The Tongues of Men

Is the country better for writing?

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 07:13:00 +0000

And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny.
– William Wordsworth, ‘Stepping Westward’

At the end of July we’re moving to the county where Henry Fielding was born and where Chaucer worked as a forester whilst writing The Canterbury Tales (apparently). It is the county in which Thomas Hardy dwelt for a time, where Arthur C. Clarke grew up, where John Steinbeck stayed to research and where T.S. Eliot chose to have his ashes interred. More recently, it is where Terry Pratchett dreamt up Discworld, where John Le Carré resided and where Fay Weldon and Charlotte Bingham are united in prolificacy, if not in style.

Specifically, we're heading to the hills and moors where Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was penned, where his friend Wordsworth moped about for a year, in the wild country of Lorna Doone.

We have just been filmed for a TV property show about the move (on your telly in December) in which the storyline of ‘writer moving to country for inspiration’ will play a part.

It’s a pervasive myth, that the countryside is more inspiring for writing. I adore the graphic novel Tamara Drewe, with its old Dorset guest home packed full of frustrated novelists retreating to the pastoral to find the space to work.

But is the country really a better place to get writing done?

The occasions on which I've written productively in remote places in the past owe a lot to being away: away from family and work life, with nothing else to think about. This time the crew are coming too. I’ll be working still, with a much longer commute. There'll be all the resettling of kids into schools and possibly all the work involved in modernising a historic building.

It certainly won’t be a retreat. The first time that we have to drain the septic tank will put paid to any romantic notions of the rural writing life.

As for whether or not it is a more inspiring setting, it is said that some authors face the window and some face the wall. There are those for whom a landscape stirs creative thoughts and those for whom it distracts. Looking out at the fields does not make me want to write: it makes me want to go out in the fields. The inspiration for my books is inside me. Writing needs no external vista: it is more the discipline of shutting out the view to single-mindedly type the internal ideas out.

More to the point, for an urban novel you're probably better off in a city. And if you get energy from interacting with people and culture and ideas then you need to be around those too.

Plus there are the issues of improving as an author and getting published. Isolation is good for neither. In Cambridge I have been part of a writing group that has been critical for my novel in at least two positive senses of that word.

Of course, there is the Internet for research and culture and connection to other writers – as long as you can get it in your village. Practical considerations such as broadband access and the temperature of the room will have far more influence over my productivity than the scenic location. The discipline of creative writing is largely a practical one: arranging a warm, quiet, uninterrupted space in which to tap the keys.

On the flip side, as long as the practicalities are available, space is one thing that the country move will deliver in spades. I’m ridiculously excited about having my own study or shed to make into the perfect creative den (facing the wall, not the window).

And there’s more to the countryside than that. I find a pastoral setting the perfect place to clear my head and make good decisions. Writing is writing wherever you do it but I’m looking forward to cultivating a clear and focused mind for the work at hand.

Above all, it's an exhilarating move all round; a new chapter of life after 17 years in a university city. It might not be the dream ticket that country life is often romantically conceived to be, but change and a new adventure are good.

Wordsworth did the same, living in Somerset for a time after studying in Cambridge. And it’s his ‘Stepping Westward’ that's rattling round my head while we plan this move.

Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

Swimming with dolphins in Akaroa

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:54:00 +0000

A final post from the New Zealand journal. This is where we were a year ago.

Nothing prepares us for our first sight of Akaroa’s tiffany blue harbour. We’ve been driving across Canterbury Plain, sparsely populated, each creek that we cross named on a yellow sign. Our spirits lift as we begin to climb into the volcanic round of mountains. Suddenly the vista opens out: green brown hills dipping their limbs into a long lagoon, its many bays like petals of a rare blue flower.

Akaroa harbour

We stop the car. Photograph. Drive round the corner and stop again. Photograph. Eventually we realise that the view is not going to go away. The harbour is gorgeous at every turn. It is deep, with a mouth gulping at the Pacific. The French originally used it as whale nursery.

We hadn’t expected the water in New Zealand to be so bright. It’s like the Indian Ocean filling Norwegian fjords. The boys lob stones into the shallows while we sit spellbound by the bay. Later, we paddle off the grey volcanic beaches.

Duvauchelle Bay at the top of Akaroa harbour

We’re here to swim with Hector’s dolphins. It’s hard to know what to expect. This is no Sea World. We’ll be out on the edge of the open sea, waiting for the wild creatures, the smallest and rarest of their family, to come by. The voyage out is just gorgeous. The mountains peel back on either side as our boat ploughs a wake through the cerulean depths. The simple joy of piloting these waters under a warm sun in a flawless sky is worth the trip alone.

Suited and booted

Nevertheless, all eyes are peeled for a glimpse of distinctly semi-circular dorsal fin. After a couple of false alarms, a pair is seen at a distance. The captain nears the dolphins and cuts the engines, but they swim off. The animals are wild and there is no guarantee that they will be interested in socialising. Another group seems friendlier, but by the time we lower into the water, they too disappear. We’ve been told the water is nippy, and New Zealanders and Americans in the party complain about the cold. They’ve obviously never swum in the North Sea. In fact it’s relatively mild. The cool water creeps inside our wetsuits in sweet contrast to the beating sun.

Hector's dolphins

We return to the boat and move further towards the open ocean. Turn right, and it’s non-stop to Antarctica; left, and you’ll be on course for Chile. A more engaging pod is found, and we drop off the back of the vessel again. Floating is easy in the extra thick suits, and we make noises to get the dolphins curious. Three of four times they swim through our midst, ghostly white and only an arm’s span away. Then they’re done. So is Theo: despite his double layers, he is shivering. Back on board we drink hot chocolate and make our way towards Akaroa.

On the jetty, we hear that the other group had half a dozen dolphins round them at all times. One man calls it 'life-changing'. Our encounter was more fleeting, and we get given a partial refund. But we would have paid in full to see the creatures even at a distance, and to ride in the breeze and warm sun through that sumptuous, sparkling lagoon.

Beautiful day

The power of the physical book

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:30:00 +0000

Books have power.

Not as much as stories. Stories predate books, and will outlive them too. The most important thing about the inevitable decline of books is that stories continue to be told, in whatever form keeps them alive, in the greatest number of minds. I don’t have a book fetish.

But there is no doubt that the physical book – the bound paper artefact – has power.

Today my photo book arrived. It tells the story of an adventure that my wife, four kids and I had in New Zealand. It tells it in photographs that I already posted on Flickr, and in words that I have already published on my blog. It goes into only a tiny amount of the detail we have related to our friends over dinner.

And yet.

And yet, it is a beautiful thing to behold. It is a beautiful thing to hold. It has weight, and sheen, and smell. I can flick through it, jump backwards and forwards among the pages, pass it to another person and watch her smile. I can crease it at my favourite pages, display it proudly on my bookshelf, write ‘Happy Birthday’ to my wife in the front. I can glimpse it in the corner and think, ‘there’s a thing that I made.’

I can’t imagine my children throwing this one away, as they clear out the attic when my wife and I are dead. They’ll flick through the pages too, and wonder at their young selves, and show their own offspring the time that Grandad marched them in the rain to see their first glacier.

Beyond that, who knows? But books have power, far more than the sum of the words within.

Film diary 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:43:00 +0000

Remember all that sport last year? All that winning? I blame it for the lower tally of films watched, especially as we kept the TV licence after the Olympics. Oh look, Scream I/II/III is on again!

Anyway, I still saw a few. 2012 was the year that Almodovar had a dip in form (The Skin I Live In) whereas Woody Allen finally got one right (Midnight in Paris). Wes Anderson wonderfully became more of what he already was (Moonrise Kingdom), but so did Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams). I think I've finally fallen out of love with Herzog altogether.

Classic films are of course classic (Sunset Boulevard, On the Waterfront, Notorious, Psycho) and Tokyo Story is not the best film ever made. It's up there though. For something entirely different, try My Summer of Love, Bombay Beach, Arrietty or Morvern Callar.

Twitter film reviews 2012

*****Outstanding ****Excellent ***Good
**Okay *Poor 0–Atrocious

My Summer of Love (Pawlikowski 2004)**** Pitch perfect teen angst & eroticism in a bored Yorkshire village, tongues-speaking nutters & all.

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950)***** Engaging story, glorious lead, cheesy noirish script & sharp shooting justify Hollywood parody classic.

On The Waterfront (Kazan 1954)***** So that's what all the Marlon Brando fuss is about. Plus: Best. Priest. Ever.

Harry Potter 7/1 (Yates 2010)*** Series gets grown up acting, cinematography and CGI. Also gets moping and ennui: biding time before pt 2.

Harry Potter 7/2 (Yates 2011)**** Sweeping, dramatic, with outstanding effects intrepid story. Everything matures into a satisfying end.

