My name is Emma, and I am a technique geek.

Not that that's any surprise to anyone who's been reading this blog for more than about five minutes. But every now and again, when I've been unpicking/listing/analysing something about how writing and writers work, someone says, "I dunno. I don't think like that, I just do it on gut instinct." Which of course we all do, much of the time, before, during and after that central process of moving from total beginner to adequately competent writer.

The thing is, although I find being geeky about creative work fascinating, I think the chief value of talking technical is actually to train your gut instinct so you don't have to think technical when you're writing.

Read Full Post

After living in the wilderness (well, Cornwall) for seven years, I’ve moved back to the city. A huge change of pace which also requires a big attitudinal change. In Cornwall I had a 4-storey cottage with direct views over the river from every floor. In the city, for the same price, I can barely afford a two-bedroom flat with views over various air-filtering devices on the roof next door - or a one-bedroom flat. In Cornwall I had a painting studio with a Belfast sink and a balcony. Now I have to consider whether I can paint at all.
This is not a nightmare but a challenge: an interesting opportunity to look at my life and how I now hope to live it. And, strangely, my writing process seems to be going hand in hand with my moving process. In Cornwall I wrote my novel – all 100,000 words of it. Lots of words, lots of space. As I prepared to move, I began editing – both my possessions (I gave away or sold much of what I owned) and my novel. And now, in the city, I’ve reached the ultimate in downsizing: the one-bedroom flat, and the blurb.


Read Full Post

On Saturday I did my first proper poetry reading. It was down in Winchester at the prize-giving for the Virginia Warbey prize. I didn't win, but two of my poems were longlisted. Before that I had entered a poetry slam at a festival and taken part in a few readings at the end of courses. I also had to read after one of my short stories was shortlisted for another competition.

Read Full Post

'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.'

Read Full Post

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.



Read Full Post

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.


Read Full Post

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?

Read Full Post

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.



Read Full Post

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.

Read Full Post