When I set out for Holland 4 weeks ago I intended to write at least 1,000 words per day of my new novel, but really wanted to write the novel in 30 days. However, I only have 16,500 words and the novel is nowhere near finished its first draft. So did I fail and am I a failure? Certainly not.
Setting targets gives me something to focus on, creating deadlines provides me with a timescale in which to achieve them, but they are all set by me. If I don't make them I'm not losing or missing out. It's not that I don't work hard, am lazy or less creative, it simply means that I'm either problem-solving or life has intervened. In this case both are true; I'm letting my ideas percolate, catching up on things that have accumulated during my absence and decorating a bedroom for a friend who is coming to stay for a while.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
"Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two"
Often I don't do that. I let the previous day intrude into the present and beat myself up about not achieving my targets, then I can't sleep properly and the cycle continues. This time I'm making a conscious effort to live each day in its entirety and let it go before I fall asleep. It's meant I haven't managed to get back to writing the novel yet, but I'm taking care of what needs to be done today so that tomorrow is a clean slate. I'll be writing again soon, so see you then.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Friday, 25 October 2013
Progress Report
I've nothing to report today as I'm getting ready to fly home. However, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of quotes from John Updike:
John Updike –Self-consciousness
Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we
wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one
could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time? It is even
possible to dislike our old selves, those disposable ancestors of ours. For
instance, my high-school self — skinny, scabby, giggly, gabby, frantic to be
noticed, tormented enough to be a tormentor, relentlessly pushing his cartoons
and posters and noisy jokes and pseudo-sophisticated poems upon the helpless
high school — strikes me now as considerably obnoxious, though I owe him a lot:
without his frantic ambition and insecurity I would not be sitting on (as my
present home was named by others) Haven Hill....
Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a
presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable.
That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both
unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. In
the morning light one can write breezily, without the slight acceleration of
one’s pulse, about what one cannot contemplate in the dark without turning in
panic to God. In the dark one truly feels that immense sliding, that turning of
the vast earth into darkness and eternal cold, taking with it all the furniture
and scenery, and the bright distractions and warm touches, of our lives. Even
the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our
personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting,
prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Progress
Progress is slow at the moment. I've been trying to immerse myself in the world of the novel that I'm trying to create and that's involved a lot of reading and watching documentaries and DVDs. Sometimes I find it hard not to write all the information and research that I've absorbed - the last thing I want is for the research to be obvious and stick out from the rest of the novel. I've read some books where the attention to detail of some things is so great and long that I lose the thread of the story. I don't want to do that. To avoid that pitfall, I have to let the info settle and percolate so that when I start writing again, it reads more natural as if coming from acquired knowledge, not from Wikipaedia or YouTube.
I want to understand what it must have been like for peasants in China when communism was first introduced and how all their dreams and aspirations for prosperity and change crumbled over time. How ideals were betrayed and what started out as salvation for many became their biggest nightmare. How young people could be manipulated to become agents of change to do Mao's dirty work, and what they felt about their actions now, as older citizens having lived through such turmoil.
I've always been interested in psychology and the reasons why people do the things they do. Even when those things are appalling. Cults and religious sects have always intrigued me, as has 'brainwashing' and propaganda: how children can be used to turn against their parents; how adults can turn a blind eye, particularly if someone else says that they will take responsibility; what it is about some people that gives them the strength to stand alone for what they believe in. Human beings are a complicated species and decisions to do the right thing, betray someone, or pretend 'not to see' are all decisions that are made irrespective of intelligence or race. But the most dangerous of the species are those with nothing left to lose.
It's easy to judge others if you've not been in their situation, so my challenge is how to write about the dark side of people's characters without turning them into monsters or appearing to excuse their actions. I have to absorb the world they live in, try to experience their hopes and dreams, feel what it's like to be betrayed and angry, to lash out and take revenge. We are all capable of cruelty and murder. We are all capable of torturing someone to get information if it meant protecting our families. Being capable doesn't mean we'd do it, it means that there is something there, inside us, to draw upon when trying to imagine characters and what makes them tick. We just have to dig deep to find it, to acknowledge our own darkness, and in that we can not only become better writers but better people.
