On Writing Read online

  III

  FROM TIME TO time I do ponder what actually inspires writers – or, indeed, anyone. We typing folk are meant – apparently – to thrive and prosper if we attend workshops. And people who provide workshops certainly make money out of selling them as a necessary thing. I myself – not being especially sociable – didn’t much enjoy the few workshops I attended in my youth, other than as an opportunity to meet people I hadn’t made up earlier and as a reminder that the insides of strangers’ heads are occasionally much more bizarre than I might assume. As a tutor I feel that workshops are often designed to make all those involved feel they’re achieving something, while taking part in an activity that is almost exactly not writing. They fill up time, if not timetables: that, and you can maybe flirt a bit in them, should you wish to embark upon something with a scribbler. Poorly balanced workshops can very easily descend into a horrible demonstration of what happens when the verbally blind lead the creatively deaf with a bit of arty bullying and random rule-invention thrown in for colour. And overly dominated ones simply offer the tutor an opportunity to do something which would more usually involve personal fluids and some DVDs in the privacy of their own lovely home.

  But what does make you/me/someone else want to rush for the keyboard/notebook/back of the hand with a lumpy biro? There is the sitting alone in a black polo neck at the edge of a café type of option, but outside of certain tolerant and bohemian areas this kind of behaviour may elicit derisive nostril-snorting from passers-by and perhaps murmurs of Tosser, accompanied by non-lethal assaults – which is fair enough, really. If you’re lucky, published and better at small talk than I am, you may happen upon the offer of an empty holiday home, Tuscan villa, artists’ colony or partially restored Bond-villain volcano lair in which to snuggle yourself and your muse away for some serious creating – but if you have a day job, friends, family, lovers, or value your sanity, then high levels of geographical isolation may not be for you. (Curiously, although I lack many of the elements reputedly essential to ‘having a life’, even I would baulk at being trapped in a picturesque setting far from conventional policing and then forcing myself to deal with the creative despair of others, tetchy sculptors, the horrors of communal dining and perhaps compulsory soirées with Lady Tabitha and her rare-breed llamas. It’s bad enough trying to type in my study.)

  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find more interesting avenues and areas of inspiration arise from a mental commitment to find everything inspirational. This means my environment need not change, but my mindset undoubtedly may. And it’s really cheap. I’m not saying this is anything like perfect in practice, but if I can approach my life with some kind of interested enthusiasm, then it can become inspirational. (Sounds appallingly self-helpy, doesn’t it? But, once again, I would emphasise – cheap and convenient.)

  To fling in a practical example, the very excellent gentleman and decorator who painted my mother’s bathroom is also a falconer. This made it not entirely complicated or difficult for me to arrange a small encounter with, as it happened, a dapper and highly intelligent Harris hawk this week. The hawk could not have helped being fascinating, even if it had tried by wearing an anorak, or pretending to be a mallard. I have no idea if or when I will make use of Mr Hawk, but he will have rattled something somewhere which will eventually rattle something else and meanwhile it was a blast to meet him. Please note that the being inspired by everything option does offer the handy and acceptable-even-to-Calvinists effect of generating treats of this kind, for purely professional reasons. It’s not really fun with Mr Hawk – it’s work. Plus, the next time I talk to any writing students I can tell them about the way a hawk’s head and body are so very alert and flexible and mobile, while mentioning that their eyes have exactly the killer focus that you would expect from a focused killer. That level of focus in a writer might be no bad thing.

