Points of View

Still working on major fiction editing job, hence the woeful lack of posts on here. Most of the time, I have my head down over the laptop and only crawl downstairs occasionally for food and tea and - at the end of the day - alcohol! I love this process, but it is very difficult in that it involves a certain amount of wrestling with the tricky business of 'point of view.' This is something that most readers don't think about. It is also something that many writers don't actually think about either until hit with the problem of how to tell a story. Exactly whose point of view is the story being told from - and what difference will that make to the finished piece of writing?
Now I'm aware that there are lots of highly prescriptive websites out there, listing all kinds of 'rules' about this. I'm also aware that, wearing my other hat, as a playwright, it's something I tend to forget about as well, for the simple reason that when you are writing a play, you have to get inside the heads of ALL your characters. This is because actors have an alarming habit of asking you why their particular character is behaving in a certain way - and woe betide you if you don't know the answer, for even the most minor characters. It's extremely good for the writer, though, in that you can't get away with anything less than a comprehensive understanding of what you are writing about!
For this particular project, a novel, I thought I was telling the story - which is in the third person - from a particular character's point of view, but I see that I'm not. I'm telling it from the points of view of two characters with the odd digression into a third - which I believe is something called 'limited omniscient' - the writer is God, but only with regard to a handful of characters! Now, I am trying to introduce a body of material which is known in its entirety only to one particular character - and it's difficult, although it is also essential, in that I was short-changing one of my characters by deciding not to explore his background. Now, I know what happened to him. And he certainly knows it. But how should that knowledge be 'stitched in' to the story. Should I write it as a 'found' account - a device often used by writers - and one that isn't unknown even in non-fiction, witness an excellent and rivetting book called The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale in which a letter from Constance Kent goes a long way towards clarifying previous events, but also includes its own element of mystery.
Should I - on the other hand - have him tell his tale to one of the other characters - something he has done to some extent in a previous version?
Should I go the whole hog and access his knowledge within the body of the book, thus making the whole thing more dense and rich. Or should I attempt some combination of all three - and see what happens.
It is, in a sense, a little like unpicking a complicated garment, retaining the fabric, but stitching it up again in a slightly different way, and any seamstress will tell you that this is actually a more difficult process than starting from scratch! I'm feeling my way into it, and - as it turns out - I'm working in layers. I don't make drastic changes all at once. I go over and over and over it, and feel my way into making the additions, and do nothing too major until I can see how the previous draft has worked. It is time consuming and tiring, but hugely interesting and - so far at least - it seems to be working.

Editing and Other Necessary Frustrations

Head down and working away on major rewrites of the 'work in progress'. Actually, this work has been in progress for some time. I wrote the first 'incarnation' - it has undergone so many changes that I hesitate to call it a draft - some years ago. Editorial comments were mixed and I was a bit miffed. Over the years, though, I realised that they had been quite right. There were all kinds of things wrong with it, and although I had been equally right to wait, and ponder, the book essentially needed such major rewrites that it is now a completely different novel! Cue forward some years to my new agent, who has given me additional feedback, of such an interesting and inspirational nature that I'm busy with more rewrites. These are in the nature of additions, a whole new dimension added to a character - which means that other sections can go, and yet others can be changed accordingly. The process is fascinating because it doesn't so much involve change as interrogating what was already there to find out what else I need to know. I was right about this particular character - but only as far as it went, and it didn't go half far enough. It's like turning a casual acquaintance into a close friend.
It is a precarious process and in undertaking it, you are queasily aware that one false move could result in an implosion and the whole project could disintegrate. On the other hand it's very exciting - and besides, I have the previous draft, so nothing is lost. But it's part of what makes the whole process of creative writing so fascinating. You're never quite sure where it's going, and if you did know, from day one, that process would become so boring that you wouldn't need to write at all. I think above all else, you write to find out. If you don't want to find out, then there's no point in writing at all.

Criminal Justice

What a fine actor Maxine Peake is! She can do more with a look than most people can do with a flood of words - it must be wonderful to write for such an actor, because you could allow yourself to be understated, knowing that she wouldn't need everything to be made too explicit. She seems to have gone from strength to strength over the years - not always a 'pleasure' to watch because she goes unerringly for roles which are demanding, of the viewer, as well as the actor. But always admirable, always real, always moving. Criminal Justice - five hours, five nights, finished last night and for a wonder, I managed to see every episode. I can't say I would ever want to watch it again. And I think if I had had a young child (remembering how vulnerable one feels on their behalf) I would never have managed to stay the pace. Too distressing. But none of that is to say that it wasn't categorically the best thing on TV for a very very long time. Everything else pales beside it. When it was finished, the now familiar announcement came on - 'If you were affected by any of the issues in this drama...' etc and we chorused 'who the hell wouldn't be?'

