Last night, my son and I watched Collateral on DVD. He had seen it in Glasgow, and persuaded me to watch it with him. It's watchable, reasonably entertaining, and I enjoyed it, but about half way through, I began to wonder if the current heatwave here in the west of Scotland had addled my brain. I could only understand about one word in three. It was like hearing something in a foreign language, of which you have a very basic working knowledge - you get the jist of what's being said, more or less, but miss all the nuances. And sometimes you listen to whole exchanges and think 'Well that went right over my head.'
I said as much to my son. 'Thank God' he said. 'I thought I was going daft. Or deaf.' And he's only nineteen. A quick poll of friends and relatives of all ages reveals that this is a problem for most of them, with all kinds of TV programmes as well as films. CSI is a particular culprit. 'I kept turning up the TV' said my sister in law. 'I thought it was something to do with the sound levels. But it isn't. I only get about half of what they say.'
Languages are organic. They change all the time. You only have to listen to radio broadcasts from the forties and fifties to hear just how far we have come in fifty years. But now, American English and British English are beginning to diverge so much, that very soon, we will need subtitles. I gather that the Americans already do this for regional British TV programmes. If vast swathes of the audience are not going to give up the unequal struggle for comprehension, they ought to start considering the same aid to understanding over here.
Gaaah as Bridget Jones Says
Just when I thought it was safe to come out of the garrett I got an email from the production editor of my Gigha book, telling me that it is about 30 pages short of the required 300. There is an index and lots of wonderful old pictures to come, but can we also find some more material for the appendices? Actually, there is a piece of place name research from the 1940s which I had drawn on quite heavily. I had acknowledged it very fully, but wanted to include the whole thing as an appendix, since it is out of print, hard to obtain but very useful for future place name researchers. It might do very well. We'll see.
I found myself wondering what makes me so uncharacteristically prickly about this process. Why? Why? As Bridget also says. Then I had a flash of insight, mainly due to the fact that I have been simultaneously working on a dramatisation of one of my own stage plays, for BBC radio. Whenever the director phones me about it, she seems to take the opportunity to tell me how much she likes it. Now I'm not expecting unadulterated praise from my publisher, but don't they know how paranoid authors can become? Why has nobody, so far, uttered the words 'Nice work Catherine.'
Why? Why?
Gaaah!
I found myself wondering what makes me so uncharacteristically prickly about this process. Why? Why? As Bridget also says. Then I had a flash of insight, mainly due to the fact that I have been simultaneously working on a dramatisation of one of my own stage plays, for BBC radio. Whenever the director phones me about it, she seems to take the opportunity to tell me how much she likes it. Now I'm not expecting unadulterated praise from my publisher, but don't they know how paranoid authors can become? Why has nobody, so far, uttered the words 'Nice work Catherine.'
Why? Why?
Gaaah!
The Proof of the Pudding....
The proofs of my book, God's Islanders, (to be published by Birlinn, in October) arrived a couple of days ago. Not only do I now have to go through them with a fine tooth comb, looking for the few typos and infelicities that 'got away' from the editor (not many, he did a fine job) but it is my very last chance to check several minor matters of fact which have been niggling at me, but which - inexplicably - I never got round to doing in the original manuscript version. God's Islanders is a work of non-fiction. But when you are dealing with a large mass of information (and the occasional wild speculation) there will always be some queries that you mentally file away to be checked later on. In the weeks before manuscript submission (usually, in my case, to a panic inducing deadline) there will be a multitude of last minute changes, and revisions, as well as the vagaries of footnote software, the fact that you didn't keep as many accurate records as you should have done and therefore have to spend several frustrating days looking things up again just to be sure, the printer that inexplicably presents you with an error message in mid manuscript, the cartridge that was full but is now empty, and the replacement cartridge that doesn't want to work...(I submit manuscripts online, but tend to send a printout as well, and ALWAYS keep a printout for myself, because like most writers I am completely paranoid about the innate malevolence of technology..) anyway, when you have dealt with all this, there will always be the odd unchecked piece of information or quotation which now needs to be dealt with.
Added to this, is that sad fact that I am not so frequently published that proof reading is second nature to me. The arrival of the proofs, when suddenly your manuscript begins to look like a real book (and you realise incidentally, just how many pages you have written!) is always exciting, but excitement is quickly followed by the realisation that you need to dig out the Writers and Artists Year Book and famliarise yourself with the symbols all over again, as well as finding the answer to those few final elusive questions. Happy days.
Added to this, is that sad fact that I am not so frequently published that proof reading is second nature to me. The arrival of the proofs, when suddenly your manuscript begins to look like a real book (and you realise incidentally, just how many pages you have written!) is always exciting, but excitement is quickly followed by the realisation that you need to dig out the Writers and Artists Year Book and famliarise yourself with the symbols all over again, as well as finding the answer to those few final elusive questions. Happy days.
Library Vandalism
Somebody was telling me today how her university library has frequent 'clear-outs' of old books. Occasionally there are library sales, but most of the time, so she tells me, the books are simply dumped in skips, and sent off to be pulped, or finish up as landfill. I am more shocked that I can say.
She tells me that this doesn't just involve outdated textbooks. Old (and possibly valuable) hardbacks of the classics are often cleared out to make way for glossy paperbacks, which are thought to be more enticing to students. Similarly, old history books, including highly collectable statistical accounts are treated in the same cavalier fashion.
At this point in our conversation, I found myself having to snap my severely dropped jaw back into place. At what point does an 'outdated historical account' fit only for the skip, become a valuable old text, giving the student a snapshop of a particular place and time? When I was writing my book about Gigha, I found myself relying heavily on just such an old history of the archaeology of the island, researched and written in the 1930s, by a visiting clergyman. Of course most of the archaeological theory was out of date but it was the accurate observations of a large number of sites, that were invaluable for me. They came complete with detailed measurements, and descriptions of places that have changed drastically over the succeeding years. Armed with my little book, I could walk the island making comparisons. And yet this is exactly the sort of volume that has probably been jettisoned from various libraries to make room for glossy popular paperbacks. It is, so I'm told, a question of space. But shouldn't it also be a question of informed choice? A swift glance at a site such as Abebooks should show librarians the market value of some of these volumes, never mind their value as reference works. Charities such as Oxfam have quickly cottoned on. Yet so many of our academic institutions appear blissfully unaware of just how many babies are being ditched with this particular vat of bathwater. Such destruction is iniquitous, and if they don't want the books, they should at least be giving the general public the chance to acquire them.
She tells me that this doesn't just involve outdated textbooks. Old (and possibly valuable) hardbacks of the classics are often cleared out to make way for glossy paperbacks, which are thought to be more enticing to students. Similarly, old history books, including highly collectable statistical accounts are treated in the same cavalier fashion.
At this point in our conversation, I found myself having to snap my severely dropped jaw back into place. At what point does an 'outdated historical account' fit only for the skip, become a valuable old text, giving the student a snapshop of a particular place and time? When I was writing my book about Gigha, I found myself relying heavily on just such an old history of the archaeology of the island, researched and written in the 1930s, by a visiting clergyman. Of course most of the archaeological theory was out of date but it was the accurate observations of a large number of sites, that were invaluable for me. They came complete with detailed measurements, and descriptions of places that have changed drastically over the succeeding years. Armed with my little book, I could walk the island making comparisons. And yet this is exactly the sort of volume that has probably been jettisoned from various libraries to make room for glossy popular paperbacks. It is, so I'm told, a question of space. But shouldn't it also be a question of informed choice? A swift glance at a site such as Abebooks should show librarians the market value of some of these volumes, never mind their value as reference works. Charities such as Oxfam have quickly cottoned on. Yet so many of our academic institutions appear blissfully unaware of just how many babies are being ditched with this particular vat of bathwater. Such destruction is iniquitous, and if they don't want the books, they should at least be giving the general public the chance to acquire them.
The Price of a Fish Supper
I'm in the middle of adapting one of my own stage plays - The Price of A Fish Supper - for BBC Radio 4, afternoon theatre. It's proving unexpectedly tricky. The original play is a 50 - 55 minute monologue that was first performed at the Oran Mor in Glasgow. It's set here in the west of Scotland and it's about an ex-fisherman, his life story, and his eventual coming to terms with his tragic past. It's also a play about the death of a traditional industry and the effect of this on a whole community- what Joyce Macmillan, in reviewing the original play, called the 'gentrification and heritage industry packaging of such a history of hard work, pain and tragedy.' Monologue it may have been, but the original play, though simply set, was very visual. And as Rab, actor Paul Morrow put in a performance of raw intensity.
I have been very resistant to changing the form of the play too much. In the original, Rab tells his own story, so we see and hear everything through the filter of his life-battered consciousness. I've been very anxious not to lose that, by introducing odds and ends of dialogue. Too much radio drama these days seems to consist of long passages of narration, interspersed with infrequent snatches of drama as though the playwright hadn't quite got the hang of what it means to 'dramatise' something. You know - show, don't tell! But of course the entire form of Fish Supper consisted of somebody telling - that was essentially what the play was about - a solitary man, opening up, drawing the audience into his world. I think I quite consciously referenced the ancient mariner, with the audience in the role of listeners. And certainly Rab has been alone on a wide wide sea.
