How do you learn to walk in high heels? Practice.
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Healthy Writer, Healthy novel.

February 16, 2012 By 1 Comment

I recently decided enough was enough and I needed to get healthy. There’s an app for it (Couch to 5K). There’s an app for everything, these days, but not all of them are as useful.

What has this got to do with writing?

Ever wondered how it is you’re going to sit down for the better part of a year, write a book, and not get backache and/or fat?

Yeah. That’s what it’s got to do with writing. I’m not the world’s biggest exercise fan. ‘Cross Country Run’ was about my most hated phrase at school (along with ‘what you lookin’ at?’) and all of my attempts at fitness in my adult life have culminated in me sitting on the sofa with a packet of ready salted and the tv remote.

Haruki Murakami wrote a book called ‘What I talk about when I talk about Running‘. He runs marathons, does Murakami San. He claims that it helps build up the stamina necessary for sustained novel writing, as well as keeping him fit. I think he’s right: there has to be a benefit of training the body  to run long distances that translates to training the mind to concentrate for long periods of time.

Since having a child, my concentration is truly shot, which I put down to having to be available at a moment’s notice. I am constantly interruptable and interrupted and sustaining one thought for longer than three minutes is almost impossible. Since I’m clearly unfit too, I realised there was no harm at all in taking up running.

Yes, the thing that I profess to hate.

Here’s the thing: I only hate it because I think I can’t do it. I have dodgy knees (get the right shoes), mahoosive betties (get the right bra), and a fear of running outside where ‘people’ can see me (join the leisure centre and run on a treadmill). So I did all three, and started doing my couch to 5k runs.

The local leisure centre is a revelation. You have the bonus of being able to watch everyone else in there and make up stories about them. You can disappear into your own head and mull over nothing or something. You can take your time and learn to run at your own pace. I also think that getting off the sofa in order to do one thing, means you’re more likely to get off the sofa to do another.

Of course, running may not be your thing. The other sport I tried recently that I was terrifically keen on was archery. Not so much about stamina and fitness as putting arrows through things, which is, let’s face it, hugely satisfying. So if you wouldn’t run, what would you do?

 

Filed Under: Food for Thought, On Writing

Conductor

February 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

You look at him and see only a bus conductor. He seems wise in the ways of drunks at 11.30pm, and mothers on their first outing with a baby at 10am. The worlds never collide except through him, and he brings his cold blue eyes to rest on all of it. He is in his mid fifties now, hair completely white, which he expected, and is grateful to still have hair and not be bald. He rides the bus through London, sweeping along the curve of the river from the west end to the city and back again, scooping up tourists, shoppers, lawyers, bankers and mingling them up on the worn seats of his Routemaster. This is his last summer as a conductor, with the withdrawal of the hop on and off London Bus coming sooner than anyone likes. No more swinging on the pole. No more collecting fares and checking tickets. No more dispensing the freedom of the city from the back of his bus.

It’s not the first time his life has been swiped out from under him. The first time was in ’89, when the stock markets went down and swirled his life around the plughole at the same time. Only just over forty, and slung out onto Gracechurch Street with all the other clueless suits. He didn’t have time to worry about what people would think, with a mortgage over his head, interest rates at fifteen per cent, and Barbara on diazepan. He saw the ad in the Standard on the train home, and thought ‘fuck it’. Applied, got the job, was out of his training before most of his former colleagues had realised their jobs really weren’t coming back and they’d have to find something else to do. Did he miss it? Of course he did. There were holidays in Florida, his Audi, the crisp collar of a hundred quid shirt against his neck, his heart racing in his chest when he made a good trade. The only way he got anywhere near that thrill these days was throwing a cocky, drunk trader off his bus on Cheapside on a Friday night, which, some might say, he did with more regularity than even they deserved.

Filed Under: 5 Minute Fictions

Creating your own practice

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A common worry with practice is that it involves too many prompts and nudges from outside, and is therefore not legitimate Writing (see that capital W? Makes all the difference).

Firstly, it’s all legitimate. No one else is doing the writing, the idea generating, the sentence  construction. It’s all you.

Secondly, you can learn a lot from being pushed by something external to your own mind.

But, thirdly, if you generate your own ideas for practice you’ll quickly understand what interests you and where your preoccupations lie as a writer. It’s a shortcut to your unconscious.

So how do you go about it?

Well, the tutor who gave me the title for this blogsimply noted down things that interested her in a little notebook she carried around. Her practice was so advanced that she only needed a sentence or two to recreate a whole story about the trials of trying on clothes in a Marks & Spencer (a clothing store, for you non UK folk).

Image credit: Gary Hayes

But it could be anything – a building you like the look of. A person with luggage of unusual size. A row between serving staff in a restaurant. Anything that sets your writerly brain off with a train of questions – where is she going with that enormous case? To dispose of a body? Perhaps she’s stolen a grandmother clock that had been willed away from her by a vicious relative and she doesn’t have a car so she has to drag it across town, dismantled and crammed into a huge case which will obviously damage the clock beyond repair? But why does the clock mean so much to her?

Image Credit: cwgoodroe

You see, the best writing is simply paying really close attention and putting down into words what we all see, hear and feel, but let wash past us most of the time. This applies no matter what kind of writing you’re doing.

