John Dickinson

Pick up a book that you wrote yourself, oh, about five years ago or more. Look at the cover (no problem, you’re used to that.) Look at the book sideways. There’s tens of thousands of words in there. You wrote them all.

Now…

Do you dare read it?

It’s horrible. It’s like wading out into an icy lake with the chill creeping up your body. You go slowly – so very slowly - and every line is agony. Who wrote this stuff? Could it really be you? You did this. How on Earth did you think you could get away with it? The lines are… (1) The dialogue is … (2) What you’re looking at seems to be the work of a tyro. Or possibly a madman. Ugh.

Actors, I am told, hate watching themselves on screen. The way they get through it is to look at everybody in the scene except themselves. The author, unfortunately, has no one else to watch. There’s no escaping what you’ve done. You must either put it back on the shelf, or plunge in.

But if you can plunge in (back to that icy lake again) you find after a bit that it’s not so bad. You stop noticing those mannerisms of yours that to begin with were so off-putting, and that most other readers were never bothered by and may not even have noticed in the first place. You might start enjoying the scenery. This isn’t half bad, after all, you may think. Not half bad at all. Some of it, anyway. You could almost forgive yourself.

And it wouldn’t be that surprising if, after a bit, you did surprise yourself. Some of it will be bloody brilliant.

(1) insert appropriate descriptor here. If these days you favour short, stark sentences, insert ‘gross’ or ‘florid’. If vice versa, insert ‘infantile’ etc.
(2) as for (1) but ‘fake’ probably covers all possibilities.

You can kill people in droves and it’s expected. But you won’t get away with underage sex or racial discrimination unless you write it strictly from the victim’s point of view. It’s easy to sell a story about a little person who takes on a big organisation. It’s a lot harder to do one in which the organisation turns out to be right and the little person wrong. Pictures from the famine camps should show us starving children, but not the ones who have already died. We don’t want it. We, the consumers, censor both what the story is and how it may be told.

Why shouldn’t we? Some thoughts can be truly dangerous if written down. Even where they aren’t, a bit of censorship can still be a good thing. It challenges our storytellers to use their wits, rather than just telling things the obvious but lazy way. And we do actually expect storytellers (in all their forms) to push a bit beyond what’s normal and accepted. It is their job to take our imaginations to places where it is not safe for our bodies to be. They let us think ourselves into dramatic situations without the risk of getting into them for real. We may even allow a writer who shocks us to be newsworthy, that is, to become a story themselves.

But storytellers have only a very little power. They have to appeal to things that are already in our minds. They can’t make us go where we don’t want to go. Whether they are peddling fact or fiction, they must massage our emotions in pleasing ways. We are ready to weep, so long as we can feel uplifted by the weeping. We want to imagine ourselves coming into power, gaining riches, lying in the arms of another human who is beautiful. We like the little-person-against-the-big-machine story because it lets us see ourselves triumphing against the world that keeps us down. And we love stories about people we all know and whom we can gossip about – celebrities whose success we can somehow share by reading about it, and whose failures and foibles we can spit upon as we pass them humiliated in the gutter. ‘You thought you were better than us, didn’t you?’

So I’m with those who say: you can blame the press, but don’t forget who was buying the newspapers. I’ll go further. Why is political debate so nauseatingly sterile? Because we like ‘pompous ass makes fool of self’ stories much more than we do ‘life is terribly complicated and if you want something to change you’ve got to accept the consequences’. So a politician in front of a microphone simply cannot afford to take risks. And if you ever get depressed about the number of books in which young heroine falls in love with beautiful monster who wants to suck her blood – well, you’ve just got to accept that some stories are stronger than others. They’re the ones that tell us what we want to hear.

