Ice Dancing - The Story Behind the Story.

 

Cover image by Michal Piasecki

Of all the books and stories and plays I've ever written, I find myself going back to Ice Dancing again and again. It's a love story, but it also tackles a serious and troubling issue that never seems to go away. When I was describing it for publication, I called it a 'very grown-up love story' and that's certainly what it is. 

When he was young, my son learned to skate, here in Scotland, and then played ice hockey for a number of years. He only stopped because playing hockey 'just for fun' is difficult in this country, and the demands of school work and his other passion at the time - karate - meant that something had to go, and that something was hockey. He enjoyed it very much, but he knew that it was never going to be a career. Later, living and working in Sweden, he went back to it for a while, as the hobby sport he had enjoyed. 

As an adolescent, he had a fine Canadian coach, one who cared about all the kids, whether they were good or not, a coach who commanded the kind of respect that made the parents on the sidelines behave themselves - in short, a model teacher. 

At the same time, we were hearing about other kinds of coaches, in this and in other sports. Coaches who were not at all trustworthy. Coaches who would come to give the sport a bad name. 

The other day, a nice, kind, trusting person of my acquaintance remarked on social media that she would always trust people when they told her who or what they were. Having grown up in a loving and protective family, I used to feel the same. Unfortunately, life taught me, as sooner or later it teaches all of us, that there are people in the world who tell you only what they want you to hear. And then, when they behave badly, manipulate you for their own ends, you find it incredibly difficult to accept the betrayal. It's not nice to feel that you've been deceived. Not at all nice to surrender at least some of your trust in the innate goodness of people. 

I've written about betrayal rather often: sometimes a betrayal of friendship or love, sometimes the terrible betrayal of trust between adults and children. 

Many years ago, having had two successful and well reviewed full length productions at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, I submitted a new play which attempted to tackle this kind of betrayal, only to have it turned down. They were quite within their rights, and it may not even have been a very good play - but I was hurt at the abruptness of the rejection when I had worked so hard for them in the past. 'I hope they nurture this new talent' one distinguished theatre critic had written. Some hopes. 

I felt that I was surely owed a discussion of some kind. Perhaps questions about why I had wanted to tackle this possibly contentious and uncomfortable subject. None of that happened. What happened was that I got a short, abrupt, almost embarrassed note, saying 'not for us.' After which, I was 'ghosted' by someone I had thought of as a friend before ghosting was really a thing. When I look back on it now, I still find something disturbing about the finality of it. It was as though I had committed a terrible faux pas in writing about something unmentionable. 

Year passed, I began to write far more fiction than plays, and eventually I wrote Ice Dancing, set in a small lowland Scottish village - a grown-up love story that was about much more than the central relationship. It was a story that went back to that original play, and its themes, about male athletes in particular and what happened to some of them. 

Even then, no traditional publisher was remotely interested, even though they were publishing some of my other novels. So here it is, under my own imprint, and doing rather well. 

If you're curious, you can get it on Kindle for a bargain price of 99p for a couple of days! 

Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges.

They're here! - the first two books in my Canary Isles trilogy: Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges. 

As I told you in a previous post, these novels have had a long and chequered past. I first wrote the story - or something like it - many years ago, when I spent two winters with my husband, artist Alan Lees, living in the Canaries. Alan was skippering a charter yacht, a big, beautiful catamaran called Simba.

The first year, I lived aboard the boat and helped take care of our customers. I also got pregnant. By the time we came back the following winter, it was with our six week old son. We borrowed an apartment in Los Cristianos from a friend, while Alan worked, and I spent several blissful months looking after Charlie in a child-friendly place. My parents and then Alan's mum flew down to help. 

But our real love was La Gomera. It was where we had taken our visitors. It was where we went for sweet, clean water for the boat And it was a place we explored ourselves, loving everything about it. It was also where I wrote the first drafts of this story, which would become a radio play and an unsatisfactory novel that was published so badly that my then editor later wrote to me to apologise for the violence they had done to my subtle story of a cross cultural relationship. 

I filed it away under bitter experience, but then, decades later, with my own imprint (Dyrock Publishing) as well as a good many traditionally published books under my belt, I thought I would try again. My two main characters - Luis and Margaret - just wouldn't sit down and shut up. I loved them far too much to let them go. 

A couple of years ago, I published the first part, under the title Orange Blossoms, but quite soon, took it down again, because I still wasn't very happy with it. If you look for the new version, Hera's Orchard, you'll find its previous title in the book description. I did quite a bit of rewriting and editing, although if you are one of the few people who bought and read Orange Blossoms, don't worry. If you want to know what happens next, you can pick up exactly where you left off, and find out what becomes of the marriage, in Bitter Oranges. 

You can also download a freebie of the eBook of Hera's Orchard from 9th - 13th April, so if you want to check out the new version, you'll be able to do that as well. 

Bitter Oranges is the sequel and you'll find it as an eBook or a paperback. 

I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to write about a 'holiday romance gone wrong' or a scammer, or an untrustworthy foreigner, or all the other tropes that seem to crop up again and again in UK fiction and drama. I wanted to write a genuine love story, but more than that, I wanted to write a love story about two people from very different backgrounds. Luis says 'soy un buen hombre' and so he is. Let's face it - love and marriage can be challenging enough, even for good men and women, if they come from very different cultures. If they speak different languages. Languages that perhaps shape their thoughts differently. 

Brexit added yet another horrible layer of complexity and potential trouble, one I certainly didn't foresee when I was writing that first radio play, but one which I had to tackle head on in these new books. 

Does it work out? What do you think? 

Both these lovely covers images are by my talented husband. 

Things You Do When Writing Novels

I bought a Spanish guitar. This Spanish guitar, to be precise. It sounds as beautiful as it looks. Not that I can play it. But for the moment, I'm just admiring it. 

This has been the occasion of some debate among my Facebook and 'real life' friends. 

When I was in my teens, I knew a few chords, and I would often play and sing to please myself. But I can't really play and I know how difficult it is to acquire even a basic level of competence. It's like playing the piano, which I do play reasonably well. I started learning when I was seven, and carried on having lessons when we moved up to Scotland, only stopping when I went off to university at the age of seventeen, by which time I was on Grade Seven and tackling quite challenging pieces.

Much later, our son, then aged seven, had lessons for a year, until we came to a decision that it really wasn't for him, greatly to his relief, I might add! I took over his lesson for a few years. At that point I was the teacher's most senior pupil in terms of experience as well as years, and I thoroughly enjoyed being 'stretched' by her in what I could play. I still play - not half enough, but I do, and I enjoy it. I'm under no illusions about my abilities. There are lots of pieces that are way beyond my technical capabilities (most Chopin, for instance, although I can manage some) as well as pieces that I know I could play a whole lot better if I applied myself. 

But I know enough to know how little I really know - and that's a state profoundly to be desired for anyone embarking on any skill at all, whether it's playing a musical instrument, writing a novel or learning a sport. 

It goes like this. You struggle. Then, you think 'I'm getting the hang of this' and that makes you happy. After which comes a blissful spell of  'look at me, I can really do this' over-confidence. (I often wonder just how many politicians never get beyond that stage.) Then, you fall off a cliff edge and think 'I don't actually know anything about this at all!' 

After which you can really start to progress. All of which is to say that although I'm tempted to re-learn how to play a few chords, I'm never going to learn how to play the guitar properly. At the moment, I'm just looking at it, and touching it from time to time. The case is beautiful too - and that's made in Spain as well. 

