'Let us consider an albino crow. Is it not said, by the great poets, that such creatures have been seen? And there is, I believe, an old Phoenician tale regarding such an occurrence. But is a white crow not a crow nonetheless?'

'That it is, Socrates.'

'Then it is true that all crows must be white?'

'That must be correct.'

'Then what would you say is that black corvid, under the tree over there?'

'Why, Socrates, it is a crow.'

'But have we not just established that crows are white?'

'Yes.'

'Can a white crow ever appear as black?'

'Impossible.'

'Then it must be a mandarin duck.'

'Undoubtedly, Socrates.'

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The 60-seater space is straight out of Alice in Wonderland: like an untidy living room where children are about to put on a show. Three rows of chairs with a mix of cushions are ranged on steps opposite a shallow stage. Carboard boxes under each seat apparently hold programmes from previous productions.

The stage set itself is sparse: a table with fold-down flaps and a lacy cloth, on which stands a tiny bell. Five Edwardian dining chairs with green velvet seats are set nearby. Dark, striped wallpaper and an oval mirror with an elaborate gilt frame complete the decor; in fact, the theatre's proprietor, Leonie Scott-Matthews, comes out at the start to apologise, explaining that Fanny's First Play is a touring production, and Pentameters' normal staging is usually more detailed. She reappears at the end, too - a charming personal touch, I thought.



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Last week the papers seized on a story about certain best-selling novelists whose sales have fallen dramatically in the past year. Jodi Picoult and Marian Keyes are among them. Here’s The Independent’s take on it:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/have-we-fallen-out-of-love-with-chick-lit-2361445.html

I don’t want to re-hash what the journalists are writing. But I find several things interesting about this story.


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One of the most useful dicta (I won't say "rules" because there are no rules) I came across early in teaching myself to write was "start as near the end as possible". It was a propos short fiction, and of course it's not really as simple as that, but there's a lot to be said for remembering it in novel-writing too. Later I came across the thriller-writers' dictum "Get in late and get out early", which is the same idea and equally sort-of-true (see here for a discussion of the "getting out" bit). And I usually find that students' MS have much more explaining of backstory and past history than they need, and it's quite rare to have too little. As so often, you needed to think all that out to write it, but we don't need to read it

But where does that leave you with the bits of What Happened Before which we really do need? The crucial underpinnings of feeling and thinking on which the events of Now are built: the lost relationship with the sister which has brought your MC back to their childhood home; the bullying at school which destroyed his confidence and so is wrecking his marriage; the difficult, lovable, hated parent who's now dying slowly in your spare bedroom. How do you convey that stuff?

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A scene from the film Educating Rita is a reminder of the 'knock-through' craze of the 1970s; terrace dwellers suddenly wanted the sense of space that the middle and upper classes took for granted. The eponymous heroine takes a sledgehammer to a dividing wall in the terraced house she shares with her husband and the comic collapse in a cloud of dust identifues it as a 'supporting wall'.

Erno Goldfinger solved the problem of how to provide space without supporting walls, in Willow Road, Hampstead. Unfortunately, as far as fellow Hampstead dwellers in their Victorian stone villas were concerned, it involved concrete; very non-traditional. There was a lot of opposition from the likes of novelist Ian Fleming. He was so incensed he named one of his most famous villains after the architect.



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Oh, Jerusha, I hardly dare write to you, because I'm not a proper writer, not any more. I don't belong on this blog, or the postgrad course I'm doing, or anywhere. Two years work on the novel, and it's a failure. I'm a failure. A friend has just bagged a two-book deal after an auction. My novel's been rejected everywhere it's gone out to. I can't start something new because all my mental and physical energy - my very breath - is on hold for this one. I know that my writing's good, and I've worked and polished and re-worked it. I've taken the feedback I've had on board, and re-worked again. I just haven't written a book that can sell. Why did no one tell me that, before I started? Why did the workshops tweak and poke and sometimes be sceptical but never say, "You shouldn't be writing this novel?" Or why didn't I? How could I have made such a completely wrong decision about what I can make work as a novel? Every now and again, I find some energy to go back to it and try to make it better. I'm not willing to let go yet. And then another rejection comes in, and I'm back where I was.

