Nick Dear - A Masterclass in Writing From Life

It was a play about writing, and words, and love, and what inspires them all. It was full of beauty and sadness, cadenced.

I'm talking about Nick Dear's new drama about the poet Edward Thomas, The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, which has recently opened in London at the Almeida Theatre. If you don't have the chance to go and see it, although you will miss the heart-wrenching performances of Pip Carter and Hattie Morahan (playing Edward and his wife Helen), you will still be able to read the script.

As well as being astonishingly articulate about the process of writing – Thomas has a close literary friendship with the American poet Robert Frost and the two of them explore the fascination of the writer's craft - the play is a must read because it reveals some of the alchemy of bringing characters to life. In Dear's perceptive, clear-eyed incarnation, Edward Thomas is shown to be capable of the strongest bonds of friendship, both with Frost and with Eleanor Farjeon, but is a vile husband and an indifferent father. Yet his love for poetry seems to transcend mere earthly ties, and that is what transfigures both him and us. Thomas's character is revealed to us facet by facet, from the point of view of the different people who knew him, in all its inconsistent, cruel, passionate, inspiring humanity. It is a masterclass in writing from life. Look and learn, look and learn...

If you want a writing exercise for the weekend, here's a thought taken from the play, uttered by Robert Frost.

Words exist in the mouth, not in books, and you can't read a single good sentence with the salt in it unless you have previously heard it spoken. That's what I think. The ear does it all, the ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Spend some time listening, listen for the salt in a good sentence, use your ears, then write about something that you've heard...

All Work and No Play

 Yesterday I wrote for twelve hours with barely a pause for breath and I've done six hours today: write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write - you get the picture. I'm off to London now, to see Nick Dear's new play about Edward Thomas at the Almeida, and tomorrow I'm going to a talk about The Wasteland - what cultural riches. I'm mentioning this partly because it means my blogging will be a bit thin on the ground this week, but also because I firmly believe in finding ways to feed your creativity. If you do nothing but write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, you'll soon find that inspiration turns to stupification (which I don't think is a word, thus proving my point).

Take time out to read and think – absorb the best and worst writing you can lay your hands upon, because you'll learn from both. Stiffen the sinews : dream, walk, wander. Make a list of all the books you've read this year, then resolve to double it  next year. Don't just sit at your desk and grind words out.

That's my excuse, at least....

Creative Writing - Making Plans

I've been appraising manuscripts for a couple of literary consultants in London recently and there is one thing which crops up time after time in the books that I've been reading and that is a lack of planning. The most brilliant conception is going to lead to an extremely poor delivery if you don't make proper preparations.

Inspiration honestly, truly isn't enough and the perspiration which is said to be a necessary accompaniment should consist of at least some careful planning. You won't do justice to your genius idea if you don't spend time thinking about the execution of it. The stories I've been working on are well-written – no problems there -  but the characters are on the skinny side because the writers haven't lived with them for long enough, and the plots are prone to hideous expediency, because the necessary traps haven't been set in advance.

Great artists do preliminary sketches for their paintings, and in order to fulfil your own potential it wouldn't do any harm to come up with an outline plan for the story you intend to write. Nothing needs to be set in stone - the process of thinking ahead will have made you ask important questions about your plot and that is the main thing;  the answers may come later and will perhaps surprise you.

Be prepared. Otherwise you may sell yourself short, may not do justice to your ability. Because planning is a practical thing to do, it may feel like the opposite of creativity, but it will provide you with a structure for your story and a gilded frame for your talent.

At the Edge of the Precipice with F. Scott Fitzgerald

The other day I started re-reading The Great Gatsby because it's recently out of copyright and as a result there has been a lot of brouhaha about it, with dramatisations and new editions galore, and I wanted to remind myself what all the fuss was about. Then I spent a guilty half hour in our local Amnesty bookshop (guilty because generally I believe in buying new books so that authors get their due royalty, but I was poorly and didn't quite know what I was doing. Guilt partly assuaged by supporting Amnesty though...) and bought The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which has sidetracked me a little, but THEN I stumbled upon the wonderful quotation below, which has catapulted me straight back to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you'll see why...

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story.