I want to understand what it must have been like for peasants in China when communism was first introduced and how all their dreams and aspirations for prosperity and change crumbled over time. How ideals were betrayed and what started out as salvation for many became their biggest nightmare. How young people could be manipulated to become agents of change to do Mao's dirty work, and what they felt about their actions now, as older citizens having lived through such turmoil.
I've always been interested in psychology and the reasons why people do the things they do. Even when those things are appalling. Cults and religious sects have always intrigued me, as has 'brainwashing' and propaganda: how children can be used to turn against their parents; how adults can turn a blind eye, particularly if someone else says that they will take responsibility; what it is about some people that gives them the strength to stand alone for what they believe in. Human beings are a complicated species and decisions to do the right thing, betray someone, or pretend 'not to see' are all decisions that are made irrespective of intelligence or race. But the most dangerous of the species are those with nothing left to lose.
It's easy to judge others if you've not been in their situation, so my challenge is how to write about the dark side of people's characters without turning them into monsters or appearing to excuse their actions. I have to absorb the world they live in, try to experience their hopes and dreams, feel what it's like to be betrayed and angry, to lash out and take revenge. We are all capable of cruelty and murder. We are all capable of torturing someone to get information if it meant protecting our families. Being capable doesn't mean we'd do it, it means that there is something there, inside us, to draw upon when trying to imagine characters and what makes them tick. We just have to dig deep to find it, to acknowledge our own darkness, and in that we can not only become better writers but better people.
Sunday, 20 October 2013
Progress Day 10
Yesterday I watched over 4 hours of documentaries about Chinese political history from 1949 - 2011, Mao Zedong, his policies and what they meant for the people of China. By the end the names all swam together and the dates meant very little. However, having ruminated and slept on it I now have a sense of my antagonist and why he was driven to seek revenge. And in true Shakespearian style he goes on to commit murders to hide the initial ones. Now all I have to do now is write it.
But it's not quite as easy as that. I may have a plot and characters but one decision I haven't made yet is about narrative - who is going to tell the story and how are they going to tell it. Viewpoint is another - whose story is it? I have three strong characters - the police officer, the murderer and the outsider who helps solve the crime. At the moment my instincts tell me to write my scenes from each of their viewpoints till I get further into the novel and see where they take me, then I can decide what I want the reader to see and feel. It's not a satisfactory way of working for lots of people but I find that if I nail something down too quickly or too soon, then I have difficulty changing things later. It's much easier for me to initially be freer with the narrative and then when I have a light bulb moment I can settle on something.
Another decision still to make is about starting point. Do I begin with the discovery of the murders and then use flashbacks? do I chronologically move through the events? or do I start in the middle and fan out? My decision on that will depend on which approach creates the most tension and drama. At the moment starting with the discovery of the bodies seems the best approach, but as each murder was committed at different times over a 4-year period, information to the protagonists and the reader relies heavily on forensic evidence. I'm not a forensic scientist and don't just want to write a police procedural novel, so I have to stylistically and structurally find ways of allowing the reader to see what I want them to without giving anything away till the last chapter.
These are the decisions I'll need to make but at the moment I'm still finding my way through all the information and background material I've been assembling. I can move forward with scenes to tell a lot more about my characters and to further the plot but I have to let them settle, sleep on them a few times, discuss ideas with colleagues, experiment and so on until it feels right. Then the real writing begins. And when that happens, it's amazing.
But it's not quite as easy as that. I may have a plot and characters but one decision I haven't made yet is about narrative - who is going to tell the story and how are they going to tell it. Viewpoint is another - whose story is it? I have three strong characters - the police officer, the murderer and the outsider who helps solve the crime. At the moment my instincts tell me to write my scenes from each of their viewpoints till I get further into the novel and see where they take me, then I can decide what I want the reader to see and feel. It's not a satisfactory way of working for lots of people but I find that if I nail something down too quickly or too soon, then I have difficulty changing things later. It's much easier for me to initially be freer with the narrative and then when I have a light bulb moment I can settle on something.
