White Rabbits, Wonderland and Writer's Block

Recognise this little fellow?

Said to be carved in approximately 1330 and wearing the distinctive satchel of the pilgrim, he graces the archway of St Mary's Church in Beverley, Yorkshire, a town where Lewis Carroll stayed while he was preparing to write Alice in Wonderland. Even the most fleeting glance suggests an impression of the White Rabbit, running behind schedule, whom Alice follows into the rabbit hole, thus beginning her fantastical adventures.

It was a treat to see him, so distinctive and characterful, partly because it made me smile to think of the stonemason with a sense of humour all those years ago, but also because it's a reminder that inspiration comes in unexpected places. If you are tussling with your Work in Progress, or suffering from writer's block, go out for a walk or a wander – it's amazing what you might stumble upon and following a fresh idea may lead you to unexpected places, just as Alice discovered when she set off in pursuit of an irresistible little rabbit...

Twenty Questions about Characterisation

Do you remember playing that car game, brilliant for long journeys, where one of you assumes a character and the others have to guess who it is by asking twenty questions? When we were little we whiled away hours playing it on the autobahns and autoroutes of Europe, but it has other applications too and can be particularly useful for a fiction writer in search of a protagonist.

When you are in the process of fleshing out your hero or heroine, you might consider submitting them to the same sort of interrogation (and it's also the kind of thing you can do on long car journeys!)

1. When were you born?
2. Where were you born?
3. Do you have brothers and sisters?
4. What is your happiest memory?
5. What makes you saddest?
6. Where do you live?
7. What do you do for a living?
8. Have you had other relationships?
9. Do you consider yourself an extrovert?
10. Do you have secrets?
11. How good is your self-esteem?
12. What is your attitude to your appearance?
13. What is your proudest possession?
14. What are you most ashamed of?
15. What are your politics?
16. What makes you angry?
17. What is your best quality?
18. What do you value most in other people?
19. What do you yearn for?
20. What keeps you awake at night?

There are dozens of other interesting questions you could pose and while some are more simplistic than others, all of them will get you thinking about your character and may even send you off in an unanticipated direction which, in my experience, is where the interesting stuff is to be found...

Inspiration - It Must be the Sap Starting to Rise....

As time off for good behaviour went to see the inestimable Lambchop play The Fleece in Bristol yesterday. Kurt Wagner took three years off from making music to come to terms with the death of his close friend and collaborator James Vincent Chesnutt and the gig last night perfectly illustrated what I was noodling on about in my previous post: that in any form of creativity, beauty should always be the servant of truth. Lambchop's new songs chart the shell shock of bereavement, Wagner's  resonant voice articulating our own griefs for us. He sang from the heart about the ravages of waste and loss  - private emotions, profoundly expressed, in a public space, have a beauty that is almost incidental.  It was humbling and elating to listen to him.

Supplementary thought - it's really good for you, as a writer, to absorb the very best of the creative arts that are available to you - gigs in pubs, borrowed books, fine art in galleries for as long as there is free admission, sun streaming through stained glass - none of it need cost much, and it will feed your soul.

As the Spring starts to spring, allow yourself to be inspired....

It's No Good Waiting for Inspiration

You can put the idea for a novel or a short story down to inspiration, but the writing of it is much more like hard graft -- that old saw about writing being 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration is uncomfortably true.  Once you have an idea bubbling away inside your head, you can forget any thoughts about a muse descending.  If you wait for that to happen, you can find yourself waiting a very long time. The only way to bring your story from germination to realisation is to write it.

Probationary writers are often put off if the great idea that has captured their imagination fails to set the page alight when they come to write it down. They may plough on for a while, smarting with disappointment and embarrassment, until the gaps between writing sessions get longer and longer and and the number of words set down on paper gets smaller and smaller, until the whole thing is abandoned and forgotten.

However, if you loved your idea enough at the outset to want to write about it, then you may well be on to something and the only way to find out is to keep writing.  It doesn't matter if it feels a bit clunky to begin with, the important thing is to keep going.  If you are continually fiddling away with the first two or three pages, tweaking here, cutting there, that you will never get anywhere.  The literary equivalent of don't look down is don't look back. The time for editing is much later on in the creative process.  When you are starting out on a story, just write.  If it helps to sustain your stamina by having a cup of tea/making a phone call/listening to the afternoon episode of The Archers, that's fine, but don't stay away from your desk so long that you lose momentum.  Forward impetus is all that you need at the beginning -- everything else is dependent upon that.

For me, the creative additive that keeps me curious and motivated and engaged, is one of these...

...because they evoke so many questions. What's yours?

Digging Deep for Symbols

On our recent trip to France, we rounded a bend in the canal, those winding curves sinuous with promise, and were confronted with          

- this!

The French waterways board were doing maintenance work, dredging up mud from the bottom and we had to doodle around a bit until they could pull over and let us pass. Without being too clunky about it, it seemed to me to be a perfect symbol of the industrial-style digging you sometimes need to do when you are working on an idea for a story: you have to dredge down deep inside yourself, and most importantly, you have to keep on doing it, until you have excavated enough material to work with.

