The Autobiography in your Book Shelves

There's only one Steve left now, doing the snagging - the ten thousand little jobs that need finishing off before the work is done.  It's a bit like copy editing your book: all your editor's notes have been minutely attended to and you think the whole thing's done and dusted, but then you have to trawl through it one more time (at least one more time) tidying up the punctuation, checking for consistency (eyes which started out as brown carry on that way and don't inadvertently become green or grey), checking your facts as well, in case something trips you up later.

So after all this slog, my house-shaped shed is looking less and less like a shed and more and more like a beautiful, writerly room in which to sit and work. I have a desk top...

....(I also appear to have a set of folding steps and a band saw, but not for long). Although the sight of it enthralls me and I yearn to be sitting there, gazing out of the window, thinking what to write next, I'm even more excited about the rows and rows of empty shelves waiting to be filled.

It's because the books I own are the intimate friends of my past life; we've been through things together, they're like travelling companions I haven't seen for ages and I'm longing to catch up with them.  Filling each shelf will be an exercise in autobiography -- I write the date in every book I buy so that I'll know what I was reading when (and by implication what I was doing and with whom). So it's not just a question of simply arranging them, it's a kind of navigation, charting memories and lost flights of imagination.

Books have siren voices, whispering pages; you turn one, and then you turn another, and before you know it, the whole day is done.

Don't Shelve the Opportunity for a Good Read

Two days without blogging. Hmm. Definitely puts me in the could do better category, but I've got the cyber equivalent of a note from home because I've been spending my time unpacking my books, which is a kind of literary activity all of its own.  I've only got as far as M - I'm one of those sad muppets who arranges all their fiction alphabetically, mostly because it means everything is easy to find, but also because I like the careless  geometry of the shelves that way: ancient hardbacks crammed in next to gleaming new large format paperbacks and nicotine-coloured old style Penguins. I also like the unexpected literary alliances which find Hilary Mantel next to Maupassant and John Fowles and Jonathan Franzen keeping company.

I packed them all away in April, many, many months ago, so there's been something of a reunion going on. My house -- and my life -- has seemed unfurnished without them and now that all those stories are sleeping softly on my shelves again, I feel rehabilitated. I've been coming across books I haven't read at all and ones that inexplicably I've bought two copies of. Then there's all the treasure that slips out from long unopened pages - postcards, bookmarks, letters.  (I once found a surgical mask in a book I borrowed from Camden library.)

The reason I'm going on about it so, is that as writers we need people to value books, and what's more, to read them. so perhaps this weekend, instead of doing some kind of writing, perhaps you could rootle through your own collection and find a book you've always meant to read, but haven't, and set to work on it....

Lost for Words?

I saw this on a wall in Charite sur Loire.  I think it roughly translates as a word separates and repairs; it signifies a loss and a return (with apologies to Patrick Granville).  Apart from being such a lovely thing to find on a wall -- so much better than No Turning or Garage in Constant Use - and sounding so poetic, I like it because it got me thinking about what I expect and want from words, both as a writer and a reader.

Perhaps words separate in the sense that they isolate meaning - as a writer, choosing the exact one is essential -- English being such a rich language the scope for  nuance is almost endless, so you need to be sure that the word you choose conveys precisely what you want it to and arriving at the right one can often take many drafts. And they repair -- Oh, how they repair -- because a beautiful phrase, an assembly of well-crafted words, consoles and uplifts and explains; it can reveal your sorrow to you and in doing so help you to overcome it.

A word signifying a loss? Hmm. A word, either written or spoken, is an intimate part of you, a thought, which you give away.  Perhaps every time you speak or write you lose something of yourself -- your mystery, your privacy, your inner self.  Certainly putting the final full stop on a novel feels closer to grief than joy; it's the end of a dream, and I guess handing your book over to somebody else is a bit like letting your child leave home: you want them to go and you want to them to stay with you. But perhaps if you don't lose anything, or give anything away, then you don't create a space for experience to fill.

Writing maybe an ambiguous experience, but reading! There is no debate about the return from a truly delicious read, and as for loss?  Who hasn't had the experience of losing themself in a good book...

Getting Away from It All...

I'm in Scotland for a short collapse of our house sale break and it's my birthday today, so I feel fully justified in sitting down with True History of the Kelly Gang by the inestimable Peter Carey and just enjoying myself. It has everything I look for in a book - dry, concentrated description to kindle my imagination, a plot that engages my curiosity and characters with whom I can empathise (essential ingredients to incorporate into your own work wherever possible).

So here is a picture of the Moray Firth to act as a kind of bookmark and keep my place.

Back on Monday...

In My Bad Books...

When we thought we were moving house, I started packing up my books and while I was doing that I chucked out some of the bad ones, the ones with gold embossed titles that I felt slightly embarrassed to have on my bookshelves.

Silly me for being such a literary snob. You need to read bad books from time to time, partly because they can be fun and we all need a great escape now and then. They are also a fantastic antidote for the flu -- perhaps instead of chucking them out I should have put them in the medicine cupboard along with the Lemsip. But the real reason you need to read bad books - don't worry, they won't contaminate you, nor will they make you go blind - is because by analysing what makes something truly dreadful, you will learn how to avoid writing rubbish yourself.

When I was teaching creative writing I used to use Riders by Jilly Cooper as an example of how not to write.  It was a big fat catalogue of pitfalls - two-dimensional characters, tired description and an overreliance on adverbs (shock horror). But it was also frothy and funny and blessed with a plot which zipped along, so there were positive lessons to be learnt as well.


So, if you are feeling a little under par, or if your self-esteem has taken a knocking, or if you just fancy an indulgent afternoon of guilty pleasure,  reach for some literary junk food and tell yourself that it's all in the name of research. (As a little aside, I read in The Bookseller that the most successful e-book genre  is romantic fiction, a phenomenon which industry insiders attribute to the fact that people can read anonymously on their Kindles or their I Pads without anybody knowing what they are up to.)