Every writer should have their own caravan

At the risk of sounding like your local hairdresser, are you going anywhere nice on your holidays? Have you already been? I'm not long back from a week in the sun. We couldn't choose between the Maldives or Monaco, so opted for my sister's caravan, in Millport.

And it was amazing.

I told myself I wasn't going to write while I was away. Even as I packed my laptop and edits, I went along with my little lie. Nearly got through the whole week, too. On our last afternoon the wind and rain was battering off the caravan (is there a better sound? No. There is not.), Colin was snoozing and I decided to get nice and settled with the laptop, a hot chocolate and cake. Four hours later, I was forced to shut down so we could go for dinner. Don't you love it when you get utterly absorbed like that? The ultimate writing sesh.

I know some people have writing sheds, but can I have a writing caravan, please? One with views like this?

(This was taken on our TWELVE MILE walk around the island *gasp* *wheeze*)

One of the things I was looking most forward to about being away, was all that uninterrupted, unashamed reading time. I took the first two books from this chunky detective series by Caro Ramsay (who chairs my writers group): Absolution and Singing to the Dead. I devoured them in record time. Highly recommended if, like me, you enjoy sinister and disturbing fiction.

Have you all heard about Richard & Judy's "Search for a Bestseller?" I'm a big fan of their book club podcast; I like their taste in books. They're offering a £50k publishing deal (and an invaluable amount of promotion, I can only assume), so if you're writing a debut novel, why don't you enter it (deadline is 1st January 2014, so you've got a wee while yet)? I'm fairly sure I'll be entering it.

Speaking of entering things, there are only 11 days left to submit to the Scottish Book Trust's New Writers Award 2013. I was shortlisted last year, which was a massive confidence boost. I still need to decide what piece to submit this year; I can't decide between sending an extract of my novel or one of my short stories. Can someone make this decision for me? Please?

Anyway, what's your news? Give me all your writing/holiday/general gossip!

Take care
Catherine x ◦

Every writer should have their own caravan

Pick that up and put it down properly!

Chief Guard Barnes

Back in February, I spoke of being seduced by the lure of the Short Story.

Part of the allure was the promise of improving my craft; to focus on creating punchy, powerful prose in an economical way.

I'd started writing draft three of BROTHERS, which I hoped would be the main, final rewrite, but felt I'd taken my writing as far as I could on my own. There was only one thing for it...

I had to join a writers group.

Being fairly introverted, this was a big deal for me. I'm a bit of a sadist, though: I'm not adverse to throwing myself into uncomfortable situations (is any writer?), and soon found myself in a room filled with lovely, talented writers, who weren't scary at all!

The first piece I read (out loud... gahhh) to the group was my story shortlisted in the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award last year. My darling baby was torn, limb by limb, and I was told to put it back together using different pieces entirely. I took it all in, nodding and smiling, and drove home in a shocked wee daze.

Of course, they were absolutely right.

I'm not precious about my words in the slightest, nor am I overly sensitive to criticism. Their words were fresh in my mind as I frantically penned my next short story. The difference in the two pieces was astonishing; you'd have thought it was written by two different people.

The feedback for my next story was very positive, and I just knew I'd taken the right path for my writing journey. I joined the writers group to open my eyes. They're bloody well open now... like the Ludovico Treatment from A Clockwork Orange.

One week, a writer read out the synopsis of her novel. It made me pine for my own novel, waiting patiently while I gallivanted with the Short Story. I resolved to read the BROTHERS synopsis out soon.

I got stuck into synopsis research and discovered it was "best" to condense it to under 500 words. 500 words? Are you mental? But who am I to question, lowly amateur that I am?

That's the thing about being so receptive to learning the ropes... you'll take anything as gospel.

Last night, I hurled my 500 words at the group. It was all fine and well writing the thing: everything was so fresh in my head and transitioned smoothly from scene to scene. Not until I began to read it out loud did I realise I was bombarding them with names, events, disasters and even more names...

They asked me to bring the first five pages in next week, which I should've just done in the first place. It's a bit late in the game (at 50k-odd words) to look for validation to continue with my quest. The writer in me from two or three years ago would've sauntered in with the first five pages without asking permission to go on.

I miss that cocky bastard.

Anyway, time to polish my first five pages. How is everyone getting on? Give me your gossip!

Take Care

Catherine x

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Pick that up and put it down properly!

Droplets

A jug fills drop by drop, according to Buddha, and that’s an ideal way to describe the current state of play with my novel: comprised of many (many) drops, going through a purification of sorts, before it is ready to be poured (into the minds of beta readers? OK... I’ll stop with the jug analogy).

The month of January was bittersweet, as far as writing goes. Refreshed from my Nano-break, I thrust myself into revising “Brothers”: a novel born in the Gallery of Modern Art one Sunday afternoon in September 2012, which flourished into a 39k first draft. I imagined it would be the most pleasurable (of all my First Drafts) to shape into a Proper Book first.

Naturally, the story then took a completely different direction, and what I have in my laptop now looks like a very distant cousin of the first draft. I’m very pleased with the new developments, but I can’t help mourning that poor first attempt, with its cardboard plotline and faceless characters. I really thought it was amazing at the time, which alarms me somewhat. Nevertheless, I’m moving forward with it nicely. I'm pleased to report Draft Three has commenced.

Would any other writers care to join me in an admission? Who else gets “author crushes”? Gone are the days where my reading experience is confined to within the covers of a book. Now I absorb everything about an author. I scour their websites. I watch interviews of them on YouTube. I download podcasts in which they appear. January's crushes were JK Rowling and Margaret Atwood.