One other 'challenge' concerns the swear words. As an ex fisherman, Rab does rather litter his conversations with the F word. Which is a non-starter for afternoon theatre. But he's never going to go round saying oh dearie, dearie me.... Solutions will have to be found, perhaps simply omitting the swear words altogether, rather than seeking less intense substitutes.
I soldier on. It's interesting work, but as I said, surprisingly tricky.
I have been very resistant to changing the form of the play too much. In the original, Rab tells his own story, so we see and hear everything through the filter of his life-battered consciousness. I've been very anxious not to lose that, by introducing odds and ends of dialogue. Too much radio drama these days seems to consist of long passages of narration, interspersed with infrequent snatches of drama as though the playwright hadn't quite got the hang of what it means to 'dramatise' something. You know - show, don't tell! But of course the entire form of Fish Supper consisted of somebody telling - that was essentially what the play was about - a solitary man, opening up, drawing the audience into his world. I think I quite consciously referenced the ancient mariner, with the audience in the role of listeners. And certainly Rab has been alone on a wide wide sea.
One other 'challenge' concerns the swear words. As an ex fisherman, Rab does rather litter his conversations with the F word. Which is a non-starter for afternoon theatre. But he's never going to go round saying oh dearie, dearie me.... Solutions will have to be found, perhaps simply omitting the swear words altogether, rather than seeking less intense substitutes.
I soldier on. It's interesting work, but as I said, surprisingly tricky.
Book Rage
I've been away in Oxfordshire, visiting an old friend, and wondering, incidentally, how so many people can afford to live in such beautiful houses. The train journey (Glasgow, Birmingham, Oxford) was tiresome as only such journeys can be - every time I travel any distance by train in Britain, it occurs to me that we will never be persuaded out of our cars and onto public transport until the powers that be find some way of improving the various overpriced and uncomfortable alternatives. Whoever, for instance, thought of situating the public lavatories in Glasgow Central (Station of the Year!) well below ground level, so that a visit involves hauling your case down two flights of stairs, struggling to get it through the narrow turnstile, and then into a cubicle the size of a dog kennel. The main problem, mind you, still tends to be anti social fellow travellers. And there's not a lot that can be done about them.
Perhaps it was this perception that resulted in what followed. All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. To while away the journey, I had bought myself two paperback novels . For the purposes of this blog, they had better remain nameless. I'm not in the business of slagging off fellow writers. But I'll just say that they were widely publicised and prize winning books, by widely publicised and prize winning authors. I had heard them praised to the skies. They were obviously walking off the shelves in their millions.
And I found both of them virtually unreadable.
I managed some fifty pages of the first, finding it more and more objectionable - a whinging confection of unrealities, - until it occurred to me that I wasn't obliged to waste time on this drivel, so I gave up. It did occur to me to leave the thing on the train, but I had a horrible suspicion that somebody would run after me shouting that I had left it behind, and besides, I didn't want to inflict it on anybody else. This is a book that has been so widely promoted (and no, I'm not talking about the Da Vinci Code, which I rather enjoyed, as a readable, fast moving adventure story) that I could hardly believe the turgid prose I found myself wading through. Fortunately my friend told me that she felt exactly the same. She had read it for a local book group, and loathed it. I turned to my second choice, quite a different book, one would have thought, to find that equally unreadable. Fifty or sixty pages into it, I ground to a halt again. I think it was around the second time a character surveyed him or herself in the mirror. This is the prose equivalent of characters in plays telling each other things they already know, for the sake of the audience, and it always sets my teeth on edge. I persevered for a bit, but it was the cliches that finally got to me: so many, that I was smitten with what I have come to think of as Book Rage. Had there been a bonfire handy, both books would certainly have gone in. As it was, I left them, sneakily, in my friend's spare bedroom, for the next victim. Maybe they will have more luck than me.
But like Wogan, I have begun to wonder 'Is it me?' And is this why, increasingly, I find myself turning to old favourites. I'm rereading Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time, but every single reading brings some new appreciation of the text and the sure intelligence that informs it. And yet this is by no means a 'difficult' book - it is a love story, told with acid wit and close attention to detail, (Jane's take on her fellow travellers) in the most lucid prose imaginable. When I take stock, I find that I have been faintly, or sometimes hugely disappointed by almost everything contemporary I have read this year so far. It must be me. Age and grumpiness must finally have overtaken me. That must be the explanation. It couldn't possibly be that the books are carelessly written and barely edited, in response to current publishing fashion, could it?
Perhaps it was this perception that resulted in what followed. All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. To while away the journey, I had bought myself two paperback novels . For the purposes of this blog, they had better remain nameless. I'm not in the business of slagging off fellow writers. But I'll just say that they were widely publicised and prize winning books, by widely publicised and prize winning authors. I had heard them praised to the skies. They were obviously walking off the shelves in their millions.
And I found both of them virtually unreadable.
I managed some fifty pages of the first, finding it more and more objectionable - a whinging confection of unrealities, - until it occurred to me that I wasn't obliged to waste time on this drivel, so I gave up. It did occur to me to leave the thing on the train, but I had a horrible suspicion that somebody would run after me shouting that I had left it behind, and besides, I didn't want to inflict it on anybody else. This is a book that has been so widely promoted (and no, I'm not talking about the Da Vinci Code, which I rather enjoyed, as a readable, fast moving adventure story) that I could hardly believe the turgid prose I found myself wading through. Fortunately my friend told me that she felt exactly the same. She had read it for a local book group, and loathed it. I turned to my second choice, quite a different book, one would have thought, to find that equally unreadable. Fifty or sixty pages into it, I ground to a halt again. I think it was around the second time a character surveyed him or herself in the mirror. This is the prose equivalent of characters in plays telling each other things they already know, for the sake of the audience, and it always sets my teeth on edge. I persevered for a bit, but it was the cliches that finally got to me: so many, that I was smitten with what I have come to think of as Book Rage. Had there been a bonfire handy, both books would certainly have gone in. As it was, I left them, sneakily, in my friend's spare bedroom, for the next victim. Maybe they will have more luck than me.
But like Wogan, I have begun to wonder 'Is it me?' And is this why, increasingly, I find myself turning to old favourites. I'm rereading Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time, but every single reading brings some new appreciation of the text and the sure intelligence that informs it. And yet this is by no means a 'difficult' book - it is a love story, told with acid wit and close attention to detail, (Jane's take on her fellow travellers) in the most lucid prose imaginable. When I take stock, I find that I have been faintly, or sometimes hugely disappointed by almost everything contemporary I have read this year so far. It must be me. Age and grumpiness must finally have overtaken me. That must be the explanation. It couldn't possibly be that the books are carelessly written and barely edited, in response to current publishing fashion, could it?
The Inland Revenue, Agents, Authors
The world of authors has been shaken to its core by the weekend revelations that the Inland Revenue are fighting a court case against Richard and Judy, to close a 'loophole' which allows 'celebrities, authors etc' to claim agents' fees as an allowable expense. The Revenue look set to win, at this point, whereupon they intend to claw back the tax on these fees for the previous six years as well. To add insult to profound injury, the Revenue will exempt musicians and actors, because they 'need an agent in order to work.' But not writers. Oh no. We get the shitty end of the stick again. Richard and Judy will no doubt appeal to the House of Lords and that is when all hell will break loose. The Society of Authors is girding up its loins for a fight. And no wonder.
What price Labour's support for the creative industries now?
The problem with being a writer in this benighted country (and I'm talking UK here, and not just Scotland) is that the tabloid view prevails. The general public seem to think that we are all in the JK Rowling or Dan Brown class when it comes to income. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course I'm talking about real authors here, and not those B list celebrities who suddenly decide that they would like to write a book, find an agent, publisher (and ghost writer) within a matter of days, and then spend countless interviews telling us how it feels to be a writer. Not half as pissed off as this writer, I can tell you. No. I'm talking about those of us who have chosen to make a career out of writing, and then spend the rest of our lives scratching to make a meagre living, and doing all kinds of other jobs just to keep the ravening wolf from the door.
So a few facts for Mr Brown, who really should know better. (And to think I rather liked him as a putative prime minister!)
Writer need agents just as surely as actors or musicians. A quick scan of a publication such as The Writers and Artists Year Book will show you that the vast majority of publishers (I think there are about three exceptions) won't even look at a manuscript any more unless it comes via an agent. Even the three exceptions have slush piles the size of Big Ben. Similarly, almost no TV or film company will look at unsolicited scripts, for fear of being sued for plagiarism. They have a nasty habit of sending them back stamped as 'unread' or not sending them back at all.
The world of creative writing is full of horror stories of writers who have signed contracts without the help of an agent, only to find themselves having signed away all kinds of subsidiary rights.
