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?

• Benefits of Running
• Couch to 5K app for apple devices

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.

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!

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.

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.

I read, and I daydream.

Daydreaming only happens if I get absorbed in a repetitive task like walking, or painting skirting boards (as I’ve been doing this week), something that requires very little high level thought from me, but produces something close to a kind of trance. Thoughts get the chance to rise up and roam around of their own accord, without too much input from me.

It’s a treat to have daydreaming back in my life. Modern life is so full of distractions (hello Twitter) that I’m finding it harder and harder to create the kind of dreamy state I seemed to live in almost permanently as a child.And as a grown up with a house to run and a child to raise, justifying time where you’re simply staring off into space is really hard.

On the plus side, having discovered that decorating is a great way to get a bit of thinking time, I now want to paint the whole house, since it means I’m technically doing chores.

Reading is much easier to justify, and this week I’ve been visiting a couple of very interesting blogs, and getting my fiction fix from a brilliant collection of short stories:

Do subscribe to The School of Life’s blog, which is run by a modern philosophy club of sorts. I was a philosophy major, so I know full well how the word philosophy can scare a person, but philosophy is only thinking about how we ought to live, why things are the way they are, and how we can make things better. Academic philosophy has become so specialised and (dare I say) insular that this essential truth gets lost in translation.

The School of Life has some very interesting classes, weekends, and ‘sermons’ to attend, just to get you thinking outside your usual tram lines, if you’re anywhere near central London. I’m completely excited by a sermon on Cosmic Connections, because I am blown away by the knowledge that we are made of stars every time I think about it.

I’ve also been noodling around Brain Pickings, a collection of really cool, interesting things, encompassing everything from five creative manifestos, to a map of a woman’s heart. I love this site already, and we’ve only been friends for a week.

On the Kindle this week I’ve been ploughing through The Best British Short Stories 2011, from amazing indie publisher Salt (also available in paperback). I promise you, never will you spend 86 pence more wisely – it is an utter bargain for some of the most arresting fiction I’ve read this year.

What’s been filling your well lately?

Oh Money. Let’s not be all airy fairy and pretend that we don’t think about it. We have mortgages, and bills, and children who need shoes, and pets who need vaccinations, and relatives who live a weekend visit away because you had to move to get work.We could all do with a little bit more.

You don’t want to be defined by it, I know. Neither do I. But we are. “What do you do?” is one of the first things you get asked by a new acquaintance. You know you’re supposed to respond with what brings in the dosh, not the things that bring you joy, like old letterpress restoration or tap dancing.

Pity those of us, who, for whatever reason, have no definable monetary role, and therefore no easy way to answer the question. The mouth thickens, the tongue stumbles into teeth, the apologies for your existence begin to flow, because your questioner has already glazed over, having made a subtle calculation, unconsciously no doubt, that you can be of no use in their own career, and therefore cease to be of interest.

No, of course it’s not like that every time.

But enough of the time, it is.

I have my own in-house careers service in my best friend (not strictly in-house, but she’s like family, so good enough). In the summer we lay on the grass in St James’s Park, staring at the clouds, and she helped me work through my anxiety about saying that I’m a writer.

“It’s because I’ve never been paid to do it,” I confessed. “I feel fraudulent.”

“So the money would make you legitimate?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“How much would you have to earn to call yourself a writer?”

“I dunno. Twenty quid?”

We laughed. But it raises a serious point, in that many of us find it difficult to take our work as writers (or artists or photographers or whatever) seriously, until we’ve been paid. How much money something is worth is how our culture places value on things, and the corresponding creed we live by is that if you haven’t been paid for it then what you do has no value.

Galling.

And so we struggle on as artists, because we feel strongly, and rightly, that there’s more to this life than just making money, but until we’re published, or sell a picture, we have to keep afloat the idea that what we’re doing has value. It’s very tiring. It can also feel lonely and shameful, when there are so many other things you could be doing.

I’m not going to tell you that you ought to answer the question ‘what do you do?’ with ‘I’m a writer’. Everyone has to come to their own conclusion about when they’re ready to deal with the follow up of ‘oh really? I always thought I could write a novel if I had the time’.

What I am going to tell you is that it’s ok to call yourself a writer in your own head. It’s ok to push the dishes to one side and write, instead of clearing up. It’s ok to take walks through the woods while you mull over your plot. It’s ok to sacrifice haircuts and shoes and work part-time to get more space for writing, if that’s what you want.

It’s ok to live differently.

Which is not to say that you have to give up on the idea of being paid for doing something you love. Just accept that it might take a while, and it might not be as much as you’d like. Me? I’m trying hard to make space for writing anyway, but I’m still hanging out for that twenty quid. Wanna chip in a pound?

 *Obviously this is a hilarious visual joke, but you know, not really, because you can pay for the words if you like. The button really works. But just so you know, I don’t expect you to. Obviously.

The ones I come back to are the ones that throw me out of my ruts, and they tend to be less specifically about writing, and more about living creatively, however you choose to do it. So here are my favourites:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The don of all creative kickstarters, Cameron wrote this classic about rediscovering your creative self in 1994, and has sold a Gazillion copies of it since. The book is a 12 week program, with exercises and tasks to help you back towards living a more creative life. It’s not just for writers, but anyone who has had, and lost, a desire to make stuff. (Now available as an online course. I’m not affiliated, just showing you where it is.)

Personally I’ve never got beyond about week 6 (which may be why I still feel blocked) but I’ve carried the tool of morning pages with me through every fallow period (and I know many writers rely on them). The idea is to write three pages a day, preferably in the morning, of whatever you like. No editor, no critic, no stopping. It works. Whatever rubbish I write I feel better for at least having done them.