Hannah Her Sisters (Allen 1986)**** Devastatingly acute relationship drama mixed with vintage comedy script. Moving, funny, thoughtful.

Intolerable Cruelty (Coen, 2003)*** Repeated views unlock the quirky genius hidden in mainstream romcom. Or maybe I just heart the Coens too much.

The Cat in the Hat (Welch 2003)*** 1-yr-old's fave film. On constantly. Want to hate but Mike Myers carries it and we're all quoting it.

Flags of Our Fathers (Eastwood 06)**** A little obvious, but true WW2 story w/ strong aesthetic, grown-up structure & visceral authenticity.

Midnight in Paris (Allen 2011)**** That's more like it, Woody. Perky Paris stages whimsical tale about nostalgia living in the present.

Letters from Iwo Jima (Eastwood 2006)**** Same battle, different war. Moving stories of childlike Japanese soldier and his General in WWII.

Also rewatched A Serious Man at the weekend. I love the Coen tropes, the sheer craftsmanship, and the repeated 'it's just a story'.

Oranges and Sunshine (Loach, 2010)*** Emily Watson is intense in open ended, natural story about forcible migration of kids to Australia.

With all the great films available on the long haul flight, I ended up watching The Hangover, I and II.

Tokyo Story (Ozu 1953)***** Best film ever made? Not for me; but a gentle, understated masterpiece about parents and their adult children.

Also, The Royal Tenenbaums. Reader, I watched it again.

Bombay Beach (Har'el 2011)**** Surreal, choreographed documentary about 3 poor American lives. Beautiful, clipped, hope & despair together.

@geoffstevenson They loved [Lord of the Rings I]. Bit plot heavy, but plenty of cool monsters. Had to keep hiding Atty behind the fridge though.

The Skin I Live In (Almodovar 11)** The usual craft and a twisted sexual plot, but pushed too far. Anti-erotic, disconcerting, unrewarding.

Notorious (Hitchcock 1946)***** A perfect film.

Shadowlands (Attenborough 1993)**** Stuffy academia & pop theology of CS Lewis stripped away to leave a simple, devastating love story.

The Inbetweeners (Palmer 2011)** Embarrasing teen boy jokes, hilarious on TV, feel thin in feature length. Series has run its course?

3:10 to Yuma (Mangold 2007)**** Post-Unforgiven yet still a true Western. Magnificent leads from Crowe & Bale, do justice to superb writing.

Psycho (Hitchcock 1960)***** Deserves its reputation as a defining moment in cinema. One of Hitch's best. And terrifying.

District 9 (Blomkamp 2009)**** Gory apartheid with aliens. Extraordinarily literal and uncomfortable. Overwritten but superbly acted.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar 1988)***** Hilarious Spanish farce involving a drug laced gazpacho.

Arrietty (Yonebayashi 2010)**** Straight telling of The Borrowers, with such tranquil mise en scene and music it's an indulgence.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)***** Pure essence of Wes Anderson. Emotionally troubled kids, depressed adults, lots of cub scouts. Very very funny.

The Illusionist (Chomet 2010)*** 50s Edinburgh, beautifully drawn. Gentle story belies source (unproduced Tati script) & sensitive subject.

Morvern Callar (Ramsay 2002)**** Poignant study of childlikeness, of life lived in the moment. Tactile like Ratcatcher, but more mesmeric.

La Vie En Rose (Dahan 2007)*** Engrossing Edith Piaf bio. Cotillard deserved best actress. Overdoes timeline jumps though.

Shallow Grave (Boyle 1994)*** Bold debut with brash performances from young stars. Influential – but why didn't they just split the money?

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog 2010)** The cave paintings are bewitching. The documentary is short, basic, laced with director's nonsense.

The Social Network (Fincher 2010)**** If only real software was as sexy as a Sorkin screenplay.

Hugo (Scorcese 2011)*** Magic for the cineaste, but slow, sentimental and over CGI-ed. Perhaps the key is to see it in 3D in the cinema.

Mr Poppers Penguins (Waters 2011)** Jim Carrey with penguins. Bit hard to care about this one. Alludes to much better films than itself.

The Nutcracker in 3D (Konchalovskiy 2009)** Magical Viennese start dissolves surreally into Turturro's rat king & Tim Rice's lyrics. Panned.

Valiant (Disney 2005)* Pre-Toy Story animation despite coming a decade later. Gervais is offputting, even/especially as a dirty pigeon.

Whale Rider (Caro 2002)**** Idiomatic and understated Maori tale, simmering with universal emotion.

Taking of Pelham 123 (Scott 2009)** Yawn. A good idea dropped from the hands of Travolta's terrible generic mad villain.

Previous years:
2011 film reviews
2010 film reviews
2009 film diary
2008 film diary
2007 film diary

I'm always open for what to watch next – tell me on Twitter.

Annus (partim) horribilis

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:44:00 +0000

I’ve had better years than 2012. Apart from an amazing adventure in New Zealand back in April, which was unforgettably exciting, it has rained more often than not, I’ve made little headway on the second draft of the novel, and I’ve seen the inside of hospitals and clinics more these three months than the preceding three decades combined.

In October I started struggling to cycle and to concentrate, and my heart was beating fast. The GP thought it must be asthma. My being out of breath got so bad that Mary insisted I phone the emergency doctor straight away. The nurse who called back said, “I can hear you’re out of breath – what have you just done?” When I told her I had only stood up to answer the phone, she arranged my first ever trip in an ambulance.

I had pulmonary emboli – multiple blood clots in both lungs. Often clots are only found postmortem, having caused fatal heart attacks or strokes. I was lucky not to have died. Apparently I have a strong heart. It’s rare for a 35-year old to suffer clots, and my age is probably one of the reasons I’m still alive.

Me, with pulmonary emboli, earlier

The strangest part of the condition is that we couldn’t identify a cause. No major injury or (recent) long haul flying, no history of embolism in the family. In May, when I’m off the anticoagulants, I’ll be tested for hereditary factors that may have allowed the clotting, perhaps needing the medicine for life. If it isn’t genetic, then the worry is that the same situation could arise again.

The hardest part has been the recovery – the grey area between serious illness and fitness. In hospital you know where you stand, or lie, with oxygen tubes and heart monitors and 17 syringes of your blood taken at once. And at some point in the future, I’ll be back on my bike, racing up Histon Road to the office, and throwing the children in the air when I get home.

But in between? In between is tricky.

You can’t magic blood clots away. Anticoagulants prevent any new clots forming and allow existing clots to naturally dissolve. But that takes time. Months, in fact. Plus my heart and lungs have taken one hell of a beating, and need time to repair. After a few fatigued weeks I pitched up to the office, only to end up back at the doctor with wildly irregular heartbeats. They were benign – but a wake up call that my major organs were trying to get better and I wasn’t giving them a decent break.

It’s frustrating. Especially when, having rested, I feel bright, only to get exhausted a day after doing normal things again. I find it hard to do nothing when I’m feeling okay in the moment. I’ve tidied every cupboard in the house. Some pulmonary embolism survivors take 18 months to recover. I’m not up for that.

It might be denial but I’ve never felt ill in myself, that is, my body has been struggling but I’ve felt perfectly well inside. Only on the first night in hospital did I consider that I might be dying – I thought how much better it would be to die now and have people say, “he could have been such an amazing novelist!” than to reach old age and prove without doubt that I’m not – although I did think how awful it would be for Mary. But since that night, and the disgusting hospital breakfast that followed, I have considered myself to be basically okay and waiting for normal life to resume.

I wish it would come quicker. I don’t feel like a lucky survivor. I feel on hold, annoyed at all this unexpected inconvenience. I can’t drink over Christmas or even next Easter, on holiday with friends. I haven’t worked a full week yet. I’ve had to cancel things I really wanted to do – from applying to a Creative Writing course and attending a writers’ workshop to running some fun new training for Fluent. I’ve had plenty of time off but been unable to write. We’re in Snowdonia at Christmas but I won’t be climbing any hills. And my wife is still having to do most of the work at home.

Mary has been incredible; quite apart from saving my life in the first place by making me phone the doctor (I’m not even the first person in the family for whom she has done that). Colleagues, friends and family have been tremendously supportive. I’m grateful for all of them, and for the myriad blessings of which my life is made – energetic children, living in Cambridge, Artificial Eye DVDs, friends releasing poetry collections and albums, cooking and eating fresh mushroom soup.

But I’m ready to feel completely better. So I’m writing off the second half of 2012, doing very little over Christmas, and hoping to hit January with more gusto. Here’s to more energy, more writing, more fun. I’m wishing you all what I want for myself – a happy new year.

Clotted history

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0000

Some of you will know that back in October I was taken ill with pulmonary emboli. At the time I wrote an account of the first few hours in hospital.