So back in April I tossed that map of the new novel to the winds, shouted ‘Yee-hah’ and charged off into writing it anyway. So how did that work? Well…

The first thing that happened, once I was round the corner and out of sight from the cheering crowds, was that I sat down and tried to draw myself a bit more map. Sure, I said to the fiery champing stallion of my creativity, we’re going to go on a charge. But this time, let’s just think exactly where you’ll be putting those feet of yours so that you can carry me flying to the finish in one glorious gallop. We don’t want to end up in the swamp again, do we?

Besides, you don’t look so much like a fiery champing stallion at the moment. You look more like a stray from the Donkey Sanctuary who’s only too glad of a bit of creative procrastination. So let me plan. Your time will come.

The Planning Department said Not Fair. They’d done their stuff already and didn’t see why there had to be more. Strike action threatened.

Fiery steed said of course he could charge, if I really wanted. It was just that right now didn’t particularly feel like it.

The Anti-Procrastination Police went to look for their whip.

Negotiations broke down, the Planning reps walked out and the APP found their whip in Lost Property. Self and Stallion looked at each other: ‘Swamp?’ ‘Swamp.’

And here we are.

The going is slow and sticky. A pitifully small number of words get written each day. Some days there’s a little leap onwards from the last bit I wrote. This is the writer’s equivalent of jumping over a ditch: I know what I want to happen in the gap, but I’ve no idea how to do it. Not yet. I’ll be back to sort it out later. In the meantime, gotta keep going. ‘Keep going’ is what matters. And as for that fiery steed – he’s not much use in the swamp. It’s not him carrying me, in here. It’s more the other way around.

Keep going. We’ve been here before.

We know that at some point these mists will lift. The way will clear and we will be running – yes, galloping - over the broad uplands towards the finish. We will write ‘The End.’ We will cheer and award ourselves homecoming treats. And then we go back along the muddy trail we have left, cutting the corners, hammering in the signs, building the bridges, the street lighting, the metalled highway along which readers will speed in joyous career, never guessing with how much labour and loss this route was first laid.

(Enough metaphor for one week. But all my writing happens like this, and every writer will know what I mean.)

Lauren asked how long it takes to write a book.  She had heard two years.

It takes as long as you take to write it, Lauren.   Which depends on several things.

-    How long the book is.  My shortest to date is 40,000 words.  My longest is 150,000.  That’s a difference of three or four times the length to start with.  And some writers go on for hundreds of thousands of words.

-    How much care you want to take over writing it.  No sneering here: there are a lot of bad reasons for taking a long time over writing.  And it IS possible to write a 100,000 words in six weeks.  But it usually shows if you do.  Some writers take ten years, carefully and painstakingly going over the text, waiting patiently for the ideas to emerge from their little dark burrows.  They take all that care over their work. I’d say that shows too.

-    When you think you’ve finished.  Which is quite hard to say.  Granted, a book that’s published and out there is almost certainly finished, but even that’s not always sure.  If it isn’t published – if it went out and got rejected and its ghost still haunts your disk drive – why, who’s to say that you might not start over again?

These unhelpful thoughts aside, I’d say that since I gave up my career I’ve produced, on average, about one book a year in a form that I thought was ‘finished’.  That’s slower than many authors, and certainly not as fast as some people say you need to produce if you want to be successful as a writer of light fiction.   On the other hand it seems to be plenty fast enough for my editor, thank you, who has been good enough to publish five of them and may yet be persuaded to do one or two more.  And it’s a lot faster than I managed while I was a civil servant (three books in seventeen years, writing in fits and starts as it pleased me.)

Could I be faster?  Yes I could.  Would it be any better for me if I were?  I doubt it.  Certainly I don’t think my writing would be better.  That counts with me.

Every two years my old school holds a careers fair. They write to those of their alumni who are known to have careers and invite us to come and tell the boys about what we do. If you arrive early enough, they add, there’s a free lunch.

