On Writing Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by A.L. Kennedy

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Blog

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Introduction to the Essays

  Insomnia

  To Save Our Lives

  Does That Make Sense?

  Character-Building

  Proof of Life

  Words: A One-Person Show

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Book

  After six novels, five story collections and two books of non-fiction, and countless international prizes, A.L. Kennedy certainly has the authority to talk about the craft of writing books – it’s just a wonder she’s found the time. These are missives from the authorial front line – urgent and vivid, full of the excitement, fury and frustration of trying to make thousands of words into a publishable book. At the core of On Writing is the hugely popular blog that Kennedy writes for the Guardian – and we follow her during a three-year period when she finished one collection of stories and started another, and wrote a novel in between. Readers and aspiring writers will have almost everything they need to know about the complexities of researching, writing and publishing fiction, but they will be receiving this wisdom conversationally, from one of the funniest and most alert of our contemporary authors.

  Alongside the blogs are brilliant essays on character, voice, writers’ workshops and writers’ health and the book ends with the transcript of Kennedy’s celebrated one-person show about writing and language that she has performed round the world to huge acclaim. Read together, all these pieces add up to the most intimate masterclass imaginable from one of the finest – and most humane – writers in our language.

  About the Author

  A.L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year. She lives in London and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at Warwick University.

  ALSO BY A.L. KENNEDY

  FICTION

  Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

  Looking for the Possible Dance

  Now That You’re Back

  So I am Glad

  Original Bliss

  Everything You Need

  Indelible Acts

  Paradise

  Day

  What Becomes

  The Blue Book

  NON-FICTION

  The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

  On Bullfighting

  On Writing

  A.L. Kennedy

  Introduction

  THE BLOGS WHICH make up the greater part of this book were written with a number of aims in mind. I intended to write regular, brief pieces which might in some way be useful to writers. I sought to make technical suggestions, offer general support and occasionally focus on specific areas of the writing life. I am fairly certain this process has helped me more than anyone else, but newer writers have been very kind about some of the content. I also intended to provide something of interest to those who had no wish to write, but who were interested in the process of writing. And I wanted to explore the positive role that the arts in general, and reading and writing in particular, can play in any life. If the tone of some pieces seems overly light-hearted, I can only say that I also intended to cheer readers and writers along during a period in which British publishing, writing and the wider world of arts activity can seem both beleaguered and self-defeating. I am also aware that even people who love writing and are free to write may sometimes need something to smile about. I have hoped to be entertaining.

  The blogs are largely unaltered from their original form, beyond small edits and some insertions to provide context. They cover something over three years – from the conclusion of a book of short stories, through the writing and publication of a novel and on to work for the next book of short stories. Although the blog continues, it seemed somehow fitting to begin with one anthology and end with another. The book runs through a period of prolonged ill health in 2011, during which my ability to write the blogs was a great comfort and some kind of proof that I was still partly functional. At the time of writing, I am well and am determined to remember that ill-governed schedules, bad working practices and minor illnesses are recurrent themes throughout the book. I should take better care of myself. I probably won’t.

  The blogs are followed by a short talk written for BBC radio, looking a little more personally at one aspect of my life as a writer. You will also find a lecture, ‘To Save Our Lives’, delivered for the London Arts in Health Forum at their London Creativity and Well-Being Week in the summer of 2012, and then three more technical pieces intended primarily for writers and which explore writing workshops, the development of character in fiction and the pursuit and support of voice.

  The final piece here is a transcript of ‘Words’, the one-person show about writing and language which I have toured with for a number of years. The show has been performed in several countries and at a variety of festivals. This book, in fact, pretty much covers the active period of the script, which has now been retired – although I have retired it several times already and it seems unwilling to disappear completely as a performance. I hadn’t fully anticipated what a positive and encouraging experience acting out my professional passions would prove to be and I am very grateful to all of the audiences who attended. Various recordings of the piece do exist and there are plans to make a definitive audio version, but there has been a certain demand for a written version to be made available. The show was designed to sound spontaneous, in as far as I could simulate spontaneity, and so it will not read as a piece of straight prose.

  I am aware that certain themes and key inspirations do repeat through this material: Chekhov, Shakespeare, love, my grandfather, working with other writers, the importance of creative activity, the importance of self-maintenance, my inability to stay that far away from a train for any length of time. In my defence, I would say that I feel some points are worth repeating and that I am only glad my inspirations do run through my life and work with any kind of regularity.