I bought it at auction. I was in our local saleroom, hunting for the antique and vintage textiles I list and sell from our Etsy store, the 200 Year Old House. And there it was. The case was closed so I carefully teased it open and gazed at this lovely thing. When I ran my fingers over the strings the sound was mellow and beautiful. It carried me straight into the world of my novel. I told my husband about it and instead of saying 'you don't need a guitar' which would be true, he said 'Try to get it! I love musical instruments!' 

I'm working on a trilogy of novels set largely on the Canary Islands, mainly lovely La Gomera, but partly set in Los Cristianos on Tenerife and partly in Glasgow, of which more in another post. Like many writers, when I'm researching and writing something, I like to surround myself with 'stuff'  relevant to the book - pictures, maps, and even objects that are inspirational. It's a kind of immersion experience and it works for me. Even down to vintage perfumes, which I collect anyway - but right now, I'm favouring Embrujo de Sevilla (the Enchantment of Seville, launched in 1933) and Maja, launched in 1921, both by Myrurgia of Barcelona, both gorgeous old scents. 

Embrujo de Sevilla by Myrurgia

This need for immersion also explains why, years ago, when I was writing a novel called The Physic Garden, set in late eighteenth, early nineteenth century Scotland, I managed to buy a Georgian hand embroidered christening cape at auction - one that proved inspirational, and figured in the finished book. I decided to let it go a few years later, because it had done its work and it was time for it to move on. Like the guitar, it was a thing of great beauty, and I loved writing about it. Most dealers in antiques are well aware that we are only guardians of these old objects for a brief time. But with writing, it's a bit different.

When I'm writing a novel, whether historical or contemporary, I tend to go for immersion in the world of the book. Once you've sent the finished book out into the world, it can be very difficult to let go. It's as though the characters exist. They go on without you, even when you've moved on to something else but it doesn't take much for you to climb back inside that world all over again. Sometimes it can be a visit to an ice hockey game (Ice Dancing) or hearing somebody singing a song by Robert Burns (the Jewel) but sometimes it can be as simple as a spray of spicy, citrussy magical perfume. 

Georgian hand embroidered christening cape.

 

Ice Dancing - A Very Grown Up Love Story

Cover image by Michal Piasecki

My novel, Ice Dancing, will be free on Amazon Kindle for the next five days, beginning tomorrow, 31st December, so if you're at a loose end over the New Year holiday, you might like to give it a try. And - if you enjoy it - reward me with a short review, or at least some stars! Because it really makes a difference to how Amazon promotes our work. 

It's set in a small village in rural lowland Scotland. As I've said to a few friends, it's 'inspired by' the place I live, in that I know exactly what it's like living in a small Scottish village.  Nevertheless, all the characters are entirely fictional. 

The story involves an attractive newcomer and his effect on a small community where more or less everyone knows everyone else, or thinks they do. But the seemingly glamorous stranger has a more difficult and disturbing past than the village - and one inhabitant in particular - could ever imagine. 

You'll find it on Amazon with a gorgeous cover by Polish photographer (based in Scotland) Michal Piasecki. 

Click on the title below for the UK link or search for it in other countries. 

Ice Dancing.

Ten Things to Think About If You're Planning a Writing Career

 

1 - Do you want to 'be a writer' or do you want to write? If you find yourself saying that you want to 'be a writer' but haven't actually written much, while making excuses to yourself and your friends - I don't have the time, I don't have the space, I don't have a computer - then you may need to have a rethink.

2 - Getting an agent doesn't mean that you'll get a publishing deal. Even if you win the query letter lottery, ten to one you'll be asked to rewrite. Many times.  And even when you've done those rewrites, you still may not get a publishing deal. At some point, you may realise that you've wasted the time you should have spent writing another book on rehashing the previous book. 

3 - Very few people make a living out of their writing, and this situation has only got worse. Are you prepared to diversify and do other things to earn actual money? The average 'advance' - if you get one, which is debatable - is tiny. £1000 or £500 is not unusual for a book that has taken a year or two to research and write. Lots of jam tomorrow in the publishing world. 

4 - If you have written fiction, you'll be told that nobody is reading fiction. If you have written non-fiction, nobody is buying that either. If you write popular fiction, it's not literary enough. If you write literary fiction, it's not popular enough. I was once told that my work was 'too literary to be popular but too popular to be literary.' It's the equivalent of the indrawn breath when you are trying to sell a car. Nobody wants that particular model, although they absolutely do want the model they are trying to sell you. The Long Tail seems to be an unknown concept. (Read the book. It's a revelation.) 

5 - For most small to medium sized publishers, editing is not what it was. A good editor will ask all the right questions and in answering them you will make the book better. But most are now freelance, and many publishers simply can't afford them. 

6 - Are you prepared to do almost all publicity and promotion yourself? You will be expected to contact libraries and local venues. You will probably have to organise your book launch yourself, and many bookstores won't be keen to host you unless you can guarantee sales. All of this genuinely (as opposed to point 1, above) eats into good writing time. And yet you feel compelled to do it for fear of missing out on sales.

7 - The physical quality of your precious baby - aka the book - may not be nearly as good as it was even a few years ago. In fact it may involve paper like Soviet Era Polish bog roll. (Of which I have some experience.)

8 -  Once you get a modicum of traction, with a reasonably popular subject, you may be asked to talk about your book. Many commercial organisations will expect you to do this for nothing. My maddest moment was realising that I had hauled myself across the country, done a ten minute talk for a big chain bookstore, (there were four other participants I didn't know about and a tiny audience) paid for an overnight stay in a horrible room, and trekked back home. All at my own expense. 

9 - There are, of course, some organisations that may invite you to speak, give you a good meal and somewhere nice to stay and buy copies of your book as well. It has happened to me and I was incredibly grateful. But it's rare and getting rarer all the time. 

10 - Given all of the above, you may want to consider going it alone. You won't be alone. You can get help along the way. But it isn't a simple solution either. These are shark infested waters, and you need to be careful and committed. Nevertheless, it strikes me that the reverted and new titles I'm now publishing myself under my own imprint are good quality. Good physical quality as well, with beautiful covers, and nice paper. I'm the same writer I ever was, albeit with many more years of experience. And you know what? When it comes to the reading public, that long, long tail of people who like books, nobody cares who published them. 

They never even notice.

Please Don't Kill Our Darlings

 

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, courtesy ITV

I have a confession to make. I have never, not once, watched those 'final episodes' of long running series where the main character dies. I was thinking about this earlier this week when I switched on the TV in the kitchen, as I often do to alleviate the sheer boredom of cooking, only to find that it was showing the Remorseful Day, in which Morse pops his clogs. I've never watched it and I never will.

I feel the same about that appalling episode where Hercule Poirot dies. Not only have I never watched that, but I avoid those episodes where he ages, episodes that I notice tend to be accompanied by doom laden background music. Poirot is the original cosy crime series. Christie herself may have been fed up of being lumbered with her wildly successful creation, but in his David Suchet incarnation at least, I love him. I don't care if he's a perjink little man. I don't care if his denouement speeches might be unbearable in real life. This is patently not real life, and I love him to bits. In my mind, he goes on forever, and I'm never ever going to be persuaded to watch his final moments.

