{"id":604,"date":"2021-03-31T11:13:52","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T10:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=604"},"modified":"2025-02-10T16:28:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T16:28:20","slug":"this-writing-business-some-rambling-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridgewriters.org\/?p=604","title":{"rendered":"This writing business: some rambling reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last month I finally got round to publishing Small Town Blues<\/em>, my second and probably last novel. Each was years in the making and at 77 I\u2019m not sure if I have the time or stamina to write another. I\u2019ll go on writing, of course, but in shorter forms: poems, stories, possibly a novella or two. Brevity is an undervalued quality and the novella an underused form \u2013 a genre that allows for development while avoiding the \u2018bagginess\u2019 that Henry James complained of. \u2018The blessed nouvelle,\u2019 he called it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A poem is never finished, only abandoned.\u2019 Same for a novel? So the question is, when to let go? I guess in a pandemic when survival looks chancy? I\u2019m reminded of those writers, Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Thom Gunn \u2013 witnesses to the decimation of whole communities in NY and San Francisco in the 1980s \u2013 who rushed to get their AIDS narratives and obituaries out before being chopped down themselves. Sometimes there isn\u2019t scope for pernicketiness. The clock says, Speak Now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The British experience of AIDS in the 1980s \u2013 so brilliantly captured in the Channel 4 series It\u2019s a Sin<\/em> \u2013 while no less horrifying for those affected, was less catastrophic in scale than that of the USA, and I can\u2019t think of any British writers except Adam Mars-Jones and Oscar Moore who testified from within the eye of the storm, so to speak. Most AIDS writing \u2013 like Hollinghurst\u2019s The Line of Beauty<\/em> and T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s The Blackwater Lightship<\/em> \u2013 is retrospective.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip Larkin thought the two novels he wrote before he turned to poetry, if \u2018not very good\u2019, were nevertheless written with scrupulous care. I think I could reasonably say the same of mine. The effort\u2019s there, whatever the achievement. Besides, \u2018every attempt is a wholly new start and a new kind of failure.\u2019 Actually, I\u2019m struck by how much you hold in your head when writing a novel, so that by the end you feel as if your brain will burst. And it\u2019s not just the language; it\u2019s the details that accrue around a character, the specifics of appearance, location, plot. Emma Bovary\u2019s eyes, apparently \u2013 though how many of us notice? \u2013 change colour several times in the course of the novel. Easy to slip up, then \u2013 or leave unplugged holes \u2013 and my heart goes out to Raymond Chandler who admitted to a gathering of screenwriters that he didn\u2019t know who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,\u2019 wrote Jane Austen of Emma Woodhouse. Likewise, Evan, my central character, is not a vote-winner. He too is arrogant, vain and callow at the start of the novel, but he passes through an arc of self-discovery and by the end has gained, like her, a degree of maturity. In any case, I confess that I\u2019m sceptical about the idea that a central character must be likeable. It suggests a na\u00efve view of fiction. For isn\u2019t there a difference between liking and sympathising? Do we \u2018like\u2019 Heathcliff, Becky Sharp, Clarissa Dalloway, Humbert Humbert, Holden Caulfield, Tom Ripley? And doesn\u2019t any sympathy we might have for a character also wax and wane? Pip, ill-used in childhood, becomes, before his change of heart, a snobbish young gentleman. And what about Hedda Gabler? Power-mad lunatic or freedom fighter? Perhaps we recoil from her at first but then inwardly cheer her on? Yeah, go for it, girl!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started my first novel with no thought of publication; I was simply lost in the creative process, and part of the challenge was to see if I could go the distance. But when I reached the point of fiddling \u2013 putting in commas and taking them out again \u2013 I wondered what to do with my bundle of words. I could leave them to rot on the computer or make them available to anyone who wanted to read them. Eventually, after some feeble attempts to interest agents and publishers, I decided that self-publication was the route for me. And there\u2019s a living to be made from that, of course; though actually I\u2019m not interested in sales; I\u2019ll settle for a handful of sympathetic readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how to gain even a single reader without some promotion? The worst part of publication is having to plug your novel. Most of us just want to write, yet if we don\u2019t promote, no one, in the welter of fiction now available, knows we\u2019re even there. The professionals, who also have to promote, complain about it too. Pat Barker says that she stopped writing for two years after winning the Booker and simply sat in bookshops signing copies of The Ghost Road.<\/em> Frankly, I\u2019d have thought that winning the Booker was promotion enough; it certainly puts everyone else in the shade. But isn\u2019t that the downside of prizes: a case of winner takes all? Anyway, not my problem: I\u2019m as far from winning the Booker as becoming Sportsperson of the Year. On the other hand, if you fancy a coming-of-age tale about a cocky young man who gets into trouble, head over to Amazon.<\/a> And if you\u2019re signed up to Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free. Paperback available soon. The cover illustration, by the way, is by my partner Phil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pic_156\"\/<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On publishing Small Town Blues, my second and probably last novel.<\/p>\n

\u2018I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,\u2019 wrote Jane Austen of Emma Woodhouse. Likewise, Evan, my central character, is not a vote-winner. He too is arrogant, vain and callow at the start of the novel, but he passes through an arc of self-discovery and by the end has gained, like her, a degree of maturity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-blog-les-brookes"],"yoast_head":"\nThis writing business: some rambling reflections - Cambridge Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridgewriters.org\/?p=604\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This writing business: some rambling reflections - Cambridge Writers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On publishing Small Town Blues, my second and probably last novel. \u2018I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,\u2019 wrote Jane Austen of Emma Woodhouse. 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