The man with the thick Indian accent returns to my bedside.
‘There is no chickin alfurno,’ he says. ‘You want vegetarian sausage?’
‘What else is there?’
He checks his sheet and says something. I feel terrible asking him to repeat it but I really can’t unpick what he said.
‘Collillower pasda,’ he says.
‘No meat on the menu?’
‘No meat.’
We smile at each other. My smile has an edge that says ‘I need meat’. He says something about the other menu, something inscrutable that ends roastchickin-stuffing.
‘Yes, that,’ I say, as firmly as I can.
Since coming onto the ward no one has told me anything apart from what is on the menu. The porter dropped me off by the bed and since then I have sat on it. I don’t know where the toilets are, if I’m allowed to unplug the oxygen should I want to visit them, where the water is if I’m thirsty, what is going to happen next. There is a thermometer cap in one of my shoes.
Eventually a nurse, also with an Indian accent, sits by the bed.
‘Do you live in house, flat?’
This question has been posed all around the ward. Every other patient has been asked it; some several times.
‘A house,’ I say.
This proves to be the easiest answer to an otherwise bizarre questionnaire. How much do I drink? My standard answer is in average units a week. But that confuses the nurse. I look at the questionnaire. She has misunderstood it. ‘The question is “how often does the patient drink more than eight drinks in one session?”’ I say. ‘And the answer is: not very often.’
My wife points out, ‘It says half a pint is one drink.’
Not where I come from.
‘Are other people worried about you?’ asks the nurse.
‘They would be if I drank half pints.’
In the neighbouring bed an old man with horribly bruised shins is being shouted at in an Indian accent by a doctor.
‘How do you like to call you?’
‘Well, my name is Joseph’, he says.
Around the corner, out of sight, another old man called Wallis Williams is also being shouted at. I have been asked twice if I am Wallis Williams. If anyone asks me a third time I will say that I am just to see what happens.
Jacob, Wallis and I are the only inhabitants of the ward. There is one empty bed and a toilet with a large female sign. After a while a young gangly nurse sits in a chair in the middle of the ward, angled away from Williams, but sneakily watching him.
‘I didn’t think you looked like a Wallis,’ she whispers to me.

I have told my story eight times. First to the GP, who thought it was probably asthma, despite my peak flow monitor performance. ‘You’ve got to kill the tiger,’ he says, pointing at the wall. ‘Imagine this tube fires poisonous darts and you’re about to be attacked. Now kill the tiger!’
I kill the tiger. The arrow shoots to the very end of the tube. I feel like I have won at the fairground, even without the ding of a bell.
‘Oh,’ says the GP, blowing down the tube himself to see if it is broken.
The next time I tell the story it is on the phone to the emergency doctor’s receptionist, then to the emergency doctor’s nurse and then to the ambulance crew that she sends around.
‘We might have to shave off your chest hair,’ says Greg the paramedic. ‘In squares.’
In the ambulance Greg’s female colleague tells me that she hates doing maternity calls because it’s not really an illness. And she hates traffic accidents because they are usually chaotic and if you don’t get there first you have no chance of imposing any order. Most of their calls come from the blind drunk.
‘Who calls it in?’ I ask.
‘Their blind drunk friends.’
Greg, while we wait in the unloading bay at the hospital, says that sometimes patients have to wait for three hours in the back of a cold ambulance before going in. As soon as they set foot through the hospital doors, the clock starts ticking, and the hospital trust gets fined if they are not seen within fifteen minutes. So during busy times, they are simply left outside. That ties up the local ambulances, meaning that emergencies have to be dealt with by vehicles coming in from other areas.
‘When I finally get free,’ he says, ‘I’ll have to go to Bedford ‘cause all their units are over here.’
My wait is thankfully short, and I tell my story for the fifth time on a bed in the corridor. The nurse says that I am ischaemic. I ask her how you spell ischaemic. I like to know what words are, especially when they refer to my heart. She does not know, and apologises. ‘It’s easier when you write it down,' she says.
I tell my story for the sixth time to an assessing consultant. He says the blood from my veins is acidotic.
‘How do you spell that?’
He takes a second sample from an artery, digging round for twenty minutes in my wrist before tapping the spring.
‘Is the book good?’ he asks, glancing at The Blue Flower on my lap while he digs.
‘A bit flitty. I can’t get into it.’
‘I’m more of a movie man myself,’ he says. The consultant likes action and comedy. Taken was good, but Taken II was rubbish. I ask him to spell it. I cannot understand his accent. My blood is not acidotic after all.
I have not eaten or drunk anything since breakfast and it is two o’clock in the afternoon. I ask the movie doctor for a drink; he goes away and does not come back. I ask a Filipino nurse for a drink and he comes back, not with a drink but a form to sign. I ask what it is and he mutters something indistinct. I sign it. As it disappears from view, my wife arrives.
‘I think I just said the hospital can steal my stuff,’ I say. She gets me a four cups of water. ‘And where’s my laptop?’
The seventh retelling is to the senior consultant who thinks that it is probably a blood clot in the lungs. He sends me up for a CT scan. The radiologist looks like Liam Neeson in Taken.
‘Any problems with allergies?’ he says.
‘Not unless you’ve got any rabbits in here.’ He looks sinister. Don’t shoot me, I think, as I glide backwards, arms in hallelujah pose over my head.
The machine comes to life, hurling its band around my chest. I hold my breath when they tell me to, and could have held longer. I killed the tiger. I won at the fair. Dye shoots through a cannula into my blood stream. It feels like a warm hug on the inside, a hug that licks my balls. I can taste metal in the back of my mouth. It’s the closest I have come to sex for three weeks. Liam Neeson helps me up, still glaring. I haven’t got your daughter.
Finally, I speak to a chest specialist.
‘Tell me everything,’ she says.

My corner of the ward makes Harry Potter’s cupboard look inviting. A bed-sized alcove, yellow paint and a window looking out to a brick wall four feet away. The young nurse is still monitoring Wallis Williams out of the corner of her eye. Roastchickinstuffing arrives, seasoned by appetite. It is better than airline food, better than collillower pasda would have been. I imagine Gordon Ramsey, in the bowels of the hospital kitchens, yelling at the staff. ‘Don’t make dishes the porters can’t pronounce! You fricking wazzocks.’
The chest specialist speaks unambiguously. ‘You have multiple blood clots in both lungs. Now we just need to find out why.’
I am wheeled feet first to another ward, rushed up bright corridors from The Shining. The porter behind drives into the porter in front, as well as scraping the walls and crashing into doors. My feet get in the way. The Coronary Care Unit is lighter and more spacious. Wallis Williams would like it up here. How do you spell that? I ask the nurse, whose name is Ambuja. I am hooked up to thirteen wires and an oxygen tube and have seventeen syringes of my blood taken away. When I move, the monitor above my head alarms. The television cranes down to advertise at the side of my face. A few loose burps fly around the ward from behind the blue curtains. What do I do now?
At least no one has stolen my laptop. I open it, and start to write.

Whangapoua

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:28:00 +0000

Having had a pretty rotten end to the year, I need a reminder from my holiday journal just how amazing our trip to New Zealand turned out to be.

It’s an inch on the map but it takes us four hours. The road traces the Coromandel peninsula loyally around every headland and pretty bay. Out in the firth of Thames black boats and rigs harvest seafood; the signs for fresh oysters get our mouths watering. Eventually we cross the hills on an even windier road. From the top we look back to the islands off Coromandel town, and forward to sweeping yellow beaches. Logging trucks squeeze past, tyres red with mud, carrying timber freshly felled from the forest.

Coromandel and the Firth of Thames

This is where we imagine the kiwis to live, their eggs on the floor among impenetrable pines, vulnerable only to the invading stoats. Finally we hit the bottom and turn off towards our dead end. On the map the low road appears to go right through the sea. In fact it is flanked by swamp land; scruffy bushes standing in clear water. We reach the one store town, sporting a single petrol pump to prevent visitors from getting stranded. Every New Zealander to whom we mentioned Whangapoua assumed we meant somewhere else. Although we probably don’t pronounce it right (something like ‘fonga-po-a’ with a very light ‘g’).

Whangapoua exists because of the beach, where three generations of baches (beach cabins) have been lined up against the shore. We’re at the back of the village by the fields, but it only takes five minutes to walk to the water’s edge. The off-white sand arcs gently for a mile, pitched up against small dunes by the strong, metre-high waves. Sometimes there are a handful of other people further down the bay, at other times we are alone. At night the sun kicks back into the hills behind the headland, and the last light on the beach is orange and cool.

Whangapoua beach

In fact the town exists because of two beaches. The second is not accessible by road. New Chums beach, or starfish beach to the natives, was a local secret until a travel website listed it as one of the best hidden beaches in the world. It is hard to reach, but having seen the pictures of white dry sand and golden flats against tall, dark trees, nothing will stop us from trying.