Another decision still to make is about starting point. Do I begin with the discovery of the murders and then use flashbacks? do I chronologically move through the events? or do I start in the middle and fan out? My decision on that will depend on which approach creates the most tension and drama. At the moment starting with the discovery of the bodies seems the best approach, but as each murder was committed at different times over a 4-year period, information to the protagonists and the reader relies heavily on forensic evidence. I'm not a forensic scientist and don't just want to write a police procedural novel, so I have to stylistically and structurally find ways of allowing the reader to see what I want them to without giving anything away till the last chapter.
These are the decisions I'll need to make but at the moment I'm still finding my way through all the information and background material I've been assembling. I can move forward with scenes to tell a lot more about my characters and to further the plot but I have to let them settle, sleep on them a few times, discuss ideas with colleagues, experiment and so on until it feels right. Then the real writing begins. And when that happens, it's amazing.
Saturday, 19 October 2013
Progress days 8 and 9
Somedays it feels like I'm living in fog with my feet in a concrete block, at others I feel I have wings. It's been a concrete block couple of days but I've managed to think through parts of the plot that weren't working and have ditched them in favour of other ideas. I've kept a record of the old ideas in case I need to revisit them, but I'm much happier with the new state of affairs.
So what has been causing so many problems?
Being overly ambitious and creating a scenario that works like juggling plates. I'm writing a crime novel about a serial killer and needed something to make my plot stand out from all the rest. So what did I do? I devised a series of nine murders over a space of 3 years and all the bodies are placed in a specific area to be found at the same time. I have a police officer with post natal depression and a specialist from Hong Kong working the case. The motivation for the murders was originally revenge but other factors take over and at the moment he gets away at the end in case I want to write a sequel. Easy-peasey eh?
Although this is my third novel, it's my first 'proper' crime novel and I'm well out of my comfort zone. I know little or nothing about Hing Kong, China or martial arts, so I've had to do a lot of extensive research alongside trying to get a manageable plot and believable characters. The hours and hours spent looking at satellite photos of Hong Kong and China to find suitable areas for my character to live in, eat, meet people/clients etc doesn't seem to justify the few lines I've written about them. Of course, I could make it all up. But having authentic details here and there is what I feel gives a novel credibility. It's a light touch, but the last thing I want is for someone who knows Hong Kong to throw the book down in disgust and say, 'She doesn't know what she's talking about.'
Am I being too ambitious? Would I have done better to have just a couple of bodies?
Probably. But I won't know till I'm finished whether it will have been worth having so many complications and twists until I'm done. Or undone. It's a way of stretching myself and pushing that bit harder to see what I'm capable of. I always layer my prose - get the storyline down first, check through for consistency of names and places then go through again to make sure the signposts are there, the little details that show rather than tell. Finally, when I'm happy with all that, I go through it again to check my prose and ensure it's more poetic than pedestrian before I pass it on to one of my readers for her feedback and to another for proof-reading. It's a long, long process, for me anyway, and with all the marketing and book signings and social media stuff you have to do once the book is published the return is zilch in terms of financial rewards. But I love it. I love the buzz I get when something goes right, when I think I've cracked a difficult plot point, when my characters speak to me and when I hold the finished product in my hand.
There's nothing like it.
So what has been causing so many problems?
Being overly ambitious and creating a scenario that works like juggling plates. I'm writing a crime novel about a serial killer and needed something to make my plot stand out from all the rest. So what did I do? I devised a series of nine murders over a space of 3 years and all the bodies are placed in a specific area to be found at the same time. I have a police officer with post natal depression and a specialist from Hong Kong working the case. The motivation for the murders was originally revenge but other factors take over and at the moment he gets away at the end in case I want to write a sequel. Easy-peasey eh?
Although this is my third novel, it's my first 'proper' crime novel and I'm well out of my comfort zone. I know little or nothing about Hing Kong, China or martial arts, so I've had to do a lot of extensive research alongside trying to get a manageable plot and believable characters. The hours and hours spent looking at satellite photos of Hong Kong and China to find suitable areas for my character to live in, eat, meet people/clients etc doesn't seem to justify the few lines I've written about them. Of course, I could make it all up. But having authentic details here and there is what I feel gives a novel credibility. It's a light touch, but the last thing I want is for someone who knows Hong Kong to throw the book down in disgust and say, 'She doesn't know what she's talking about.'