Our agents are our friends in times of need. Often they act as editors, discussing our work, shaping the way we write, and all of this unpaid until the time when they finally manage to place a piece of writing for us.
When we say that an agent helps us, we are not talking about large sums of money. We are talking about the difference between being offered £500 for an 80,000 word novel, and being paid £2000 with the help of an agent who then takes his or her 10%. According to the Society of Authors, the average working writer manages to earn around £5000 in any one year, of which Mr Brown - not content with his fair cut - is now looking to claw back even more.
As usual, people in the creative industries are soft targets and writers are softer than most. But if we take this one lying down, one wonders what will be next. Other small businesses should take note. If they win this one, the way is open to all kinds of other presently allowable expenses, accountancy fees included. The pen may be mightier than the sword but unless some fairly broad exemptions are made to this ruling, the only solution for many writers will be to do what most of us think about from time to time: give up the unequal struggle and head for a country like Ireland, which (although the tax breaks are not what they once were) actually seems to value its writers, according them a modicum of respect and enthusiasm which - from this side of the water - begins to seem increasingly attractive.
What price Labour's support for the creative industries now?
The problem with being a writer in this benighted country (and I'm talking UK here, and not just Scotland) is that the tabloid view prevails. The general public seem to think that we are all in the JK Rowling or Dan Brown class when it comes to income. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course I'm talking about real authors here, and not those B list celebrities who suddenly decide that they would like to write a book, find an agent, publisher (and ghost writer) within a matter of days, and then spend countless interviews telling us how it feels to be a writer. Not half as pissed off as this writer, I can tell you. No. I'm talking about those of us who have chosen to make a career out of writing, and then spend the rest of our lives scratching to make a meagre living, and doing all kinds of other jobs just to keep the ravening wolf from the door.
So a few facts for Mr Brown, who really should know better. (And to think I rather liked him as a putative prime minister!)
Writer need agents just as surely as actors or musicians. A quick scan of a publication such as The Writers and Artists Year Book will show you that the vast majority of publishers (I think there are about three exceptions) won't even look at a manuscript any more unless it comes via an agent. Even the three exceptions have slush piles the size of Big Ben. Similarly, almost no TV or film company will look at unsolicited scripts, for fear of being sued for plagiarism. They have a nasty habit of sending them back stamped as 'unread' or not sending them back at all.
The world of creative writing is full of horror stories of writers who have signed contracts without the help of an agent, only to find themselves having signed away all kinds of subsidiary rights.
Our agents are our friends in times of need. Often they act as editors, discussing our work, shaping the way we write, and all of this unpaid until the time when they finally manage to place a piece of writing for us.
When we say that an agent helps us, we are not talking about large sums of money. We are talking about the difference between being offered £500 for an 80,000 word novel, and being paid £2000 with the help of an agent who then takes his or her 10%. According to the Society of Authors, the average working writer manages to earn around £5000 in any one year, of which Mr Brown - not content with his fair cut - is now looking to claw back even more.
As usual, people in the creative industries are soft targets and writers are softer than most. But if we take this one lying down, one wonders what will be next. Other small businesses should take note. If they win this one, the way is open to all kinds of other presently allowable expenses, accountancy fees included. The pen may be mightier than the sword but unless some fairly broad exemptions are made to this ruling, the only solution for many writers will be to do what most of us think about from time to time: give up the unequal struggle and head for a country like Ireland, which (although the tax breaks are not what they once were) actually seems to value its writers, according them a modicum of respect and enthusiasm which - from this side of the water - begins to seem increasingly attractive.
Talking to the Critics
Mark Fisher, who has written extensively about theatre in Scotland, gave this blog a recent mention on his own theatre blogspot, http://scottishtheatre.blogspot.com/ so I will reciprocate - mainly because I think he is right. There should be a dialogue between all kinds of people associated with theatre, audiences and critics as well as practitioners, instead of the habitual 'them and us' stance that infects so many of us (me included if I'm honest). The convention is that the critic criticises and the playwright pretends to ignore whatever is said. You don't of course. You smart a bit and get shirty. Or at least sometimes you do. Sometimes you rejoice in the good review, until your insecurity devil whispers in your ear 'Can it possibly be true?'
There are some critics whose words can (whisper it who dares) be rather helpful and perceptive, so that once the initial impulse to indignation goes away, you have to acknowledge that they might have a point. But then, you want to ask questions. Why on earth should the playwright have to go on pretending that (a) he or she doesn't read the reviews and (b) isn't affected by them. Because plays are always works in progress, you so often feel that it would be good to talk. You can't possibly write to please everyone, and only a fool would try. But sometimes it would be nice, as Mark says, to get some kind of dialogue going and the internet is surely the place to do it.
There are some critics whose words can (whisper it who dares) be rather helpful and perceptive, so that once the initial impulse to indignation goes away, you have to acknowledge that they might have a point. But then, you want to ask questions. Why on earth should the playwright have to go on pretending that (a) he or she doesn't read the reviews and (b) isn't affected by them. Because plays are always works in progress, you so often feel that it would be good to talk. You can't possibly write to please everyone, and only a fool would try. But sometimes it would be nice, as Mark says, to get some kind of dialogue going and the internet is surely the place to do it.
Writing Non Fiction - a Hard Row to Hoe
My book on the history of the people of the island of Gigha is finished. I travelled through to Edinburgh with the manuscript and a bundle of old photographs last friday. I decided to take the whole lot to the publisher myself, mainly because I daren't trust the photographs, precious old pictures, to the post office, and I didn't have the wherewithall to do the necessary high resolution scanning here at home. Besides the pictures had been lent to me by one Angus Allan, whom I have never met, but who sounds delightful, and the redoubtable Willie McSporran, Gigha's answer to Alan Breck, and a man who, like that most wonderful of literary characters, one would 'rather have as a friend than as an enemy.' Hence my panic over the pics.
Actually, I write that the book is finished, but there will be rewrites. I feel it in my bones. Once some editor gets his or her hands on it, there will most certainly be rewrites. The problem will arise (I know already) because although most of it is carefully researched and backed up with the necessary references, I have allowed myself (as a writer of fiction, after all!) the occasional flight of fancy. I know that this will not appeal to a certain cross section of historians, possibly including the man who commissioned the book, although I am prepared to fight my (feminist) corner. We'll see. My Master's degree was in Folk Life Studies and although it does its best to be a sound academic discipline, it is one that has to take serious account of oral history, and the transmission of information without reference to written texts. I find that quite exhilarating - the fact that even the most wild flight of storytelling may actually have some germ of truth at the heart of it. But most academics of my acquaintance feel vaguely threatened by it.
When I began to research this book some years ago, the publisher said that it was 'not a work to make you rich.' What he didn't say, in so many words, was that it would be a work to make me very very poor. So far they have paid me £750 for something that I feel as though I have been researching and writing for ever. I can't complain, because I volunteered for this. But the last year has involved almost nothing else apart from one short play. Only a very helpful bursary from the Scottish Arts Council allowed me to continue, but even so (and with our last oil bill, for a very small tank, coming in at £350) it has highlighted for me the fact that something has to change, for me at least. No wonder such non-fiction books are so often written by academics with tenure, who - although not well paid by most standards except those of freelance writers - do it in their spare time as a kind of adjunct to their researches .
It has been a steep learning curve for me because there were all kinds of things I hadn't really thought through. When you write fiction, you do a certain amount of research - usually a real pleasure, because you are so embroiled with your subject - but then you 'give yourself permission' to fictionalise. The story itself, with all its implications and resonances, takes precedence, and once you begin, the characters carry you forwards.
With non fiction, the research is non stop, and whenever you finish a chapter or a section, you feel as though you have finished the whole thing, and have to wind yourself up to start all over again, with the next part. It is exhausting, or I certainly found it so.
You have to paraphrase and reference and compare accounts and make sure your footnotes make sense . You have to write a bibliography, and an index. Even then you know that somebody is going to quibble about any original conclusions you may have decided to reach. There are as many interpetations of fact as there are academics to make a career out of them. Mind you, that's exactly what they are doing to Dan Brown as well, and he was writing fiction, although I can't feel too sorry for him. Would that Gigha was going to earn only a tiny fraction of his income.
The book is with the editorial manager at the moment, but his concern is mainly with the book's production rather than the content so I still await a verdict on the text. I'll let you know what happens next!
Actually, I write that the book is finished, but there will be rewrites. I feel it in my bones. Once some editor gets his or her hands on it, there will most certainly be rewrites. The problem will arise (I know already) because although most of it is carefully researched and backed up with the necessary references, I have allowed myself (as a writer of fiction, after all!) the occasional flight of fancy. I know that this will not appeal to a certain cross section of historians, possibly including the man who commissioned the book, although I am prepared to fight my (feminist) corner. We'll see. My Master's degree was in Folk Life Studies and although it does its best to be a sound academic discipline, it is one that has to take serious account of oral history, and the transmission of information without reference to written texts. I find that quite exhilarating - the fact that even the most wild flight of storytelling may actually have some germ of truth at the heart of it. But most academics of my acquaintance feel vaguely threatened by it.