We come. Those of us who have done this before know that it is fun to do. (We also know that the lunch is quite good.) The lawyers and engineers turn out in truck loads. I am astonished to discover how many different types of engineer it is possible to be. There are doctors, psychiatrists, the armed forces, financial services, gap year excursion organisers, a music agent, a couple of guys from TV companies and a man who is now a most eminent astronomer but whom I know - because I was an accomplice - to have mis-spent much of his school days in Napoleonic wargaming. There is also one author.

(Knowing my school as I do I should have expected a strong team of investment bankers, but for some reason there aren’t any this year. There aren’t any accountants either, which is astonishing. I assume that the bankers are still hiding and that the accountants know where the food is even better.)

The rest of us take up our positions at our little desks around the central atrium and the boys are released into us in batches through a long afternoon. Some of them make a bee-line for a specific career. Most drift uncertainly past the tables. They glance down at the books I’ve scattered on mine to prove that an author is what I really am, and then they drift on again. The trick is to nail one with your eye and start talking. Once you get the first, the crowd forms around you just as if you were a street artist. And you can keep going for as long as you have any voice left.

They’re interested. (Who after all, wants to be a banker? Dad’s a banker and he’s still hiding in the cellar.) And they do quite a lot of writing at this school: mostly short stories, for which there are organised competitions. Some are working on playscripts or even poetry. ‘I’d like to be a writer,’ one says, ‘but my careers adviser says it’s a hobby, not a career.’

Deep breath. This is what I’m here for.

It can be a career, I say. But there are some things you need to know.

And I talk about the money (or lack of it), the security (or lack of it), and maybe also a bit about the odds against any one piece being accepted for publication. I talk about having a regular job, and how far that can be combined with writing, and the differences it made to me when I left the civil service to follow a writing career. ‘Anyone here want to get rich?’ I cry, several times during the afternoon. ‘Then go somewhere else!’ Go and talk to the lawyers and the engineers. The best I can say for myself is that I have a deal on my next book. As an author, I am alive for a little bit longer.

I’m not here to turn anyone off writing. Creative writing is a holy thing, to authors and schools alike. If you enjoy it, if you feel you do it well, then you must go on doing it. But if you want to be an author, take a good look at the Ancient Mariner here. That’s why they’ve given me lunch.

‘Books are like autumn leaves’ my father says.  ‘They lie on the ground, and maybe they are beautiful.  But they are soon hidden under the layers that come after them.’

There’s a melancholy thought.  Books should last – especially the ones we have written ourselves.  We spend so much effort on them, we feel they should be forever.  They should be like Mansfield Park and Treasure Island, entertaining for generations.  But the excitement of launch is quickly lost.   The reviewers (if we got any reviews) turn to other books. The chatter is about other things.  Have you read this?  Not yet.  Have you read that?  No, I’m sorry - I will try. But This and That will soon be covered in their turn.   From time to time someone may tell you how much they’ve enjoyed what you’ve written.  Others will remember a scene and frown, thinking  – where did I read that?  All the while the leaves are falling.

If you take a leaf home and spray it with liquid gold, it will last forever.  Is it still a leaf?  We do need a few books like Mansfield Park and Treasure Island.  These are things we can all share and talk about and watch the re-makes when they come round.  But we also want new stories, all the time, more and more and more of them, and mostly we want them to be new versions of the same old themes, only told in new voices and with new twists.  Their transience is necessary.  If all books lasted forever there would be no room for renewal.

I could never make a leaf.  They are complex, delicate things.  But they’re being made all the same.  It’s the tail end of February now.  There’s a fuzz on the alders that wasn’t there a week ago.

Better get writing.

So your partner has become an author. Congratulations. This may not have been your choice but congratulations anyway. With a little attention an author can be a rewarding companion as well as a curiosity and a conversation piece. But there are just a few things you need to know.

1) If you do not already have a paying job, you may need to get one. Do not imagine the future will be fame, fat royalties and film contracts. That sort of thing only happens to other people.

2) If your author greets you with a big smile and the news that they have written x000 words, it is unkind to remind them what they said the other day about how little reward is related to effort in this profession. Coo adoringly and tell them how clever they are. (If on the other hand your author does not offer to tell you what they have achieved, do not press them. Very probably they have no idea.)

