomber jacket gives that postural shape in the reader’s mind. I could have left the kind of leather jacket vague, but then it might have suggested a scruffy biker. A different kind of bearing. So Gene wore a bomber jacket.

My friend also observed that Andreq, Carol’s incarnation in the future, is like a geisha. Once he’d drawn that parallel, he found more layers, exploring how geisha inhabit a separate reality, as Andreq does, and Carol has a different reality when she performs, and ‘recreates the spiritual environment that a piece of music represents, just as would a geisha with her client’.

Again, this seemed to give me credit for a lot more calculation than I actually did. When I wrote, I had much simpler aims. I was thinking only of the resonances between my two characters, Carol and Andreq. Though I’m very relieved that this aspect of the book made wider cultural sense.

Reading this essay, I was seeing the book in a new register. There are writers’ reasons and then there are the reasons readers find. Are they necessarily in tune?

I posted about this on Facebook and a merry discussion ensued. Some were reminded of school essays where they’d had to dissect texts for hidden meanings, which they were sure the author hadn’t consciously planted. This is just a fireplace. Anything else you can see is your own problem.

Of course, this is not to say we don’t take care when we write. Every word, image and phrase in My Memories of a Future Life was deliberately placed – but for reasons that were more to do with plausibility and nuance. My priority was controlling the reader’s emotional experience. With Gene’s jacket I was trying not to give a wrong impression, but in my friend’s essay it became a standout signal of its own.

That doesn’t mean I dismiss my friend’s analysis – not in the slightest. His version of the book is just as valid as mine. I wonder if he’d be disappointed to know how those creative decisions were made – that some of the effects he appreciated seem to me to be lucky accidents.

Fundamentally, I think this is a difference between writers and certain kinds of reader. I’m sure many writers are working more on gut than on grey cells.

This recent post at the Literary Hub rounded up a clutch of authors who didn’t have a formal writing education. They learned principally from reading and from life. It wasn’t study; it was an emotional process, a state of eternal noticing, a response as natural as breathing.

One of those writers, Ray Bradbury, I featured in my Guardian masterclass on self-editing. I took the beginning of Fahrenheit 451 and used my beat sheet method to study its structure. I found contrasts and balances that I hadn’t been aware of, subtle ways in which Bradbury plays with our expectations that add to the book’s enthralling effect. The book is itself a masterclass in pacing, balance and contrast (I’ve talked about that here) . In reality, I suspect Bradbury did most of it by instinct rather than by conscious design, but if you put the book through that process, it’s there.

I’ve written before about what creative writing teachers teach.   Mostly we direct a sensitivity that is already innate, and awaken the blind areas. The other side of the coin – the learning – is about building habits: first consciously, then so that they become second nature (I’ve written about that here – the three ages of becoming a writer). An example: at first you might have to be told to prefigure a major reversal; after a while, it’s something you knit into the story by gut feeling.

Earlier in this post I talked about ‘controlling the reader’s experience’. You might have laughed in a hollow way because I seem to be proving precisely the opposite. We hope we’re directing the reader to notice the things we want, but actually they scoot off into the text like gerbils and chew random things.

In the end, readers bring themselves to a book. One friend drew a parallel with his work in IT – he said you never knew how a piece of software would work until the users told you. I suppose that’s what we’re doing. Our ‘product’ isn’t even a tangible thing like a theatre production or a picture or a sofa. It’s squiggles on a page or a screen that perform a transforming effect on the reader’s mind and emotions. A novel is code, and we can’t even definitively tell you how we assemble it or how it works.

So I guess that makes it magic too. Do give me your thoughts.

More about the beat sheet? You can find it in Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books & How You Can Draft, Fix & Finish With Confidence.

Thanks for the chicken pic Christian Bortes on Flickr and thanks Cat Muir for the dancing fireplace.

Oh and this little thing is less than a month to lift-off. Rather excited. Here’s my latest newsletter if you want to catch up, including a free preview.

5 things I didn’t expect when I released my first novel

It’s five years since I released My Memories of a Future Life. I actually hadn’t realised it was that long ago, but Facebook has an algorithm that nudges you to repost old updates. And recently it gave me this:

Still, I wasn’t feeling especially retrospective until I happened upon this post by Caroline Leavitt at Jane Friedman’s blog, which talked about a few realities of author life.  And I thought: yes. Releasing that book marked a big change. A set of new and unforeseen challenges.