I should perhaps also confess that I've killed off more than enough darlings of my own. And mourned them too, mourned with those who are left behind. But that's different, because I'm not writing cosy crime. Sometimes I'm writing grown up love stories, literary fiction, explorations of real life, whether historical or contemporary. And for the writer, in an odd sort of way, even though you may have killed them off, those characters live on in your internal world. I'm thinking of two novels in particular: Bird of Passage and The Amber Heart. Without going into much detail, in case you haven't read them and want to, some darlings didn't quite make it. But don't worry. They're here, living their best lives in my head and heart. 

That phrase 'killing your darlings' was attributed to William Faulkner, but was used earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch who wrote of murdering one's darlings. Essentially it means that as a writer, you may well find yourself having to delete the passages that you love best, the parts of a book that don't really advance the story. I used to think they were right. Now, as I'm reading swathes of tremendous classic fiction where people didn't feel the need to edit out all the best bits, I suspect they were probably wrong anyway. Imagine Dickens or Emily Bronte killing their darlings. Well, of course, she did. But just imagine (as I did here in this blog post!) if she had had an editor who told her to make radical changes. 

But I digress. Along with a sizeable chunk of the older female population, I loved Mamma Mia. We didn't get to see the sequel in the cinema so my husband bought the DVD for me. I got only a little way into it to realise that - horrors- they had killed off Donna. (Presumably because Streep didn't want to do it.) 

I donated the video to somebody who wanted it, but I still feel cheated. I wish somebody had warned me beforehand. The songs may have been great but it meant that the whole thing shifted from being a joyful film about wonderful middle aged men and women to focusing yet again upon the young. Not only that, but removing that brilliant central character was like chopping down a mast on a sailing boat. It took a whole lot of rigging with it, and crippled the vessel. 

The point of these ongoing characters is that in our minds, they don't die. They just are. Which is, now that I think about it, very like the way writers feel about their characters, even if we may have killed them off. They don't die. They are still there, popping up from time to time to remind us of their existence.

Can you imagine a grown up William Brown, struggling with mortgage payments and divorce? Can you imagine him ill and lonely? William - whom I love quite as much as Poirot - changed with the changing times, but he never grew old. That wasn't a tragedy. Peter Pan this isn't. Richmal Crompton created a world into which we all, from time to time, need to escape - hilariously funny, wise, wicked, badly behaved (he'd definitely have been hit with an ASBO now) and completely outside time and its sorrows. That's why I still feel the need to read those stories all over again from time to time, and why I still, all these years later, take so much pleasure from them. 

Bird of Passage is available on Kindle at the bargain price of 99p until 31st July.

Real People?

 I've been watching the television version of  Uncanny, having listened to the excellent podcast of the same name. As you'll know, if you're a follower of this blog, I'm fond of a spooky story. The success of Uncanny proves I'm not alone, and reminds me of the occasion, some years ago, when I was asked to attend a meeting with people from a big Scottish media company. I'd had several successful stage plays as well as vast amounts of radio drama produced by that stage, so they wanted to find out if I might have any ideas that I could propose for TV.

Two things happened at that meeting. 

One was that I politely made it clear that - other than the basic proposal of course - I wouldn't be doing too much work without at least a modicum of development money. I'd been bitten by this kind of thing before, wasting a whole year of my writing life working on a detailed proposal that included many meetings and some sample episodes only to have it knocked on the head without even a 'kill fee' as the compensatory payment is called. This isn't unusual, incidentally. But jam tomorrow is a poor diet. 

Then I suggested something with a supernatural theme. They pulled a sort of collective face and chorused 'nobody is interested in the supernatural.' This was just before Buffy hit our screens. As William Goldman put it in his wonderful Adventures in the Screen Trade,  'Nobody knows anything.'

Anyway - good on Danny Robins for his success with the excellent Uncanny. Although the explanations of the sceptics seem to me to be much more far fetched than the accounts of the believers. The third episode of the TV version included an 'experiment' in the way infrasound can induce feelings of unease and physical discomfort in humans. I'm sure it does. But if you tell the subjects of your experiment beforehand that the place where you are going to hit them with infrasound is 'haunted' you have instantly invalidated any results! I find the sceptics irritating for more than one reason though. They just seem to be so closed minded. 

I believe that in Tibetan Buddhism, there is the concept of the Tulpa, a thought form. The Tulpa is said to be a manifestation of the unconscious mind and can assume a physical shape, even interacting with the real world. Sometimes inconveniently so. It's obvious that this is not something to be treated lightly. I find myself wondering how many of the experiences related on Uncanny might be explained by this theory. Especially those manifestations that persist and seem to pursue those who have conjured them. 

More relevant to creative writing though - when you, as a writer, create characters, they become very real to you. Or they should do. If they don't, you're doing it wrong! They persist. You can't suddenly change them, or not without difficulty. Even when a book is finished and published and you've moved on, you can, if you think about it, switch back to the world of that book, and see those characters as vividly as though they were real people - friends you've known and haven't spoken to for a while. 

They are just as real as anyone else you might meet in person or online. Perhaps more real than the people you know only online. Because you know them intimately. You can see them and hear them. And there they are - carrying on with their lives - even when you're not actually writing about them any more.

Which is a strange little thought for Hallowe'en, isn't it? 

If you want to read another strange little story, here's one I wrote earlier: Rewilding.   You can download it free from 30th October till 3rd November. 

The Fiction and the Fact - how a true story inspired a novel

 

My great grandmother Anna 

Many years ago, when I first started researching my Polish family history, I heard the tale of my great grandmother, Anna, a lady of high status even among the szlachta, the Polish aristocracy. All I knew then was that she had, somewhat scandalously at the time, married her estate manager. I was intrigued, and the more I discovered, the more intriguing the story became. 

The real Anna was left a youngish widow, after the death of my great grandfather, Wladyslaw Czerkawski. By then, she had five children, of whom the eldest was only fourteen, and two large estates, some fifty kilometres apart, to maintain. All this was in the uncertain and often dangerous borderlands of what was then Eastern Poland, but is now Ukraine. For a woman who had been cossetted for most of her married life (my great grandfather seems to have been quite a romantic) it was challenging to say the least, especially since most of the cash was tied up in land. 

One thing I did manage to discover back then, well before the internet made things so much easier, was that her youngest son, my grandfather, also Wladyslaw, had inherited the second estate, at a place called Dziedzilow, from a wealthy but unmarried great uncle, at an extraordinarily young age. Seven, in fact. Leaving Anna with a set of intractable problems, little ready money, and many people relying on her for their very livelihoods. Not to mention the demands of her own children. I promised myself that in future, I would find out more. A lot more.

Meanwhile, this information, of which I knew tantalising little real detail, fermented away in my head and the result was a novel called The Amber Heart. Because I knew so little about the real people who inspired the story, I decided to set it very firmly in the more distant past, in the early to mid nineteenth century rather than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of the true story. And because I had an inkling, even back then, that some people who knew the truth of the relationship might still be alive, I used the story as a springboard for the novel. Anna became my fictional Marianna, a landed lady, and her lover, Danilo, started life in extreme poverty. I loved telling that story, even though it was to take a long time to come to print. (You can read a bit about it on this blog, here.) 