3) Authors spend a lot of time in their own heads and may pay little or no attention to the outside world. This can be frustrating for those who share their lives. Learn to recognise the signs. Muttering, pacing about and seemingly random activity such as unstacking dirty plates from a dishwasher that has not yet run probably means that something creative is happening in there and it’s best not to disturb. Just restack dishwasher when they have moved to loading the cat into the tumble-dryer. On the other hand, if they are drifting around the house with a vacant expression this may mean that their thoughts have got lost somewhere inside their skulls and they need help to get out. Try saying things like ‘Shall we watch the news now?’ or ‘Would you like a hand with supper?’ In extreme cases, shake, slap or announce casually that you have put the computer on e-Bay. That ought to do it.

4) Authors, particularly male ones, may neglect their grooming. It is best to keep an eye on this because once things slip they can slip a long way. Deal with it while the products you need are still in the realm of the pharmacy. If you have to resort to the garden centre it is probably too late. But also be realistic. Your author is never going to be a fashion accessory.

5) At some point your author will produce their latest typescript. This is a delicate moment. You are now about to discover who it is they have spent their last few months with. If you find, for example, that your author has involved themselves with romantic interest of a particularly dashing or beautiful variety, it is best to read nothing into this. Really it is. Similarly, if you encounter hot love-scenes that bear no resemblance to anything - so far as you can remember - that your author has ever experienced, just assume that they have lifted these lines verbatim from the work of some other author. Almost certainly, that is what they will have done. (And that other author will have done same. And ditto, and ditto.)

6) Criticism. This can be a difficult one. Authors’ egos are fragile things and must be carefully nurtured. Bear in mind, however, that the publishing world is full of meaningless hyperbole and that your author will be at least dimly aware of this. Phrases such as ‘I like it’ will be taken to mean no more than ‘I have managed to read the first three pages without gagging’ etc. Say what it is you like about the book, and you had better mean it. Do not be shy of pointing out weaknesses either – your author will be grateful for this. At least, they should be. Above all, leave them wanting to go on writing. If this is not possible then it is probably kindest to have them put down.

7) Final thought. Do not breed from your author. One in the family is quite enough.

I was sharing a corner of the RHCB Christmas Party with the writer John Dougherty, sheltering from exploding glasses and from the crowds of other writers whose books I ought to have read but hadn’t. We’d got as far as agreeing that today’s young readers preferred stories that were much more pacey and quickfire than the ones we had enjoyed in our childhoods. Therefore, I said, I ought not to worry if the stuff that I’m writing seemed to me rather hurried. It was what today’s child wanted, wasn’t it?

John wouldn’t go so far. It might be what they wanted, but that didn’t mean we should always be writing it. He recalled studies on the effects of shortening attention spans on children’s intellectual development. There was a trend here to be resisted. It was good for children to read stories that demanded concentration.

Well, yes, I said. But won’t they need to hop quickly from subject to subject? Many working environments are fast, multi-tasking places. Think of your average office. I swear that the hours I had spent shooting down space invaders were just as much help to me when I was an office worker as any amount of time I had put into carefully-researched essays on medieval history.

Ah, said John. But… And he talked about further studies which showed that the butterfly mind does less well in a multi-tasking environment than the mind that is a focused beam. John is a former teacher who thinks deeply about the relationship between teaching and writing. And there’s a time when even I give up arguing with people who know more than I do. Especially when I’m in a room with a hundred other people and am having to shout to make myself heard.

Writers are entertainers, not teachers. Even more than teachers, they part from their audience at their peril. But the best stories should be about more than entertainment. They affect the way we think. They give us models to follow and ways of understanding the world. A story-teller who is not, at some level, saying to the audience I want you to think about this is an empty vessel. If the story teller is good, maybe they will listen. But is the thought a good one? The usual test is ‘do enough of us (adults) agree with it?’ Yet no one can really be sure. Whole generations can be wrong. Or at least, they can fail to see how the world is changing.