Pic from Wikimedia Commons

1 Lovely reactions – which will wildly delight you

My Memories of a Future Life wasn’t my first book. I’d ghosted lots of titles (more about that here), so I was used to seeing my work bound between covers. I’d also published the first Nail Your Novel book, and knew how nice it was to get feedback. But fiction sets up a different kind of relationship. I received long emails and reviews – as if the book had started a thoughtful and personal conversation. I didn’t know this happened.

2 Upsetting reactions – your author friends will see you through

In her piece, Caroline Leavitt talks about bad reviews. We all accept we’re not going to please everybody, so we shrug and move on. But sometimes, a bad reaction really knocks you. Especially if it’s soon after the release, when the book is finding its way.

I had two.

The first was from a pre-release reader. It all started well. He wrote me emails while reading, chapter by chapter, saying how much he was enjoying the book. Then the end threw him right out of whack. It wasn’t what he was expecting. He sent a long, wounded email.

I was prepared for disagreement, or even dislike. I’d had the book rubber-stamped by people who wouldn’t let me get away with bad work. But still, my confidence was battered. This reader was genuinely upset and I didn’t want that.

My fellow authors told me: ‘Never apologise for your book’. Even so, I wrote back – which I shouldn’t have done and probably wouldn’t now. He replied, calmer, admitting there were complicating personal factors. Quite horrendous ones, as it happened. Still, I sneaked back to my blurb and description and examined them carefully, in case any of it was misleading.

The other upsetting reaction was a thoroughly scathing review. A blogger eviscerated it viciously. Again, I wondered what to do. Again, other authors held me down: ‘It’s dripping with malice. Some people do that. Stop being so sensitive. You don’t have to do anything.’

This time I heeded their advice. But I worried about that streak of spite, sitting on a blog for all to see, a stain on my book’s reputation before it had had much of a chance in the world. And I also didn’t do anything about the person who voiced plenty of critical opinions about the book but managed to reveal she hadn’t read it.

Two lessons here. 1 – other authors are your rock. 2 – you have to hope that on balance, you reach enough of the right people.

3 Your book changes you – a deep work of fiction is a work of personal examination

You mine yourself to write a novel like that. Your central characters come from your understanding of the people around you, and of yourself. Spending time with people in deep crisis, even imaginary ones, can change you. As do your antagonists. In order to make them rounded, I had to empathise with their point of view.

Carol’s end point made me examine some of my own life. Her psychological journey felt like my own rite of passage, a memoir in parallel, even though it was all invented.

Hence the need to be talked down, from time to time.

4 When the book comes out, that’s not the end

When I ghost-write, my contribution finishes when the book goes to press. But your own book needs constant shepherding and revisiting – and not just for promotion. I made an audiobook, which meant presenting it to voice actors, discussing the characters and approach – and finally, listening to the recordings chapter by chapter (which revealed how much of it I had completely forgotten). This year I was interviewed at the Clapham Literary Festival by Elizabeth Buchan, so had to brush up on it again.

Tip – keep a list of your old interviews so you know what you said about your book when it was fresh. Also read your good reviews so you can discuss the themes and bigger picture – I found my smartest reviewers identified these more readily than I could.

5 Your debut is a special time – enjoy it

‘Debut’ is a good word for releasing your first novel. ‘Inauguration’ would be a good word too. It’s more than just putting a book on public sale. It’s the beginning of a new order. Even though I’d written for years, been published under cover, taught and mentored, produced oodles of other books, nothing was like this. Releasing my own novel was like finally putting my feet down, having a voice in something I hadn’t been part of before.

And now a new look

Lately, Husband Dave had been dropping hints. Should My Memories of a Future Life have a new look, in tune with the style of Lifeform Three? I resisted long and hard. Getting a concept first time round was difficult enough. And if you’ve been round this blog for a while, you’ll remember that the cover of Lifeform Three was an epic undertaking.

But he was right and it’s now wearing its new jacket. I was going to sneak it out without much ado because, well, it’s just a jacket. But I didn’t anticipate how new it would feel, all over again.

Which is where we came in.

 

If you’ve released a novel, what took you by surprise? Is there anything you’d do differently? Any advice you’d pass on? And I think next time I owe you a writing craft post, so if there’s something you’d like me to tackle, leave it in the comments or drop me an email on RozMorrisWriter at gmail dotcom.

Peter Shaffer, my earliest muse – how we create the infinite

I’m not good at nominating favourites. I find the question too complicated to answer so absolutely. For instance, a favourite book? Favourite in what subset of a subset? It’s like comparing apples to aardvarks. But I do have a few authors I’m wholeheartedly absolute about, and one of them is Peter Shaffer, whose death was announced today. I thought I’d dig out this piece as a tribute.