  In conclusion, I would thank the readers of the blog – and those who also follow me on Twitter – for their support and for the community of letters they seem to have developed over time. I would also thank the students and staff involved with the Warwick Writing Programme for the continuing inspiration they provide, and my agent Antony Harwood and my editor Robin Robertson for their continuing support. It would be impossible for me to adequately express my gratitude for the part that reading and writing have played, and continue to play, in my life.

  A.L. Kennedy

  August 2012, London

  Blog

  Blog

  I

  ON THE ROAD again . . . Somebody – I am currently too tired to remember who – once described me as The Littlest Hobo of Literature. Although I save far fewer orphans (in fact, none) and lack the buoyant charm of the raggle-eared original, I can currently see what they meant. I do have a home, of course. I know that it contains furniture, tinned foodstuffs and items of clothing (probably black) that I may never have worn. I also know I don’t really live there. So – less time worrying about the neighbours and more time worrying about why so many B&Bs are run by former law-enforcement personnel. On the one hand, their emergency-related skills are probably cracking and, on the other, they clearly harbour a pressing need to lock people up overnight in tiny rooms with inadequate plumbing and facilities. When I started writing no one told me it would come to this.

  But I do try to tell other people what it will come to – hence my occasional visits to Warwick University and its Creative Writing students. They want to write, they have application and vigour, they’ve all come on since I read them last and yet . . . it would be unfair not to remind them of how horrible their futures may become. If they’re unsuccessful, they’ll be clattering through a global Depression with a skill no one requires, a writing demon gnawing at their spine to be expressed and a delicately nurtured sensitivity which will only make their predicaments seem worse – and all of it of minimal interest to anyone else. If they’re successful, they still may not make a living, will travel more than a drug-mule, may be so emotionally preoccupied that they remain unblissfully ignorant of entire relationships, will have to deal with media demands they don’t even want to understand and may wear far too much black. (Yes, it is slimming, but unisex Richard III isn’t always what every occasion demands. Trust me – experience is a painful teacher.)

  Naturally, I don’t believe anyone will be deterred by my mad-eyed and negative rantings. Once somebody wants to write it’s almost impossible to stop them without also killing them to some significant degree. Nothing beats that raging delight at three in the morning when sentence number fifteen finally agrees to do what you want, and never has banging wiggly marks on to a computer screen seemed so heroic – even if you’re simply ensuring that the orthopaedic surgeon ravishing your senior nurse in the sluice room doesn’t seem implausibly limber and can meanwhile reawaken echoes of that summer afternoon with her funny uncle . . . And if you think you might actually be doing some good, amusing someone other than yourself – making them less lonely, more alive, more informed – well, you’re just not going to chuck that over in favour of crafting, long walks and a quiet life. Hence the number of regimes and leaders who have discovered that killing writers until they are entirely dead is the only effective way to slow their output. And may angels and ministers of grace preserve the students, and indeed myself, from any shades of that. It’s quite possible we feel hard done by – writers often do – but, for individuals trapped in a society intent upon eating its own tongue, we’re probably doing fairly well.

  And I try not to mention the publishing industry to the students – the legions of people with names like Miffy, Muffy, Tufty: is there anybody out there who isn’t one of Santa’s little helpers? – and the fact that it’s all been spiralling into recession ever since the Net Book Agreement went south. Countries that are keen on having a national literature haven’t followed that path, but we have to make the best of what we’ve got: which is deep discounts, dump bins and more mindless staring than you’d get from a warren full of rabbits trapped at the Indy 500. Weirdly, the bleakness may even be a help to the artistically inclined. I set off on my wonky career path during the Thatcher years, when unemployment was so massive that a non-proper job didn’t seem any more foolish than, say, working in a bank. Now that so many of us dream of bitch-slapping bankers up and down the high street and there are, once again, no safe havens, new writers may feel they have nothing to lose by taking the plunge into typing. I’m a creature of extremes, I’ll admit, but surely it is generally better to live a life that tries to find its own edges and push them a bit, rather than simply settling for habitual numbness.

  And some days those edges may involve going over other people’s manuscripts (much less upsetting than going over your own) in a borrowed office all day and then trying to rewrite a play all night in an extremely secure bedroom, while living on Red Bull, Complan and iron tablets. That does cover each of the food groups, I believe. Next week it’s a photographer (why I said yes to that, I’ve no idea – there’s already ample evidence abroad that I’m a gurning, horse-faced muppet), more rewrites, inventing a synopsis of something that doesn’t exist and may never have to, learning a one-hour show about writing and trying to forget that I need to sleep. Onwards.

