clareodea

Caught looking for the best bits

Oct 22, 2013by clareodea6 Comments

It is surprising, when you say you are writing, who is interested in seeing the manuscript and who is not. Some people are (understandably) afraid your work will be terrible and they will have to damn it with faint praise. Others are genuinely not interested.

In my writing course I have got used to sharing extracts from my book and hearing feedback. It’s been a helpful and positive experience. It’s also been stimulating to listen to other people’s work in progress, as much to get a sense of what’s going on behind good writing as to learn more about the common pitfalls.

The other day, in advance of my next reading slot coming up in the writing course, I was with my writing buddy in the most unfashionable café in county Dublin, scanning my chapters trying to pick out the right excerpt to share.

What to choose? I interrupt my writing buddy for the fifteenth time that hour and hope that look does not mean he is rethinking our weekly arrangement of writing together. Well, he says, are you sifting through your novel looking for the best passages? Cue guilty smile. And what if I am?

The problem with writing a novel, I have realised, is that every page has to work and that requires great persistence and attention to detail. Nobody will wade through the clunky bits to get to a gem they don’t even know is there.

And the other thing about the best bits – they’re probably not that great after all. I think Samuel Johnson may have hit the nail on the head in the 18th century.

“Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

About writing

Bowing to good advice

Oct 9, 2013Oct 9, 2013by clareodea14 Comments

When you’ve wanted to write for a long time and you finally get started, something wonderful happens. If you’re lucky it can be like striking oil. You hit the seam and the ideas come gushing out – characters, storylines, scenes and themes flow onto the page in great abundance.

But, like an oil gusher, things can get very messy very quickly.

And you’re so happy about the oil, you hardly notice.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been offered some very good advice from various quarters – and it hasn’t been easy. In particular, I was talking to a good friend who knows her stuff when it comes to writing. She listened to me describe the knots I’ve been tangled up in on the second draft.

I’m passing on her advice, in case it applies to any other first-timers who might find it helpful. With all that’s going on in my novel, I had been finding it difficult to make the most important themes and storylines rise above all the rest. The deadline to enter the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair is approaching fast and in my heart I knew something was not right in my manuscript.

My friend hit the nail on the head when she pointed out I had too many themes. Write down all the themes, she said, and decide which ones are central to what the book is about. Many of the others can be taken out and saved for another time, another place.

Of course I knew she was right but I was scared of the implications of this advice. It took me several attempts to even begin the process of cutting and I started to waver. What if it just couldn’t be done and the story wouldn’t work anymore? What if it was too late to change?

But I’m happy to report that I did find the courage and the insight to make the big changes. And things are looking a lot better now. Now for the next challenge – the synopsis!

About writing, Book reviews

Famous last words

Sep 29, 2013Jun 16, 2016by clareodea7 Comments

How many of you are bold enough to read the ending of a book before beginning it? I might take an occasional guilty peek but only when a novel begins to drag. As a rule I am an obedient reader and let the author lead the way. Also when I am enjoying a book, the ending becomes ever more precious and I want to appreciate the full power of the finale.

There is a popular notion that a writer has to capture his or her potential reader on the first page. With all the emphasis on the opening of a novel, I haven’t been giving that much thought to endings but as far as any lasting impression of a book goes, the ending has more weight. It is the place where you are likely to hear the author’s voice most clearly and often find the real message of the book.

To the most recent example: I have just finished On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, a wonderful depiction of lost love. The private hell of the newlyweds’ wedding night is beautifully portrayed but it is the row on the beach after Florence and Edward’s doomed attempt at lovemaking that broke this reader’s heart. The two main characters are trapped in an escalating argument where they find themselves saying the most hurtful and reckless things to each other, simply because honesty is impossible.

So it makes perfect sense to me that McEwan ends the novel back at the beach on that fateful night, with the message that not even a lifetime of regret can undo the consequences of our actions, or in this case, inaction.

On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. … Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer’s dusk, watching her hurry along the shore, the sound of her difficult progress lost to the breaking of small waves, until she was a blurred, receding point against the immense straight road of shingle gleaming in the pallid light.

Here are a few more endings for your enjoyment:

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Gatwick airport is not the best place to be gripped by a fear of flying. But it seems that this is what is happening to me now; because you are up so high, in those things, and there is such a long way to fall. Then again, I have been falling for months. I have been falling into my own life, for months. And I am about to hit it now.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

And I thought of a cresting wave of water, lit by a moon, rushing past and vanishing upstream, pursued by a band of yelping students whose torchbeams criss-crossed in the dark.
There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

A rare surge of feeling, of something like vindication, came from the pit of his belly and spread out till it sang in his veins. As he stood with his hands in his pockets, staring out over the sleeping city, over its darkened wheels and spires and domes, Veals laughed.

I’ve got to say McEwan with his “cold and righteous silence” is my favourite here but maybe that’s because I’m still under the spell of the book.

(Image courtesy of arztsamui at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

About Ireland, About writing

Switching the novel to sustainable energy

Sep 18, 2013by clareodea6 Comments

You know that feeling when you just make it to a socket at the last moment before your laptop dies? That’s how I felt crossing the threshold of the Irish Writers’ Centre on Monday. It’s going to be OK.