Every step of the trek builds our romantic expectations. The sun is shining as we cross the river at the northern end of Whangapoua beach, following the shore of the headland as it fills up with rocks. At first we can walk between them, but then they pile up: large and irregular, hard to walk on. The older children clamber ahead, but Jude finds it difficult and the baby must be carried. A track emerges by the undergrowth that at first makes walking easier. But it has been wet, and deep brown mud and puddles appear in the path, crisscrossed by devilishly slippery tree roots. We debate returning to the slow rocks, but the path is beginning to rise slightly. At last, after some tears and a lost flip flop, it turns and crosses the headland saddle.

An impossibly blue flash comes through the trees, and as we descend we see more of the gorgeous bay. Theo and Huxley have already negotiated the meagre rocks on the other side and are running in the water as though they were born to do so. The sandy crescent is so lovely, backed by dark and steep vegetation, that our hearts soar and we are desperate to dive into the inviting waters.

New Chums beach

Small snappers jump out of the shallows as we plunge in and each wave leaves sunlit effervescence on the surface. It is like swimming in champagne. And the water is mild. After the first nip it becomes warm enough to forget about the temperature completely. The struggle to get here is forgotten. It is simply the nicest beach we have ever been to.

Wave breaking on New Chums beach

Back in Whangapoua, we eat fresh fish that our neighbour caught in the bay. At night, the air cools fast and ankles are assaulted by sand flies, while the strumming of a thousand cicadas is as loud as the stars overhead are numerous. A mantis climbs up the window. In the morning the boys catch him. They call him Moron for being so easily captured: they put a bucket down and he crawled right in.

The village is still a wild place, belonging to the creatures. A fat kingfisher sits on the power line, less colourful but bigger than its British cousin. California quail busy themselves around the fences and shrubbery while welcome swallows swoop red-head first above them. In the weeds by the dusty road spiders build web balls like candy floss, and we startle a tatty peacock and his white hen who make off up the hill. We could stay here forever, defending sandcastles from the sea, bathing in it and devouring its fruit.

Whangapoua beach in the evening

Hilary Mantel falling down the stairs

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:30:00 +0000

My friend reminds me that to prove the readability of Umbrella, Will Self also promised to the Arts Theatre audience that readers who didn't like it could phone him for a free carpet cleaning. He would personally come round and shampoo their stairs.

Later in the evening, reluctant to criticise his rival's writing, he suggested instead that Hilary Mantel was no match for his carpet scouring skills.

"She doesn't even remove the plastic before applying the soap," he said. "And now you've got the image in your head of Hilary Mantel falling arse over tit down a soapy flight of stairs because she forgot to remove the plastic tread first".

Indeed I have. Man Booker trophy in hand.

On the readability of the Booker

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:12:00 +0000

Congratulations to Hilary Mantel for capturing the Man Booker Prize again with Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to 2009 winner Wolf Hall. In producing a second novel of equal (some say better) quality, and winning the coveted Booker for the second time, she has pulled off something of a Godfather/Godfather II. Although by that reckoning, her third in the series will be rubbish (somehow I doubt it).

Much was made in some corners of the media of a possible backlash against readability this year – Will Self’s Umbrella touted as the impenetrable corrective for literature going too soft.

I saw Will Self at the Cambridge Arts Theatre recently, promoting his book on stage. He did what is best described as slow stand-up, and was incredibly funny. It’s a shame that his joke about dropping a newspaper in Schiphol airport won’t translate – literally – into writing, but he also teased us about the readability of his novel. “It’s piss-easy to read,” he said, “it makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like A La Recherche du Temps Perdu”.

If anything, the opposite appears to be true. He read from the work, with all the voices, and it was a stream of guttural and sensory phrases with a rich texture – but I can’t say I knew for a minute what was happening.

Self insisted on several occasions that all he really does is write things. And that about sums it up. Both he and Mantel write the books that they want to write. Prizes come and go. The award (or not, for the majority) of prizes is part of the great lucky dip of life as a writer. Mantel used to call herself the “veteran of shortlists”. Whilst the Booker in particular boosts sales significantly, she wrote, “prizes are not, or not necessarily, a judgement on the literary merit of your work”. They represent the subjective, and often ego-driven and political opinions of any given year’s judges.

It sounds very boring, but I don’t think there was ever a real story around whether less readable novels would be favoured this year. Newspapers have to write about these things, but the it’s more the case that authors write what they want to, and panels pick what they like.

I haven’t read any of the 2012 shortlist but I gather Bring Up the Bodies, despite sounding like a Carry On title, is as worthy a winner as any. Plus the whole historical story is a sure candidate for Hollywood glory – Cromwell as Corleone – I wonder if Francis Ford Coppola is interested?

On writing groups

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:18:00 +0000

Spot the odd one out

I’m in a writing group. Just about (I can only make one in five of their weekly meetings). But even at that infrequency the benefits are evident.

Here’s how it works:

Each week three people submit a passage of prose or poetry of up to 3,000 words.
Everyone reads the submissions during the week and critiques them – usually printing out the passage and scribbling all over it, or doing the digital equivalent.
We meet for 2 hours in a café, each member giving a potted version of their feedback before handing over (or emailing) the notes to the gallant recipient. Why gallant? Because each writer must remain perfectly silent while his or her work is critiqued.

Simple, no? But effective. Here’s why I like it:

It’s a deadline

Writers need deadlines. And whether they manage to meet them or simply enjoy the whooshing sound they make as they fly by, regular deadlines bump up the productivity. Especially for the first novel, when there is (sadly) no publisher or agent breathing down one’s neck, or film studio desperate to start production.

It’s a terrifying prospect preparing a chapter for critique by a group of perceptive writers, but one that sharpens the wits and gets the job done.

It’s feedback

I’m going to post another time about what to do with feedback on your writing (when I’ve figured it out); but it’s a good thing. Writers can be blind to obvious mistakes in their own work: repeated words, inadvertent shifts in the point of view, slips in continuity. On more grey areas, like style, characterisation, voice, length, believability, story, it helps to get the opinions of other readers.

You don’t have to agree with their comments, especially as members disagree with each other. But feedback of any sort makes you think: about what you’re trying to do, how it’s coming across. It picks up on the obvious problems (how I wish I knew about this group 3 years ago!) and makes you question your motivation and execution.

Besides, hearing, “this is the sort of book I could read late into the night wanting to know what happens next,” is the type of comment that keeps me going.

It’s inspiration

Writing a book is the most boring thing I’ve ever done. Look at me, sitting at a table on my own, hour after hour, day after day, huddled over a little screen.

The writing group gets me out of the house. It presents me with the work of talented writers, in all sorts of forms and styles and genres. It keeps my critical faculties sharp, keeps me reading, keeps me thinking.

And it’s more than just the work of other writers – it’s the human connection too, the solidarity. Some of the group members have been published; we all want to be. We have different lives but face the same challenges, of inspiration, research, juggling work and family, of improving the quality of our writing, of getting our books into print.

We’re on the same page.

Go ahead and start one

The great thing about a group like this is its simplicity. How hard would it be to start one yourself?

I guess the group needs to be a workable size. Usually there are 6-12 of us who make the meeting. A dozen bouts of feedback take a long time to deliver, and even longer for the submitter to assimilate afterwards.

The other trick is to find other writers who are equally ambitious and talented – you want to encourage and stretch each other. You need to be able to take criticism and give it. The group I’m in is excellent at this, talking straight and taking it on the chin.

I’d sum it up as being committed to succeeding and helping others to succeed.

You can follow half of the writing group on Twitter and Alex and Azadeh have blogs.

The Rob Roy Glacier

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:08:00 +0000

After our recent trip to New Zealand, I wrote a journal of a few of our memorable experiences. I thought you might appreciate reading one or two. Besides, it gives me another chance to do something with all those photos.

On a gravel road in New Zealand's Southern Alps.

The walking trail up to the Rob Roy glacier starts an hour from Wanaka, an hour up the Matukituki valley with tyres droning fiercely on the rough track and small stones peppering the underside of the car. Fields of winter feed for the sheep lie along the valley floor, small clouds of greenfinch swirl up from the dusty road in front of us and Australian magpies play in the fields. We glimpse large deer among the pine trees, fenced in. The dry fords we cross are full of pale dust and bright grey volcanic stones, cutting down to the low Matukituki River, which glows pale blue. It is lined in places with bright red autumn leaves caught on the banks of shingle, and dotted with pied stilts for relief. The droning stops, in a car park with a green toilet shed, a path beside the river the only way to go on.

Crossing the rope bridge over the Matukituki River.

