Reading and Writing

How much does the ability to write well, depend on how dedicated a reader you are? 

For those of us trying to write around the demands of a day job and family, time reading somebody else’s words would surely be better spent creating our own? That’s a logic I have followed from time to time over the years, but one I eventually found to be false – in my case at least. These days I tend to agree with Stephen King, who said, “If you don’t have time to read, then you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

Me, doing a tough work-out (photo: Dylan Cousins)

Over the years I’ve noticed that when I’m not reading every day, my writing flows less freely. An obvious analogy would be the sporting one: that reading is an important part of maintaining a level of writing fitness, like a footballer exercising in a gym. The activity has little to do with football, but will greatly affect his ability to play well. When I’m reading a lot, my writing feels natural, instinctive – fitter, if you like. Or as The King puts it: “Constant reading will pull you into a place where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.” For me, it’s about filling my subconscious with words and stories – the rhythm of sentences and paragraphs, the pace of a well spun yarn.


“Every successful writer I know is also a great reader.” – Robert Cormier

When I started to write, I worried that my own stories, or rather my voice, would start to sound like whatever I was reading, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I find that reading somebody else's words helps to clear my head, and stops me thinking about my own for a while, so I'm fresher when I return.

But what about you? I’d be interested to hear other people’s experience of how reading sits alongside their own writing. Does it help? Does it interfere? Does it matter what you read? Please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Writing a Novel (Part Three): Good Days and Full Bin Days

Since handing over 15 Days without a Head to my publisher, I've been sitting down each day to write what I hope will become my next book. Some days the writing flows and I get lost in the story, sailing through a thousand words and barely noticing the time passing. Others are more difficult. When I'm not sure where the story goes, or when the words on the screen feel wrong.

 

Having a Full Bin Day

I call these Full Bin Days – when each page is metaphorically torn from the typewriter, screwed up and tossed in the bin. These are the days when writing anything feels like an act of faith, continuing to type even though your brain and every cell in your body is telling you it's a waste of time. 

On these occasions, I find it sometimes helps to remind myself that I'm not alone – that better writers than me have suffered days like these. Over the years I've amassed a collection of quotes to help me through such dark hours of doubt. I thought I might share a few, just in case anybody out there might be having a Full Bin Day too …

"Most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything – just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud. Somehow I've now written eighteen books." Louis Sachar

"If you're going to make a living at this business … you have to realise that a lot of the time, you're going to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with. Of course, you write less readily and fluently without it; but the interesting thing is to look at the private journals and letters of great writers and see how much of the time they just had to do without inspiration. Conrad, for example, groaned at the desperate emptiness of the pages he faced; and yet he managed to cover them. Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs." Philip Pullman

"There's a lot of hard graft along the way. It feels precarious. I suppose it's like sculpting. You keep working away at a formless blob until some kind of form emerges. What keeps you working is the certainty that there is something in there." Julie Bertagna

"No topic is perfect. You just have to shut up and write." Natalie Goldberg

"She said, 'The way to say something is just to start saying the start of it, then everything will come out.'" From Clay, by David Almond

"It's important to write regularly. Discipline is as important as talent, perhaps even more important – a lot of books don't get written simply because talented people never sit down and actually write." Robert Cormier

"I've listened for years to the reasons why the book is not being published … he wants it to be perfect, so it will never happen. If you look at the first copy of The Big Issue, it is rubbish compared to what it has become. It was done very quickly. I didn't want it to be the best magazine in the world. If I had, I would still be waiting to launch it." John Bird, founder of The Big Issue.

And finally, my favourite, from The King himself:

"Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position." Stephen King

Writing a Novel (Part Two): A Place to Write

Welcome to the second part of my series looking at the process of writing a novel. Part One: What to Write? can be read here.

One of the great things about writing is that it doesn’t require a lot of equipment – something to write with and something to write on, and you’re sorted. If you're really stuck, you can breathe on a window and write with your finger! Obviously if you’re going to attempt to be published, eventually you will need to get your words typed-up, but there’s a lot of writing required before getting to that stage.

A common excuse for not writing, along with not having the time (which I’ll look at in a later post) is not having a quiet space. I know that some writers need absolute silence and solitude in order to work. Bill Hussey locks his door, and sometimes even uses ear-plugs; by contrast Frank Cottrell Boyce has talked of finding the clamour of a house full of children inspiring.