This novel that provided its own fuel for the first year has been draining me since then and needs to be switched to sustainable energy. What better source than the positive energy of fellow writers? I want to get the manuscript into the best possible shape and send it on its way to make room for the next book. This course is the boost I’ve been looking for.

Somewhat dishevelled from the blustery walk up O’Connell Street, I held my paper cup of tea and looked around in excitement and wonder. These people, I realised, are just like me and finally we have come out of the woodwork. We’ve been squirrelling away words for months or years, storing up the stories we want to tell. Now is our chance.

I had the experience of reading out the opening of the book to a group for the first time and it went well. My relationship to the work is different now that it’s been exposed a little. That feeling of working in a vacuum is gone and I can see more clearly now what needs to be done. The feedback was encouraging and useful, under the kind and expert guidance of Conor Kostick.

Even though I didn’t have to use my one-line pitch last night, here is what I have come with. I realise I have two lines here but surely the concept is not that literal? It’s also possible that I have veered towards writing the blurb rather than the pitch. Do they necessarily have to differ?

Set in boom-time Ireland, this is a story about people, what they bring to our lives and what they take away. Haunted by the disappearance of her brother years before, when Laura is caught up in an emotional and professional disaster, she has to find new faith in family, friendship and love.

I may have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

About Ireland, About writing

Climb every mountain, or not

Sep 11, 2013by clareodea5 Comments

In a fit of irrational exuberance just before I left Switzerland I booked tickets for three events at the Dun Laoghaire book festival Mountains to Sea. I took one look at the line-up and lost the plot, so to speak. Margaret Atwood (exclamation mark, exclamation mark), I cried. Téa Obreht (exclamation mark, exclamation mark), I added breathlessly. Oh and look Jennifer Johnston at lunchtime (click on two more tickets).

A while later back in Dun Laoghaire and real life, it quickly became apparent that I couldn’t spend week two of my big trip to Ireland waltzing from literary event to literary event. There were other things to consider, not least of which was settling the children into their new school and temporary new home.

In the end all I can boast is that these writers I admire were just down the road from me, a mere eight-minute cycle or 24-minute walk away.

But every bookshelf has a silver lining. On Saturday afternoon, miraculously and unexpectedly, I did manage to attend a festival talk called New Voices – with my three year old. We had to hop in and out of the room a bit to keep the peace but I came home motivated and encouraged, mainly by the contributions of Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, author of Back to Blackbrick, and agent Caroline Walsh from David Higham Associates. My daughter was equally happy with her blue Mountains to Sea balloon.

It’s the first time I’ve heard a real live agent speak and it was reassuring to see that she was no big bad wolf. What struck me about Walsh’s submission advice was that it was all familiar. There is no secret formula for getting published. Agents are just looking for good work and a professional attitude. Walsh’s agency gets 60 submissions a week and they take on 12 new authors a year! Anyone who goes up against those odds has to be an optimist.

Moore Fitzgerald spoke about self-belief and how to hang on to it. A successful academic, what put her off writing fiction for so long was the perceived impossibility of the challenge. She warned against sharing too soon and reminded the audience that ragged first drafts are not meant to be compared to award-winning published works.

Next Monday I will be making my way to the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin city centre to start the Finish Your Novel writing course. By hook or by crook I will have my one-line killer pitch ready by then!

About Ireland, The everyday

The great sea escape

Sep 6, 2013Sep 6, 2013by clareodea5 Comments

Since I arrived back to live temporarily in Dublin I can’t get enough of the sea and its show-stopping other half, the sky. We are all products of our environment no matter where we come from and that makes me a coastal person. There’s a feeling of being on the edge of something vast and mysterious. The sea is an ever-changing story – welcoming one day and threatening the next.

Gazing out over the sparkling waves again, I am struck by how inaccurate the term insular is. On an island you are always looking out, not in. You are confronted with the limits of your existence, exposed to the beauty and cruelty of nature. You cannot help but dream about the world beyond the horizon.

The sea is a powerful presence. It calls us back when we go away. One day maybe we’ll find out what it has to tell us.

About Ireland, The everyday

You’re looking fierce well altogether

Aug 28, 2013by clareodea3 Comments

This phrase, which I overheard on the street today in Dun Laoghaire, adds great flourish and emphasis to the standard ‘you’re looking very well’. You can also be fierce upset or fierce busy in Ireland. In my first week back I am feeling fierce well altogether myself.

Maybe it’s the street where we are staying, ten minutes’ walk from my childhood home and from the sea.

Or the morning we spent on the sea shore, climbing the rocks and looking for crabs.

Being there for my little nephew’s birthday.

My membership card for the Irish Writers’ Centre arriving in the post.

Bumping into old friends at the Sunday market in the park.

Sitting out in the back garden with my mother and knowing that for a change we have time on our side.

About writing

What’s the book about?

Aug 20, 2013Aug 20, 2013by clareodea19 Comments

Now there’s a question to get an aspiring writer sweating. Since I started writing in earnest and gradually educating myself about the world of writing, I’ve discovered there are lots of extremely important rules out there. I’m not talking about mere guidelines; I’m talking about make-or-break, tarnish-your-name-forever-should-you-break-them rules.