Of Mobiles and Reading

I did a reading last week - a very short short story, but one that depends heavily on atmosphere - so as reader, concentration is important. I don't usually have too much trouble - I enjoy public readings, like the opportunity to be ... well, theatrical. This was in a small but very congenial gathering in a room in a hotel. And all was going well, until a mobile rang and the middle aged professional man (old enough to know better) sitting to the right of my eyeline, proceeded not only to answer it, but also to have quite a long, if muted, conversation!
Of course what I should have done - when I thought about it with all the benefit of hindsight! - was to stop the reading, ask him if he wanted to take the call outside the room, give him a moment to go - and then carry on. But a combination of extreme surprise (oddly enough, this has never happened to me before) and innate politeness made me soldier on. It was alright, but only just. My concentration had a wobble, and the rest of the audience was clearly outraged but too polite to say anything. Now that it has happened once, I think I'd react more swiftly next time. I'd ask for mobiles to be switched off first, and then if one did happen to ring, I would almost certainly stop. But in my experience to date it has become habitual for most people to switch off their phones before a reading or performance of any sort. And as somebody said to me afterwards - lots of us have had the embarrassing experience of forgetting, but if the phone rings under those circumstances, there's a mad scramble to switch it off. You don't answer the thing unless your wife is about to go into labour, and even then, you take it outside the room!
A friend, pointedly, asked him afterwards, if he had been 'on call'. He hadn't and he did apologise, saying that he thought the person would ring off, but frankly, that's not good enough.
It's getting to the point now where younger people have better 'mobile phone etiquette' than the middle aged. I sat next to a pair of women in a cafe the other day, friends sharing a coffee. One of them took three long and essentially unimportant (I know, because I could hear every stupid word) phonecalls, while her friend sat there, staring out of the window, drinking her coffee, and mentally, I have no doubt, drumming her fingers on the table. I have a 'friend' who sometimes does it too, usually moving outside the cafe to take the call. It drives me nuts. Even my son, who might be expected to take a few liberties with his mum, never does it when we are sharing a coffee and a chat. He switches his phone off, and says if it's anything urgent they'll text him or leave a message. The oldies really should know better.

Playing About

Went to Glasgow at the weekend, to see a director about a play. It's an idea I've been mulling over for a while - in those moments between trying to earn a living - thinking - as you do - 'I want to write about that, that person, that situation, that time and place, and those ideas' - but not quite sure how to find a way into it. The director is young, and that's good too: uncynical, full of imagination and enthusiasm. I love writing for theatre, but periodically become disillusioned, mostly because finding outlets for drama is quite hard, even with a track record. But there's a part of me that adores collaboration, that loves the process - you work away at something in the privacy of your room, in the privacy of your head, and then you take a deep breath and dive into the development/rehearsal process. What emerges is - often - somewhat different from your original intentions - but if you're lucky, it's better! I love that precarious sense of holding on, and then letting go - the sense that it could all go horribly wrong, but usually doesn't, the sense of something growing and changing which is what theatre is all about. But I couldn't work like that all the time - I confess. Which is why I spend a lot of time writing prose as well. And then I get sick of my room, the blank screen, the loneliness - and have a sudden hankering for plays and players, for looking at interesting spaces and faces, and listening to words - for the sheer excitement of working in theatre all over again.

Transitions and other things.

Couldn't keep away, could I? Back at the beginning of August, I had decided to wind down Wordarts, and concentrate a bit more on The Scottish Home. Well, I took a break, did a lot of thinking, read a few books, talked to a few friends working in other artforms, did rather a lot of work on The Scottish Home in general - and my antique textile business in particular - and now feel ready to reactivate Wordarts again, a bit sooner than I had expected, even though I'm still in what I now realise is something of a transitional phase between one way of working - and another.
Two of the books I read were recommended by The Sunday Times Style Magazine's 'Aunt Sally' - so thanks to her for Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. It's very funny, and very wise and for those who like lots of little 'exercises' to do, it will be ideal.
But even better from my point of view - and for creative individuals everywhere - is Transitions - Making Sense of Life's Changes, by William Bridges. This is an easy book to manage - it doesn't demand very much of you except thoughtful reading - but it gives a huge amount back, perhaps because its author rewrote his original book in the light of all that he had learned in the thirty years between his forties and his seventies - and it shows! It's a book full of poetry, wit and wisdom and I was a lot happier with myself at the end of it than I was at the beginning. It helped to explain me to myself - and I'm rereading it again right now.
Both of these books seem to have helped to get me back on track with my writing. Bridges in particular offers no glib solutions. But he does offer the distilled wisdom and reassurance of his own considerable experience. As a result, the book is full of profound insights and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who is in the middle of one of those phases of change and confusion that beset all of us from time to time.

Taking a Break

As of today, I'm taking a break from Wordarts, and will be concentrating on developing the Scottish Home into a bigger and better blog over the next few months.
There are a number of reasons for this.

First and foremost is the fact that I have been spreading myself too thinly and crunch time has come. I need to cut down on the demands I'm making on myself. This has forced me to focus and prioritise and I'm in the process of trying to organise my time in more profitable ways.
One of those ways is to concentrate much more on my own creative writing. Its the activity I love more than anything else, but there are too many days on which I find myself squeezing it into the late hours at the expense of my own health and happiness. One way of resolving that is to spend much more time on my writing and much less time writing about writing. I've become so sick of opinionated people - but the opinionated person I'm most sick of is probably myself!

When I ask myself who or what I am, the answer seems to be that I'm a creative writer with a passion for history. The Scottish Home began as a companion blog to my online shop which deals in gorgeous vintage and antique textiles - 'upcycling' of the nicest sort. Quite often the items I sell have a fascinating history and I like to blog about them to give people extra information. Now, it strikes me that there's scope for developing The Scottish Home even further - for writing not just about textile history but about garden history, and all kinds of interesting artefacts.

I'm not saying I'll never come back to Wordarts, because I'm sure I will. But if you've been following this blog, I think you'll find plenty to interest you on The Scottish Home instead.