When I began to research this book some years ago, the publisher said that it was 'not a work to make you rich.' What he didn't say, in so many words, was that it would be a work to make me very very poor. So far they have paid me £750 for something that I feel as though I have been researching and writing for ever. I can't complain, because I volunteered for this. But the last year has involved almost nothing else apart from one short play. Only a very helpful bursary from the Scottish Arts Council allowed me to continue, but even so (and with our last oil bill, for a very small tank, coming in at £350) it has highlighted for me the fact that something has to change, for me at least. No wonder such non-fiction books are so often written by academics with tenure, who - although not well paid by most standards except those of freelance writers - do it in their spare time as a kind of adjunct to their researches .
It has been a steep learning curve for me because there were all kinds of things I hadn't really thought through. When you write fiction, you do a certain amount of research - usually a real pleasure, because you are so embroiled with your subject - but then you 'give yourself permission' to fictionalise. The story itself, with all its implications and resonances, takes precedence, and once you begin, the characters carry you forwards.
With non fiction, the research is non stop, and whenever you finish a chapter or a section, you feel as though you have finished the whole thing, and have to wind yourself up to start all over again, with the next part. It is exhausting, or I certainly found it so.
You have to paraphrase and reference and compare accounts and make sure your footnotes make sense . You have to write a bibliography, and an index. Even then you know that somebody is going to quibble about any original conclusions you may have decided to reach. There are as many interpetations of fact as there are academics to make a career out of them. Mind you, that's exactly what they are doing to Dan Brown as well, and he was writing fiction, although I can't feel too sorry for him. Would that Gigha was going to earn only a tiny fraction of his income.
The book is with the editorial manager at the moment, but his concern is mainly with the book's production rather than the content so I still await a verdict on the text. I'll let you know what happens next!
The Crucible
I've been neglecting my blog over the past week or so, mainly for the aforeposted reason that I have been writing about nothing but the Isle of Gigha. The end is in sight, however, and last week I permitted myself a small break to go and see a production of the Crucible, by the new National Theatre of Scotland, which was touring, in collaboration with various community groups. Besides, an old friend was in it, one of the best radio producers I ever had the good fortune to work with, an award winning director who the BBC, as is their inexplicable habit, made redundant some years ago. Having returned to his old profession of acting, he is doing rather well, and his performance as Giles Corey shone out on this occasion. I love the play. Not, mind you, that it is a bundle of laughs, as my husband remarked somewhat sourly, when someone asked him if he had enjoyed the show. Enjoyed is not quite the word.
As for the production, however, I'm not sure. I saw a youth theatre production of this same play some years ago, and although it was an ambitious project, it worked extremely well. The kids were committed and there was something very moving about seeing the whole thing done by a company whose oldest member couldn't have been more than 19 years old. But this mixture of professional and amateur was problematic and the main stumbling block was the play itself. It is quite impossible to treat the Crucible like a "devised drama" or "text", the theatrical buzz word these days, and an alarming concept for playwrights everywhere. Sometimes it seems to me as if we don't write plays any more. We draft out texts for other people to manipulate at will. A text can be altered to suit a production and a cast which involves a mixture of talents. It can result in a worthwhile project, and of course it involves "inclusion" - another buzz word and one that is always good for a few more thousands in funding. (Or am I being exceptionally cynical here?)
On this tour, the main parts were taken by professional actors, with the so called minor parts being allotted to amateurs from the various venues. I don't know where they were recruited from, but on the whole and in the production I saw, they were not particularly competent, so maybe were simply volunteers.
But the real stumbling block is that there are no minor roles in Miller's plays. Each character, each scene is a finely crafted part of some astonishing whole. One of the kids in the audience, sitting behind me, said to her friend "So who IS the main character?" and I sensed the dead hand of Standard Grade or Higher preparation in there, with teachers posing unanswerable questions.
Whenever one of the "community" participants forgot his lines, stumbled over words, or gabbled incomprehensibly, our suspension of disbelief was broken, a large gap appeared in the production, and the play started sliding into it. Or at least that was the way I felt.
The audience, though, were appreciative, so maybe I am being too hard. And one of the nicest things about the whole evening, was the way in which the very young audience which consisted in part of large numbers of school students, who were obviously studying the play at some level, behaved so immaculately. They were interested, absorbed and much more attentive than most adult audiences of my experience.
As for the production, however, I'm not sure. I saw a youth theatre production of this same play some years ago, and although it was an ambitious project, it worked extremely well. The kids were committed and there was something very moving about seeing the whole thing done by a company whose oldest member couldn't have been more than 19 years old. But this mixture of professional and amateur was problematic and the main stumbling block was the play itself. It is quite impossible to treat the Crucible like a "devised drama" or "text", the theatrical buzz word these days, and an alarming concept for playwrights everywhere. Sometimes it seems to me as if we don't write plays any more. We draft out texts for other people to manipulate at will. A text can be altered to suit a production and a cast which involves a mixture of talents. It can result in a worthwhile project, and of course it involves "inclusion" - another buzz word and one that is always good for a few more thousands in funding. (Or am I being exceptionally cynical here?)
On this tour, the main parts were taken by professional actors, with the so called minor parts being allotted to amateurs from the various venues. I don't know where they were recruited from, but on the whole and in the production I saw, they were not particularly competent, so maybe were simply volunteers.
But the real stumbling block is that there are no minor roles in Miller's plays. Each character, each scene is a finely crafted part of some astonishing whole. One of the kids in the audience, sitting behind me, said to her friend "So who IS the main character?" and I sensed the dead hand of Standard Grade or Higher preparation in there, with teachers posing unanswerable questions.
Whenever one of the "community" participants forgot his lines, stumbled over words, or gabbled incomprehensibly, our suspension of disbelief was broken, a large gap appeared in the production, and the play started sliding into it. Or at least that was the way I felt.
The audience, though, were appreciative, so maybe I am being too hard. And one of the nicest things about the whole evening, was the way in which the very young audience which consisted in part of large numbers of school students, who were obviously studying the play at some level, behaved so immaculately. They were interested, absorbed and much more attentive than most adult audiences of my experience.
Dr Who and Monet
The new Doctor is, frankly, the bees' knees. I loved Christopher Eccleston's dangerously contained energy but Tennant's glittering, mercurial and manic air is just as engaging. Also he's probably the most emotional Doctor so far. But then a lot of that is down to the writing, which is superb. Just as I used to watch it from behind a cushion, I now watch it with my tongue practically hanging out at the quality of the scripts. The trouble is that so much else suffers by comparison. I think the fault with almost everything else (other than some soaps, see previous post) is a chronic lack of subtlety. Why does so much television drama assume that the audience - arguably the most sophisticated ever- needs to have everything flagged up and explained all the time?
The Impressionists, for example, just clunked along. Not even a bunch of high calibre actors could do anything with all those conversations that seemed to consist of people telling each other things they already knew, for the sake of the audience. Way back when I was starting out in Radio Drama it was considered to be the sin that knew no forgiveness, so why aren't all these hordes of script editors picking up on it? Or are they all so wet behind the ears that they don't notice it either?
I found myself hiding behind a cushion, just as I used to do with those old episodes of the Doctor, but for quite different reasons. The visuals were lovely, but I didn't for one instant believe that was the way these guys talked to each other. I don't believe they proclaimed how avant garde they all were. I don't believe they were so art-history-book sure of what they were doing at the time that they sat around name dropping and having profound discussions about their revolutionary new talent. It was like a third rate audio tour. I write scripts for audio tours myself, sometimes, and I know the pitfalls. And yet once again, you sensed that there was a proper drama in there, struggling to elbow its way out. Maybe the poor writer sensed that too, but was browbeaten by aforementioned hordes of script editors firm in their belief that the audience needed to be educated.
Last summer, I went down to Kirkcudbright and saw a magnificent Monet. It was part of a travelling exhibition from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow which was closed for renovation and is due to open this summer. I forget the name of the picture, but it was a simple stretch of Mediterranean coastline with a village and the sea. Perhaps it was the setting - a smallish room, not that well lit. Perhaps it was the fact that the picture seemed closer and more accessible than it would have in a bigger and more formal gallery. But it was a stunning experience, a glittering and mercurial performance too. It drew you inexorably from the other side of the room. People would stand in front of it till those coming after jostled them out of the way, and then veer back round to look at it again. We weren't simply viewing a picture. We were experiencing it and we would never be quite the same again.
Out in the little shop, we searched for a print of the image to take away, but although prints were on sale, we came away empty handed. The prints were nice enough but it was as if the light had gone out of them. Only the original would do and I expect they would have noticed if we had tried to take it with us. The TV version of the Impressionists is, I'm afraid, only a print of a much more enticing original.