Cue forward many years, and I found out all kinds of interesting and moving things about the real relationship between Anna and her much younger Jan - facts which gave me considerably more sympathy and understanding of the real estate manager than (I suspect) the family had ever accorded him at the time. Which was a pity, because he had been an intelligent young man and their saviour in more ways than one. You can read all about it in my new non-fiction book, The Last Lancer.   As ever, truth is often more messy, more nuanced, more difficult than fiction, in which we always have the impulse (and, let's face it, the permission) to shape things into a satisfactory story. 

All the same - I'm very fond of the big family saga that The Amber Heart became. I was as much in love with Danilo as Marianna, and there are things about it that can still, when I read them again, make me cry. As readers have told me, they too cry over it.

If you want to download it on Kindle, it's only 99p from now until 19th of May. A bargain, because it's a big book. If you'd rather read it in paperback, that's available too, although you'll have to pay full price for that, I'm afraid. 

The point I want to make for any writer just starting out, though, is that your 'material', whatever that is, can inspire many different ways of writing. Just follow your heart. 

Plotters and Pantsers - which one are you?

 

A friend inspired this post and I'm grateful to her. She observed that she had been taken by surprise by the ending of one of my novels called Ice Dancing and my immediate thought was 'so was I!' I honestly had no idea how it was going to end until I started writing the last couple of chapters, and suddenly saw what should have been staring me in the face at the same time as the narrator herself discovered it. The odd thing was that it didn't involve any manipulation of the story. When I looked back, the clues were all there. I didn't have to plant them at all. 

Which in turn led me to think about a couple of other novels where the ending had taken me by surprise. Without any spoilers, in Bird of Passage, I discovered the trauma that the 'hero' (if he can be called that) Finn was trying to remember at about the same time that he realised it himself. Until that moment, I knew there was something, but didn't know what it was. I literally woke up in the middle of the night saying 'So that was what happened!'

Similarly, in The Physic Garden, I knew that the ending involved a shocking betrayal - because that's how it begins. With the narrator mentioning it, without explaining it. Again, I realised the nature of that betrayal and its consequence only when I got to that part of the story. 

I am what I believe is known as a 'pantser' in creative writing circles. I write by the seat of my pants. Although that isn't how I'd ever describe it myself. I write to find out. I always know the beginning, and I sometimes have a very vague idea of the ending, sometimes as little as the last few lines - but I never know how to get there. And if I did, I would get so bored that I would never finish writing the book.  

Outlines were always anathema to me, because I could write them (with difficulty) while knowing full well that the finished book would be nothing like the outline. How could it be when I just didn't know? Plotters do seem to know. They plan everything out, including detailed character sketches. I never do that either, because I've only just met these people. It doesn't feel precarious. It feels uncannily as though the story is already there, waiting to be uncovered. 

All the same, for many writers, plotting works extremely well. I don't write crime fiction or the kind of thrillers that depend upon intricate plots that must fit together but I suspect they do need to be pretty well plotted in advance. Otherwise you might find yourself desperately trying to tie up too many loose ends in the last chapter. Or in the last episode, as happened with a recent, deeply annoying TV series. But it would be interesting to hear from crime writer friends if this is indeed the case, or if there's a sort of half way house where you have a broad outline that you flesh out as you're writing. 

There is, of course, no right or wrong way - only the way that works well for you. The trick, as with so much writing, is to find out what suits you best. And the only way to do that is to carry on writing. 

 

Loving Ayrshire

 

It's no secret that I love Ayrshire. We moved from Leeds, years ago, when I was twelve, and my biochemist father got a job in a research institute here. I never enjoyed school much, even though I did quite well academically - but I adored the countryside and history of this lush, green and, let's face it, rainy county. If you can put up with the rain, it's considerably warmer than the rest of Scotland, and warmer than much of Northern England. Winters are much milder than in my native Leeds. 

Holidaymakers tend to pass it by in the mad rush for the Highlands, but the scenery is spectacular and the history is fascinating. Not surprisingly then, it has featured in at least some of my fiction, in novels such as The Jewel and Ice Dancing, as well as in many of the radio plays I used to write, notably a couple of series: The Peggers and the Creelers and Running Before the Wind. I'm planning a new series of novels even as I write this, and guess where they are mostly going to be set? 

I was happy to be asked to record a reading for this year's Tidelines Festival and chose a passage from the Jewel, about an early encounter between our very own Robert Burns and the woman who was destined to become his wife, and who was quite clearly the love of his life: Jean Armour. I didn't much want to record myself just sitting on a rock reading and my tech skills weren't up to recording myself walking and reading on a smartphone - so I included a sheaf of my own pictures of Ayrshire, as well as some lovely watercolour images from a Victorian artist called Janet Muir, who lived in Mauchline. Nice to see that the person putting the video together worked a bit of magic on them all. 

Anyway - here it is. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and watch the whole Love Ayrshire video. You'll find me, and a sheaf of other Ayrshire writers too. 

Vincent D'Onofrio, Character Inspiration and Click Bait Headlines

A slightly prickly post illustrated by very prickly thistles! 

Many writers, me included, will often find themselves imagining actors playing certain parts in the fiction we're creating. Mostly, this is without any expectation or even remote hope that it will actually happen - especially since we often look at previous performances of people who, however talented, would be far too old for the role. Although if you tell me that the author of the Bridges of Madison County didn't imagine Eastwood in the role, I won't believe you! 

It's a more nebulous idea than that. Sometimes a character arrives whole, and you, the writer, can see them and know exactly what they say and how they say it. William, the narrator in my novel The Physic Garden, was exactly like this. He was who he was, he spoke to me and there was nothing I could do about it. But sometimes, it can be difficult to 'see' them, as you're embarking on a project. And sometimes we watch an actor in performance and think - there's something about the performance that I can use.  

It's no secret among my close friends that I'm pretty obsessed with Law and Order Criminal Intent, but only those episodes with Goren and Eames. I'm intrigued by the character of Bobby Goren, and yes, I know he's written that way, but a fine actor can bring so much to a role. As a playwright, I know that an actor and director can show you elements of your writing that you hardly even knew were there. Between writer and actor, this is one intriguing character.

I'm in the middle of a huge and complicated piece of non-fiction about my Polish family background, but - as so often happens - there's a new novel simmering away at the back of my mind, and in that novel is a character who is walking around saying 'here I am, look at me' relentlessly. There are certainly elements of this character that owe something to D'Onofrio's fine realisation of Goren in Criminal Intent, his vast intelligence, his solitary nature, his vulnerability  - albeit in a completely different way, in a completely different setting, in a completely different country. 

This isn't 'copying' or fan fiction. It's using a past performance of someone you admire as a springboard into creating another character, teasing out their unique story, using those insights in the creation of something new and different. 

I think a lot of us do this. We'll see what emerges.

Finally, somewhere online is an idiotic video titled the Life and Sad Ending of Vincent D'Onofrio. And no, I won't be linking to it, because it's clickbait, pure and simple. He's not dead. He's still a very fine actor indeed. He's just - you know - older. Which is no sin. I find these celebrity posts and videos so strange. As though growing older and wiser is somehow optional. 

I've news for you. We're all heading that way. You may be a few years behind - but it's coming. Nothing surer. 

An Unforgettable Novel

Often, when I'm working on a new book, I actively avoid reading fiction set in the same period, although I always read plenty of non-fiction books around the subject, especially if I'm writing historical fiction and non fiction. Sometimes the 'voice' of a particular piece of fiction is too strong and gets in the way of the made-up voices in my head - and this is even true of non-fiction in which I tend to write narrative rather than academic non-fiction.