As previously admitted, I’ve never read a Harry Potter novel. Many see this as a slight on my character, but I was thrilled to be in a rare, impartial position (notwithstanding my adoration after her Harvard Commencement Address) to read The Casual Vacancy . And I loved it. Just… bloody adored it. I had a good cry at the end, for the sake of humanity and its many perils explored in the book. Not long after finishing, I was kneeling on the kitchen floor, surrounded by clothes being sorted into dark & whites for the machine. I was snivelling away when my other half entered the room, took one look at me, and said “Sake… it’s only a book!”

As any writer/reader can imagine, this only further increased my despair.

I picked up Margaret Atwood’s The Year of The Flood from the library and, what with it being “speculative fiction”, I didn’t think I’d be particularly enamoured with it. But I’d heard her writing style was beautiful and  I have to say... it really is. I found myself writing down passages that struck me, to join the ever growing passages from novels that inspire me to learn good writing craft. Do you do that too? Care to share them?

Although my ultimate goal is to write novels, I have been seduced by the lure of the Short Story. Virginia Woolf once described her daily diaries as containing “diamonds of the dust heap” and I believe writing short stories would be a perfect opportunity to sift through my own (ever increasing) dust heap in the form of Morning Pages and copious note-taking. There must be diamonds in there somewhere. I have more ideas written down now than I’ll ever be able to work with, so it gives them a fresh opportunity to thrive.

Anyway, I'll stop waffling for now. I do hope everyone is getting on well with their writing. I'll leave you with a photo I took the other day, which might be a useful writing prompt:

 

 

Take care,

Catherine x

◦

Droplets

Watching me watching you...

As my novel is set in Glasgow, I'm trying to figure out how I'd like to portray my city of origin.

Is there a better way to absorb the character of an area, than to plonk yourself right in the middle of it? I think not.

So, yesterday after work, I took my wee notebook to a bench to write about my surroundings. To do a bit of people-watching and eavesdropping, the way those real writers tell you to. My aim: to capture the essence that is Glasgow, in the month of May, in the year of 2012.

Now... if that bench was located in the leafy West End of Glasgow, it would be expected of me to have a notepad with me. The place is rife with Artistes, dahhhling.

There are other places, however, where notepad-scribbling is a bit of a rarity. Where it is even viewed with suspicion. Places such as the one I found myself in yesterday… Govan.

See those benches? I sat in the middle of them, with my wee notepad, and opened my eyes and ears. I felt like a bit of a weirdo, to be honest, but I persevered.

The place was bustling with people, out enjoying the sun. In Glasgow, the mere mention of sunshine makes all upper-clothing magically vanish from the male species. It brought out the exhibitionist in some of the Govan folk: they felt it appropriate to walk around topless as though they were swanning around a Spanish island; giving us all an eyeful of their pallid torsos.

In stark contrast, there were also masses of old people wearing several jumpers underneath their jackets, despite the blistering heat. They appeared to be making their way home, laden with grocery bags that weighed down on their weary arms. They looked tired from their wee day out at the Govan Cross Shopping Centre.

Once I stopped crying, I observed a woman in her fifties speaking to a young boy behind me. "Nine already?" she asked him, "Ah don't believe it! Happy Birthday, son." She handed him a package from the bakery she’d just come out of, "here's a sausage roll, pal. It's no' money, but it's better than nuttin'."

A man in his late twenties literally bounced past me. You’d think he had springs in his trainers. After almost colliding with a passer-by, he turns to him and says "Here, mate, will ye tap us a fag?" When guy responds that he doesn't smoke, the man continues bouncing along, then stops to pick up a discarded cigarette beef from the ground.

Meanwhile, two stray dogs were doing the rounds, looking for scraps, nosing their way through the bins.

Just before I decided to leave, I spotted a harassed young mother trying to instill discipline in her child, in the form of a reward system: “If ye don’t shut it, yer no' gettin a sweetie.”

People tell you to "write what you know", but, on days like yesterday, I wonder if that can sometimes defeat the point of escapism!

So, what did I learn on my wee jaunt? I observed that you get a heightened sense of community in places like this, compared to the more affluent areas. The people I saw yesterday all appeared to be complete extroverts; they had that "I just don't give a fuck" attitude that stuffy, uptight people could probably do with (in moderation).

They’re assertive, for the most part. They’re not blighted by insecurity over trivial matters, and  they have a directness which, given the right situation, could be quite appealing. These are all traits that some of my characters exhibit in the novel, so yesterday's excersize could only have benefited my work.

But where does my humble novel fit in in all this?

Despite feeling a deep sense of despair at the world (that's nothing new for me, right enough), I've definitely given my book a better chance of having an authentic feel to it.

Yesterday's "people-watching" excersize will be the first of many for this WIP. I find there's no better research than going somewhere and literally absorbing the area*, to go back and bleed it out on to your novel.

You can feel the surrounding, the atmosphere and its unique character, in my opinion. Fingers crossed it shows in my finished draft!

I'll tell you what, though, I now understand why so many people read and write fantasy novels instead...

How about you? Do you try to filter in your own surroundings within your WIP? Have you heard any crackers in your "eavesdropping"?

And, finally, should I be feeling so guilty over snooping over unsuspecting people? Someone please tell me I'm not a bad person!

*By the way, I'm not a stranger to Govan. I've lived there before and many of my family grew up in the area. It's just different seeing the place through my "writer eyeball", hence the new perspective. ◦

Watching me watching you...