Miriam Halahmy wrote much of Hidden in cafés

Most of us are somewhere in-between, and try to write when and where we can. Miriam Halahmy and Candy Gourlay are just two writers I know who are part of a long line of café scribes, following in Ernest Hemingway’s espresso stained footsteps. Some of us write in libraries or on trains – I’m drafting this longhand in my notebook while walking, during my lunch break. Sometimes, in order to write anything at all, we have to adapt and learn to get the words down where we can.

Having said that, I think it is useful to find a more permanent space to write. This doesn’t have to be a beautifully designed bespoke writer’s study, though that would be nice. Stephen King wrote his early novels with a typewriter balanced across his knees in his laundry nook, Roald Dahl famously in his shed, and I read somewhere that Michael Morpurgo writes in bed. What’s important is finding a space you will associate with writing, so that as soon as you enter, your brain recognises it and thinks, ‘Ah, so this is what we’re doing now!’

My corner of the attic

I've written in libraries, on a laptop balanced on a drawing board in the bedroom, but about two years ago I cleared a space for a makeshift desk in the corner of our attic. It’s cold in winter and besieged by wasps in summer, but I love it. And when I climb the ladder each evening, by the time I sit down and switch on my computer, my brain already knows what’s required. It doesn’t always comply, but that’s another post altogether …

Writing a Novel (Part One): What to Write?

I'm not sure about that title – I don't wish to mislead anybody arriving here hoping to find a guide to writing a best selling novel. If you were, then I apologise and wish you well in your search for wisdom. I will however direct you towards Stephen King's excellent book On Writing, and Nicola Morgan's website – you will find many nuggets of writerly advice available from both. Other than that I would suggest you switch off your internet connection, open a new word processing document and simply start to write. Do this every day and you'll be surprised how quickly the words build up. I don't mean to suggest that writing a book is easy, it isn't, but you can read as many how to books as you like, it is the act of sitting down and actually writing that will get you there in the end. 

Okay, now that's out of the way, for those still reading, I thought it might be interesting to look at the process of writing a novel – at least my experience of it, which is all I am really qualified to talk about. You never know, a few scraps of useful information might emerge along the way. 

One of the most common questions asked of writers is where do you get your ideas from? It's a question that many will struggle to answer. Not me. I know exactly where my stories originate. I'll let you into the secret, but don't go spreading it around – this is just between us, OK? On my desk there's a metal box, 18cm wide by 9cm deep and 8cm high. I call it the Word Tin, and it contains all the words I need, stamped into small strips of metal, like dog-tags. To build a story, I simply delve into the box, pull out a handful of words and put them in the right order – easy. OK, see you next week for part two … 

The Word Tin – where stories come from!

Sadly, I’m joking (but imagine if such a tin existed – now there's an idea for a story!) The tin is real though, if not magic, and I have once or twice tried to conjure a story the way I described and produced some interesting, if not exactly publishable, results. 

So where do ideas for stories come from, if not a magic tin or mail-order story depository? The answer to that is – everywhere and anywhere – a memory, an overheard snippet of conversation, a location, a news story, the list goes on. But as Philip Pullman said, 'the initial idea is much less important, actually, than what you do with it.' Often a single idea isn't enough to make a story, but combining two seemingly disparate concepts … that's when you strike gold. However, I believe there's another important consideration – the reason most of the ideas I scribble on scraps of paper will never become stories.

The late, great Robert Cormier

For me, Robert Cormier explained it perfectly when he said, ‘to work for me, an idea must be attached to an emotion, something that upsets, dazzles or angers me and sends me to the typewriter’. The spark that sent me to my notebook to scribble the start of the story that became 15 Days without a Head, came from an incident I witnessed in a pub one afternoon. A very drunk woman arguing with a stranger at the next table – much to the embarrassment of her sons. It made me wonder what life was like for those two boys, what would happen when they got home. 

It takes time to write and revise a novel, and I find that if the characters and their story don’t mean anything to me, they won’t sustain my interest through the months of writing. If you care, it also brings with it a sense of responsibility, a desire to do justice to the characters and their story, which can be a great motivation – especially in those dark hours encountered with every novel, where the story won’t come and you find yourself reaching for the Word Tin. 

You will often hear writers speculating what the next big thing will be, asking what publishers and agents are looking for. The answer that usually comes back, is that they don't know. What editors want is something special, something captivating and original, and the best chance of writing like that is to be honest – write what excites you. If it's fun to write, chances are it will be fun to read. 

So maybe the place to look for inspiration is not here, or in the next how to book, but inside yourself. Work out what it is that excites or unsettles you, which are the ideas that gnaw away at your subconscious, disturb your daydreams and keep you awake at night. Find out what it is that drives you to the typewriter … and start typing!