(Did you notice the bird? I didn’t at first.)

If you are always looking for things to note down for your practice, then you are always open to ideas, and you are always paying attention.

After you’ve started writing you might find that the mundane questions get replaced with something far more interesting. Or they might not. It doesn’t matter either way – you’ve paid attention. You’ve tried out the idea. Sometimes they have legs and sometimes they don’t.

Buy yourself a tiny notebook, or make notes on your electronic device of choice, and try this exercise next time you’re out:

Come Back with a Face

This is one of my own, and one I do most frequently. My preoccupation is people, obviously.

While you are out, make brief notes about the appearance of someone you find interesting.

For your practice, invent the life behind the face. This can be quite surprising, and lead you  a long way from where you started. Just remember not to tie the face to the place you see it, or you’ll be in too tight a corner.

(Indoor variation: search Flickr for ‘interesting face’.)

Image Credit: JakeBrewer

Happy Practicing!

Filed Under: Notes on Practice, On Writing Tagged With: , ,

Serious Play: What is Practice?

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Let’s have a closer look at what practice is, or perhaps I should come at it from a different direction and say what practice isn’t.

It’s not journalling.

It’s not stream of consciousness writing.

It’s not morning pages.

All of these things are useful tools for a writer’s toolkit, and they have their purposes, but practicing is more than simply turning up to the page and writing whatever comes into your head.

Writing freeform and undirected is a great way of warming up, but it doesn’t necessarily make you better at description or dialogue. Once your mind has got rid of its everyday clutter and chatter, then you have the space to focus on aspects of writing you find difficult, or just practise something you find enjoyable.

Photo credit: Willster K

Other art forms give us a good insight into what directed practice can be: singers do scales, or go over difficult pieces of music. A ballet dancer practices the basic steps, plies, and arabesques before they try a new choreography. Painters often learn to paint by copying the old masters. They warm up, in other words, but in ways that strengthen the basic knowledge of their art, and give them solid foundations to stand on when they create something new.

It’s the same with writing fiction.

You might worry that using prompts and practices will lead you to write in a certain way, or like everyone else, but it’s simply not possible. You always bring yourself to your writing, and you are unique, so your practice will be too.

Think about when we learn to write, physically, with a pen: we practise the letter forms over and over again. Over time, our confidence and skill grows, and we develop our own style of handwriting.

Practice is only ever a starting point. You might notice that certain themes or characters keep popping their heads up when you practise. They might be new to you, or old friends, but if this does happen, don’t feel the pressure to try and keep them out. You never know what your mind might be trying to tell you.

And what should you do with your practices? Nothing if you don’t want to. But – keep them. Somewhere safe, where you don’t have to look at them. You might want to later, say in six months, to see if there are ideas worth mining, but if you can’t bear the thought, then just know you have done the work, and that is valuable enough.

Later this week I’ll be posting about creating your own source of practices, but for now sharpen your pencils and keep writing.

Filed Under: Notes on Practice, On Writing

On the Seriousness of Reading

January 5, 2012 By 2 Comments

New Year. We all love the sound of a fresh leaf turning. Maybe you’ve already made a resolution to make more space and time for your writing. I know the feeling, because I’ve made that same resolution I don’t know how many times.

But you’ve got it wrong.

There is only one resolution you can make that will make you want to write more, and will help you be a better writer.

Read More.

Maybe you got a Kindle for Christmas, or a bundle of book tokens, or, if you’re really lucky, a stack of new books handpicked by someone who knows you really well. Don’t wait. Dive in and start reading.

If you didn’t get something new, or don’t have something unread on your shelves waiting for your attention, then pick up something you love and start reading it again.

Just read.

Read as a reader, and read as a writer.

Take pleasure in the way stories unfold, in the pace and heft of the prose. Take note of how much you already know ten pages in. That’s about 3000 words of writing: how much does your first 3000 say? Delight in great descriptions, and delight more in figuring out how you would have said something better.

Engage with the words, get lost in the rhythms. Remember why you love the written word.

If you’re stuck for something to read next, or want to try something new, go for a browse in a bookshop, check out Goodreads, or ask someone you trust. (Remember, trusting someone’s book reading habits is not exactly the same as liking them, but it is a pretty good indicator of whether you’ll get on.)

Take a couple from my bedside table, if you like:


Freedom
I wanted to read this when it first came out, because I adored the Corrections. I seem to have both a trade paperback and a kindle edition. I’ll probably read the Kindle because there are a lot of words.


The Penguin Book of Norse Myths: Gods of the Vikings
Likewise I have a paperback and the kindle edition. My husband bought me the paperback for Christmas without knowing I’d already bought it for Kindle. Smart fella.

If you’re writing, then reading is technically doing work. It’s legitimate, and absolutely not optional.

And remember, if you’re going to try writing something big, then the thing you enjoy reading the most is probably the kind of thing you should be writing. If you have shelves full of science fiction then chances are you’re not going to be able to sustain writing an historical romance. Writing a novel is a long business, and when your stamina fails, as it inevitably will on some days, you’ll need passion to carry you through to the next day.

Reading is the key. Whenever you feel blocked, and crazy, and want to give up, just read instead. You’ll find your way back, I promise.

Filed Under: Food for Thought
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