We start along the gentler side of the Matukituki, and spots of rain cause consternation. Drizzle down here means it will be much wetter on the mountain, up the icy stream that flows from the glacier. But we cross the rope bridge anyway, and begin our ascent through the forest. When the path breaks into a clearing before angling up the ravine, we stop for refreshment by a sign that says, “Please do NOT feed the kea”. But there are no Alpine parrots today, perhaps because it is too wet, although we hear plaintive birdcalls among the trees.

What Kea?

We have another hour and a half to climb, on a good path that is occasionally quite steep, or rocky, or half-slidden down the bank. Mainly we can see only the route and the trees around us, but occasionally a view opens out on the left, of the steely blue Rob Roy stream crashing down to where we came from, of bright lichen-coated trees smothering the opposite bank, and just once or twice, of the crown of the glacier itself on the mountain above, towering impossibly high over our heads.

The icy Rob Roy stream.

This wonder keeps us going. Theo is eight, and although he looks bedraggled in the wet, he makes his own way, clearly relieved when we stop briefly for each rest. Huxley is younger and only a few minutes into the trek begins to complain. But he has no option: I cannot carry him because it is too steep and we cannot turn back from our first glacier. I chivvy and praise, push and drag, and we make good progress through the forest. At first it seems as though we are alone on the mountainside, but occasionally a group of teenagers strides past. Towards the top, we meet more and more walkers coming the other way, all with smiles, from the spectacle no doubt, but also perhaps from the relief at not having to climb any more.

The biggest boost comes when thin but monstrously high waterfalls appear in the rock face on the left: icy melt water that is falling from the glacier, out of sight behind the mountain. These pencil lines would be hardly noticeable in a photograph, so thin at distance, but up close they must be voluminous. The water takes a long time to hit the ravine floor. Most of all they mean that we are getting close.

When we reach the rough clearing we are still a long way from the glacier but this is where the footpath ends. It is the viewpoint. There is no shelter, and my friend is right about the rain being heavier at this height. For that reason we do not stay long, but these few minutes are unforgettable. The parts of Rob Roy that we can see crest on top of the mountains like the tops of breaking waves. They are high above our heads, and myriad waterfalls run down from the peaks as gifts to the stream below. The colour of the ice is unique: white, but somehow blue in its whitest parts. It is power and it is beauty. We have come so far and yet we are humbled far beneath the glacier’s mount. It is unapproachable, but we have at least witnessed its splendour.

View of the Rob Roy glacier.

And that is enough. My Kiwi friends have a low tolerance for rain and cold, and for standing around. Only minutes after arriving they are back off down the slope, as though getting back to the car was always the point of the trip. I carry Huxley on my shoulders some of the way, where it is safe to do so, and for as long as I can. The rain lightens up, and the half hour between the bridge and the car park seems the longest stretch of all. But what a view, with blocks of sun roaming the open valley sides, the whole scene somehow transfigured by our meeting with the glacial king enthroned on its summit. I know now why those walkers were smiling.

The last leg feels the longest.

The drive back down the valley yields even more stunning vistas, and as we near Wanaka deep blue lakes with meticulous vineyards on their shores replace the colourful mountains of Aspiring national park. Old warplanes from the weekend air show curve overhead. It is hard to take a bad photograph in a place like this. Even in the rain.

Franzen vs Coelho on digital books

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:34:00 +0000

Two authors with very different attitudes to literature online spoke up recently. Jonathan Franzen defended the physical object of the book at a festival in Colombia:

When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that's reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough.

He seems to be conflating form with content. Books are lovely. Almost sacred. I still mostly read physical books. Ebooks will never compete with the sensual, material experience of a book, nor the ability to get a sense of the whole book by flicking through its pages and scanning endings and beginnings. That's why I think the idea of free electronic version for everyone, alongside a premium special edition paper version for fans, might be a sustainable future route for fiction.

But it’s hard to see Franzen’s comments as much more than pure conservatism. So he doesn't like screens. He should see how my one-year-old moves physical books around. That would make him weep. Pages of T.S. Eliot studded with raisins and stuffed under the sofa.

Ebooks, and the devices through which we access them, are going to continue to develop, absorbing all the advice and habits of people who love reading, who love books; they are going to become even more brilliant for reading and browsing, for sharing and annotating, for adapting to our quirks and preferences. That’s the beauty of the digital arena: openness, connection, and rapid evolution.

Franzen is wrong. There might be “a trillion bits of distracting noise” on the Internet, but that does not mean, “all the real things, the authentic things, the honest things, are dying off.” (These are lines he gives to Walter Berglund in Freedom). There might be a terribly low signal to noise ratio on the Internet but there is reality and authenticity if you know where to look.

Take Paulo Coelho for example. The Brazilian author recently made headlines by advocating online piracy. It’s hardly surprising – when a pirated Russian edition of The Alchemist was posted online, it opened up the market and contributed to the sale of more than 12 million copies. That’s because:

When you’ve eaten an orange, you have to go back to the shop to buy another.

It’s not just his attitude towards sharing his writing freely that is polar opposite to writers like Franzen. He also blogs several times a week, posting videos and links and smart competitions that connect him to his fans and have contributed to him having more than 3 million followers on Twitter.

He uses the opportunities that the Internet age has thrown up to connect generously with people and spread his work. Readers are lapping it up.

I have a tiny bit of sympathy for Franzen. I wonder sometimes how the good stuff is ever going to rise to the surface in the rubbish-infested oceans of the Internet. It was much simpler taking a book off the library shelf. But unless the best writers embrace ways to publish and share their work online, they are part of the problem. Coelho is doing it better than most. I’m with Paulo.

In search of an alternative chunk

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Henry Miller's writing commandments got me thinking again about how to motivate oneself to write.

Towards the end of the first draft I established a good system. The weekly word target was no good – invariably leading to 3 days of doing very little followed by desperate, guilty cramming on Thursday and Friday. I started aiming for a daily word target instead, but with a twist.

A simple daily goal was not that helpful. Firstly, I would leave it late in the day to try and reach it, wasting at least the morning. And if the going was hard, I would think never mind, I'll just make up the words tomorrow. Then the pressure would be on the following day to write even more, and the cumulative effect would make the past two days just as scrambling as before.

So the twist was this: the daily goal was 1500 words, and as soon as I wrote the 1500th word I could pack up and do whatever I liked with the rest of my day.

It was a daily reward for progress. Some days I hit the target by mid afternoon and smugly went off alone to the shops, or turned up at the school to surprise the boys by picking them up. Other days I kept on writing past the limit because I was in the zone. On tougher days I might labour up to the last minute, or not manage to hit the target at all. The beauty of the system was that the words did not stack up throughout the week: if I missed the goal one day, I'd just start afresh the next.

Henry Miller also had fresh start concept: 'Discard the Program when you feel like it — but go back to it the next day'.

Something about the daily, reward-driven but guilt-free chunk of work helped me to finally to finish a first draft. I discovered too that freedom is my favourite reward: I relish the prospect of free time in which I can do anything I choose, rather than any one favourite activity.

But this formula doesn't work for the second draft. It doesn't work because the work can't be quantified in as simple a term as a word count. I have a terrifyingly long list of changes I want to make to the book, of things I need to check for, new scenes to add in and others to delete. I have extra research to do. I want to overhaul the speech of some of the characters. I need to zoom in on words and phrases as well as stand back to see if the whole works as a story.

I'm overwhelmed. On any one day don't know where to start.

Miller says: 'Work on one thing at a time until finished,' which is good for focus, but I never know how long each task is going to take, or how entangled it is with others. I don't know how to turn a task that I start into a chunk that I can reward myself for completing.

He also says, 'when you can't create you can work', which reminds me of something Eric Griffiths once told me. He said, 'there is no such thing as study; there is only work'. Forget the wall you have to build; simply lift up the next brick and put it on top of the others.

Perhaps then I need to work in chunks of time, like the Pomodoro technique. Anthony Trollope used to write 3 hours a day, every day. Perhaps I should set myself a target in hours that allows for some free time at the end of the day if I get on with it quickly enough.

Whatever I do, I need to try it fast. I feel like I'm sinking in the mire.

January roundup: prizes, free books and a writing group

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:37:00 +0000

Apart from the shocking news that the refitted Co-op round the corner started stocking cinnamon whirls again before withdrawing them a second time (the heartbreak!), I thought I’d start my first writing week of the year with a roundup of news to get the fingers working for another week of editing.

Remember Anjali Joseph and Christie Watson? Anjali’s Saraswati Park won the Desmond Elliot Prize, awarded to best first novel published in Britain. And Christie, not to be outdone, bagged the Costa First Novel Award for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away and is in the running for the overall Costa prize this month.

Not bad. I like that Christie is not giving up nursing. It’s difficult to run two jobs but there are rewards too. Both ways. And the combination means she can write intelligent things about nursing like this in the Guardian: NHS reforms must give nurses time to care.