Meanwhile, back with the inimitable Dr Who, the return of Sarah Jane and K-Nine were handled brilliantly as well. I can remember a time when I wanted to BE Sarah Jane. OK, so now I want to BE Joyce Barnaby but back then I was a bit more adventurous. Sarah Jane didn't look all that much different, and the whole episode had an emotional depths that brought a tear to my somewhat jaded eye.
PS I'm about to start work on a new play, called The Physic Garden, about a Glasgow gardener in the early 1800s. David Tennant, will you be in it please?
The Impressionists, for example, just clunked along. Not even a bunch of high calibre actors could do anything with all those conversations that seemed to consist of people telling each other things they already knew, for the sake of the audience. Way back when I was starting out in Radio Drama it was considered to be the sin that knew no forgiveness, so why aren't all these hordes of script editors picking up on it? Or are they all so wet behind the ears that they don't notice it either?
I found myself hiding behind a cushion, just as I used to do with those old episodes of the Doctor, but for quite different reasons. The visuals were lovely, but I didn't for one instant believe that was the way these guys talked to each other. I don't believe they proclaimed how avant garde they all were. I don't believe they were so art-history-book sure of what they were doing at the time that they sat around name dropping and having profound discussions about their revolutionary new talent. It was like a third rate audio tour. I write scripts for audio tours myself, sometimes, and I know the pitfalls. And yet once again, you sensed that there was a proper drama in there, struggling to elbow its way out. Maybe the poor writer sensed that too, but was browbeaten by aforementioned hordes of script editors firm in their belief that the audience needed to be educated.
Last summer, I went down to Kirkcudbright and saw a magnificent Monet. It was part of a travelling exhibition from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow which was closed for renovation and is due to open this summer. I forget the name of the picture, but it was a simple stretch of Mediterranean coastline with a village and the sea. Perhaps it was the setting - a smallish room, not that well lit. Perhaps it was the fact that the picture seemed closer and more accessible than it would have in a bigger and more formal gallery. But it was a stunning experience, a glittering and mercurial performance too. It drew you inexorably from the other side of the room. People would stand in front of it till those coming after jostled them out of the way, and then veer back round to look at it again. We weren't simply viewing a picture. We were experiencing it and we would never be quite the same again.
Out in the little shop, we searched for a print of the image to take away, but although prints were on sale, we came away empty handed. The prints were nice enough but it was as if the light had gone out of them. Only the original would do and I expect they would have noticed if we had tried to take it with us. The TV version of the Impressionists is, I'm afraid, only a print of a much more enticing original.
Meanwhile, back with the inimitable Dr Who, the return of Sarah Jane and K-Nine were handled brilliantly as well. I can remember a time when I wanted to BE Sarah Jane. OK, so now I want to BE Joyce Barnaby but back then I was a bit more adventurous. Sarah Jane didn't look all that much different, and the whole episode had an emotional depths that brought a tear to my somewhat jaded eye.
PS I'm about to start work on a new play, called The Physic Garden, about a Glasgow gardener in the early 1800s. David Tennant, will you be in it please?
The truth about the Da Vinci Code
Here we go again. This time it's the Archbishop of Canterbury, who really should know better, complaining about Dan Brown's novel, while DB laughs all the way to the bank (and good luck to him I say. Only wish it were me!)
Let me spell it out.
The Da Vinci Code is a novel. Fiction. Entertainment. Made up stuff.
So far as I can see, it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
Unlike all those books which consist of wild speculation masquerading as truth which lurk in sections of bookshops labelled "New Age".
But where did this inability to distinguish between fact and fiction spring from? I'll tell you where. It comes from exactly the same impulse that makes people apply for jobs in Weatherfield's Knicker Factory, or send condolence cards to relatives of deceased soap characters.
When ordinary people do this sort of thing, we snigger at them. When senior clerics do it, they make the national news.
I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code. As a piece of far fetched fiction. Sure, the slight suspicion that there might just be some vague truth at the bottom of it crossed my mind. And it did reinforce my long held belief that Mary Magdalen has had a bad press all these years. When you want to discredit a woman, you just label her as a prostitute and hey presto. All of which was interesting. But not earth shattering.
This isn't a book that stays in your mind for more than five minutes together, although it is a damn good read. But I don't really believe in it, any more than I believe that there are talking moles and water rats boating merrily along the burn that runs at the bottom of my garden, or that when I next go for a walk in the woods I will meet a bunch of elves, singing as they go, or that somewhere out there is a time travelling doctor, with powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals.
I think some of this confusion is down to reality TV. We are so often entertained by real people doing bizarre things, that we are beginning to confuse suspension of disbelief with belief in just about anything.
Of course some fiction is life changing in that it is - as novelist Bernard McLaverty calls it- "made up truth." We enjoy the story, and learn something momentous about the human condition in the process. But so far as I can see, the Da Vinci Code never pretended to be like that. It is fast, slick, honest to God entertainment. We read it to be entertained. End of story.
Let me spell it out.
The Da Vinci Code is a novel. Fiction. Entertainment. Made up stuff.
So far as I can see, it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
Unlike all those books which consist of wild speculation masquerading as truth which lurk in sections of bookshops labelled "New Age".
But where did this inability to distinguish between fact and fiction spring from? I'll tell you where. It comes from exactly the same impulse that makes people apply for jobs in Weatherfield's Knicker Factory, or send condolence cards to relatives of deceased soap characters.
When ordinary people do this sort of thing, we snigger at them. When senior clerics do it, they make the national news.
I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code. As a piece of far fetched fiction. Sure, the slight suspicion that there might just be some vague truth at the bottom of it crossed my mind. And it did reinforce my long held belief that Mary Magdalen has had a bad press all these years. When you want to discredit a woman, you just label her as a prostitute and hey presto. All of which was interesting. But not earth shattering.
This isn't a book that stays in your mind for more than five minutes together, although it is a damn good read. But I don't really believe in it, any more than I believe that there are talking moles and water rats boating merrily along the burn that runs at the bottom of my garden, or that when I next go for a walk in the woods I will meet a bunch of elves, singing as they go, or that somewhere out there is a time travelling doctor, with powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals.
I think some of this confusion is down to reality TV. We are so often entertained by real people doing bizarre things, that we are beginning to confuse suspension of disbelief with belief in just about anything.
Of course some fiction is life changing in that it is - as novelist Bernard McLaverty calls it- "made up truth." We enjoy the story, and learn something momentous about the human condition in the process. But so far as I can see, the Da Vinci Code never pretended to be like that. It is fast, slick, honest to God entertainment. We read it to be entertained. End of story.
Rabbit Holes
I've been mulling over exactly why it's so difficult to keep going with a piece of non-fiction writing, when it seems so much easier to achieve a first draft of a novel, or a play. This is not to say that either process is really easy, just that when you are working on fiction in any form, the desire to pursue the story, to find out where it's going (even if you think you already know the ending) just carries you along, and before you know it you have this large, unwieldy thing that will eventually (you hope) turn into a novel or a play. But at least you have something to work on, and with. You don't have the blank screen and the pile of books and notes to alarm you every morning when you turn on your PC. I'd be interested to know how other writers feel about this. Do those who usually write non-fiction, I wonder, feel equally thrown by the need to keep inventing, when they first attempt a piece of fiction?
This, of course, is all about Gigha. I am writing a book about Gigha, with a deadline of the end of May and although now I really do feel that the end might just be in sight, and that I might actually manage to finish drafting out the last few chapters within the next couple of weeks, thus leaving me a whole month to (a) do final rewrites (b) find some elusive old photographs of the island (c) draft out an index and a bibliography and (d) manage a trip to the island to check final facts. But it has been a long haul, and I wouldn't willingly do it again. I'm not sure why. Mostly it's to do with the fact that my natural inclination is to write fiction. But the other problem seems to be what a friend of mine, hard at work on her thesis, calls "Rabbit Holes." It seems a wonderful description, calling to mind images of Alice, and her adventures in Wonderland. Because research of any kind is full of potential Wonderlands. Every single time you set out to research a specific topic, you find something else so fascinating that you can barely resist the urge to go tumbling down the rabbit hole after it. When I sent a first chapter to the publisher, it came back with several dismayed comments. Can you just focus on Gigha? That was what he was saying in essence. So - reluctantly - I did.
But the problem is that in fiction, drama, poetry, it is these same rabbit holes, the million interesting diversions and connections that are the very life blood of what you write. In researching Gigha, I have come across literally dozens of interesting facts, stories, observations, any one of which might provide material for a piece of fiction. Just not for this particular book. Come the end of May, I know where I'll be though. Off down a rabbit hole, that's where.