Marite, a student in Mexico, asked me if I go through an endless chain of emotions during writing.

I don’t know. Do I?

Surely I do! I am an artist, and should be consumed by the emotions! Endlessly. I should be a seething, nay, gibbering mass of creativity, and my soul should be white-hot agony like molten metal that I pour out into my works! Er…

There’s one emotion that’s very common. All together, writers? One two, three – Frustration. When you hunt for words and can’t find them. When the feelings you started with have become the limping, inadequate sentences that you have managed to put on the page. The mists of self confidence depart. You are in a desert. The horizon is barren. And (sob!) such a long way off.

If writers could get paid for self-pity we’d all be millionaires.

All right. Seriously then, yes of course I feel emotions, especially when I am first planning the novel. I experience the highs and lows I want to evoke in my reader. If I didn’t, I could hardly begin. But I don’t feel them all the time.

Mostly it’s just a job, line after line, hour after hour. You write tragedy when you’re feeling cynical, high drama when you’re nursing a hangover and romance when you know the cat’s just left a mess on the carpet. That’s what it’s like. Emotion will show you the horizon, but it can’t get you there. The only way you do it is one word at a time. Craftsmanship. Patience. Dull plod, plod, plod. Don’t look up too often. Don’t go chasing off after that high. In the way of these things, if you keep plodding long enough, then maybe the high will come to you.

Wham! Half-way through a morning, something catches fire. The words are flowing out of you, and you are living what’s happening on the page. It’s a good feeling. The passage you’re writing now will need little or no editing, and will always be for you one of the best in the book.

Yes, but the feeling doesn’t last. The scene ends, a new one begins. You don’t know quite how to handle it. There’s also the shopping to be done, supper to be cooked and cat-mess still to be cleaned off the carpet. Tomorrow you will have to start again. And maybe, yes, you’ll be lucky. Maybe the spark will come and visit you. Don’t plan on it. Just keep plodding, and see.

Perils lie in wait for the writer who surfs to find out what people are saying about his book. They can be saying all kinds of things. With a single click you pass from a page of happy reading to one on which the very words themselves have jaws. Your plot is weak. Your characters are wooden. Your writing, even worse. This author, you understand, has condemned both himself and every soul who, however innocently, turns a single page of his…

How can this be? Is this really about the same book of which reviewer A particularly praised the plot development, and bloggers B and C (blessings upon them) wrote of the flawed, believable characters and the crystal–clear prose? Yes, it is.

And who is that guy? An unhappy fellow writer? Or is it Godzilla, who has somehow found three extra braincells and a keyboard? Don’t know. You left the page without even getting as far as the signature.

As the shock fades, other emotions replace it. Each suggest their own response. In order, they are:

1) Attack - with tooth and claw! Write him such things (what they are, yet I know not) that they shall be the terrors… Never mind if he is Godzilla - kill first and weigh him afterwards…

Ahem.

There are few sights more pathetic than an author gone hysterical in defence of his own writing. Don’t do it, chum. You’ll just look a fool. It’s exactly what the guy wants. Besides, he might actually be Godzilla. Ever think of that?

2) Peace be upon you, my child. Write a measured, reasoned, courteous response, carefully explaining that you accept the right of all readers to make what they will of what they read, and then point out, in one or two specific instances…. Thus proving that you are wise and benevolent and …

Well. I have gone back once or twice to reviewers whose criticism was balanced and with whom I felt it would be possible to have an intelligent dialogue. And I have received equally courteous replies. But really, nothing you write afterwards can say more about the book than the book itself. You publish, you get what’s coming. Including the guy who wants a reputation and who thinks that ‘incisive’ is spelt with an axe. Be thankful, therefore, that you are published. And know that the best response is

3) Silence.

Stat opus dum volvitur orbis.