Suffice to say you should read both those novels. And congratulations to another friend, Jon Cullen, on the publication of Sustainable Materials: With Both Eyes Open. I have said it elsewhere, as well as down the pub (the Old Spring, astoundingly the most middle class pub I have ever set foot in), but here’s another shout for some great ideas and all that hard work. The New Scientist seemed to like it.

What else? Still no one knows the future of publishing but I found these predictions interesting. They imply that publishing is affected considerably by technological development, down to specific devices. They also paint a more cheerful picture for authors, suggesting that ebook royalties and copyright terms will improve this year, and that self-publishing is going to work for more and more writers.

I’m trying something new by going to a writers' group. I met a playwright at the boys’ football who told me about it. (I love Cambridge. The week before I was chatting to one of the other dads about combi boilers). They meet to talk through two or three people’s writing each week. Sadly it’s during the day, but on my writing weeks I can give it a shot. It will make a nice change to sitting in a room on my own all week not knowing if what I’m writing is bollocks or not.

Finally, you should apply for World Book Night to give away 24 copies of one of these marvellous books. Now for some editing. Laters.

Editing the monster

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:05:00 +0000

Ah, remember the giddy days of early summer, when a Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were crowned anew, cherished Fitzbillies Chelsea buns were rescued from oblivion and I finished the first draft of my novel? Well, sort of.

By first draft some people mean an initial version that they would be happy to show to agents and publishers. What I mean is that I filled out the plan I had for the book.

Early on I plotted the story out in detail, both the current action of the book and the backstory. So when I wrote all of those chapters, I felt rather elated. In software parlance, the novel is feature complete. I sketched a skeleton for the book and now it has flesh on all of its bones. I projected a book of about 100,000 words and the draft comes in at over 105,000 (about 300 pages if you think in those terms).

It was a huge relief to get that done. It is by far the longest thing I have ever written. By over ten times. I jubilated just to achieve a novel-length word count. First big question (can I actually compose a cohesive single work of such length?) answered.

However, after the feature-complete stage comes the testing and bug fixing and user interface design and spit and polish. Or, to use the skeleton and flesh analogy, I've stitched together a Frankenstein's monster but parts of it are ugly as hell and the heart is not beating just yet. My creation needs LIFE!

So with a surgeon's knife, a brewing electrical storm, a bug-eyed hunchback and a limitless pile of cinnamon buns, I am tackling the following:

Continuity
Who knows what when? Does anyone notice that it's Christmas in the middle of the book? Is everyone the right age to be doing the things they're doing? Legally? What happened to Jonathan's coat? Had the Internet been invented when I need it to be? Does it sound like the same book all the way through?

Authenticity
Some scenes in the book are placeholders, glossed over just to get to the end without losing momentum. Now I'm going back over them to make them appear real. Last week I was researching how to put on tarty makeup and treatments for breast cancer. I made some assumptions that just don't hold up, and changing them has a knock on effect for other characters and other scenes.

Drama
Is the level of dramatic tension right throughout the book, building steadily to a climax? Not just overall, but in all of the narrative threads – will readers care? Is the pace right? Is it clear enough what all of the characters want and why they want it? The secondary narrative thread in particular needs augmenting to give it a slower burn.

Style
This is the wood and the trees. It's the voice. The character's voices. The texture of the language; the extent of the similes. It's not repeating the word 'tent' too many times. It's the shape of the sentences and paragraphs and chapters. These are not things that can be inserted mechanically but they can all be improved, by standing right back and by zooming in forensic detail.

Each change has implications for the whole book. Each time a scene becomes more authentic the list of things to check in continuity grows a little longer. I tell people that I'm editing but it is more like rewriting. I'm deleting scenes. I'm writing new chapters. I'm restructuring, I hope without damaging the foundations.

And overall I'm trying to keep a view of the whole thing. Is it any good? Why should anyone care? Is my monster alive and terrorising orphans and blind people at will?

I've been writing The Tongues of Men for over three years now, which seems like a lot (unless you're Jonathan Franzen), except that I only take nine writing weeks a year. 30 weeks is not long to write a novel with literary pretensions, especially when you have to continually dip in and out of it. I'd love to be nearer to finished by now yet I'm happy with where I'm up to and that the book is still moving forward, even when it feels like going backwards to get there.

How not to kill your writing blog after 2 years

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:29:00 +0000

Tonight was fairly typical.

In from work and straight to the table to wolf something down before taking the boys out to swimming. Most nights we do eat together, the clamour of which has to be suffered first-hand to be believed. Last night I said, "the baby's quiet" at teatime. Mary pointed out that he'd been yelling for the last half hour, only I hadn't heard him beneath the shouting of the other three.

But Monday the kids eat early. And only the toddler greets me as I come through the door – the others are grouped around a computer game. So no stories about Club Penguin or school – just an 18-month-old desperate to play football with the yellow ball that the neighbours have thrown back over the fence. We exchange a couple of passes in the kitchen, then he follows me to the table where he copies my every move. He sits in the chair next to mine, frequently almost falling off, eats my pizza crusts, sips my drink.

We've only got 15 minutes so I shout to the boys to get ready. The four year old is barred from accompanying us since he made so much fuss by the pool last time. We can get from our house fully clothed into the pool with trunks in 10 minutes. I'm grateful we haven't got girls.

Girls. The boys change slowly afterwards in the hope that they'll bump into two of their favourite female friends who come for the later lessons. They try to impress them by doing head-over-heels down a grassy slope. It seems to work.

By the time we get home it's almost bedtime. We squeeze a bit of dinosaur origami in and then I promise to read to the oldest three if they get ready on time. It is impossible for them to stand around the sink and not wind each other up. Tonight it's all about accidentally drooling toothpaste on your brother's hands.

We start a new book by torchlight: The BFG. We have to read a good few chapters to discover that the giant is in fact friendly, so that the four-year-old won't be afraid of Bonecrunchers all night. By the time we've sorted out bedding and drinks and prayed and hugged and answered the sincere questions that they always ask at this point to prolong my presence in the bedroom – I shut the door and trudge down the stairs.

I'm thinking of all the things I'd like to blog about, all the ideas I've jotted down, and the embarrassing yawn of time since I last posted that makes it harder to just publish any old post. There’s also SmyWord that desperately needs updating, as well as Verbatim. But Mary wants to talk, about arrangements for later in the week, for the weekend, Christmas presents, which is fair enough as we've not had a chance to catch up yet.

I finally sit at the computer, but then a child starts yelling, so loud it might wake the toddler. I race upstairs to prevent that happening, knowing it will only be a case of my tummy hurts or he's copying me, which it is. Only with an added bout of singing. There is nothing I can say to prevent this occurring each night. It happens again, and this time I play the "next time someone gets moved to our bedroom" card, which seems to stick.

Back to the computer, but typing is difficult. The space bar is jamming. The beautiful Apple keyboard has long lost its virginal whiteness to scrawls of biro and the imprints of filthy fingers, but it's the fruit toast that is more annoying because it gets under the keys and stops them working. I discover just how hard it is to clip a space bar back on again.

So, the space bar is back and bouncy, and the C, V, B, N, M, <, >, and both command keys are back in place too. I decide to write about why I haven't been blogging so much, about how I'm still working on the novel and it's going well, but how most evenings by the time the kids are settled and everything else that needs doing has been done and those other things talked about I am so tired that I'll sink into the sofa while Mary plays yet another episode of some formulaic show like Escape to the Country or Masterchef because there isn't enough time to watch a whole film. Although I draw the line at The Apprentice.

And this is the blog post. I managed to spew it forth without any further interruptions. Masterchef is chugging through its banal liturgy in the other room, but I wanted to share my excuse for not writing so much of late. It's a flimsy one, I'll grant you, and I'd be the first to remind myself that JG Ballard wrote prodigious amounts while bringing up his three children single-handed. Although I'll bet he had a nanny. And there was no Club Penguin in those days.

So there we go: a little taste of evening leisure chez nous. I want to pick up the blogging here again. Next week I have a writing week so I'll let you know how the novel is progressing. I know some of you actually read this so thanks. Time for bed.

How not to kill your writing career after 8 years

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:51:00 +0000

I met a guy at the Content Strategy Forum 2011 who is a content strategist like me. He works for a website agency in London, and has young children. And like me, he also writes his own material outside of work: screenplays and stories.

There was, however, one key difference between us. Unlike me, this guy has already had his work published, or rather, his story has been made into an animated film.

By a little company called Disney.

After his idea was picked up by an agent who turned out to be rather good and his story became an international kids' film, he had a run of eight years of being a screenwriter. Eight years of doing what he had only dreamt of – what lots of other aspiring writers would kill to be able to do.

And there we were, talking at a conference.

He was happy with his job, happy having kids even though it wears you out and you fall asleep in the evenings instead of accomplishing all the great things you imagine you will do with the time when they're finally in bed. His attitude towards writing was tempered by the realism of having been there already, but he still wanted to create more filmable stories in the future.