  And, talking of good eyes and focus, I was delighted to parcel myself off on Friday and visit the new perhaps-portrait of Shakespeare. Although soaking myself in Shakespeare every summer as a nipper made me want to be a writer, I still wasn’t sure what I’d get out of seeing his face (should it be his face), given that he remains dead and therefore unavailable for chats. But it was worth a whirl, just to see what would happen – and possibly to uncover what kind of a man his words had caused me to inadvertently assume he might be. As it turns out, the portrait, which is aesthetically pleasing in itself, does seem peculiarly convincing – the big and sad and clever eyes, the sexy mouth, the weak chin and exceptionally neat beard, the weirdly big hair, concealing a catastrophically retreating hairline. The overall effect chimes remarkably well with the Shakespeare I’ve built in my head. Whoever it is looks intelligent, interestingly risky and extremely alive. And to bring me back to our theme – in as far as we have one – being extremely alive is a real possibility for anyone intending to use, for instance, writing as an excuse for paying attention to their life.

  On a train again at the moment, I am heading for home with two small nubbins of inspiration, both of which are still settling and thumping against each other as they do so. I have an enlarged sense of Shakespeare as muscle and blood, as someone more and less than the words (whatever he looked like) and an odd little reminder of the risk in his writing, another angle on that big dark edge. I also have another angle on how grateful I am that other people wrote before me, gave me all kinds of things as a reader and allowed me to be (in a very small way) a writer – to have a profession when I was otherwise unemployable. And, thanks to the Harris hawk, A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind gets a whole new kick. Tomorrow I get to find something majestical and of use in washing and ironing a travel-week’s worth of clothes. Yeah, well, if I could actually do that, I’d be a majestical and useful author. As it is, I do what I can. Onwards.

  IV

  WELL, I KNOW I’m still here because I can feel me breathing – other than that, it’s all up for grabs. Since I last wrote I have, Dear Reader, been in Glasgow, Ullapool, Aberdeen, Oxford, London, Bakewell, Tissington and various bits of leafy Warwickshire. This is partly a continuation of my cunning plan to inspire the bejeezus out of myself with random experiences – Tissington involved well-dressing, for example. I had never seen a dressed well before and will henceforth be shocked if I meet a well in a state of undress. ‘Lawks-a-mercy!’ I shall cry. ‘A bare-nekkid well. I must avert my eyes.’

  Mainly, however, my travelling is a testament to the truly impressive number of literary festivals with which the UK now provides itself. All over the country, large and small organisations bring together appropriately sized numbers of readers and other interested parties to have, in the widest possible sense, literary experiences that are at the very least fun (if not inspiring) and which are woefully under-represented in the wider media. How long these particular gatherings will last is anybody’s guess as publishers cut expenses to the bone, through the bone and out to the threadbare trousering on the other side. (I was thinking of a leg bone. If you weren’t, you’re just going to have to imagine someone who can’t dress themselves proper, or picture a sleeve or other suitable habiliment all by yourself. I know you’ll manage.) Publishers currently subsidise travel and accommodation for many festival appearances, and withdrawing this support may mean some smaller festivals fold – which would be quietly tragic, because festivals kindle, meet and encourage a range of excellent things to do and be, which might otherwise simply remain undiscovered, or make a noise like a hoop and roll away for lack of support. At the very least, festivals add to the sum of human happiness and sell books.

  And, on a related topic, now The South Bank Show’s gone. Is this wise? I know SBS didn’t involve yelling or tits and was therefore unsuitable for British television, but I’ve met so many people who sat at home like me when they were nippers and/or teenagers and had their heads tickled open and their sanity saved by that show. There we were, possibly feeling we were slightly strange compared with our surroundings, and there Melvyn was with his
diddly theme tune and a weekly blast of things we’d guessed we might like and ended up loving. He also, perhaps more importantly, supplied bushels of stuff we’d never heard of, or might have avoided, and worlds and worlds of unimagined possibility – there other people were, imagining those possibilities; we could hear from them, see them. When I was young, unsure of most things, buried alive in Dundee and gave every sign of being unable to find a job that wouldn’t make me crazy and then fired, SBS was like getting a weekly jolt of oxygen and hope. It’s our loss if we let it go without at least an equivalent replacement and some kind of thank-you.