Fearless Creating by Eric Maisel. A confession: this is a new purchase for me, and I was attracted by the idea of tackling the anxiety I feel about writing (I took a long break, I had a baby and now am brain dead, I have no ideas left – that sort of thing). Maisel is a psychotherapist who works with creative people from all disciplines, and this book is unlike the others that encourage you to sit down and pick up a pen, or go for walks in the woods. One of the very first exercises involves a potato. It may not be the book for you, but I laughed so much while trying to hold my potato that I have to include it.

The 3a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kitely. If you’re after writing exercises that push you a little further than ‘be inspired by this image of a camel’ or whatever, then this is the book for you. Kitely teaches Creative Writing at the University of Denver, and takes the approach that we can learn about writing by actually doing writing. The exercises can feel narrow in their scope, but this just encourages creativity, rather than stifling it. It’s Oulipo-like in the approach to using boundaries to encourage free wordplay – just like children, writers play with more freedom if they have a wall to bash against. Highly recommended, as is the sequel The 4a.m. Breakthrough.

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. Tharp isn’t a writer, she’s a dancer, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about her creative process, and the tools she’s used in her career as a choreographer. There are practical exercises throughout the book, which focus on developing working habits and encouraging the creative mind to be awake and present, as well as tackling frailities. It ends with a lovely chapter on the necessity of failure, and her admission that she was 58 before she felt like a master of her craft. Very inspiring book.

Most of these books can be used by anyone who wants to live creatively, whether that means making a living out of it, or just following your passions for making art of one kind or another, regardless of monetary reward. I hope you too find some inspiration for your Autumn renewal.

Conkers.

Crumble.

New pencil case.

Since my other occupation (sewing) is currently impossible (sewing machine buried under stuff that ought to be on eBay) and we have a new table (Ikea) and some functioning dining chairs (new obsession – upholstery), lately I often find myself at the kitchen table, sitting on a slightly rickety chair, with my laptop open and the kettle on.

Surprisingly this is a good place to write for me. I’ve experimented around the house, in all the rooms and all the chairs, and it seems that the place that makes me most productive is the one place you’d think I’d get distracted by all the jobs I ought to be doing. Luckily I’m enough of a domestic slut that I have no trouble ignoring the things I ought to be doing, in favour of things I’d rather be doing.

I know that Virginia says we need a room of one’s own, and that’s all very well, but how many of us can really have that luxury? Better to amend the exhortation to a place of one’s own, because I think this is necessary. In conjunction with the notebook you like, and the special pen, sitting down in the place where you write best helps your brain take shortcuts to the bit you want to get to. And we are all creatures of habit, even if you think you’re not: we run in little grooves, and make routines for ourselves that let us function on autopilot to get things done – imagine the horror of having to think everything through from scratch every day! It would be like starting a new job all the time.

But this is a great time of year to forge a new routine, and breathe some life back into your writing habits. Experiment around the house, and out of the house, until it feels right, until you have a great writing session that makes you feel giddy, and by October, you’ll be back on autopilot again.

So rejoice in the season changing, in children going back to school, in new shoes, winter coats, and rib-sticking stews. More than anything the promise of the new pencil case is that we antisocial creatures are freed from the pressure to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, making terrible small talk at barbeques, and can hole up with books and pens and as much of our own company as we can stand. Bliss.

I looked for it for years. I tried all manner of disposables, gel inks, rollerballs, fountain pens, ink types, and even pencils. But nothing ever felt right. You need it to have just the right amount of heft when you hold it, so that it’s light enough to hold for hours without cramp, but not so light that you feel you’re trying to pin down a helium balloon. There must be no splodges, nor false starts, where you scratch at the page before the ink starts to flow. For me there had to be no cap either, as I’ve a habit of trying to store them in my cheek like a demented hamster, which is simply unpleasant.

And then I found it.

It was the last day in Tokyo, and we’d been saving up a trip to Ito-ya, the seven storey stationery shop in Ginza (reviews in English). Heaven for paper geeks, marked by a giant red paperclip on the side of the building. We noodled around the paints and exquisite papers, fingered the stamps and inks, marvelled at racks of elaborate envelopes for giving monetary gifts, and then I found myself in the pen section.

It’s a serious business in Japan, stationery, and what is stationery without a pen? Frankly, if I couldn’t find a pen in there, I had no hope. They have everything from the cheapest biro to the most expensive fountain pen. As it turned out, it was incredibly simple. I drifted towards the Pilot section, since I have a fondness for their disposables, and picked up a simple ballpoint. Slim metal case, push button action, 0.7 ballpoint. I was smitten almost instantly.

Now, a funny thing happened when I started writing this post. I thought I ought to do a search on the web so that I could point you in the right direction, just in case you were curious. When I was in Tokyo I bought a couple of refills, just in case, but since it really wasn’t an expensive pen, and I knew I could get Pilot pens in the UK, I’d always assumed I’d be able to find a replacement, in case the worst happened, and I dropped it in the Thames or my son threw it onto the train tracks.

Wrong.

No matter how I searched for a Pilot Cavalier I kept coming across fountain pens rather than ballpoints, and pages of people discussing ink colours and replacements. I began to fear that it had been discontinued. In order to track it down I ended up on the Pilot website in Japanese, where I used my rudimentary knowledge of katakana to locate the exact pen, copy the model number and finally do a search that led me to a site where I can purchase a replacement. I spent almost two hours doing this rather than writing this post, and am so tempted to buy several pens so that I need never go through those two hours again.

So my intent was to talk about having rituals, and the way using particular objects is a way of preparing the brain for particular tasks, and instead I became so distracted at the possibility of never being able to lay my hands on this cheap pen that I more than demonstrated that other writer’s cliché, the one where we’re all superstitious and cranky. More about rituals another time. Perhaps once my parcel is here from Japan.