As symbolism is my theme for this morning, perhaps I should explain that it means using an object or an image - see above! - that works as an expression of something underlying, that has an additional resonance. Using symbols (sparingly, as with all things creative) can be an excellent way of underscoring the importance of a moment, or of giving it some extra spin.  You will make your reader work  harder to glean the full significance of what you are depicting and your narrative will gain in depth. 

If you want to try this out for yourself, try writing a story or a poem that has something symbolic at its heart...

A La Recherche du l’Eau Perdu…

Am  skittering around on the River Yonne in Burgundy as I write and thought that the Proustian illustration below would give you a sense of the challenges we face in the drawn-out drought in central France. 

We've never seen the waterways so low and are bumping about on the bottom with frightening regularity - we had to be pulled off the floor of the first lock we went through - but around each bend in the river are sights so beautiful that they melt your heart and make you forget everything, except how you might conceivably find the inspiration to put it all into words…

Literary Terroir

I'm still writing in my little Devon bubble, away from the real world, and in the last couple of days we've visited Greenway and Coleton Fishacre, homes of Agatha Christie and the D'Oyly Carte family respectively. Coleton was more beautiful (and the bedroom curtains were designed by Raoul Dufy - how fantastic is that?) but it was Greenway which made a greater impression on me.

I think it's hard to separate the lives of writers and the locations in which they are lived, from their work.  I know that great novels exist as an entity in themselves, but I can't believe that what occurs in a writer's imagination isn't profoundly influenced by what has happened to him (or her, or her).  Winemakers say that the most important factor in making wine is the terroir - that geographical combination of landscape and climate -- and I suspect the same is true of fiction.  It was wonderful to walk through the woods of Greenway, listening out for subliminal echoes (almost drowned out by the sound of squirrels on the rampage).  There has always been a fascination with writers’ rooms, perhaps Dylan Thomas's evocative boathouse started the trend, but as someone who gazes out of her window for hours on end, thinking, searching for words, what really interests me is the views that writers look out at.  The vista from Agatha Christie's house was breathtaking, although I've never been a fan of her books, so it wasn't surprising to learn that she did most of her writing in London…

Word Association

Here's a nice old, seedy old, despondent old French door, which seems to me to be extraordinarily evocative, with its closed blinds and peeling shutters and faded paint. I think you could probably construct a whole narrative just from looking at it for long enough -- one thought leads to another and then to another.

It's the same with words: one conjures another and you can start adding links to a magical chain.

Because it's the start of 2011 and I'm still childishly, rather obviously obsessed with beginnings, I think that using word association can be a great way to kick start a story, or more particularly, a poem. Why don't you try it for yourself?  Choose a word that can have a number of different meanings, a word like soil, perhaps, and write down everything that comes into your head in response to it.  Allow yourself a couple of minutes to really scour round for all the possibilities, then spend a few more minutes contemplating the words you have come up with and see what ideas they suggest to you and before you know it you are starting to shape these ideas into something a little less random, a little more coherent, and then you're putting on a bit of length and before you know it, you have written something.

Picture this....

After all last week's chat, some radio silence, and perhaps a fine old door to admire...

In fact, pictures or images can sometimes be a fertile source of inspiration.  Why not spend a little while looking at the one above and then start asking yourself some questions....?

• Why is the man sitting there?
• Is he resting?
• Has he been there long?
• Is he hoping to meet someone?
• Will they turn up?
• What can have detained them?
• What is his mood - is he tired, reflective, contented, distracted, bored, despairing - and if so, why?
• Where is he?
• Is he employed / a tourist / homeless?
• Is he there on legitimate business, or is something shady going on?
• Do you like him?
• Can he be trusted?
• Is he a passive sort of person, to whom things happen, or is he more of an active protagonist?
• How old is he?
• Is he married or single?

You get the general idea...

Just the act of thinking about the questions and finding some answers for them will probably provide you with enough material for the basis of a story.  You are already on the way to establishing a central character; all you need to do now is to start assembling your thoughts into some kind of order and a plot will begin to emerge and before you know it - you're writing!

When is a door not a door?

I love doors.  They fascinate me.  They reveal and conceal.  They are a bridge from one state to another.    They can be a barrier that forbids,a dead-end which is frustrating and inhospitable.  They can be used almost as a weapon, as a form of assault -- to have a door closed in your face is a terrible humiliation.

Oh, but a door ajar....

This is one of my favourites, a proper Frances Hodgson Burnett door, redolent of secret gardens. It offers and withholds; it entices; it makes you want to press your hand against the splintery wood, glancing over your shoulder to see if anybody is looking, and slip inside.  It is full of possibilities....

God knows what Freud would say, but I like to think that my fascination is to do with the central question that fiction asks: what next?  Where will this take me? Each door is like the start of a fresh scene or situation, a new chapter. I also think that in many ways they tell you something about their owners - in that sense I like my doors smart, or faded and peeling; piss-elegant or vandalised.

This one is in Moret sur Loing in France and belonged to the painter Sisely....

And this one didn't....