quotable

What I learned from authors, part I


I've been thinking about what I've learned from other authors when it comes to lessons for my own writing.

To start off, and inspired by my friend and former flatmate, Jessica, who has written and illustrated her own children's book, I bring you a blog post with some actual quotable quotes about writing, by writers, which have been thought-provoking for me.

A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost. - Henry James

This is one of the few quotes about writing in which I first saw myself. It was an encouraging moment, to realise why I write and to understand that it's not necessarily normal to notice as much as I notice.

Often, I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself, leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Well, I certainly felt this way after my finishing my thesis, although I suspect that I would invest even more of myself in a novel.

Human language is like the cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity. - Gustave Flaubert
There's something ironic about this quote, in that it's written so beautifully even as it mourns for the absence of a completely satisfying language. I like that. One has to remember that although perfection is so far from one's grasp, it is still possible to write magically.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. - Red Smith
Reading this was one of the first times I realised that my vision of becoming an author was not a very romantic vision.

I... do not think the worse of him for having a brain so very different from mine. ... And he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my works. - Jane Austen
At first when reading this I thought of V. S. Naipaul and his comments about women writers, and I thought about how comparatively gracious Jane Austen was in this sense. Then I also learned an important lesson - not everybody needs to like your writing.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. - Oscar Wilde
OK, so I haven't quite got this far yet, but I certainly empathise and can see this in my future!

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. - Ernest Hemingway
Verification from one of the "great writers" that the literature that is not usually seen as "high" can be the most difficult to write.

And now for a quote I disagree with:
Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct, and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish. - Monica Dickens
Now, I don't like this quote so much, because I think that writers are perpetually bound to reality, even the writers that produce fantasy or science fiction or the like. Writing is hard work and then on top of that the "real world" is constantly standing over you, hammering you with its reality cudgel until you bleed, trying to make your writing work.

What have you learned from the advice that other authors have given?

location, location

I have this idea that perhaps I could write better or more often if I was in exactly the right location. I know, rationally, that it's not quite as simple as that - but I still have idealised ideas of my future writing space which I can't quite shake. I thought I'd share some which have faded and some which have stuck with me.

(1) I used to imagine myself writing novels in a traditional library all of my own:

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Red leather armchairs, smoking jacket, a flask of port, roaring fire, big dark wooden desk. Then I realised that (a) it felt a little too masculine a stereotype, and not quite cosy enough; and (b) I'd probably feel overwhelmed, surrounded by so many books. Who am I to attempt to write one?; and (c) I'd get distracted too easily.

(2) A romantic Parisian café:

You can just see it, can't you? Wearing a beret and scarf, frowning as you attempt to keep your pages of manuscript from blowing away, ink stains on your fingers, polite or not-so-polite Parisian waiters bringing you café au lait.
Then I realised that probably while I sat in this position I'd be ingesting enough nicotine to bring on a rapid demise. The streetside would probably smell. And the waiters would give me nasty looks when I stopped buying things but still sat there all day.

(3) A more literary café might do the trick. It worked for J. K. Rowling, didn't it?

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But then I realised that, as attractive as this café looks, I'd probably be surrounded by literary snobs, and I would either become one myself, or feel grossly inadequate as they talked about writers I've never heard of.

(4) For a while I considered the possibility of writing on a tropical beach, like the one I stayed on at Koh Phi Phi in Thailand a few years ago:

Imagine how pleasant it would be to write here. Maybe swinging in a hammock, lazily watching the sea.

But I think this is probably just wishful thinking. I think I would actually just become lethargic, obese and boorish. Or, I would start feeling really guilty about the way Westerners are able to come to idealised little places like this and completely ignore the Thai people, and then I would become a Communist and start writing angry protest novels.

(5) Now, this is an ideal that has stuck with me. I still feel extremely attracted to it. I first thought of it when my supervisor asked me once what I would do if someone left me enough money to survive on perfectly adequately and I didn't need to work. I decided that I would spend six months of every year in a little cottage beside a mountain lake (I imagine Lake Tekapo) writing novels, and six months in the city doing some kind of volunteer work.

This is how I imagine the cottage:

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There are no mice or rats - that's a given. There is a cosy open fire. There is a small community nearby so I'm not completely cut off from humankind. And there is a big window overlooking the lake and the mountains, with my desk in front of it. Not quite like the one below, which is too big, but you get the idea:

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Along the same lines, I can imagine myself in a Swiss village like the one below, learning German and writing novels. I think this is slightly less realistic, though!

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(6) Finally, I am absolutely sure that whenever I end up getting a house, I want there to be sloping ceilings, and a little attic room I can use for writing. I've always been attracted to sloping ceilings, for some reason. I think they're cosy and they make me want to write. So I imagine a writing space a bit like this:

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... or this:

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... or this:

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So there you have it. My ideal locations.

history versus story

As I approach the end of my MA, I start to wonder about what it will be like when I have the time and energy to write fiction again.

I've been writing history for so long now that I suspect it has completely changed the way I approach creative writing. Maybe in some ways for the better. I've had to learn to be more concise. But I definitely think my writing will be a lot more ... dry at first. I try to write history in an attractive way, but I definitely have an academic style, and it will be strange to start breaking rules again. I just hope I can overcome what has been drummed into me by academics for the past six years.

But something that I will be fascinated to find out is whether doing a MA will have helped me overcome my aversion to writing an extended piece of work. I've planned, and planned, and planned. I've researched. I've rewritten. I've learned the value of simply trying to get an idea down, without worrying too much about the prose at first. And I will come out at the end of it all with a piece of writing that is over 50,000 words long - longer than any original writing I've ever done before.

Is it different, though? A thesis has the benefit of being based around facts, and so all your material is there to work with. It has the difficulty that if something isn't working in the way you structure it, you still need to base it around those facts. Writing a novel, on the other hand, has the benefit that you are the Boss. If things aren't working - you make something up. Its difficulty, however, is that everything in it is supposed to magically appear from your imagination. And what if I find that all my hard work has been completely useless when it comes to sitting down and trying to write a novel?

Maybe the elusive answer is this: to write a historical novel.

a place to write

I am a lucky girl. For my birthday, my flatmates gave me a beautiful multi-coloured hammock. I'm afraid that, for the moment, it has superseded my armchair.

I lay in it this afternoon, writing in my notebook a review for Halfway Down the Stairs of Isaac Marion's new/upcoming novel, Warm Bodies. Already I can sense that in my hammock there is a good vibe for review-writing.

In it, I hang suspended slightly over the garden, swaying gently in the breeze. I feel isolated, private, but at the same time people walk past the fence immediately beside me and I listen to their voices, thrilled that they don't know I'm there. It's a slight contradiction.

Above me, I see leaves, with sunlight glinting through. In front of me, roses and the deck and my sandaled feet and my rainbow hammock. A butterfly darting about. Cobwebs that were invisible before. I raise my pen and write. The ideas come quickly and freely.

I am going to have to exercise great self-control when it comes to this hammock. I feel that perhaps there should be a fairy tale about a hammock that bewitches those who lie within it, because that is the effect it is having on me.

At least, I suppose, I can read and write in it, with old-fashioned pen and paper. If I read more books because I become addicted to my hammock, is that a bad thing?