We only talked a little over lunch but I realised there was so much to learn from someone like him. And although I should probably have asked more questions about how he got to work with Disney in the first place (luck and a good agent played significant parts it seems), I admit I was more intrigued by the other end of his brief career.

Why did it fizzle out?

He told me, in a roundabout way. I was talking about when new ideas compete with existing work. The closer I get to finishing my first novel, the more ideas I have for the next one. And the one after that. And the kids' book I've already started writing with my boys. I've got a rough structure mapped out for novel number two, with character sketches and a couple of experimental chapters written to see how it feels. I've got a solid conceit for a third novel, and the other day between Cambridge and Kings Cross I wrote a synopsis for a fourth, out of the blue, inspired by a throwaway remark in a book, about a man who doesn't realise that he is in…

This is the problem. I'm not going to tell you what it's about. Because the more life I give to these ideas the harder it becomes to finish the lumbering old first book. The one that's not sexy any more. The one that needs redrafting and editing. 95,000 words that need squaring up to one by one.

I have come close to jacking it in and starting the next book. I know it would be stupid but there is so much promise in the new idea. In the blank page. What if this first one is just a limbering up exercise, and the next idea is the one that will actually have the legs to succeed?

The screenwriter nodded his head. He knew exactly what I was talking about. 'If I could sum up the reason that my writing career ended when it did,' he said, 'it was because I gave too much attention to the new ideas instead of focusing on the job in hand.'

Sobering.

So I'll be looking for a good agent in a while. And buying enough tickets at the tombola to give luck a fair chance of coming my way. But in the meantime, the only thing to do is to stop thinking about the new ideas and crack on with shipping the first. Focus!

Excerpt 9

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:15:00 +0000

After New Year the Christmas decorations were still up on the ward: a small tree in reception and a cladding of greetings cards on the notice board. Davina arrived this time to find the woman asleep so she picked up the magazines from the floor and placed them back on the table. She filled the glass of water from the cooler in the hallway. She tried to look at the edition on top of the pile but kept reading words and scanning pictures without processing them, returning to the top to start again, expecting something to stick, burr-like, then giving up. She looked at the parrot picture above the bed for interest but met the same glossy indifference. She had glanced in that frame a hundred times before and still did not care what was in it. She walked the few steps to the window and surveyed the view.
Half of the prospect was taken by a facing hospital building, the other half by a sight across the city, both of which were made dark, almost silhouetted, by the white sky. A few windows in the building opposite were lit up, uncurtained little rectangles, a handful with people inside. In one ground floor window a cleaner or doctor, someone wearing a green scrub suit, sat at a desk and wrote. In a window higher up, nearer to her eye level, Davina saw a woman’s back, white, with only a thick, black band of bra strap to break the naked aspect. The woman reached back and unhooked it. The girl looked away. When she returned her gaze somebody else was drawing the bed curtain across. She noticed the strip light behind her reflected in the window.
Davina stepped back towards the bed and drank a little of the water. She drank half, then all, of the glass. She went into the hallway to refill it from the cooler. The male nurse was there, speaking quietly to a colleague. She walked past him, up to the desk, out of earshot.
‘Is it possible to choose which nurses look after someone?’ she asked the ward manager behind the counter, who was checking back between some notes and a monitor screen, only answering after several seconds.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If there was someone who a patient would rather not have change them and stuff – can a patient choose?’
‘No,’ said the manager, giving up on the screen and facing Davina squarely. ‘Unless the patient would like to do it herself. Have you any idea how busy we are? Never mind with Christmas leave and winter flu.’
‘What if I make a complaint?’
‘Do you wish to make a complaint?’
‘Well, that depends what happens if I make one.’
‘What happens,’ said the ward manager, ‘is my staff who should be caring for people like your friend end up doing more paperwork, being asked stupid questions in stupid meetings, and being taken away from the ward where I need them most. Usually, for absolutely nothing at all.’
The male nurse walked into the reception area and behind the counter to a box of files. She asked again, ‘Do you wish to make a complaint?’
‘Forget it,’ said Davina.
As she walked away the manager called after her:
‘You people come in with your baggage but we’re just trying to do our job.’
In the room the woman was moaning, her eyes flickering. Davina placed her hand on her bony shoulder and she woke up.
‘Oh God,’ she said.
‘It’s okay,’ said Davina.

From the first draft.

In which I finish my first draft and share teenage love on the internet

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:16:00 +0000

Today was a funny one. Firstly the hand-crafted envelopes bearing my teenage infatuation with Mary got retweeted to high heaven and much-viewed on Flickr. People seemed to enjoy them, and it reminded them of their young love and the creative things they used to do for their partners, which was entirely the point (I have decided afterwards).

But what a distraction, because today I was hoping to complete the first draft of The Tongues of Men, not talk with strangers about how the postal service has declined since the 1990s when a postman would do everything within his powers to decipher an obscure address for the princely sum of 26p first class!

I even had an offer from a journalist keen to get my 'love story' in a woman's magazine (that's the envelope one, not the novel).

But eventually I managed to buckle down and write for a good portion of the day, finishing the final chapter just at the close of the day. It probably isn't quite a full first draft, because there are a couple of additions I need to make earlier on in the book, but it is the complete writing of all the sections I planned to write all that time ago when I planned it, a sort of filling-out of the novel's body. It lives, with all its vital organs.

There are all sorts of levels of pain still to come with redrafting and revising and editing like a Samurai (with a massive Samurai sword) before I even approach the shores of publication, but this is some sort of milestone.

And it feels great.

Most of it may be rubbish but it's 95,000 words more rubbish than I had when I started so that's something. Emergency babysitter is procured and Mary and I are going out for a wee supper to celebrate (with prosecco, not envelopes).

Thanks for all your kind words.

Sarah Palin found poems

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Yesterday The Guardian website featured some found poems from Sarah Palin's emails. They weren't particularly good. Marika challenged me to do better.

So here are a few. None of them is good enough for Verbatim Poetry, except the first, perhaps, for the dinky rhymes. Turns out that Marika was right – Sarah Palin does lack poetry.

THE TANNING BED

And the old, used
tanning bed that my
girls have used a handful of times
in Juneau? Yes, we paid
for it ourselves. I, too,
will continue to be dismayed
at the media and am thankful you
and Sharon are not part of the strange
going's-on in the media world of today.

NEITHER COLD NOR DELICIOUS

And no, we didn't
participate in eating
the moose meat.

CAN SOMEONE FLAG

Can someone flag
the lie in the blog
sexy highway talk among governors
that claims Trig
was in the fender
bender
with me
and he
wasn't in a car seat
on my commute.
Sheeeesh.

HI MOM

I'm smiling at u
in the camera.

ACCESS

I am a hunter.
I grew up hunting –
some of my best memories
growing up are of hunting with my dad
to help feel our freezer.

I want Alaskans to have access to wildlife.

METAPHORICALLY ECLECTIC

I hear from the worker bees in the field
that Industry is on a roll against us
on a rampage because they had no idea
they wouldn't get their way on all issues.
We don't win ball games merely playing defense.

I'M FREE

I'm free – noon
on – to do
ktuu

ALCOHOL FREE

With so many kids and teens
coming and going in that house
especially during this season of celebrations
for young people, proms, graduations,
I want to send the message that we can be –
and the People's House needs to be –
alcohol free.

SUPPORT

If the new cheese manufacturer
wants us to do anything with them
to help kick off their venture
(if you think it's a good idea)
please let Kyle know
we can come cut a ribbon or something.

I am me, doing this now

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Wed, 18 May 2011 22:41:00 +0000

I love that. Christopher Eccleston, in the This Much I Know interview in the Observer, says that his earliest memory is:

turning right at the top of our path on my bike and saying to
myself: "I am me, doing this now." I was about four. I
turned right, said that to myself and shot off.

His simple, non-specific definitions of identity and activity perfectly convey the sense of being fully in the moment. This is what children do. Usually without the words. Reading this took me instantly to a handful of strong childhood memories, times of a strong sense of me-ness and now-ness: knocking yellow plums from a tree with my school bag on the walk back home; skateboarding down a long, gently sloping lane, sitting between my sisters on the board as we steadily picked up speed; squeezing through the cool gap filled with pencil-thin branches behind the shed in the garden.

I find myself reaching in my writing for moments like this. Not literally, because my childhood is scarcely big enough for a bookful of characters and stories, but in creating episodes that have a similar nature; a quality of immediate, body-stored immanence like those childlike saturated moments.

Moments that stand irrefutably as testaments to life, to reality, to truth. Moments that just are.

Of course, the paradox is that to describe the time in writing is to stand outside of it, to judge it from an older, removed standpoint. To take what was actually in the muscle and the nerves and translate it into words for the mind. To be through time instead of in it.