Am I being too ambitious? Would I have done better to have just a couple of bodies?
Probably. But I won't know till I'm finished whether it will have been worth having so many complications and twists until I'm done. Or undone. It's a way of stretching myself and pushing that bit harder to see what I'm capable of. I always layer my prose - get the storyline down first, check through for consistency of names and places then go through again to make sure the signposts are there, the little details that show rather than tell. Finally, when I'm happy with all that, I go through it again to check my prose and ensure it's more poetic than pedestrian before I pass it on to one of my readers for her feedback and to another for proof-reading. It's a long, long process, for me anyway, and with all the marketing and book signings and social media stuff you have to do once the book is published the return is zilch in terms of financial rewards. But I love it. I love the buzz I get when something goes right, when I think I've cracked a difficult plot point, when my characters speak to me and when I hold the finished product in my hand.
There's nothing like it.
Wednesday, 16 October 2013
Progress days 6 and 7
By the time I finish writing my daily quota I find I'm too tired and wrung out to write this blog, so my intention to do a post a day has sadly fallen by the wayside. I may be able to pick it up again later, but at the moment I'll take the pressure off myself and write when I can.
Some things are a lot easier to write than others. All of the creative process of inventing people and situations is draining, but getting into a murderer's head I'm finding particularly exhausting. My natural reaction is to make him 'acceptable', to be a flawed character not a psychotic beast. Finding that middle road, to present his as a man without empathy for his victims and no conscience, yet still be someone human, has been difficult.
There are many shades of murderer, from the bully whose tactics go wrong, to the child abuser, to the jealous lover, to the avenger, to the serial killer. My murderer is seeking revenge but ends up a serial killer. So the problem has been to get him from point A, his beginning, to point B when he's betrayed, to point C, his first murder, then to D when he's killing the rest. What psychology does he need to have to get him there? I'm still struggling with that one, but I have him growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China, joining the Red Guard as a child and over time being brutalized and de-sensitized, rather like the kids in the Hitler Youth and Khmer Rouge movements. It's hard to get into that mind set and I've spent a lot of time trying. My imagination can take me so far but I have to have something within my own experience to draw upon. For me, that means opening up the dark pockets, finding something appropriate and projecting from there.
I've met a lot of criminals but I've only met one murderer. He was in his early twenties and a 'hit man' up from London. He had just been released from prison - I never asked what he'd been in for - and was in the same bail house as my daughter's friend's boyfriend. The two of them came up for a visit and I treated him the same as any other friend of my daughter. Unfortunately he had undertaken a contract whilst in prison to kill a drug dealer in Redcar, which was about 30 miles away from where I lived. He saw his opportunity to have a base and check out the dealer's movements when the other lad was coming to visit. He was polite, respectful and nothing about him indicated that in a couple of days he would shoot dead a man and his pitbull in broad daylight. He was paid two thousand pounds for the hit.
I've no idea what his past was or how he came to be like that because at the time I was more concerned about my daughter. It was frightening to think that people walk in our midst and we never know what they're capable of. If we did, then people like the Wests, Brady and Hindley would never be able to get away with their crimes for so long. They are the extremes in our society and we're fascinated with them. Enough has been written about them and their crimes for them to have celebrity status and photos make them look demonic, as if they should have a label across their foreheads saying 'I'm a serial killer'. Yet they walked the earth unnoticed for a long time because they looked the same as the rest of us; the demonization came later, after they'd been caught.
I'm still struggling to get inside my murderer's head but as I work on episodes of his past I see glimpses of how he shuts down emotionally. Hopefully that will give me the insights to drive him forward and create a believable character. Right now, I need to get back to him. Till next time.
Some things are a lot easier to write than others. All of the creative process of inventing people and situations is draining, but getting into a murderer's head I'm finding particularly exhausting. My natural reaction is to make him 'acceptable', to be a flawed character not a psychotic beast. Finding that middle road, to present his as a man without empathy for his victims and no conscience, yet still be someone human, has been difficult.