First published at For Books’ Sake, October 2011

We create the infinite: my favourite 3 fictional characters when I was 16

Francisco Pizarro. Dr Martin Dysart. Antonio Salieri.

This trio of unhappy protagonists crossed my desk many years ago in English class. An illiterate Spanish general. A burnt-out psychiatrist. A composer in the Habsburg court. Two are historical, but I met them in fictional form in three dramas by Peter Shaffer – The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus and Amadeus. Disillusioned antiheroes kicking themselves for bad lives, and confronted by startlingly peculiar chances for redemption; perfect for darkly brooding A-level students.

General Francisco Pizarro, leader of the Conquistadors, is on a mission to capture the city of the Incas for the glory of Spain and the Catholic Church. He’s an unusual choice as commander, being the illegitimate son of a pigherd – and illiterate to boot. His whole life has been driven by a need to prove himself, and to his men he’s a hero. But Pizarro sees nothing worthwhile in himself. He’s disgusted by the blood he’s shed and the Catholic faith he has killed for.

His mission to find the Inca city of gold is a work of spite, proof that a pigman can win fame and riches before he dies – but even that will be scant comfort for the fear that needles his soul. But as well as gold, he finds Atahuallpa, god-king of the Incas.

Pizarro is drawn to the dignified, aloof creature. Atahuallpa has absolute belief in his nature as a god, putting to shame the Catholic priests who are hypocritical, brutal and self-serving. The Inca king is almost Pizarro’s twin in circumstance. He was illegitimate and killed his own brother in order to take the kingdom. Self-made and brave, he is, in short, Pizarro himself – but complete.

Pizarro’s men sentence Atahuallpa to death. Pizarro fights to keep him alive, but Atahuallpa senses what his friend needs and promises to rise again if he is executed. With little other choice, Pizarro allows him to be strangled. When the sun rises we watch in fervent hope that it will revive him, but Atahuallpa remains still. The world shrinks back to flesh, blood and murder. A lifetime’s mistakes, gravitationally condensed as tight as a neutron star. We have seen something strange, transforming and ungraspable.

At the age of 16, I’d gobbled a lot of powerful stories but this was the first that descended on a bolt of lightning. Possibly it was because my school was obsessively religious. We were crammed to pass divinity O level, and made to sit it again if we failed. I got the grade as an academic duty but was disappointed with the subject and its blind spots – including the exclusion of all religions beyond Christianity. Then along came this play, where a man who needs a god meets a man who might be one. It turns out they’re nothing but men, but nevertheless we feel the power of the infinite.

At that moment I realised I too had an unshakeable belief – in human beings, what we create and how we scare and heal each other.

And most specially in the artists and writers who could give us such experiences.

Equus followed the same pattern as The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Dr Martin Dysart is another jaded, repressed soul confronted by a passionate, otherwordly innocent. His patient, Alan Strang, has blinded a stable of horses, driven by a profound, primitive worship he has fashioned for himself after a terrifying encounter with a magnificent steed. Dysart’s mission to treat Alan’s delusions and normalise him is how he has sterilised his whole life.

And Antonio Salieri in Amadeus has dedicated himself to composing music. Along comes Mozart – uncouth, rude and effortlessly gifted – and much better at being alive. True to Shaffer form, Salieri destroys him.

Writing this post, I realise how many of those synapses are still smoking. My first novel, My Memories of a Future Life, is about the phenomenon of past-life regression, where you touch into the life you lived before. The romantic in me wants reincarnation to be true, but the scientific half can see reasons why it isn’t. The story is set in the world of classical music, where players seem to be channelling the spirit of the composer. Also, if there was ever any evidence for man being touched by the transcendental infinite, music must be it. I wrote that whole book without realising that Mr Shaffer was secretly at the controls.

Invented gods. Past lives. Future lives. Whatever the explanations, these are wondrous creations, and so is what we do with them. ‘Account for me,’ says Equus’s Dr Dysart, confronting what he’s seen. In my own accounting, I owe a great debt to Mr Shaffer.

I invented you, honest. An author’s apology to a blameless town

I’ve nearly finished the second run-through of Ever Rest, and now I know the characters well, I can flesh out details that I’d previously left vague, such as where they live and what I want that to suggest. But this brings certain hazards, as I found when I published my first novel. I thought you might like this post from my archives, originally penned for Authors Electric.

…………….

It’s a funny thing, releasing a novel. You think you’ve made everything up, then someone informs you that it’s not as fictional as you’d hoped.

And moreover, you got it wrong.

Like the time when I received an email telling me the fusty village where I’d set the action in My Memories of a Future Life was not spelled Vellonoweth but Vellanoweth.