As soon as a writer thinks about how she will describe an experience later that she is now, the moment is lost. Incessant notetakers and analysts become the photographer who is always there but never in any of the pictures, and whose subjects always look first and foremost like they are being photographed.

The four-year-old Eccleston had perfect words at the time for his moment, although the power of them is brought through a description that he gives us as an adult. At some point I'd like to write a book in the first person present tense exactly to capture that immediacy and identity.

But how to convey it now, in the third person, past tense?

Eccleston's words reminded me of Dave Eggers, in a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, when he somehow makes a moment more vivid by positioning us at some distance from the scene:

Please look. Can you see us? Can you see us, in our little
red car? Picture us from above, as if you were flying above
us, in, say, a helicopter, or on the back of a bird, as our car
hurtles, low to the ground, straining on the slow upward
trajectory but still at sixty, sixty-five, around the relentless,
sometimes ridiculous bends of Highway 1.

This is ludicrously clever, conveying the sensation of driving by observing from a distance, yet by imagining oneself flying in a helicopter or fantastically on a bird's back, projecting the experience of motion and giddiness and thrill onto what one sees.

He gives the reader a position from which the moment comes alive.

I'm trying in my own writing to take a position inside the musculature of the characters, to feel the physical sensations of the moment. How successful this is, I don't know yet. But that's how I'm trying to do it.

And I am me, writing this now.

The roller coaster of confidence

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:38:00 +0000

If you are involved in a work of creativity, I’m guessing you know all about the confidence roller coaster.

There are some weeks that I read through what I’ve written and smile at the genius of it, enjoying the little flourishes in the prose, and the cadences at each chapter end. The following week I have another look, find all the mistakes and inconsistencies, and am struck by how much work there is to do to make this book work in any way at all, and conclude that, to put not too fine a point on it, IT’S ALL SHIT.

One of the reasons I have not blogged in a while is that I was in a belly-lurching low over the book (don’t feel sorry for me though – the other reason is that I’ve been on holiday smoking Montecristos in a hot tub).

I’ve heard it said that if you don’t think what you’ve written is rubbish then it won’t be any good. That makes some kind of sense. Like spotting the best musicians in an orchestra because while other people are showing off during the warm up, they sit silently, waiting for the conductor. Those that show off their ability still have a long way to go. Perhaps because thinking they are already great retards them at that stage, whereas the awareness of our limitations allows us to improve.

The funny thing about the roller coaster of thoughts and feelings about creative work and ability is that awareness doesn't seem to put the brakes on it. In (my amateur version of) psychology, awareness is usually the first step to dissipating many problems. But I can be acutely aware of the ups and downs I experience in confidence – and they come around again all the same.

Where awareness does help, though, is that the roller coaster does not have to run the show. Whether my feelings are ridiculously inflated or miserably pessimistic, I tell myself that they are just par for the course, and I book in my writing weeks anyway, buy a couple of cinnamon whirls and sit down to write.

And I suppose if the average artists are the ones who don’t experience the crisis, then perhaps those of us who are on the roller coaster have the chance to create something pretty special, eventually.

But I might only be saying that because I’m on an up.

The God Lab, Tiny Sunbirds, Fingersmith

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:45:00 +0000

Congratulations to Roger Bretherton, senior lecturer in psychology at Lincoln University and extremely nice bloke, whose book The God Lab is now out and can be ordered on Amazon. It's psychology meets the sermon on the mount. Whenever I've heard Roger presenting this material it has been insightful and intelligent, and the book will be equally so.

I've known Roger since student days. Three years ago we were presenting a church leadership training weekend together and sharing a room. I warned him that sometimes I talk in my sleep, even walk around a bit, and after the first night I checked with him that I hadn't done anything inappropriate. He quietly said that I had pulled back my covers in the middle of the night and patted the bed, encouraging him to climb in.

Just the sort of thing you don't want to do to a psychologist. Still. I'd rather you heard it from me.

Another book launching this week is Christie Watson's Tiny Sunbirds Far Away. It is a novel about a privileged Nigerian family having to adapt to poor country life, told in the voice of the daughter. I met Christie at Anjali Joseph's book launch – they did the renowned UEA Creative Writing MA together. I have every reason to imagine that it will be brilliantly written too.

I have never asked her to climb into my bed.

If you like following authors on Twitter they are @tinysunbird and @anjalij.

Finally, if you want a copy of Fingersmith I still have some to give away. Just say aye in the comments and I'll work out a way to get a copy to you.

A window in Perthshire

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 23:25:00 +0000

The view of Loch Tay from my friend's house, set into the hillside overhanging it, is always changing. This last weekend I woke and peered under the blind as I lay in bed, to see snow falling over the water and the fields, fluttering, eddying, plummeting through the huge volume of air between the hills.

By breakfast the snow had stopped but tufts of mist were pulled out of the forest on the other side of the loch like unkempt hair, yanked upright. The mountain tops above were as white as the sky, so when I came to photograph the horizon the two melted into each other, a dark ring of pines near the summit appearing to float away into the atmosphere.

Later there was sleet and there was rain. At no point did the sun break through but the light kept altering in subtle ways. For one moment, as we started down the muddy slope towards the shore, the panorama suddenly crystalised, with deep colours in high definition, and the wind stopped playing to let the scene echo deeply in the surface of the loch. It only lasted a few minutes. By the time we reached the water's edge it was no longer glassy but ribbon-crossed with a symmetrical wave pattern, neat and black and white.

It was perhaps the dreariest weather I've experienced by Loch Tay, but the wetness plunged the tree stumps and bracken into deep orange hues, the fleeting snow filled in the mass of air above the valley and the dim light gave body to the sodden grass, the thick hills, and painted the loch as a luminous, dancing streak through their midst.

And I remembered looking at the same view one April morning, from the same bed, not that long ago, when the day was brighter for the sunshine in it, and the ground dryer and more workable. I had no reasons left not to write a novel, and my friend had asked me the previous evening if I was going to write a book. I had said 'I'll tell you in the morning' because he did not mean, casually, do you think you might write a book one day. He meant will you commit, to actually making it happen, to starting tomorrow and not stopping until it is done.

So I looked at the scene and rehearsed my answer. There could hardly be a better view to make a decision upon. The answer could only be yes.

Looking through the same panes at the same view this weekend served a silent reminder that I did start writing a book, and have kept going, slowly at times but never quite stopping, sometimes in great bursts of enthusiasm and at other points just plodding on, and that seemed to be the truth: that the vista last Saturday morning may have been dimmer than that occasion in April, when the sunshine roved in patches over its waters, but it was the same view; always changing, yet always the same.

I said I'd write a book, and I haven't stopped yet. I said I'd blog about it, and I'm still yapping on. This is how it feels down the line: like February by the loch; damp, earthy and vivid.

Succeed as a writer: stop wanting to be one

noreply@blogger.com (Gabriel Smy) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:07:00 +0000

Bowling with my son at his friend's birthday party at the weekend I met a published novelist who also teaches English and creative writing. I won't name her because I'm not entirely comfortable with reproducing private conversations in public without permission, but I thought that you might find something she said interesting.

She has held positions at both universities in Cambridge and has ambivalent feelings about teaching creative writing (although from her tone and the look on her face on Sunday I would say that the negative feelings are winning out). I asked her if that was because you can't really teach talent.

'No', she said, 'because you can teach technique. The reason I hate teaching creative writing is the high levels of delusion among the students. They want to be writers.'

They picture satisfied authors whose works of fiction are published and admired, who have made it, to the point of being able to devote themselves to penning whatever they want for the rest of their lives.

And that's not how it works for most people.

So she tries to instill some realism. About most people who create fiction having to do it in their spare time. About the fill-in jobs and the bits and pieces that you have to do if you do want to make writing pay. About the hard work to produce a book that you are actually proud of, and then the small likelihood that anyone will want to publish it.

None of this will be new to you, if you're writing yourself, or if you've heard me whining on about how hard it can be, but the next thing she said was more surprising:

'The ones who are just doing the course for fun are the best, or the ones who are using the course to get something finished; because they don't have unrealistic expectations, and because they actually get on and write.'

If you want to be a writer you've got the wrong focus. You've got to want to write, and then actually do it. Almost as though there is a paradox that to become a writer you've got to stop wanting it, and just start writing instead.

You've got to write because you want to, not because of something you want to become.

I talk about both on this blog: writing and being a writer. I do want to be an author but am realistic (I think) about the path I'm on. It takes time. There are no guarantees. My first novel may not get published. Nor my second. I already know how many I'll produce without publication before giving up on that particular form. Then I'll try something else.

So a good reminder, as my son came last in the bowling and I encouraged him that I was pretty sure he had scored more than the last time he played. Don't worry about being a bowler, son, just keep on bowling.