There are many shades of murderer, from the bully whose tactics go wrong, to the child abuser, to the jealous lover, to the avenger, to the serial killer. My murderer is seeking revenge but ends up a serial killer. So the problem has been to get him from point A, his beginning, to point B when he's betrayed, to point C, his first murder, then to D when he's killing the rest. What psychology does he need to have to get him there? I'm still struggling with that one, but I have him growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China, joining the Red Guard as a child and over time being brutalized and de-sensitized, rather like the kids in the Hitler Youth and Khmer Rouge movements. It's hard to get into that mind set and I've spent a lot of time trying. My imagination can take me so far but I have to have something within my own experience to draw upon. For me, that means opening up the dark pockets, finding something appropriate and projecting from there.
I've met a lot of criminals but I've only met one murderer. He was in his early twenties and a 'hit man' up from London. He had just been released from prison - I never asked what he'd been in for - and was in the same bail house as my daughter's friend's boyfriend. The two of them came up for a visit and I treated him the same as any other friend of my daughter. Unfortunately he had undertaken a contract whilst in prison to kill a drug dealer in Redcar, which was about 30 miles away from where I lived. He saw his opportunity to have a base and check out the dealer's movements when the other lad was coming to visit. He was polite, respectful and nothing about him indicated that in a couple of days he would shoot dead a man and his pitbull in broad daylight. He was paid two thousand pounds for the hit.
I've no idea what his past was or how he came to be like that because at the time I was more concerned about my daughter. It was frightening to think that people walk in our midst and we never know what they're capable of. If we did, then people like the Wests, Brady and Hindley would never be able to get away with their crimes for so long. They are the extremes in our society and we're fascinated with them. Enough has been written about them and their crimes for them to have celebrity status and photos make them look demonic, as if they should have a label across their foreheads saying 'I'm a serial killer'. Yet they walked the earth unnoticed for a long time because they looked the same as the rest of us; the demonization came later, after they'd been caught.
I'm still struggling to get inside my murderer's head but as I work on episodes of his past I see glimpses of how he shuts down emotionally. Hopefully that will give me the insights to drive him forward and create a believable character. Right now, I need to get back to him. Till next time.
Sunday, 13 October 2013
Progress - Day 5
It's actually not day 5 at all. I've been ill for a few days and unable to write anything meaningful but here I go again, picking up the baton and carrying on.
The story so far...
I'm up to 7300 words, have sorted out some plot problems and have a clearer sense of direction. Problems to solve today - my inability to write an 'evil' murderer. I have a problem with the word as either a noun or adjective and don't believe in it as a personality trait. I think it's an abstract concept that people buy into because it represents power and permission to perform acts that most of us find heinous, an irredeemable force that exists to lure us to our damnation and makes no apology for itself. It's a word that the media and church use to describe abominable acts perpetrated by people they set apart from the rest of us. Demonizing them makes us feel comfortable and safe because if we thought that someone we knew, or worse, someone like us could do that, where would that leave us?
I'm a baby boomer and growing up in the 50s and 60s was subjected to all the media manipulation of what 'good' and 'bad', 'attractive' and 'unattractive' was meant to be at that time. Women were meant to be good home makers, slim, always looking nice for their man when he came home. Men were supposed to be rugged, provide for their families and if they strayed from home then the 'little woman' was obviously to blame. She would alter her ways to make herself more acceptable to him, he'd forgive her and so harmony would be restored. We had cinema images that told us what to aspire towards and rarely did the whore with a golden heart win the man, or the hunchback get the girl. These were the 'good guys' and people who indulged in criminal activities were 'dirty rats', those who murdered were 'evil'. Sorted.
Unfortunately I had a problem with this script for life. I always sided with the underdog, brought home all sorts of strays and runaways and joined 'causes'. But it was during my literature degree I really started questioning what, exactly, 'evil' was. To me it was the politicians and war-mongerers, (I was into CND and anti-Vietnam marches) the scientists who'd developed the atom bomb, the KKK, or the police who attacked peaceful protesters on civil rights marches. It's easy to slap a label like that on something or someone you see as committing unconscionable acts, less comfortable to try to go below the surface and understand who these people were, why they did or believed in those things.