This, of course, is all about Gigha. I am writing a book about Gigha, with a deadline of the end of May and although now I really do feel that the end might just be in sight, and that I might actually manage to finish drafting out the last few chapters within the next couple of weeks, thus leaving me a whole month to (a) do final rewrites (b) find some elusive old photographs of the island (c) draft out an index and a bibliography and (d) manage a trip to the island to check final facts. But it has been a long haul, and I wouldn't willingly do it again. I'm not sure why. Mostly it's to do with the fact that my natural inclination is to write fiction. But the other problem seems to be what a friend of mine, hard at work on her thesis, calls "Rabbit Holes." It seems a wonderful description, calling to mind images of Alice, and her adventures in Wonderland. Because research of any kind is full of potential Wonderlands. Every single time you set out to research a specific topic, you find something else so fascinating that you can barely resist the urge to go tumbling down the rabbit hole after it. When I sent a first chapter to the publisher, it came back with several dismayed comments. Can you just focus on Gigha? That was what he was saying in essence. So - reluctantly - I did.
But the problem is that in fiction, drama, poetry, it is these same rabbit holes, the million interesting diversions and connections that are the very life blood of what you write. In researching Gigha, I have come across literally dozens of interesting facts, stories, observations, any one of which might provide material for a piece of fiction. Just not for this particular book. Come the end of May, I know where I'll be though. Off down a rabbit hole, that's where.
Hey Mr Tambourine Man
I was outraged late last year when a Scottish journalist declared that women don't like Bob Dylan. Well in this household at any rate it's me who worships at that particular shrine. Above all, I love the way he refused to be defined, labelled, branded. Just as soon as they thought they had pinned him down, he changed. It was as though he cared, but he was damned if he was going to be squeezed into whatever mould the media had planned for him. Instead he would simply thumb his nose at them, and reinvent himself as something else. He's a shape shifter, he's mercurial and he's magic.
I like everything he does, but if pushed, I would have to say that I like Tambourine Man best. And I like Dylan's extended, exuberant and exhilarating version better than the Byrds. No matter how many times I hear it,I'm back there, when I was young and when everything seemed possible. Love was an adventure. Words were an adventure too. What happened, I wonder? Did I just stop taking the time to daydream?
I used to write poetry in those days. Now I write plays and prose that have something of poetry in them. But the spark that seemed to make the poems themselves comes seldom, if ever. If I start again, it will be Dylan that does it for me.
Back then, I could "forget about today until tomorrow". But now that tomorrow is well and truly here, I find myself remembering. Sometimes I feel like Alice, grown cumbersome, peering through the little door into the lost garden. It's Bob Dylan who gives me that feeling, every time.
I like everything he does, but if pushed, I would have to say that I like Tambourine Man best. And I like Dylan's extended, exuberant and exhilarating version better than the Byrds. No matter how many times I hear it,I'm back there, when I was young and when everything seemed possible. Love was an adventure. Words were an adventure too. What happened, I wonder? Did I just stop taking the time to daydream?
I used to write poetry in those days. Now I write plays and prose that have something of poetry in them. But the spark that seemed to make the poems themselves comes seldom, if ever. If I start again, it will be Dylan that does it for me.
Back then, I could "forget about today until tomorrow". But now that tomorrow is well and truly here, I find myself remembering. Sometimes I feel like Alice, grown cumbersome, peering through the little door into the lost garden. It's Bob Dylan who gives me that feeling, every time.
Spring Has Sprung
and this is me, trying out a photograph of my favourite flower, just to see if it works! Actually, I thought spring had sprung until tonight, when the temperature here in rural Scotland plummeted all over again. At the weekend,the garden was warm and full of daffodils, the birds were singing and next door's cat came visiting. He greets me like a long lost buddy when I visit my neighbour, but won't come near me when he's in my garden. He sits neatly by the pond, watching the newts, and occasionally glancing complacently in my direction. Whenever I talk to him (which is embarrassingly often) he twitches his ears but won't come near. I get the feeling this must be some kind of feline etiquette. I used to consider myself to be a dog lover but the older I get, the more I like cats. Dogs seem so needy while cats are so admirably self possessed. There must be material for a story somewhere in there.
All of which is a hint to those people who (a) ask me where I get my ideas from and (b) complain to me that they can't think of anything interesting to write about. Everything is interesting, if you look closely enough. It's seeing the original and the fresh in the everyday stuff of life and then trying to convey it in exactly the right words that makes you into a writer. And you don't always have to leave home to do it.
Goodbye to all that. (And to them.....)
Yesterday morning at 6am one of the most draconian anti-smoking laws in the world came into force here in Scotland, a wee country that has more experience than most of the appalling effects of tobacco on public health. There have been a great many whinging articles from addicts, not least David Hockney, who may be a superb artist, but is a poor advertisement for the effects of a lifelong tobacco habit on the brain cells. Personally speaking, I'm delighted. One of my favourite cafes (good coffee in pleasant surroundings at an affordable price) has suddenly become unpolluted. My husband, who has a genuine allergy to cigarette smoke, can go to the pub again. And yesterday a young friend said "won't it be nice to be able to go out clubbing without having to wash everything when you get home!"
Interestingly enough, it seems to be the older generation who are doing the lion's share of the moaning. The kids don't seem all that bothered. But maybe it's because the oldies have been addicted for longer. Sadly, you get to an age when all the chickens start to come home to roost at once. You notice that people who used to be good looking have taken on that wrinkly, kippered appearance. It would be nice if that was the only problem, but I know dozens of people who have been killed by their smoking, people I loved and admired, people I miss with the added ache of knowing that since so many of them came from essentially long lived stock, they would probably still be here now, if it wasn't for the bloody fags.
One slightly bizarre side effect of the legislation has been to ban all cigarettes (even herbal alternatives) from the stage. Wormwood, my play about Chernobyl,has a character who smokes, and yes, it's part of the plot. There has also been a fair bit of moaning about "censorship" from people who should know better. However the consensus among younger actors and directors seems to be that since we are in the business of creating illusions, sometimes of a very extreme sort, (nuclear reactors in melt-down for instance) managing to convey the idea of somebody smoking should be a piece of cake!
Interestingly enough, it seems to be the older generation who are doing the lion's share of the moaning. The kids don't seem all that bothered. But maybe it's because the oldies have been addicted for longer. Sadly, you get to an age when all the chickens start to come home to roost at once. You notice that people who used to be good looking have taken on that wrinkly, kippered appearance. It would be nice if that was the only problem, but I know dozens of people who have been killed by their smoking, people I loved and admired, people I miss with the added ache of knowing that since so many of them came from essentially long lived stock, they would probably still be here now, if it wasn't for the bloody fags.
One slightly bizarre side effect of the legislation has been to ban all cigarettes (even herbal alternatives) from the stage. Wormwood, my play about Chernobyl,has a character who smokes, and yes, it's part of the plot. There has also been a fair bit of moaning about "censorship" from people who should know better. However the consensus among younger actors and directors seems to be that since we are in the business of creating illusions, sometimes of a very extreme sort, (nuclear reactors in melt-down for instance) managing to convey the idea of somebody smoking should be a piece of cake!
The People's Friend
My copy of the People's Friend arrived today, with the first part of The Curiosity Cabinet which has been abridged for the magazine in a number episodes.
There is a wonderful two page illustration, with all the characters: Alys, Donal (very handsome) Manus (not so handsome) and Henrietta. It has a real period feel and it reminds me of those magazines I used to look at in the doctor's waiting room when I was a little girl. (I was an asthmatic child, and spent rather a lot of my time in doctors' waiting rooms.) In fact it took me straight back to those days with an astonishing vividness of touch, taste and smell. And I wished that my dear late mum could have been around to share the moment. Magic.
Incidentally, I wonder if anyone else is terminally bored by some of today's waiting room offerings. And is it a sign of encroaching middle age that I invariably find myself asking for Country Living or Homes and Gardens in the hairdresser's, instead of Hello which everyone else seems to be fighting over?
Anyway, I digress. The mag arrived from the book publisher, Polygon, with an unsigned compliments slip. I don't think the People's Friend sits very well with their image of themselves as publishers of cutting edge crime fiction, and reprints of Scottish classics, but I am delirious, and if it sells some more copies of the novel, I will be even more pleased. There was just something about the juxtaposition of this fabulously traditional magazine, and the meaningfully silent compliments slip that made me roar with laughter. I am so sick of literary snobbery. If I can write something that a Whitbread prizewinning poet, whose work I admire, finds to be a "powerful novel about love and obligation" which at the same time appeals to the vast readership of People's Friend (and believe me, it is vast) then I feel I might just be doing something worthwhile. I spent as much time honing every last bit of The Curiosity Cabinet as - in a previous incarnation - I would have spent on a poem. Then spent much too long feeling apologetic about it because it's a love story. But everything about it was meant. Considered. Sometimes, when people talk to me or email me, I find that they have tapped into that intention. But if they simply think it's a good read, about real people, with a modicum of emotional truth, then that's fine by me.
All this reminded me about the worst thing anyone ever said about the book, long before it was shortlisted for a prize, praised by a poet and thus found a (slightly embarrassed) publisher. This was a comment by a jaundiced male agent, (of which more in a future post about "Finding an Agent") who wrote to me to the effect that it was merely a "library" novel, aimed only at "housewives", thus managing to insult not just me, but stay-at-home mums, libraries, Andrew Carnegie and all. As a friend of mine is fond of saying "It would bust you, wouldn't it?"