‘No it’s not,’ I replied, thinking my correspondent had a cheek. ‘I made it up.’

‘It’s near Penzance,’ he said.

Oh dear. It was.

I honestly had no idea the place existed. My Vellonoweth, with an o, was inspired by a stand-out surname I spotted in a magazine. It embodied everything I needed for my setting – a fusty, sleepy hell full of dreary people. If I used a real town I couldn’t take it to the stifling depths I needed.

But it turns out there is a real Vellanoweth. So I may have some apologising to do. Here it is.

1. I’m sorry I gave you a terrible amateur dramatics society, which was performing a musical they’d written themselves about a lost hat.

2. I’m sorry I gave you so many atrocious singers and musicians and I’m sorry my narrator didn’t find that endearing.

3. I’m sorry your only watering hole was the Havishamesque and immense Railway Hotel with its curry-coloured carpets and paintwork like melted royal icing. In earlier drafts it was much worse so I’ve spared you a lot.

4. I’m sorry I gave you a dismal 1950s high street with concrete shoebox buildings.

5. I’m sorry I made it rain most of the time, which made the precinct even more depressing.

6. I’m sorry about the spiritualists.

7. I’m sorry no one could pick up TV or radio, except for the barmy local station in the old wartime fort which most of the time played industrial whalesong.

8. I’m sorry the electricity supply was as bad as the weather and the singers. But on the plus side I did give you a decommissioned nuclear power station which attracts more tourists than Glastonbury Tor and allows the locals to sell home-made radiation detection badges. See, it wasn’t all bad.

9. I’m sorry the people I despatched to this hell from London behaved so bizarrely and upset these good folk, who as you can see had enough to contend with.

On the other hand, as the novel is about other lives, perhaps you’ll enjoy Vellanoweth’s literary alter ego. To allow some respite, I did give you the neighbouring towns of Nowethland and Ixendon. If they really exist I’ll eat my atlas.

Yours sincerely, Roz

(Thank you for the pictures, Recoverling, Hydra Arts, Angelhead and Abode of Chaos)

Have you ever invented a place or a character and later discovered it was real? Have friends or family members ever spotted themselves in one of your stories, or imagined they have? Confess in the comments.

How I cope with writers’ RSI – and when your books come back to haunt you

It was final revision time on Lifeform Three. I’d been living at the computer, desperate to spend every moment with my book. And one morning I woke up unable to move my right arm.

To be truthful, I could move it, but it hurt so much I preferred not to. Reaching for my glasses left me a gasping wreck. Keeping still wasn’t much better. I’d felt it nagging the previous day, but never thought it could turn into this.

The repetitive strain injury was back.

In a way it seemed like divine retribution. In my first novel My Memories of a Future Life, I inflicted a cruel case of RSI on a concert pianist. And now it seemed that some deity that sat on the interface between art and life had thought it would be very fine to dump the same fate on me – and right when I needed my fingers most.

In my defence, I hadn’t used the RSI device glibly. Its details didn’t come from comfy googling.

They were earned.

Ouch

My RSI journey began when I became a sub-editor in the 1990s, when desktop publishing loused up a lot of limbs and livelihoods. I’ve battled this keyboarder’s curse ever since.

In some ways, I was kind to Carol, my concert pianist protagonist. Although I gave her my gruesome medical tests, I spared her the acupuncture.

Wait, are you thinking acupuncture is benign? Do you imagine it’s like being stroked by a healing Chinese butterfly? No. It is not. When the therapist needled my painful nerves, they hurt even more. (He was perplexed, though, and probably suspected I was a wuss. I thought he was an idiot. If you poke painful parts with needles, don’t you expect they will hurt?)

I also spared Carol the buzz needles – this is acupuncture jollied along by voltage from a car battery. Meanwhile my journalist colleagues told (possibly tall?) tales of being put on racks to pull their necks straight. But in our gallery of horrors, buzz needles trumped traction; hands down.

After a year of these random tortures I said stop. The publisher paid for ergonomic chairs and such, and I think these have kept me typing over the years.

So this is the advice I’d pass on to a fellow sufferer

• Posture and straightness are important – I got a kneeling chair, because it makes you sit upright as though poised on a horse. (It’s good for horse-riders too, if lifeform threes are your thing.)
• I learned to touch type, fluttering across the keys instead of stabbing them in my own peculiar pattern. (I rather missed my invented fingering, though. It felt more expressive than the ‘correct’ way.)
• Some RSI is caused by muscle wastage, which means nerves aren’t as padded as they should be. I certainly found relief by lifting considerable weights in Body Pump classes. After a bad bout two years ago I bought a split ergonomic keyboard (this is the make I use) and joystick mouse (like this).
• Screen breaks are sensible, if I remember them. I’m not always sensible.
• It helps to put the strain on different muscle groups. If my neck starts to rebel, I jack the monitor up to a different height. Hooray for Time-Life books.