Oh, Writer it's so hard, and it hurts so much. Rejection of something which you've invested everything in poisons your sense of your self as a writer in a way that few other things can. It is horrible - which is why just pulling your socks up doesn't work, and nor does telling yourself to try harder. But it doesn't have to become toxic, though I know plenty of writers, published and unpublished, for whom it has.

But this is not Failure: the only person who can decide that you've failed is you, and you can decide that you haven't.

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Hello!

I am new to the Blogworld, so please be patient with me!

I intend to use this blog to document my attempts at getting Tollesbury Time Forever published. Any comments would be very gratefully received, good, not so good, humourous, boring - all is fine with me! And if any of you out there can give me some leads....

Will do my best to update regularly and, who knows, Tollesbury Time Forever may one day be published! But if not, well that's ok. I really like it and the messages within it that create the acronym FRUGALITY -

Forgive everybody everything
Recognise beauty wherever it be
Understand the nature of loss
Give love wherever you go
Anger devours the soul
Look deep or don't look at all
Imagination is life
Trust everyone for, at heart, everyone is good
You are wonderful!

So there you go and here we are.

This is all very strange...

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In the beginning, I started out producing what I would have described as intensely psychological prose, creating entirely interior worlds, interior dilemmas, inner struggles... It seemed almost writerly. A chapter would involve one person, walking in a park, thinking. Or perhaps only sitting on a park bench. Perhaps this was because the thoughts came to me that way, and I didn't quite have the wit to dress it up more. This, I might call the Insight stage. Irony, hey.

I grew past it, in time. I started having two or even three people in a scene, even interacting sometimes. This, finally, was proper writing. They began to talk to each other, sometimes at length. They were (sort of) demonstrating things, through dialogue at least. No longer did the author clumsily illuminate via his eighteenth century narrator. Sometimes the characters even misunderstood each other, or talked across each other. Or were unreliable in their knowledge. I felt advanced.

But a different kind of pattern emerged. Each chapter, it was politely pointed out to me, is just people talking. Yet again. They were right, naturally. What was actually happening? I counted ten chapters in a single novel that each consisted in some part of two people talking at a checkout (mostly in coffee shops, but also, through a burst of wild imagination, in a supermarket).

Conversation isn't action, of course. Only action is action. Which is not to say a building blows up in every chapter, but at last I am deleting entire chapters that had seemed integral only months ago, and expressing a good thing once instead of a dozen times. It's the same thought that has football managers screaming at their daft winger to stop turning the defender and just bloody cross the ball.

I wonder what the next stage is?

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Every now and again an aspiring writer says in my hearing that they're afraid to revise a piece too much, in case they "lose the freshness". And there are understanding nods round the writers' circle or the class, while I try not to say that if the piece as it stands is freshness, then give me over-ripeness any day. Instead I gently explain that there is yet more which could be done to the piece (any piece), such as X and Y, and if Y then Z.... and indeed all those and more must be done if the writer's ever going to learn enough to get their work anywhere near publication.

But a few times I've heard of an agent or editor saying the same sort of thing of one of their authors, which has surprised me much more. Why would they suggest stopping work if there's any possibility that the novel could be better? But presumably they have seen books which have been spoilt by over-working, which have "lost the freshness" as they see it. So I've been thinking about what's going on.

They say that the actresses who can play Juliet well are either fourteen, or over thirty, and I think that's relevant.

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This has been a summer of contractions and a contract.

On August 1 at 6:16am hubby and I gave birth to Amelie (7lbs 11oz) and a few days later I signed a contract for Novel Two (Novel One is currently on the backburner). If truth be told, the novel was far more painful and laborious, despite mum having hyperemesis from hell (extreme sickness) for nine months. The book took around two years from start to finish, whereas my labour (as a first timer!) was four hours and up until the last eighty minutes or so, relatively painless which I attribute to my chiropractic treatment.


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