  II

  ONCE AGAIN MY life is taking the road less travelled without packing enough sandwiches for the trip.

  Gripe Number One: I am in Belfast. I have no problem with Belfast per se, it’s a lovely town, but I should currently be in Glasgow. My massive fear of flying means that I’m relying on ferries to get me home – ferries which aren’t sailing today because of gales.

  Gripe Number Two: my left ear has taken to aching and developing obscure infections whenever I’ve had to go without food, sleep, light and tickling for weeks at a time. I had it syringed last year, and I feel exposure to the open air has left it feeling shy and wayward. At the start of this month I had been under the unusual and exhilarating impression that all was well with me, my skull and parts appertaining thereunto. I then scampered down to London – as you do – so that I could read an essay and play the banjo for a BBC wireless emission – as you do if you inhabit some kind of alternative, unmusical reality. The banjoing and basic literacy test went fine, but my ear was already becoming unruly and I was aware that my week was due to run, if not gallop, between London, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast, Dublin, Waterford and Backagain. (I had high hopes of Backagain.) This meant my best option for health and safety was to find a quick and available doctor in the Central London area, lest the sinister side of my head should decompose inconveniently.

  Gripe Number Three: as it turned out, there was only one ‘private clinic’ which could see me during the five hours I had available. Lovely though the establishment was, in a homely and vaguely unhygienic way, the place was clearly geared towards patients afflicted by ailments too embarrassing for their family doctor, rather than those seeking, say, celebrity breast adjustments – or suffering from ear infections. I therefore entered the consulting room – which cunningly doubled as a storage cupboard – and proceeded to be examined at cross-purposes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have an ear infection.’

  ‘Well, just pop up on the examination . . . shelf there and remove your jeans and hampering underthings.’

  ‘Um . . . Thanks for asking, but I actually have an ear infection.’

  ‘Of course you do. You’ll find there’s enough space to lie down between the paper towels and those boxes of stool-softener.’

  ‘No, I mean I have an ear infection that’s in my ear.’

  ‘If you can just remove your things.’

  ‘And afterwards will you look at my ear?’

  I left with some horse tablets and proceeded to Manchester for a workshop and a reading, which may have gone well, but mainly seemed far away and wibbly under the influence of whatever the pills were
. Still, at least my ear was hurting less.

  Gripe Number Four: a Manchester audience member subsequently took it upon himself to rid my Wikipedia entry of its fallacious reference to my keeping a pet luwak. I mentioned during the reading that I have never owned a luwak and have never said I do – there is simply at least one person who enjoys adding local colour to my Global Information Presence. Someone, for that matter, also submits Amazon book reviews in my name, which is rather puerile and tedious of them – but I have to say that I do miss my imaginary luwak, now he’s gone. I had decided to call him Wiki and had already bought him imaginary chew-toys and taken him on imaginary outings to nearby parks.

  Meanwhile, on I went to Waterford and its small, but jimdandy Seán Dunne Literary Festival. My outward journey was accomplished without the aid of air transport – by train, ferry, cab, train, cab and train – and went off without a hitch, although the poker school in the back of the Belfast cab was slightly disconcerting, and sprinting for the last connection at Dublin, Heuston, while still on my tablets did leave me wondering whether their powerful effects had accidentally challenged my spinal column in some unhappy way. My very visible distress caused a kindly train guard to hold the service and also to nip out and gather up the many important belongings I had dropped while I ran, returning them to me softly as I curled up on the floor in a luggage storage area and twitched myself into a better frame of mind.

  Gripe Number Five: although the Waterford gigs went fine and the show for Edinburgh is shaping up well, the hotel lift made the most extraordinary variety of retro-sci-fi noises I’ve ever encountered. All night, every night, on it would go – MWAWhhaaooooo . . . neeneeneeneeneenee . . . MWARNngngng . . . My dodgy ear prevented me from using earplugs and so I either lay awake or dreamed fitfully of being strapped inside the Tardis while the cast of Blake’s 7 played didgeridoos at me with evil intent.

  Gripe Number Six: if I’m lucky, tomorrow will see me arriving at possibly the world’s most hideous ferry terminal, Stranraer. Even on a bright and balmy day, every surly inch of it suggests it was constructed in a hurry by condemned men on loan from Stalin’s Russia and was intended for the transportation and/or slaughter of livestock. But off I go, in any case. Onwards.