We writers are emotional beings. We live in our heads but our emotions rule.
Perhaps it is because we spend so much time living our characters' lives, feeling their joys and sorrows and getting angry or sad for them. We journey through their roads of despair and frustration when we make things go wrong in their lives - as they always must, or there would be no story to tell.
For that very reason it is only on rare occasions that we can share their elation and joy when everything is going well. Because as soon as we do we are plotting ways to make it all go horribly wrong again.
While all these emotional roller coasters are swooping around in our heads as we play God with our characters, in the big world outside we have families, commitments and other pressures to contend with.
As if that was not enough there are the emotional highs and lows, the joys and frustrations of being a writer....
8.30am Full of enthusiasm for the day, determined that lots will get written which will, without doubt turn out to be a bestseller.
9.00am Phone call from publisher who says YES! to a new book- Celebratory wild dance around the house- until a neighbour is looking strangely at you through the window. Make coffee and prepare to start writing.
10.00 Notice that someone has written a scathing review on Amazon - depths of despair.
11.00 An invitation arrives by email to take part in a great new project, praises abound for your skill and expertise. no one else will do.
12.00 The morning is over and not a word written - It is surely all rubbish anyway- can't write at all, should give it all up. Decide to give it one last try and find the flow.... just as the phone rings.
1pm It is a call from mother she is unwell and needs to be taken to the doctor, NOW!
2pm Check email on phone while at doctor's to discover there has been a spelling error on an advertising brochure for a festival you have been invited to. Unfortunately thousands have been printed already calling you not a writer but a Best Selling WILTER! You check the dictionary to find out what a wilter is.
3pm Arrive home determined to get an hour or two of solid writing before the day beco
How often do you play? In your work, I mean? In your writing, if that's what you do?
Most writers start out, I think, by 'playing' at writing - however young or old we may be at the time. In those early days, writing is probably a hobby - perhaps an escape from real life in the form of a dull or demanding job and/or a challenging home life. At the beginning, we are often bursting with enthusiasm and ideas, and what we lack is the space, time and (perhaps) expertise to get them into shape.
If we persevere and have a hefty dose of luck, we may end up earning something for our efforts. In the past, if not so much so today, some writers could make a part-time or even a full-time career out of it. If they were
very lucky, they might even become rich, though of course most never did, however good they were.
The danger is that as our writing careers progress, it's so easy to lose that intial sense of fun and play. Writing becomes the thing we
have to do - either to please a publisher or even just ourselves. I'm all in favour of self-discipline - the 'sit down at your desk at 9am (if only!) so the muse knows where to find you' and the 'minimum word count per day' frame of mind. Mostly, these things work for me. But it's when I lose that sense of play that trouble looms.
I've experienced this before, way back in another life, when I studied for a PhD and then became a researcher and, eventually, a university lecturer. As a student, my research was mostly fun. OK, I was lucky - I know that PhDs can sometimes be a terrible slog. But I happened upon a topic that fascinated me, had a good supervisor and made encouraging progress from the start. My main problem was combining this with caring for two young children. Not easy, but still, on the whole, satisfying and fun.
The fun continued when I gained an EPSRC research fellowhip for three years to do postdoctoral research. In fact that was eaiser, as it was actually a 2-year fellowship spread out over three years, which suited me fine.
The trouble started after that. My marriage broke up, which didn't help. I spent a year looking for a job in the city where my ex worked so my children could see us both. After months of struggling to get by, doing tutoring and gardening and PhD supervision, often all at the same time (well, in the same morning, anyway), I managed to get a lectureship at a unviersity. Perfect - except that I was now so busy, with several hours' commuting each day, a high teaching load, masses of admin, supervising students, giving pastoral advice, etc etc etc - my research slid into the back seat. It was no longer fun - and all my creativity dried up. It became something I had to do - in order to keep my job - and something I had to do well. In the odd hour or so between other commitments, I had to come up with earth-shaking new projects and theories. Hmmm....
The human brain just doesn't work that way. Or mine doesn't. A move south (the children older now) and a new job helped a bit at first, but the pattern was soon reestablished and the commute even longer. What's more, I now had an invalid mother-in-law waiting for me with all her demands when I got home - and two teenage step-children. Then my mother died and my father (110 miles away) became very ill. Something had to give and it was my health. I had a breakdown and was very lucky to be offered early retirement on a small pension, which put me in a position (just) of being able to fulfil my lifelong dream and spend my time writing.
That was wonderful - and still is. But just recently, six years on, writing has begun to feel l
Three years ago, I moved to a beautiful town by the sea. Now I’m here, I can’t imagine ever living in a place where I can’t look at,walk alongside or play in the sea every day.
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| What I need a bit of every day |
Part of my obsession with the ocean is that I love surfing (orattempting to surf), swimming and messing around in boats. Ialso write books about mermaids so it’s handy for writing inspiration. But it’s only recently that I’ve realised that, actually, itall goes a lot deeper than that.