  No, it’s particularly the loss of the generation from whom we have already stolen an education system, a functioning and credible democracy and a variety of other things they might have found useful. It’s not that I like all children indiscriminately – some of them are appalling – but I would rather they didn’t grow up being more than averagely miserable and under-fulfilled.

  Meanwhile, and on a not-unrelated topic, let’s talk about Ullapool. It runs a great wee festival all the way up in the far(ish) North – next stop, Isle Martin and the Summer Isles – with the listeningest audiences I’ve ever met. It provided me with a weekend of talk and thought and a genuine sense of one long conversation/meditation being conducted over the course of consecutive events. The organisers looked after everyone extremely well with friendly attention to detail in a remarkable location. In that kind of environment writers can really get to know each other – and their audiences – and exchange ideas. (Most of us were too old or too married to exchange anything else – just think of sleeves; they’ll calm you if your mind was wandering to shady places.) Everyone there got to throw ideas around and appreciate a genuinely resourceful and imaginative community. And our final conclusion as a sunny Sunday eased its way towards lunch? That none of what we do would be worth doing or would really mean much without love.

  Dreadful, I know – but we’d got all relaxed and unparanoid and truthful and there it was: love. At which point I have to cough a lot and think about death to counteract any disturbing or embarrassing sensations of well-being.

  Death was, of course, present up in Ullapool – as it is everywhere else. I was forcibly reminded of the Reaper presence as I made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to rescue an unwell gannet on one of Ullapool’s beaches. Gannets, it turns out, are remarkably heavy birds and can be tetchy. I ended up simply having the thing die in my arms – after forty-five minutes of carriage – as I approached the outskirts of Ullapool. I feel you may agree that it is socially uncomfortable to meet a succession of strollers and dog walkers as you carry a suddenly stiffened, wings-outstretched and madly staring dead gannet. (Yes, and I didn’t know they do that when they die, either.)

  And please don’t write in. I was advised to try carrying it, had covered its head, had not chased it about . . . it was just a very poorly gannet. I have since received a surprisingly high number of gannet emails, gannet postcards and gannet-related items. Obviously, the idea of a gannet-bearing novelist catches the imagination, somehow. I can only say that divesting oneself of a large, very blue-eyed and rigid corpse at the edge of a small and inquisitive town is something I would not necessarily wish upon you. Onwards.

  V

  AH, DEAR READERS – I now know for sure and certain that, counted all together, you would add up to more than double figures. How do I know this? Because the disturbing gush of gannet-related items and communications has not abated, although I am now weeks away from the Ullapool Gannet Incident. (See previous post.) I can even identify chums out from amongst their surroundings and other faces (I am not good at facial recognition) because my pals will be the ones imitating dead gannets. That, or spasming, staring and simulated wing contortions are all side-effects of swine-flu and I have lately been chatting warmly to a number of infectious strangers. I do, after all, occasionally live in what we probably now have to call a Pandemic Hot Spot.

  The decision to move the official swine-flu description from epidemic to pandemic is, of course, interesting to a wordsmith. Epidemic suggests bodies in the street, plague pits and disease lurking in your cupboards and breathing-air. Pandemic sounds much worse, but is more about geography than numbers – although it’s about numbers too. So an initial response to pandemic which runs, ‘Ooh, Nelly, you mean we’re all going to die? This morning? I must laminate my children at once’, rapidly declines into – ‘Oh, just some people coughing in a number of different countries . . . right . . . So I can still sneeze on old ladies for a lark, then? And lick door knobs?’

  Medical language tends to be challenging – a word currently used as a shorthand for ‘If this problem doesn’t kill you, we probably will.’ I still remember that I missed my grandfather by half an hour because I was unable to translate quite poorly into could die at any moment. Not that I in any way lack admiration for people who spend parts of most days having to say (or obliquely hint) to other people that someone they care for very much will be leaving this earthly plane directly. See? Hard to talk about death. Hard to say – ‘She’s dead. He’s already started decomposing. Her digestive system has begun digesting itself – as, eventually, yours will – unless you fall into a volcano, or experience some especially unusual demise. Oh, and try to avoid those big, sucky in-breaths when you pass the crematorium.’