But this wonderful novel, Neal Ascherson's, the Death of the Fronsac, is the exception. 

I don't know why I didn't know about it earlier. I should have, given the subject matter and the narration, and also given that I admire the writer both as a journalist and a historian. Set in 1940, it is mainly, but not wholly, told through the experiences of a Polish soldier who has found himself in Scotland when his own country has been divided between Hitler and Stalin. It is, as one reviewer describes, an extended and 'marvellous meditation on what it means to have lost a country and a past.' It is a book about the meaning of the word 'home' in Polish more than in English. What it means to lose it, where it resides and whether, once lost, you can ever find it again. 

I finished it at 3 o'clock one morning, found myself dreaming about it for the rest of the night, wept over it, and wrote an online review which I knew wouldn't do it justice. My late father could have been the main narrator of this book - he too lost everything in the war and had, if anything, an even more traumatic time. He too arrived in Britain and elected to stay here, in the face of suggestions that the Poles 'go back home' to a home that no longer existed. I think nobody in his new country, even his much loved wife, my mother, really understood how it no longer existed and what his experiences had been. Not back then, anyway, although my mum certainly came to an understanding later. They simply didn't understand the trauma of it. 

During the course of my life, so many people here in Scotland have rushed to tell me how much they loved the Poles who stayed at the end of the war. 'Oh, they fitted in,' they'll say. 'Fine people.' I always suspected that it wasn't quite the whole truth at the time. It certainly wasn't my mother's experience in post-war Leeds. This book serves to confirm that it wasn't the whole experience of Poles in post-war Scotland either. 

I'm in the middle of researching the history of the Polish side of my family for a new book called The Last Lancer, and I've found more than one Scottish person asking me 'why didn't your dad go back to Poland'? Among much else, this fine book also explains some of those reasons why, in sensitive, detailed and horrifying terms. 

The novel also clarifies for me the reasons why my father's attitude to Churchill was equivocal at best. It was an attitude he shared with many Poles. But above all, it explains something central to the Polish perception of 'home', an inadequate word in English, and of the way in which Poles never confuse the piece of land labelled state - and nation. 

But what is that nation? What does it mean to be Polish? What, and where, is home, when home has been all but obliterated.

I think about it a lot these days, having recovered my own precious Polish citizenship a year ago. I think about it when, as happened to me recently, a new social media 'friend' posts something astoundingly insensitive, inaccurate and angry about 'illegal immigrants' (And is promptly unfriended - something I very rarely do!) 

There are no easy answers, and this is by no means an easy book - but it is still the finest and most illuminating piece of writing on these subjects - and on my own heritage - that I have ever come across.

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Promoting Your Books on Social Media - Only Connect.

This is one of a series of occasional posts about the more practical aspects (or should that be pitfalls?) of writing and publishing. 

For many years, I wrote for radio, TV and the theatre before turning to fiction and non-fiction. I'm traditionally published, but I also know something about self publishing, and have published several backlist titles and collections of short stories under my own imprint: Dyrock Publishing. I've taught creative and academic writing for years, from one off events to long courses. For most people, even after publication, discoverability* is the biggest problem. 

How do people hear about your book?

This post has been gnawing away at me ever since I tried to say something about using social media on one of those big professional Zoom meetings, only to have a man interrupt me with such casual rudeness that I'm still irritated about it. Not just because of the rudeness, but because I could see a genuine need for advice in the group - and could see, moreover, that some people were going about it in the most counterproductive way. 

The debate in this particular group turned to the use of social media for promotion: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Goodreads and various other platforms. The variety is confusing, and the demographics of each platform tend to change over time. There's no point in me reinventing the wheel and trying to describe to you what each site does best. There's plenty of information out there already and the best advice I can give you is to set aside some time, and have a look for yourself.

One thing struck me about the debate though: so many people, in a meeting aimed at writing professionals, said that they 'didn't like social media'. 

Now, that's fair enough. There are some social media sites with which I have a troubled relationship, in the sense that I find them not particularly user friendly. Or in one case, a bit of a bear pit. But you can't say that you want to learn how to promote your own work without spending at least some time engaging with one or more social media sites. If you feel so strongly about this dislike that you avoid them altogether, you're going to have to employ a publicist. There is a piece in this season's Society of Authors magazine, all about getting the most out of 'your publicist'. I found myself wondering just how many writers, even traditionally published writers, actually have them. Publishers do what they can, but publicity budgets are small, unless (paradoxically) you're so famous that you don't need the publicity. And if you're not famous to begin with, publicists don't come cheap. 

The second thing that struck me about the debate was just how many professional writers seem to think that landing on - for argument's sake - Facebook, and plonking down 'buy my book' posts and nothing else, will make people want to buy the book. There is nothing more off-putting than the Facebook 'friend' who never engages with you, or anyone else, until - fanfare of trumpets - they have a book to sell. 

So here's the big secret that is no secret at all. 

If you're going to use a site like Facebook, and are hoping that at some point people will be interested enough to buy your books, you have to actually engage with those people. 

It's fun. Some of them will be old friends you'd maybe lost touch with and that's a bonus. Some will be new friends. Some will be people you've met online and find that you like. Chat to them. Post photographs, Make them laugh. Make them cry. Let them admire your dog/cat/garden/recipe collection/model railway/full size Dalek made from egg boxes, or whatever else you love. Like their pictures. Reciprocate. Enter into debate. 

Join a few groups, not just to promote your book, or even primarily to promote your book, but to meet like minded people and to contribute. You don't have to give your whole life history away and you don't have to spend hours on there. You just have to engage and enjoy it. Ask for research help if you need it. Facebook is wonderful for this and in my experience, people are generous with their expertise. 

Then, if and when you have a new book coming out, some of these nice, interesting, witty people might be inclined to buy it. And if they don't, well, does it matter? It's the equivalent of a big, friendly book festival event, where there's a willing audience, whom you're happy to entertain, followed by a good question and answer session during which people often enlighten you, at the end of which, some of them will probably buy a copy of the book. Except that on social media, you don't need to wait for an invitation.  

Dip a toe in the water. Find one or two social media platforms that suit you.  Facebook is good for books as well as all kinds of other interests, so if you want to start somewhere, that would be the one I'd recommend. But other platforms are available. Watch for a while. Chat about this and that. Post some pictures. And eventually, yes, talk about what you're writing. Because people will often be interested in whatever went into the creation of the book. I know I am, where other people's work is concerned.

Only connect, as E M Forster would have said. 

 *This word, discoverability, when used in a recent publishing trade journal, seemed to cause a good deal of angst among a few men on social media. They wasted a huge amount of time and effort, trying to denigrate it. Ironically enough by using very long words in opaque sentences, presumably to demonstrate the elegance of their prose. It's a perfectly good word. And if you're a serious writer, aiming for publication, you need to know about these things. 

 

Too Much Hype

Out now in paperback

I'm a voracious reader and depending upon length, I can get through a couple of books in a week. I read most of my fiction on my Kindle Paperwhite, late at night or in the early hours of the morning, with the light off - so that I don't disturb my longsuffering husband, although the thud as the Kindle slides onto the floor when I fall asleep has been known to wake him up with a jump. 

Except that for a few weeks now, I haven't been able to find anything that I really want to read. Which is crazy when you think about the number of books published each year. 