With its waves and its swells and its tides, the sea beats a rhythm that I see reflected everywhere. And in doing so, it makes me realise that the crazy roller coaster swirls of life are not crazy swirls at all. They are, in fact, the patterns that lie at the heart of everything.
I am particularly fascinated by tides, by what they do, by their regularity, their predictability, their patterns. Without getting too technical, here is a tiny mini lesson in tides...
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels, caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun, and the rotation of the earth. We have two high tides and two low tides each day. The reason for this is to do with the earth moving round the sun and the moon moving round the earth. High tides and low tides relate to the time it takes for these rotations to take place, and the journey from high to low and back again takes approximately twelve hours and twenty five minutes.
OK, lesson over; let's cut back to the seaside town. Tides make a huge difference to what goes on here. For example, on a low tide, I can take the dog for a beautiful long beach walk. On a high tide, she will scamper onto the tiny scrap of sand that is visible and whimper with fear as the waves brush her legs. (So much for her pirate dog status!)
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| Poppy the Pirate Dog enjoying low tide walkies |
On a low tide, the harbour sits quietly, full of stranded boats. On a high tide, the fishermen can go out and make a living.
23 Comments on Writing On The Tides, last added: 4/10/2012
I am fascinated by the creative process, particularly when I'm not engaged in it. The more I think about it and try to pin it down the weirder it seems. Do you picture a scene before you write it and then describe what you see or do you bring the scene into being by the act of writing, the words themselves populating your brain with images? Do you hear the voices and try to cpature them or do characters only speak as the words tumble onto the page? I think for me the words precede thought, or at least that's what it feels like. I never know what is going to happen until it emerges somehow or other from my incompetent careless fingers. But words definitely make pictures in my head so that in editing I can take a closer look, re examine a shadowy figure and discover that he has black hair, that his shirt is crimson, that he holds a damascene blade in his left hand and that his nails are painted the colour of ripe plums. I always thought that this process of writing was the same for all writers, but of course it isn't. I am intrigued to discover that many people know what they are going to write before they start, that some people don't picture what they write at all and others are haunted by the disemboided voices of characters they have never met, though they may just be the mad ones. It isn't much discussed, this actual business of envisaging or creating perhaps because it is so hard to describe, the moments of making things up are fleeting, the ideas, intangible.At times writing comes close to lucid dreaming at others it is more like constructing a flat pack wardrobe from IKEA - one of the ones with the key piece missing- and doing it blindfold. And another thing is this imagining universal or is it only writers or painters who work this way? When people ask where we get our ideas from is it because they don't have them? Doesn't everyone sit and extrude images, places people, pulling them like rabbits from a hat of our imagining or gathering them like candy floss on a stick. Are we writers particularly strange or is it just that we, spending long hours staring into space, are more inclined to notice? Any ideas?
I have two very different takes on the creative process to share today: obstruction and freedom. They may seem like opposites, but I think they can both benefit creative people.
Obstructions are the limits that other people set on what we can do. I first came across this idea a good few years ago when I watched Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions in which von Trier challenged his friend and mentor, Jorgen Leth to remake the same short film five times, each time with an arbitrarily imposed obstruction. Lars chose the obstructions, naturally, and they ranged from technical (one short could only be made up of sections that were 12 frames long) to the emotional (another short had to be filmed in the worst place in the world). It should have been a disaster, but Leth rose to the challenge and, for the most part, the short films he produces are sublime. In each case, it is the obstructions that inspire Leth to try harder, to think bigger, to be bold.
Freedoms, on the other hand, are what you have when no-one is looking over your shoulder. When an idea comes, characters take shape, words spring and there are no deadlines and contracts and editors. Freedom is what you have when writing is done simply for pleasure. It is often the thing that self-publishers will guard jealously.
This week I attended a meeting for a writing project that comes laden with obstructions - it is for the educational market. There will be no violence, no dangerous activities, no pigs, no swearing. There will be a phonics list. I might have felt the weight of a depressing constraint. But I didn't. Instead, I felt challenged - how do you make a story exciting if it also has to be safe? How can I keep readers asking for 'just one more chapter' if it all has to be written in phoneme-decodable language?
Actually, I found myself bristling with ideas. By setting up obstructions, the publishers are forcing me to think harder, to be ingenious.
Next week, I'm attending a writer's retreat. That will be all freedom (even the freedom to lie around in bed eating biscuits all day, if I want). I won't be doing any contracted writing. I hope that it will be invigorating and luxurious. It is just this kind of freedom that keeps writing fresh for me.
And just to illustrate how good things can be with a bit of obstruction, here's Jorgen Leth's 'cartoon perfect human':
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23 Comments on Writing On The Tides, last added: 4/10/2012
I like this - very helpful!
Me too! ;)