Naturally it is understood that anybody exceptionally talented can disregard all the rules because the brilliance of their writing will override any other considerations but it is also understood that the newbies listening to the oracle dispensing the rules do not fall into that category of genius.

Last November in the draughty bar of a Co Wicklow hotel with a British soap character giving birth at top volume on the television in the background, a friend of mine leaned across his third cup of tea and told me one of the most basic and sacred of rules of all. Figure out what your book is about and learn to articulate that idea in one line.

When you get hit with the big question, you do not, as I had done earlier that evening, ramble or search for words. You do not use the phrase ‘well it’s about this woman who …’ .Neither do you start to list the early plot points like a random chain of events. What you do is delivery your pre-prepared killer synopsis: It’s a coming-of-age story set in a 19th century Boston brewery during the great beer strike with an unlikely heroine, the head cooper’s teenage mistress who was born in a coffin ship. For example.

After that you will be confident enough to field any follow-up questions. The danger, my friend explained, is that if you cannot effectively describe what your book is about, then you might be in a naked emperor situation. You might just have written thousands of words about nothing in particular, producing a meandering story which is all flesh and no skeleton, all paths and no map, all filling and no crust. Well you get the idea.

I’m fresh from a book club gathering last night where we discussed the remarkable first novel by Téa Obreht – The Tiger’s Wife. (Yes, she is one of those who can disregard the rules). Here is a book that knits together vibrant strands of stories over many decades and explores numerous big themes – war, death, guilt, Balkan history and folklore, a grandparent-grandchild relationship, the outcast in society, enduring love. I could go on. I’d say the author had trouble summing the book up in one line when she was writing it but that’s neither here nor there. I’m looking forward to finding out more about Obreht when I attend her talk at the Mountains to Sea festival in Dun Laoghaire next month.

Meanwhile I will keep mulling over my one line.

About writing, The everyday

‘Hold on, I just have to answer this’

Aug 16, 2013Aug 16, 2013by clareodea5 Comments

It’s taken a fortnight of messages back and forth to arrange an afternoon meeting with my busy friend. Finally she’s pouring me a cup of tea in her over-decorated sitting room and we have each other’s undivided attention until the nanny returns with the children from the park in an hour.

Time is short so I skip the opening chit chat about plans for the summer holidays. I’ve always trusted her judgment and I have something important to tell her. It’s about Charles, I begin. I really don’t know what I’m going to do …

There’s a knock at the door and I close my mouth mid-sentence while she deals with the interruption. I take small sips of my tea feigning patience while she opens the envelope she has just been handed. Could she not have waited until I was gone?

Then with a little guilty look, the letter fluttering in her beautifully manicured hand, she jumps up. “Hold on,” she says, “I just have to answer this,” and before I can say a word she is scribbling a note at her writing desk by the window.

Sound familiar? That little scene I wrote for fun is set in London in the 1890s. Believe or not there were between six and 12 postal deliveries per day in the city at that time (depending on the area) which meant correspondents could exchange multiple letters within a single day.

What did they write about? The same things we do, I suppose. With such a high frequency of communication, the residents of Victorian London probably also wrote their fair share of banal messages along the lines of: “what are you wearing tonight?” or “can you pick up cough syrup on your way home?”

As a new smartphone user I am getting used to constant interruptions with SMS, email and social media notifications. I’m not sure I like the dependency that’s creeping in. When I’m out of earshot of my phone I automatically check the screen when I come back to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

If I hear the little chime from my bag when I’m with someone, I can’t let many minutes go by without checking the message. I try to resist the temptation to respond immediately but can’t say for sure that I haven’t occasionally asked a friend to hold on while I answered a message.

The expectation is there that we will respond to each other rapidly. Unanswered texts, direct messages and mails buzz around in the back of my mind like restless wasps. I’m afraid if I don’t answer promptly I might break communication law by forgetting to answer at all!

The Victorians loved their books of etiquette. Maybe it’s time someone wrote a survival guide for the smartphone era. Any takers?

The everyday

Carry each other

Aug 12, 2013by clareodeaLeave a Comment

When was the last time you carried someone? Maybe you carried a sleeping child to bed, helped an elderly parent into the car, or lifted a barefoot friend over hot sand. Part of our lot as human beings is to carry each other; we are carried before we come into the world and our bodies are carried to a final resting place at the end.

Of the thousands of news stories that have flashed along my optic nerve, there is one scene that stays with me. It takes place on a suburban street. A man and his adult daughter get out of a car and turn to speak to the waiting media. The distraught young woman collapses and the man scoops her up and carries her into a house. The scene was over in a few seconds. She was a young mother whose baby had been kidnapped. Thankfully the baby was found safe and well.

There was something so beautiful and tender in that image of the man carrying his daughter, helpless in her despair. But most of the carrying we do is unseen. It happens in private – between partners, family members and friends.

For all the people who are carrying someone right now, using every last ounce of strength and patience to support a loved one through a difficult time, don’t give up. For those leaning hard on the people close to them, your time will come around again.

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