Partly, I put it down to the fact that, having galloped through all of Fred Vargas's brilliant Commissaire Adamsberg novels, I'm feeling bereft without him. 'He' being Adamsberg. I know Vargas is female. But it's like the end of a love affair. Nothing quite matches up to the beloved, so everything I've tried to read since, with a few notable exceptions, has seemed a bit 'meh'. 

If you don't know these books, you could do what I did, on the recommendation of my good friend Alison, who first introduced me to this writer: begin with the magnificent, magical Ghost Riders of Ordebec - captivating pretty much from the first page - and then go back to the beginning of the series. 

I may just have to read them all again, I'm missing Adamsberg and his world so much. 

Since I finished the last one, trying to read more slowly to prolong the pleasure, I've tried for a couple of months to find something equally involving, thought provoking and multi layered. I've searched and I've downloaded samples. And I've become ever more frustrated and angry.  

Hyperbole. That's the problem. 

Every book from the major publishers is now touted as the best thing ever. The over-promotion is almost bound to result in disappointment. Right now, at the tail end of a particularly grim period, I find myself looking for well written fiction, good storytelling, believable characters and a reasonable mix of triumph and tragedy. I don't need the best thing since sliced bread. I just need something well made and satisfying. 

Last night though - and I'm naming no names - I came across a fairly new crime novel that had been praised to the moon and back. I downloaded a sample. I've learned the hard way about being tempted into buying something without first reading a chapter or two, unless I already know and love the author. It's one of the benefits of reading on a Kindle that you can do just that, and then go on to buy the book with ease. Even at 2am. 

Except that when I opened the sample, instead of finding the first chapter, I found ELEVEN PAGES (I counted them in a rage, and I don't use a particularly large font size on my Kindle) of quotes telling me how wonderful this writer and his books were, just in case I was in any doubt. Now all publishers and self publishers add a few positive reviews to our books. I've just checked a couple of my traditionally published titles and there's a page of well chosen quotes. Even Ice Dancing, above, just out in paperback, has a single page. It's normal. But they're meant to reassure the potential reader, not browbeat them into submission. 

By the time I had waded through page after page of turgid and exclamatory praise, I wasn't very well disposed towards the book itself. I read on a bit to see if it matched the promotional overkill. It didn't. It was ordinary. And a bit glib. There was a certain satisfaction to be had in deleting it, but I'd rather have had a really good read. 

Still, all is not lost. I've gone back to Poldark - I read the first two books during the winter, and now I've turned to Book Three. What a relief to lose myself in vivid, well structured writing, great storytelling and above all engrossing characters - the kind of book you look forward to reading and then enjoy so much that you can hardly bear to put down. That magical, enviable sense of entering a world of someone else's creation - one that Vargas's quite different, but still wonderful Adamsberg novels gave me too. 

If you haven't already read them, do try them. 

No More Crime (For Now) Thank-You.

 

I apologise in advance to all my writer friends who work in this genre, but I've had it with crime fiction. This is probably a temporary state of affairs, but I know what brought it on. A little while ago, a friend who often has similar tastes in books, recommended Fred Vargas's 'Commissaire Adamsberg' novels. I read one from the middle of the series, The Ghost Riders of Ordebec. I was captivated from the first few pages, and then I went back and read the whole series, obsessively, far into the night. 

Feeling absolutely bereft when I had finished - and I may even go back and read one or two of them again - I read Vargas's three 'Evangelists' novels. I wasn't quite so captivated by them, but I still liked them very much indeed, especially the last one: The Accordionist. 

Then, as you do, I went on Facebook and asked for recommendations for similarly captivating novels. They flooded in. 

And you know what? I haven't really liked any of them. 

One, I bought on Kindle, read several chapters, and then sent it back for a refund. It was much too violent for me. It began with a woman being tortured in graphic detail, and went on with the murderer fantasising about torturing and murdering the torturer. 

I tried again. I bought a couple more, read about fifty pages, and nearly died of boredom. I downloaded samples of various recommendations. Just couldn't get into them.

Fred Vargas, incidentally, is female, and the string of books I've started and discarded this week are all by men. Does that tell me something? Maybe. But I love Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, E F Benson, China Mieville, James Joyce, Phil Rickman (especially his standalone paranormal books) and many many more. I'm nothing if not eclectic in my reading. And many of my favourite writers are men.

I need to move on. But partly, as the same friend who recommended Vargas pointed out today, it's that Adamsberg was a kind of watershed. The books were so original, the characters so vivid, the settings,  even the police station concerned, so wonderfully quirky and yet real, in the way that real life is so often bizarre and funny and strange, the plots so clever, and Adamsberg himself so engaging that everything else pales by comparison. There's a pedestrian, box ticking quality about so much of what I've been trying and failing to read. 

I wonder if it's the publishing industry itself? Maybe they're right, because all of these books had many glowing reviews. It wouldn't do if we all liked the same thing, would it? And people must be buying them, reading them, loving them. So who am I to complain?

But for the moment, I really have to give myself a break and find some other fiction to immerse myself in. I need somebody like Barbara Pym. Or Shirley Jackson. Or Rumer Godden (a recent discovery for me) or even - back to crime again - a Margery Allingham. 

Oh go on then. 
Any recommendations? 

We Need to Talk About Hierarchies

Riding the waves ... 

Over lockdown, I've been having some online conversations with fellow creatives about what we want from our work, and how that changes as we grow older. How we manage our expectations. How we deal with disappointment. How we navigate the line between working at what we love and getting reasonable payment for that work. 

The real trigger for this post, though, may have been somebody referring to 'writers lower down the ladder'. It is a common enough expression and one that we often find ourselves using or implying. I've probably used it myself.  But the more I thought about it, the more it struck me that the hierarchical model is useless where creative careers are concerned. If you see your career progression in terms of some hypothetical hierarchy, where you're aiming for status, authority, celebrity and massive remuneration, you will almost certainly be doomed to disappointment. 

Worse than that, you may waste good writing time hoping for your big breakthrough, when you should be getting on with writing. This isn't a counsel of despair. Nor does it underestimate the skills required, skills that you'll mostly acquire by practising every day. Reading a lot and writing a lot. 

The truth is that there is no single ladder. For the vast majority of people, a creative career is a giant game of snakes and ladders, with most of the ladders turning out to be more like step stools - and a whole lot of snakes of varying lengths, some more deadly than others. 

There are exceptions. There are wildly successful people. Some are fine writers. Some, not so much, but they have tapped into something in the popular imagination, and good for them. I may envy their success, but I don't begrudge it. But they are all outliers. You may as well go and buy a lottery ticket. The odds of mega success are pretty much the same. Somebody will win big every week just as somebody will achieve genuine, enduring, multi million pound worldwide best seller status. But if you do the lottery, the most you stand to lose is a couple of quid a week. If you waste a lifetime pursuing mythical best seller status as a writer, you may well lose a whole lot more: the joy of writing, of loving what you do, of honing your craft, of - yes - making as much of a living as possible along the way, but of not letting the pursuit of somebody else's expectations or fashions impinge too much on what you feel in your bones you should be writing. 

Besides, as the wonderful William Goldman says in his Adventures in the Screen Trade, 'nobody knows anything' - so you're just as likely to make it big following your heart as you are following somebody else's 'how to' prescription. Or last year's fashion.

The myth of the ladder to success - if you try hard enough and climb long enough you'll make it - is such a powerful one that all writers seem to subscribe to it when they're starting out. Me too. But it's demonstrably untrue - a tale usually told by those who have already made it big, often more by good luck than good management. 