  Meanwhile, August is looming and so my director and I trotted out the one-person show about writing again for an evening at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. We had a very pleasant and appreciative audience, although possibly the fact that the room was hot enough to vaporise lead may mean that we’ll be medically challenged in later life. This was the first time I’ve done ‘Words’ in a space roughly equivalent to the one in Edinburgh and without a mike – so lots to think about and have fun with. It’s been fascinating, working on my literal voice again for a while (in order to be audible and flexible) and seeing that work slowly have an effect on the ‘voice’ on the page.

  I’ve always been in favour of writers working with their voices. Although we are usually fugitive creatures, often grating (at best) in person and rambling of tongue, writers will almost inevitably end up reading their work in public for many pressing financial reasons. This will very often involve standing in a space specifically designed to make spoken-word events impossible and to irritate all parties involved. There will be noise, there will be atrocious sight-lines, there will be non-functioning mikes, there will be wild pigs in the foyer . . . you simply have to accept that nothing will run smoothly. Meanwhile, as the writer, you have to make the experience as nice as possible for the ladies and gentlemen (I never like kiddies to hear my versions of adult life, in case they become disheartened and go all Tin Drum and stunted) who have turned out for the event. Your audience may even have paid money for the reading to happen at them.

  Trying to please your audience is not only polite – it’s also deeply practical. If a writer can experience their words being enjoyed by others, can make strangers laugh, or go ‘Hmmmmm . . .’ or sigh, or cry, or clap, or sit – alarmingly – with eyes closed in an attitude of profound concentration, sleep, or death, then the writer can feel more confidence in his or her words and move forward with them. This short-circuits something of that ‘playing alone with fake strangers for the benefit of real strangers’ aspect of the typing life. Of course, a good reading style can partially conceal the fact that your writing is rubbish – but the aim would be to have your preparation perhaps lead you to reassess and improve your words, to have your desire to touch others enlarge your words and then your presentation assist your words.

  And if that all sounds as if we have passed briskly into the Enthusiastically Sticky zone of the Self-Love Continuum, then let us consider the dark side of the equation – the gangly young author trembles behind an unreliable lectern, his or her hands shake, pages fall to the floor, are scrambled after and then reassembled in the wrong order. There is an excruciating pause before his or her strangled voice stumbles
dryly through a mangling PA system and manages to make shiny, lovely words into a numbing wash of communal shame and boredom. Ten minutes are transformed into an ugly and debilitating lifetime, after which the author plods limply off to the sound of one hand clapping, vowing never to write again.

  Which would be what we don’t want. Onwards.

  VI

  THE POST BELOW refers to the anthology What Becomes.

  When my first novel was published there was a small and helpful burst of accompanying publicity which, nevertheless, caused me to feel suddenly exposed, examined and poised on the lip of some horrible pit of compensatory doom – today The Guardian profile, tomorrow the freak case of galloping leprosy/lycanthropy/demonic possession. In an effort to comfort me, a friend of mine remarked, ‘Never mind, it’ll all be back to normal soon.’ I remember the evening clearly, because it also involved his pouring the contents of a box of Trill down my collar and my chasing him up the street. (We were young, he had a budgie, seed-throwing was popular, all the cool kids were doing it . . .) Of course, my life never did get back to normal, and during weeks like the last one my chum still calls and sepulchrally announces, ‘Never mind, it’ll all . . .’ while I yowl with busyness and tiredness and all the side-effects of still having a job when many others don’t, and being able to earn a living as a writer when many others also don’t. It seems ungracious to complain, but there are weeks that exceed even my capacity to anticipate extreme workloads, sleep-deprivation, train travel and the naggingly persistent sense that any media exposure will inevitably lead to a hideous disaster of some especially unnameable sort.