There is a wonderful two page illustration, with all the characters: Alys, Donal (very handsome) Manus (not so handsome) and Henrietta. It has a real period feel and it reminds me of those magazines I used to look at in the doctor's waiting room when I was a little girl. (I was an asthmatic child, and spent rather a lot of my time in doctors' waiting rooms.) In fact it took me straight back to those days with an astonishing vividness of touch, taste and smell. And I wished that my dear late mum could have been around to share the moment. Magic.
Incidentally, I wonder if anyone else is terminally bored by some of today's waiting room offerings. And is it a sign of encroaching middle age that I invariably find myself asking for Country Living or Homes and Gardens in the hairdresser's, instead of Hello which everyone else seems to be fighting over?
Anyway, I digress. The mag arrived from the book publisher, Polygon, with an unsigned compliments slip. I don't think the People's Friend sits very well with their image of themselves as publishers of cutting edge crime fiction, and reprints of Scottish classics, but I am delirious, and if it sells some more copies of the novel, I will be even more pleased. There was just something about the juxtaposition of this fabulously traditional magazine, and the meaningfully silent compliments slip that made me roar with laughter. I am so sick of literary snobbery. If I can write something that a Whitbread prizewinning poet, whose work I admire, finds to be a "powerful novel about love and obligation" which at the same time appeals to the vast readership of People's Friend (and believe me, it is vast) then I feel I might just be doing something worthwhile. I spent as much time honing every last bit of The Curiosity Cabinet as - in a previous incarnation - I would have spent on a poem. Then spent much too long feeling apologetic about it because it's a love story. But everything about it was meant. Considered. Sometimes, when people talk to me or email me, I find that they have tapped into that intention. But if they simply think it's a good read, about real people, with a modicum of emotional truth, then that's fine by me.
All this reminded me about the worst thing anyone ever said about the book, long before it was shortlisted for a prize, praised by a poet and thus found a (slightly embarrassed) publisher. This was a comment by a jaundiced male agent, (of which more in a future post about "Finding an Agent") who wrote to me to the effect that it was merely a "library" novel, aimed only at "housewives", thus managing to insult not just me, but stay-at-home mums, libraries, Andrew Carnegie and all. As a friend of mine is fond of saying "It would bust you, wouldn't it?"
Getting Stuff Out There
Stuart Hepburn,whose screen credits include Taggart, Monarch of the Glen, Rebus and a dramatisation of Quite Ugly one Morning, delivered a brilliant lecture on scriptwriting, and writing for television, at the Ayr Campus of Paisley University, earlier this week. He managed to be both inspiring, and realistic in that he told it like it is to a group of students, among whom were many aspiring writers. People always assume that once you have had one success, everything will be easy after that. It couldn't be further from the truth. Most writing careers are an uneasy and messy switchback of rejection followed by success followed by rejection. Even hugely distinguished and popular writers can suddenly fall out of favour for no very obvious reason. But for those of us wrestling with the middle ground, every step forward, every acceptance, or successful production, or publication, seems to be followed inevitably by a whole clutch of knock-backs. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it and it is probably the single most depressing thing about a writing career.
Stuart managed to convey this cheerfully, and without recrimination, although he did make us laugh in the process. He recommended a book I am always telling creative writing students about - Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman, a wise and wonderful book full of anecdotes and insights, and genuinely useful to aspiring writers everywhere. And if even the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid can be denied access to one of his own premieres, because he isn't on the guest list, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Stuart gave many excellent pieces of advice among which were: get your work out there because it's not doing any good sitting at the bottom of a drawer, grasp every opportunity that comes your way and finally, be nice to people, because not only will it make you feel good about yourself, but you never know when the Third Assistant Director on a project is going to turn up somewhere else as the Head of Drama!
Grasping opportunities, and getting your work out there, I sometimes think, are what make the difference between comparative success and absolute lack of it. Well, that and realising that if you wait until you have "time" to write, you will never write anything. Aspiring writers are surprisingly diffident about their own skills, and consequently run away from opportunities. We find excuses, because we're scared. And we all have unsatisfactory stuff lying around in drawers - I have plenty of it myself - but it's like the lottery. Small as your chances are, if you don't buy a ticket, you're never going to win. If you don't send your work out, once you feel that it is as good as you can make it, you are never going to get feedback on it.
If you are writing only for your own pleasure it doesn't matter. But if you have ambitions to be published or produced, you have to be amazingly proactive.
So don't file things away and forget about them. Send them out into the world and make them work for you. As Stuart suggested, this doesn't have to be in the more formal world of theatre/publishing etc. You can do it for yourself. Get together with like-minded friends, amateur actors, local theatre groups, develop your script and "do the show right here". Write a blog. If you have the capability, make yourself a website. Think laterally. Search out literary or poetry or drama competitions of which there are many, and submit your work to these. (You will often get feedback which can be useful). Join a club. Submit your stories and poems, not just to the big players, who will be inundated with work, but to the smaller magazines who won't. They won't pay much, if anything, but you will start to build up a body of published or produced work. In other words, as with any product, it's no earthly use complaining about your lack of sales if you aren't prepared to work at
getting your stuff out there!
Stuart managed to convey this cheerfully, and without recrimination, although he did make us laugh in the process. He recommended a book I am always telling creative writing students about - Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman, a wise and wonderful book full of anecdotes and insights, and genuinely useful to aspiring writers everywhere. And if even the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid can be denied access to one of his own premieres, because he isn't on the guest list, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Stuart gave many excellent pieces of advice among which were: get your work out there because it's not doing any good sitting at the bottom of a drawer, grasp every opportunity that comes your way and finally, be nice to people, because not only will it make you feel good about yourself, but you never know when the Third Assistant Director on a project is going to turn up somewhere else as the Head of Drama!
Grasping opportunities, and getting your work out there, I sometimes think, are what make the difference between comparative success and absolute lack of it. Well, that and realising that if you wait until you have "time" to write, you will never write anything. Aspiring writers are surprisingly diffident about their own skills, and consequently run away from opportunities. We find excuses, because we're scared. And we all have unsatisfactory stuff lying around in drawers - I have plenty of it myself - but it's like the lottery. Small as your chances are, if you don't buy a ticket, you're never going to win. If you don't send your work out, once you feel that it is as good as you can make it, you are never going to get feedback on it.
If you are writing only for your own pleasure it doesn't matter. But if you have ambitions to be published or produced, you have to be amazingly proactive.
So don't file things away and forget about them. Send them out into the world and make them work for you. As Stuart suggested, this doesn't have to be in the more formal world of theatre/publishing etc. You can do it for yourself. Get together with like-minded friends, amateur actors, local theatre groups, develop your script and "do the show right here". Write a blog. If you have the capability, make yourself a website. Think laterally. Search out literary or poetry or drama competitions of which there are many, and submit your work to these. (You will often get feedback which can be useful). Join a club. Submit your stories and poems, not just to the big players, who will be inundated with work, but to the smaller magazines who won't. They won't pay much, if anything, but you will start to build up a body of published or produced work. In other words, as with any product, it's no earthly use complaining about your lack of sales if you aren't prepared to work at
getting your stuff out there!
Wuthering Heights
I've always been unashamedly obsessed by this book. When I was a little girl (named for the heroine, of course) my mother and father trundled me across Haworth Moors in my push chair, to see the old ruined farmhouse called Top Withins, which was believed to be the inspiration behind the name and the situation, if not the actual building. Mum was something of a romantic. Why else would she have married a dark and handsome Pole, who kissed her hand when they first met. Mind you, dad was no Heathcliff. He was much too kind for that.
I liked Jane Eyre well enough, but I was passionate about Wuthering Heights, with its mad, bad and dangerous pair of lovers. Actually, there is nothing romantic about the book at all. It is a whirlwind of thwarted passion, the single minded passion of youth, and it has a deeply disturbing vein of intense (and intensely rural) cruelty running through it just as the descriptions of the brightly burning fire at the heart of the farmhouse run through the heart of the novel.
But really, I adore all of it, find that my friends fall neatly into those who love it and those who loathe it, and return to it again and again. This weekend, I see that the excellent Sally Wainwright (of Sparkhouse fame) has written a radio play about a possible source of inspiration behind the book: a forbidden love affair between Emily and a local weaver's son. He died young, and she wrote Wuthering Heights. Women's Hour had a slightly outraged academic quibbling with Sarah Fermi's research which inspired the play, but it seems feasible enough to me (and of course completely unprovable, either way.)
"But she wouldn't had had anything to do with a weaver" said Emily's biographer. "They were from completely different stations in life."
Which is, of course, exactly the point. From time immemorial, people have been forming inadvisable relationships. Such things are the stuff of a million works of literature, film and theatre, Wuthering Heights included. I, for one, and speaking as someone who has also written her own obsessive homage to Wuthering Heights (this time with a Scottish setting) will be listening with interest.