Some people use dictation software. As a sub-editor, that was never an option for me and it’s no good for manuscript doctoring either. As a writer, it might do for drafting, but the vast majority of my creative writing is done in the edits. Like a masseur, I think through my fingers. I can’t imagine editing hands free.

I also can’t imagine how anyone can write lolling at their laptops in bed, as we see in the movies.

But sometimes all the ergonomic wisdom in the world doesn’t help me, so I go to the bad side. I get my notebook computer, put it on my knee and hunch over. A few days contorted like that gives the overused muscles a break and they recover. Or they have so far.

So these are the ways I can carry on. But a musician, like Carol in my novel, has no other way. It’s piano or nothing, and the pain of that is worse than anything physical.

Back to haunt you

We novelists have a cruel side. We’re ruthless enough to create exquisite tortures – and sensitive enough to appreciate what they are doing. When I was writing that novel I would wake at night, telling myself these questions were not to be treated lightly, asking how I would feel if I had to face them. I know I’m earning more bad karma for what I’m doing in Ever Rest.

I soldier on, bludgeoning the RSI when I have to, so that I can continue to do my own version of playing an instrument. I hope I never have to be really brave, the way I force my characters to be.

(thanks for the pic Lizspikol. This post originally appeared on the Authors Electric blog)

Do you get RSI – and what do you do about it? How bad are you to your characters? Are you grateful you don’t have to live their lives?

PS Ever Rest is now finished and you can get a sneak preview in my newsletter here.

2 days to get 7-novel box set – the band is about to split

Remember us?

The band is about to split. Our magnificent seven will soon scatter. The box set containing our seven novels will evaporate at the stroke of midnight BST on Saturday 23 May.

We might even resume our normal colours.

Here’s a post that explains the box set experiment. Here’s one where we were asked just what kind of political statement we thought we were making. And, in case you feel like tackling a similar venture, here’s one where we explain lessons learned.

And here’s what it’s all about:

And here’s a pretty thingy to watch

So, for the final time, you can get the box set on all ebook platforms here.

And in the meantime, I’m taking a blogging break this weekend, but I’ll be back with The Undercover Soundtrack as usual. See you there.

‘Music for looking into the past’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Audrina Lane

My guest this week brings a real blast of the 1980s, with a bright red emphasis on romance (I guess it’s that time of year). She drew on the soundtrack of her adolescent years to create the love-torn characters in her novel, and the heart of the story beats to George Michael, Berlin and Patrick Swayze. She is Audrina Lane and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.

‘Music for tragedy, coming of age, romance’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Karen Wojcik Berner

My guest this week says she was a singer long before she was a writer, and when she started writing, music was a natural place to find story inspiration. She writes a series of novels based around the members of a book club, and many of the titles and characters come from tracks that have been special to her. I took unashamed pleasure in seeing Icicle Works and Peter Gabriel make an appearance – the latter with Sinead O’Connor (gasp). And one of her books was inspired by a track by Indigo Girls, which talks about reincarnation and the soul reinventing – possibly a familiar idea to longtime visitors here. Anyway, she is award-winning journalist and contemporary women’s fiction author Karen Wojcik Berner and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.

‘Music is the undertow to what I am writing’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Davina Blake

My guest this week is one of those many writers who values silence – but is keenly aware that music is influencing what comes out on the page. She describes how music acts as a portal, letting her access moods and mental states in order to recreate them faithfully in her fiction. She describes trying to capture a state of longing and nostalgia, but without sentimentality and the soundtrack she shares here is such a treat: a Gershwin cover by Kate Bush; a Purcell lament sung by Alison Moyet. If you follow my show on Surrey Hills Radio you might hear me finding an excuse to give them airplay sometime soon. Anyway, this imaginative guest is wartime romance author Davina Blake (who also writes historical novels as Deborah Swift), and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.

‘A sequence of notes to transport you to a time and place’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Debbie Bennett

My guest this week says she was always secretly a rock chick, and has provided pictorial evidence to prove it. When she turned her creative impulses to writing, music helped create the mood and tone. She writes gritty crime with a heavy dose of psychological thriller, and drew on a aural landscape of Alice Cooper, Soul Asylum, Bon Jovi and Skid Row. She is Debbie Bennett and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.