With experience comes the harsh but liberating truth. Experienced writers often make judgments based on all kinds of things, often conflicting things that we would do well to acknowledge. Do we want to get this book or play or other piece of work out there? Do we want to communicate? Are we working on something for ourselves alone? Do we trust this person with this project? Do we believe in the project? How much are we prepared to sacrifice? Do we feel exploited or are we - as is so often the case - partners in some worthwhile but not very lucrative exploration. 

Everything is a negotiation between what we want and what is possible. Which in turn makes us think about how we can manage a career and how our aspirations can change over a lifetime. There is no ascending curve that you can plot your position on at any one time. We are, lets face it, all at sea, almost all the time. Sometimes our little craft is riding the waves beautifully. Sometimes we're rowing like mad and getting nowhere. Sometimes we're clinging to the wreckage and praying for help. Just occasionally, the million pound yacht looms on the horizon and we dream of climbing on board but more often than not, it motors on by. And sometimes, in the words of a very fine poet indeed, we're not waving, but drowning. And even then, we'll probably write about it. 

Facebook for Writers

Dreaming of a white Christmas - or maybe not.

Over the past year, I've attended a few professional Zoom meetings with my fellow writers, and the subject of social media comes up fairly regularly. Some of us are happy to wade in and engage with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, and others aren't. Some think that Facebook is the work of the devil. It may be, and you will need a long spoon to sup with it. It is also a huge time suck. A veritable sink hole of time suckery. 

But it's still a useful tool for writers. And there are some very nice people on there. I've made contact with many old 'friends in real life' as well as making some new ones. 

The truth is that, much like real life, all these sites are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the truly ugly, but if you want to sell books, or help your publisher to sell your books, (as well as keeping sane during a pandemic) you are going to have to learn how to do a little interacting and Facebook is probably the easiest place to start.

What surprises me is how many writers still claim to know nothing at all about using social media and are quite nervous about it in general. 

So here are a few pointers about Facebook in particular. And since I don't claim to be an expert, do feel free to add your own comments and recommendations below. This is an ever changing world, so if you are reading this in some hypothetical future, it may all be very different! 

1 Practical matters. There is no point in my reinventing the wheel, so if you want to set up a Facebook profile, go to the site, press the buttons, and follow the instructions. They make it pretty clear and I'm not going to be able to add very much that's useful to it. 

There are a couple of provisos though. When you are setting up your Facebook profile, you can search for - or Facebook will show you - potential friends. You can send friend requests. Don't send too many at once, (the Facebook Gods don't like it) and begin with people who are friends in real life. People will also send you friend requests. You don't need to click on them all at once. Or at all. You're in charge. Gradually, you will build up a circle of people who know you, on and offline. Or people with mutual friends. You will even meet some lovely, interesting new people.

Look at the tab marked 'Privacy'. You can make your account quite private. For example, I don't let anyone else post stuff on my pages. By which I mean that they can comment on my posts all they like, but I don't want them dumping unwanted stuff straight on my page. It's why I have comment moderation on my blog. You might be surprised by how much spam crops up on here, but never makes it onto the blog, because I just report it and delete it.  I relax my privacy settings in time for my birthday though! You can post things only to your friends, or you can make them public. Facebook explains all this much more clearly than I can, so again, do read the instructions. 

2 Once you have a Facebook account, you can also set up a dedicated author page. Or you can just focus on that, if you want to. Again, Facebook will tell you how and give you options for the kind of page you want. I'll come clean here. I use my private Facebook profile - with some privacy settings tweaked - far more than I use my author page. But I do still use it. I post links to blog posts such as this one, and other professional news, and information about the book I may be working on at any given time. That also links in to Goodreads, which I find a difficult site to 'work' so at least it keeps my profile current on there as well.  It also gives me the facility to set up details of events. In a normal year I would probably use it more than in a Covid year. 

3 Groups are where it's at with Facebook - increasingly so. If your books are set in ancient Rome or 19th century London, you can be sure to find a group of like minded individuals - not writers, but just people who are interested in that time and place. Join them. Join in. There are many writers' groups out there as well but remember that you are more likely to find your readers in special interest groups. Writers read a lot, it's true - but they also work a lot, and find themselves reading for work. I for one don't read very much new fiction when I'm deep into a book, although I often reread old, much loved fiction, Dickens and the like, mostly as a means of escape from the intensity of my own work. 

4 Probably the most important point of this whole post - be generous. Much like in the real world, you have to interact with other people. One thing that stands out to me is how many beginners will join a Facebook group and instantly dump a 'buy my book' post on there. No interaction, no chat, no likes, no sympathy, nothing. I attended a professional Zoom meeting earlier this year and while the speaker was speaking, there were people in the chat facility posting 'buy my book' links. Not sure if they would have got any takers, but for most of us, it's a bit irritating. Some groups don't allow it. There are people on Facebook who I never see or hear of from from one year's end to the next, unless they have a book to sell. Then it's 'oh, look, here's my book, you have to buy it.' No. No I don't. 

There is, to be fair, a whole spectrum of engagement. I'm on there a lot - too much probably. But I blog a lot as well. And I'm interested in what other people are doing and thinking and saying, whether it's online or out in the real world. 

In summary, Facebook can be good for writers. But if you put very little in, you'll get very little out. Much like computers, it's a case of garbage in, garbage out. We've all been to those parties where you meet somebody and try to talk to them, only to find them peering over your shoulder, in case somebody more interesting or useful comes along. Social media is much the same. You don't have to like everyone, but you do have to be interested in human nature in all its many manifestations. 

After all, isn't that what being a writer is all about? 

Writing Classes, Rainbows and Pots of Gold.

 

 

I've just finished reading a book called Negative Capability by Michele Roberts - a memoir of a difficult year in her life. Among the memorable passages was one dealing with writing classes. 

She points out that 'most of the students equated novels with producing marketable commodities. They were obsessed with writing correctly to certain agent identified, agent approved agendas.' A little further on she points out that 'they trusted literature less than self help writing manuals.' Roberts goes on to remark that she can't stop herself from bursting out in 'defence of making art' which cuts no ice with the students.

I found myself highlighting these passages and going back to them with sympathy and recognition. I too have taught writing classes and workshops. Over the years, I've seen the balance shift from the desire to learn about the craft of writing to an obsession with commodity and some hypothetical market - the pot of gold at the end of the writing rainbow. 

I used to teach creative writing for the Workers Educational Association. We lost funding, but eventually, because I was working in what was termed an 'area of social deprivation' (it was certainly that, but the people were the nicest, funniest, most talented bunch I've ever worked with) - the local council offered to supply the deficit. Except that suddenly they wanted an end product. It wasn't enough to encourage people to write in different ways, whether it was prose or poetry or drama - and we had people working on all of these within the group. No, there had to be an outcome. A thing at the end of it. Hence a great many funding applications that involved the production of box ticking anthologies. 

It marked a shift from a perception of the value of doing something for itself alone, to doing something only if there was a tangible result. When the relative impossibility of that tangible outcome became obvious, they decided that health and wellbeing was enough of a thing, so you had to demonstrate that you were prepared to be a cut price and largely untrained mental health professional as well. This is an attitude that is now so deeply and disastrously embedded in the bodies set up to support the creative industries that I doubt if we will ever manage to switch back to valuing participating in the arts purely for its own sake. 