I liked Jane Eyre well enough, but I was passionate about Wuthering Heights, with its mad, bad and dangerous pair of lovers. Actually, there is nothing romantic about the book at all. It is a whirlwind of thwarted passion, the single minded passion of youth, and it has a deeply disturbing vein of intense (and intensely rural) cruelty running through it just as the descriptions of the brightly burning fire at the heart of the farmhouse run through the heart of the novel.
But really, I adore all of it, find that my friends fall neatly into those who love it and those who loathe it, and return to it again and again. This weekend, I see that the excellent Sally Wainwright (of Sparkhouse fame) has written a radio play about a possible source of inspiration behind the book: a forbidden love affair between Emily and a local weaver's son. He died young, and she wrote Wuthering Heights. Women's Hour had a slightly outraged academic quibbling with Sarah Fermi's research which inspired the play, but it seems feasible enough to me (and of course completely unprovable, either way.)
"But she wouldn't had had anything to do with a weaver" said Emily's biographer. "They were from completely different stations in life."
Which is, of course, exactly the point. From time immemorial, people have been forming inadvisable relationships. Such things are the stuff of a million works of literature, film and theatre, Wuthering Heights included. I, for one, and speaking as someone who has also written her own obsessive homage to Wuthering Heights (this time with a Scottish setting) will be listening with interest.
The Earth According to Google
Our son came home last weekend, and downloaded Google Earth for me. This was a big mistake. The sheer magical joy of being able to fly around the world and home in on familiar and unfamiliar places in great detail is compellingly and completely addictive. Arguably, the places you know well are even more intriguing than foreign lands, for the simple reason that looking down on anything from above like this adds a strange glamour to it all. I found the site of the house where I lived when I was a little girl in Leeds - now an area of major development, like so many old industrial areas that are about to become highly desirable. Suddenly, I could see exactly how it sat in relation to everything else round about it. Curiously, it brought back all kinds of memories and made me feel quite emotional. I could have looked at it for hours. I've always loved maps, but this goes one better. Obviously on a roll, my son then went on to show me Google Video. Soon I was enthusing over the Beatles singing Revolution.
"So who's that then?" he said.
"John Lennon. It's John Lennon. And it's wonderful... Go away. I want to see what else I can find!"
He sighed and went back to his maths.
This is displacement activity of the very highest order. I can't recommend it highly enough. Just don't expect to get anything done in the meantime, that's all.
"So who's that then?" he said.
"John Lennon. It's John Lennon. And it's wonderful... Go away. I want to see what else I can find!"
He sighed and went back to his maths.
This is displacement activity of the very highest order. I can't recommend it highly enough. Just don't expect to get anything done in the meantime, that's all.
Soap Opera
Why would anyone use such a gloriously varied, universally popular and participatory art as soap opera in a perjorative sense? Except maybe the Beeb who, when River City was in development, allegedly insisted on everyone referring to it as a "continuing drama" lest anyone should imagine that what they were creating was a soap!
In 1982 one Dorothy Hobson conducted a fascinating study into the relationship between Crossroads and its viewers. This is extensively reported in John Carey's iconoclastic "What Good Are the Arts?" (Buy it, read it and rejoice, Faber and Faber, 2005) He says "Taste is so bound up with self esteem, particularly among devotees of high art, that a sense of superiority to those with 'lower tastes' is almost impossible to relinquish without the risk of identity crisis."
Hobson researched audience response to the soap and found - unsurprisingly - that its viewers had a high level of critical awareness and that the soap was essentially a "popular art with communal participation which provoked a straightforward clash of cultures." The critics hated it purely because it offended their own cultural values.
Not so very long ago there was a scene in Corrie (My soap of choice) in which Emily, Audrey, Norris, Rita and - I think - Fred, sat around a dining table eating Sunday lunch and talking. It was a scene of such breathtaking skill (any playwright will tell you that dining tables can be death to drama) that I watched it in gobsmacked envy of the team that had created it. Each of these characters had his or her own densely woven back story. Each of them had a complex relationship with the others. And for all of them, something was also happening right now. Every character was being played by a fine actor, using a script to die for, with inspired direction that placed every member of the audience firmly at the table with them.
Not only that but they were all older characters, and yet they weren't being treated as figures of fun, or also-rans, but as real, three dimensional people, central to the drama. In short it was a dazzling tour de force.
Once upon a time, when a wandering poet arrived in a small Highland or Island community he would be asked "Do you know anything of the Fianna?" When the reply was in the affirmative, he would be invited to a village gathering to relate the next episode in the popular soap that was the story of Finn MacCumhaill,his warriors and their strong, dauntless women. So what is the difference between this ancient craving for story, and the animated discussions about the latest episode of this or that soap in the pub or the canteen? And why should one be intrinsically more valuable, or more culturally significant than the other?
The answer is, of course, that it isn't. But don't tell the elitists that. The shock to their self image might be disastrous. I often think they they are like the exclusive religious sect in the old joke - you know, the one where St Peter lets the newcomer climb up the ladder to peer quietly over the high wall of their heavenly enclosure because "they think they are the only ones in here!"
In 1982 one Dorothy Hobson conducted a fascinating study into the relationship between Crossroads and its viewers. This is extensively reported in John Carey's iconoclastic "What Good Are the Arts?" (Buy it, read it and rejoice, Faber and Faber, 2005) He says "Taste is so bound up with self esteem, particularly among devotees of high art, that a sense of superiority to those with 'lower tastes' is almost impossible to relinquish without the risk of identity crisis."
Hobson researched audience response to the soap and found - unsurprisingly - that its viewers had a high level of critical awareness and that the soap was essentially a "popular art with communal participation which provoked a straightforward clash of cultures." The critics hated it purely because it offended their own cultural values.
Not so very long ago there was a scene in Corrie (My soap of choice) in which Emily, Audrey, Norris, Rita and - I think - Fred, sat around a dining table eating Sunday lunch and talking. It was a scene of such breathtaking skill (any playwright will tell you that dining tables can be death to drama) that I watched it in gobsmacked envy of the team that had created it. Each of these characters had his or her own densely woven back story. Each of them had a complex relationship with the others. And for all of them, something was also happening right now. Every character was being played by a fine actor, using a script to die for, with inspired direction that placed every member of the audience firmly at the table with them.
Not only that but they were all older characters, and yet they weren't being treated as figures of fun, or also-rans, but as real, three dimensional people, central to the drama. In short it was a dazzling tour de force.
Once upon a time, when a wandering poet arrived in a small Highland or Island community he would be asked "Do you know anything of the Fianna?" When the reply was in the affirmative, he would be invited to a village gathering to relate the next episode in the popular soap that was the story of Finn MacCumhaill,his warriors and their strong, dauntless women. So what is the difference between this ancient craving for story, and the animated discussions about the latest episode of this or that soap in the pub or the canteen? And why should one be intrinsically more valuable, or more culturally significant than the other?
The answer is, of course, that it isn't. But don't tell the elitists that. The shock to their self image might be disastrous. I often think they they are like the exclusive religious sect in the old joke - you know, the one where St Peter lets the newcomer climb up the ladder to peer quietly over the high wall of their heavenly enclosure because "they think they are the only ones in here!"
The Aftermath
There is nothing quite like the let-down after a stage play, unless its the let-down after you've finished writing a book. But I think the let-down after a play is worse, for the very good reason that writing is essentially a lonely business. You sit in your room, with the radio and your own imagination for company, and write what you want to see. Then, for a few short weeks, you work with other people, people who are taking this piece of work seriously. You collaborate. You discuss, and watch and listen and marvel as your work takes on a life of its own. And you meet people. You meet them during rehearsals, and during the production. Friends come and see it. Colleagues come and see it. Complete strangers come up to you and tell you how much they enjoyed it. Let's face it, it gives you such a buzz and not just because it's nice to be appreciated (which it is) but simply because it's good to know that you are communicating with other human beings. And then all of a sudden, it's over, finished, and everyone has moved onto the next thing, and so must you. But there's a space, and suddenly everyday life seems a bit humdrum and a bit boring. You feel spaced out and slightly depressed.
The play was pretty much a success. The reviews were good, the people involved with the production seemed to like the play, and the audiences were appreciative. After the last performance, on saturday, there was one of those rare moments when the whole audience (and the place was packed) falls silent, and then gives a little collective sigh, before bursting into applause. THAT was good.
But now it's back to reality, which in my case means the desk, the endless pots of tea (made with real leaves of course) and the next big project.
The play was pretty much a success. The reviews were good, the people involved with the production seemed to like the play, and the audiences were appreciative. After the last performance, on saturday, there was one of those rare moments when the whole audience (and the place was packed) falls silent, and then gives a little collective sigh, before bursting into applause. THAT was good.
But now it's back to reality, which in my case means the desk, the endless pots of tea (made with real leaves of course) and the next big project.
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