Here is a thought that sums up what is exciting about great writing. First of all, it subverts, it takes you by surprise - Scott Fitzgerald isn't saying draw your chair up to the fire, or closer to mine, he's taking you to the brink of something extraordinary.
   
I like the fact that in this line there is an implicit contract between the writer and the reader. The writer is asking something of his reader and promising a reward in return. In reading a book you form a brief but intense relationship with its author. You open up your imagination and your emotional experience and allow him to work upon them. It's an intimacy that is almost sexual, and the vertiginous excitement that can result from it is what Scott Fitzgerald is referring to here.

There is danger in what he is proposing: the edge of the precipice. You are still on solid ground, but only just. If you lose your balance, either literally or metaphorically, you could plunge to your death, or to some hitherto unexplored depths of your interior world. He is not locating you anywhere comfortable; he's not offering you an easy ride; on the contrary, he is throwing down a challenge, but in doing so he is also asking you to trust him. Perhaps that's a writer's  greatest task – to challenge his readers, but to bring them safely home.

Whether you're reading or writing, finding a story that skirts the precipice's edge is the most exciting thing of all.

Throwing a Sickie...

Vile cold.
Here's a lovely door for you to be getting on with. It might lead you somewhere...

Normal service will resume shortly.

Help from Your Favourite Heroines

What is it that makes a character in a novel memorable? Perhaps it would help to answer this question by asking it in a different way: who are the characters you most remember? If you can come up with the who, it might lead you to the why and that in turn might be of help when you are conjuring your own protagonists out of that thin, thin air.

In terms of heroines, my younger self would probably say Scarlet O'Hara from Gone with the Wind, but more mature contenders would be Anna Karenina, Nana, the heroine from the Zola's book of the same name, and Tess of the D'Urbevilles 

 Why Scarlett O'Hara? Because she is so flawed and so beautiful– she behaves badly, has no moral compass and no self-knowledge. Because she is punished for all of these things and remains indomitable.

Why Anna Karenina? Why Nana? Both of them find themselves on the outside of society, one as an adulteress, the other as a prostitute. They're not conventional, nor are they seen as ideals of womanhood. They are compromised and unhappy and the dilemmas they face seem real. Anna ends by hitting the self-destruct button, Nana ruins every man she comes into contact with. The terrible workings of cause and effect in both their lives are plain to see. The same is true of Tess, whose unfortunate seduction by Alec is her social and moral and doing. She is both victim and avenger.

Perhaps there's a bit of the theme emerging here. The women I have chosen all have tragic stature because their fall from grace is so vertiginous. With the exception of Anna,  these women fight back, they show resilience. Their behaviour is extreme and in some ways subversive, and three out of four of them end by dying, something which makes the stakes of their respective stories extremely high. They are passionate, risk-taking and rebellious, and yet beneath this we glimpse their vulnerability, qualities which form a combustible mix.

When you are thinking about your next project, it might be helpful to conduct a brief survey of the heroines you admire. If you can work out what it is that attracts you to them, you are halfway to being able to endow your own protagonist with their feistiness, or their fragile glamour, or whatever it was that drew you to them in the first place.

Room With a View

Pulitzer Prize winning American author Edna Ferber once observed, 'The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.'
Perhaps the blank brick wall might serve as a timely reminder that trying to write well and be published is a bit like hitting one, time and time again, and I can see that a cloudless stretch of sky might lend itself to blue sky thinking, but I'm rather fond of the clutter of green that I can see from my window.

I guess Ferber was advocating minimal distraction and perhaps I have spent too much time watching my neighbour's runner beans ripen and gawping at the builders re-pointing the swimming pool chimney, but I'm thinking while I'm looking out, honestly, I am.
Rather than being a distraction, a view can often provide inspiration. At the moment sunlight is streaking along a cobweb that's been loosened by the wind, and the leaves on the silver birch tree won't be there much longer. When I'm gazing out across the muddled gardens I'm learning to notice  detail, I'm absorbing subtle changes and the effect of light and weather. Some of the time I stare attentively, sometimes I have no idea what I'm looking at, what I'm seeing is all inside my head.
Perhaps distraction is no bad thing, in any case: if you let your mind wander, who knows where it may lead you?