I play the piano because I love doing it. I'm never going to be a concert pianist. I learn to play things because it gives me a bit of a buzz, and I suppose that's a wellbeing outcome of sorts, but frankly, I do it for the sheer enjoyment of playing and that's reason enough. I do it to do it. 

This is why, although I'm happy to give talks about my fiction, about the experience of writing and publishing, and also about the practicalities of research, I'm no longer keen to engage with the highly prescriptive aspects of a writing life, such as all those social media posts about the dos and don'ts of constructing query letters. And as for those agents who post scathing online take downs of terrible-query-letters-I-have-known for a bunch of sycophants to laugh at, in hopes of currying a bit of favour ... don't get me started! 

The harsh truth is that, even if you do manage to land an agent in the net of your perfect query letter, there is no guarantee at all that that agent will find you a publisher. But if you write to the specifications of a string of other people: the agent's reader, the agent, the publisher's reader, the publisher, the editor, I'm not at all sure that what will emerge will have done your development as a writer any good at all. Add to that a clutch of so called beta readers - a term from the video games industry that doesn't mean what people think it means -  before you even start on the long road to finding an agent, all with varied opinions about what you should and shouldn't be writing, and you'd be better to do a whole lot more reading and a whole lot more writing. As Roberts so succinctly puts it, find your own way into 'making art'. 

That's what Stephen King recommends here, and whether you like his books or not, I reckon he's right about this one. 

Which is not to say that a good editor isn't a wonderful thing: one who asks all the right, difficult questions and allows you, the writer, to rework and to learn a lot about your own craft in the process.  But that's a very definite professional skill, and not one usually possessed by an opinionated literature graduate intern working for peanuts for an agency or publishing house. 

The harsh truth is that the pot of gold at the end of the publishing rainbow is as elusive and mobile as the mythical one. And as William Goldman accurately states, in his Adventures in the Screen Trade, 'nobody knows anything'. Unless you're one of that growing band of celebrities in another field deciding that they've always wanted to write a book, the really big hits tend to come quite suddenly, out of left field, unpredicted by the industry itself. Not just unpredicted, but often rejected. Then they all want more of the same, until the next big hit comes along and takes them completely by surprise. If you're ready to ride that new wave - which tends to be a matter of coincidence and luck rather than anything else - good for you. 

Otherwise, write what you love, write what obsesses you - and to hell with the rest. If you don't, you may find yourself missing the beauty of the rainbow, in pursuit of an elusive pot of gold that will probably turn out to contain a few dried leaves. 

Fairy gold, you see. Just can't trust it. 

Bird of Passage, A Labour of Love, Shame and Sympathy

My novel Bird of Passage is on special offer on Kindle this week. It's a big, chunky read, and it's going cheap, so it will see you through a few more days of lockdown!

When I was posting about this on Facebook recently, various people told me how much they love this book. The group included a professor of English Literature, which should tell me something. Not least that I have some lovely discerning friends. 

Somebody asked me if I thought that the potentially controversial subject matter had put publishers off since this is a book that has never been traditionally published. Well it could be so but the truth is that I've found it almost impossible to get publishers to read it. And that's in spite of many of my books being traditionally published by publishers I like and respect. So it hasn't been rejected for any intrinsic faults. It has just, somehow, along with another novel called The Amber Heart that I've been editing during lockdown, slipped through the net.  

I'm never sure why. One of the problems may not lie in the controversial nature of the subject matter but in the fact that it is a kind of 'homage' to Wuthering Heights, which I love, albeit with a (fictional) Scottish island setting. This seems to be problematic, perhaps because people think it's a retelling, when it's not. How would I dare? But it certainly is, as one reviewer says, a re-imagining of the novel in a modern setting. The novel explores the terrible effects of institutional childhood abuse; it is about what people have to do to survive, and how that in turn affects those around them. It is also an exploration of the destructive nature of obsessive love. 

The background to Bird of Passage involves an issue or indeed a set of issues that are difficult to write about, problematic, sickening and to some extent neglected or even suppressed. My second major professional stage play, Wormwood, was a piece of ‘issue based’ drama so I know all about the problems and pitfalls. I’ve even run workshops on it for the Traverse in Edinburgh. 

But Bird of Passage is – and feels – very different.

A lot has been written about the notorious Magdalene Laundries but not so much about the Industrial Schools to which youngsters were committed by the Irish state over a long period of time and – it has to be said – long after the UK had decided that treating vulnerable children in this way was a Bad Thing. The schools were run by religious organisations, and there was a capitation payment: a sum of money for each child removed from an ‘unsatisfactory’ parent or guardian and incarcerated.

These were vulnerable children, treated as young criminals. Sometimes they were the sons and daughters of the women sent to those Magdalene Laundries on the flimsiest of accusations. They might be orphans. Or seen to be 'out of control’ (which could cover a multitude of small crimes). Or just plain poor. Single parents and their offspring seem to have been fair game.

Once they hit sixteen, of course, the payments stopped, so they were effectively shown the door. But even then they were not free. Thoroughly institutionalised, they would be sent to work on farms for low pay, under the impression that they must stay where they were sent. In some cases, the police were alleged to have conspired in this belief, returning escapees to the forced labour they were trying to escape. Eventually they would realise that they were free to go.

Industrial schools continued in Ireland until the 1970s.

The extreme physical abuse was at least as appalling as the sexual abuse but really it was all part of a regime of unrelenting cruelty and almost unbelievable sadism. One of the survivors has pointed out that it was the absolute randomness of the physical cruelty that was so horrific. There was seldom any connection between the beatings and any misdemeanour. All of this is documented in various accounts as the survivors, even now, struggle to be heard and struggle for redress - although as I say, it's not widely publicised.

Some of them, unsurprisingly, turned to alcohol to drown out the pain. Some survived and made a good life for themselves against all the odds. Some – with few skills, because the ‘schools’ provided little in the way of real education – came to mainland Britain and worked as unskilled labourers until they grew too old and too troubled to function properly.

In Bird of Passage, Finn and his friend Francis are placed in the Industrial School system in 1960s Ireland. In the way of characters – well, the characters I write about – Finn and Francis took shape and form as I wrote. I didn’t set out to ‘make’ them victims of a regime of appalling cruelty so much as discover the truth about them. It seemed like a process of interrogation. Why were they as they were? Eventually they told me.

I read a number of accounts of the experiences of boys and girls in these 'schools' that were more like prisons and was moved to tears by them. I hope some of that horror and pity found its way into the novel. Of course, the novel is about much more (and also much less) than that. It’s a love story of a kind. It’s a story of obsession and damage and the destructive power of passion.

But the background is so appalling that I find it hard to write about it in any kind of promotion for the novel. It’s as though the fact that it is 'interesting' in the sense that these things should be known and discussed and brought out into the light of day feels somehow shameful. I’m invariably seized with a feeling akin to embarrassment. Within the novel – that’s one thing. It seemed all right and even desirable to write about it there. I have an Irish background on my mother's side, and have written about the truth of that elsewhere. The characters felt real, and I felt the most profound sympathy for them as I wrote about them. Finn's story moves me - as I hope it moves the reader.

It’s when it comes to writing about the story that I shy away from saying too much. Perhaps it isn’t my story to tell. But then, there’s a part of me that knows these stories must and should be told. And sometimes writers have to try to speak for those who don’t always have a voice.