Stephen King wrote:
''Fiction is a lie, good fiction is the truth inside the lie''
Macbeth is a good example of this. At the beginning he's a well-respected warrior who goes on to murder his king, a man who loves him and has heaped honours on him. He then, to cover up the murder, has his best friend assassinated, then the whole family of his rival. Each act he commits is more heinous than the next, but what Shakespeare does is to show us a glimpse of the great man he used to be, right at the end. When there's no way out and he becomes aware the witches have tricked him, instead of running away he stays and fights. He doesn't beg or surrender, he fights to his last breath, like the great warrior he used to be. And even Lady Macbeth is shown to have redeeming traits when in her sleepwalking scene she shows her love and worry about her husband when she tries to lead him to bed. The truth within the lie is that there are always redeeming features - even Hitler loved.
My current problem with my murderer is that in providing him with a 'reason' for him to start committing the murders I have too much sympathy for him. I want my readers to understand his initial motivation but to be glad when he's caught and gets what he deserves. However, having too much sympathy for him is interfering with the plot. I have to be able to show how that man is capable of committing the acts he does and at the moment it's not realistic. So that's the problem for today. Now I've just got to find a way of sorting it out.
The story so far...
I'm up to 7300 words, have sorted out some plot problems and have a clearer sense of direction. Problems to solve today - my inability to write an 'evil' murderer. I have a problem with the word as either a noun or adjective and don't believe in it as a personality trait. I think it's an abstract concept that people buy into because it represents power and permission to perform acts that most of us find heinous, an irredeemable force that exists to lure us to our damnation and makes no apology for itself. It's a word that the media and church use to describe abominable acts perpetrated by people they set apart from the rest of us. Demonizing them makes us feel comfortable and safe because if we thought that someone we knew, or worse, someone like us could do that, where would that leave us?
I'm a baby boomer and growing up in the 50s and 60s was subjected to all the media manipulation of what 'good' and 'bad', 'attractive' and 'unattractive' was meant to be at that time. Women were meant to be good home makers, slim, always looking nice for their man when he came home. Men were supposed to be rugged, provide for their families and if they strayed from home then the 'little woman' was obviously to blame. She would alter her ways to make herself more acceptable to him, he'd forgive her and so harmony would be restored. We had cinema images that told us what to aspire towards and rarely did the whore with a golden heart win the man, or the hunchback get the girl. These were the 'good guys' and people who indulged in criminal activities were 'dirty rats', those who murdered were 'evil'. Sorted.
Unfortunately I had a problem with this script for life. I always sided with the underdog, brought home all sorts of strays and runaways and joined 'causes'. But it was during my literature degree I really started questioning what, exactly, 'evil' was. To me it was the politicians and war-mongerers, (I was into CND and anti-Vietnam marches) the scientists who'd developed the atom bomb, the KKK, or the police who attacked peaceful protesters on civil rights marches. It's easy to slap a label like that on something or someone you see as committing unconscionable acts, less comfortable to try to go below the surface and understand who these people were, why they did or believed in those things.
Stephen King wrote:
''Fiction is a lie, good fiction is the truth inside the lie''
Macbeth is a good example of this. At the beginning he's a well-respected warrior who goes on to murder his king, a man who loves him and has heaped honours on him. He then, to cover up the murder, has his best friend assassinated, then the whole family of his rival. Each act he commits is more heinous than the next, but what Shakespeare does is to show us a glimpse of the great man he used to be, right at the end. When there's no way out and he becomes aware the witches have tricked him, instead of running away he stays and fights. He doesn't beg or surrender, he fights to his last breath, like the great warrior he used to be. And even Lady Macbeth is shown to have redeeming traits when in her sleepwalking scene she shows her love and worry about her husband when she tries to lead him to bed. The truth within the lie is that there are always redeeming features - even Hitler loved.
My current problem with my murderer is that in providing him with a 'reason' for him to start committing the murders I have too much sympathy for him. I want my readers to understand his initial motivation but to be glad when he's caught and gets what he deserves. However, having too much sympathy for him is interfering with the plot. I have to be able to show how that man is capable of committing the acts he does and at the moment it's not realistic. So that's the problem for today. Now I've just got to find a way of sorting it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)