Robinson Crusoe's Airplane

I recently heard mention of a book called How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by a man called Pierre Bayard. The title reminded me of the UK politician who was famously asked what he was going to do now that he had some free time. He replied that he was going to read Ian McEwen’s brilliant new novel. Now, he hadn’t actually started reading the book at this point but he had already made up his mind that it was brilliant. Why? Because he’d heard other people saying so and, being a man who liked to appear knowledgeable, he was more than ready to join in the chorus of praise. That’s what happens when you see a book as a badge of cultural rank instead of as something to be enjoyed.

Of course at one time or another most people, myself included, have tried to pretend they knew about something they were secretly ignorant of. But it doesn’t look good when you get found out. And what a shame to turn books into trophies in this way! It takes all the fun out of reading. Novels become like cod liver oil – something to consume, not because you really want to, but because they’re good for you,.

A few years ago I was asked to speak at a Literary Festival in South London. One particular member of the audience was determined to pick a fight with me.

‘Don’t you think that novels for teenagers are a waste of time?’ she began.

‘Well, no I don’t, obviously, since I write them,’ I replied.

‘When I was a teenager, I was reading Jane Austen, Dickens and Thomas Hardy,’ she said, emphatically.

‘Well I expect that plenty of teenagers read those authors now,’ I pointed out, ‘but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for books that reflect the current experience of young people.’

‘But why do we have to keep dumbing down all the time?’ she demanded.

I suggested, politely enough, that I didn’t think my books were dumbed down at all. But I was wasting my breath. On and on she went, complaining that young people weren’t being stretched. She kept talking about her own teenage appreciation of literature and how much she had gained from it, though I couldn’t help feeling that it hadn’t improved her powers of empathy one little bit.

Surely literature should be something to celebrate, not to boast about, or to make other people feel inferior? Remember that sensation of losing yourself so completely in a story that when you stop reading, you look around, dazed for a few moments, as reality reasserts itself. You know you’ve got to put the book away or you’ll be late for your appointment, but it feels almost painful. And all the time you're away from it, the story is still going on in your head, calling you back so that you can’t wait to pick up the book once more. That’s why we read books, not so that we can boast about them, or use them to make other people feel inferior.

This is what I wanted to say to the woman at the festival but of course I only thought of it afterwards. At the time I was too busy trying not to be rude.

I recall a conversation that took place many years ago when I was at Primary School. A number of children were talking about the things they’d done and seen during their Summer vacation. There was one poor boy whose parents never took him anywhere. But he was determined not to be outdone. He waited until there was a gap in the conversation, then he piped up with, ‘My dad took me to see Robinson Crusoe’s airplane.’

The rest of us looked at him in complete bewilderment. Nobody bothered to point out that Robinson Crusoe was a fictional character or that there was no airplane in his story. We just nodded, saddened even at ten years old, by such a desperate need to gain status. Thank goodness we’ve all grown up since that time. Or at least some of us have.

Writers' Heaven

For the past week I have been reading the first three chapters of a series of novels. This is because I’m on the judging panel for entrants to the Apprenticeships In Fiction scheme. (You can find out more about it by clicking on the link on this page labelled Mentoring for Writers).

The course programme involves the chosen writers getting professional help to bring their work up to a publishable standard. So, in addition to submitting the first three chapters of their novel, they also have to prepare statements about how they see themselves tackling the year of work that lies ahead.

The thing that often strikes me on these occasions is how few of the candidates really understand the amount of work involved in writing a novel that is fit to be published. You don’t just write one draft; you don’t just write two drafts; you don’t just write three drafts. You go on and on fiddling with the damn thing until you reach the point where you are ready to murder anyone who suggest you make any more changes. That’s what it takes

Then afterwards, when you’re finished, what’s the next stage? Relaxing beside a pool in the Mediterranean? A world tour? Your own chat show? None of these, I’m afraid. The first thing you do after you sign a contract with a publisher is start thinking about your next book. There’s a well-known joke about a writer on his death bed which sums the situation up very neatly in my opinion. Apologies if you’ve heard it before.

An author was lying on his deathbed when the Angel of Death appeared. 'I don't know whether you realise this,' the angel began, 'but God is a big reader.'

'Really?' asked the author.

'Oh yes!' the angel replied. 'She runs our Heavenly Book Group and she's particularly keen on your work. So keen in fact, that She has sent me down to earth to offer you a choice. You can go to hell or heaven. So what's it to be?'

Now. the author had signed too many publishing contracts to make a rash decision. So he thought about his options for a while. Finally he said, ‘I think I’d like to see exactly what these two places have to offer before making my choice. Would that be acceptable?’

The angel sighed. ‘You authors are all the same,’ he said. ‘Always looking for a better deal. Very well, I will grant your request but you must realise that though there are many heavens and many hells, I can only show you Writers’ Heaven and Writers’ Hell since that is what your life on earth has prepared you for.’

With these words, the angel flapped his wings once, twice and in an instant the author found himself standing upon the brink of a vast pit in which row upon row of writers were chained to their desks, typing away furiously. As they did so, they were whipped and tormented endlessly by grinning demons while other, smaller imps sat upon their shoulders and filled their ears with a stream of mindless chatter.

The author was horrified. ‘So this is Writers’ Hell!’ he gasped. ‘It is a truly dreadful place! Take me to heaven, quickly, for I can stand no more of this!’

‘As you wish,’ the angel replied. He flapped his wings once, twice and in an instant the author found himself standing outside the gates of heaven. The gates were shining with a cold radiance but when the author peered inside he saw, to his dismay, row upon row of writers chained to their desks, typing away furiously. As they did so they were whipped and tormented endlessly by grinning demons while other, smaller imps sat upon their shoulders and filled their ears with a stream of mindless chatter.

The author turned to the Angel of Death in fury. ‘Is this some sort of trick?’ he demanded.

The angel shook his head. ‘There is no trick, I can assure you,’ he replied.

‘But this is just the same as hell!’ the author pointed out.

The angel smiled a patient smile. ‘You authors have such unrealistic expectations,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. The difference between Writers’ Hell and Writers’ Heaven is quite simple. Up here, in Writers’ Heaven, the authors get their books published.’

Eating Humble Pie

The other day I was walking home with a friend who is a visual artist. ‘What are you doing at the moment, Brian?’ she asked me. ‘Oh I’m just finishing the re-writes on my latest novel,’ I told her. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked. ‘Well,’ I explained, ‘when the first draft of my novel is finished, I send it to my editor and she reads it, suggests a series of changes that need to be made and then sends it back to me for re-drafting.’

My friend stopped in her tracks and looked at me in horror. ‘But how dare she!’ she exclaimed. I stared back at her in bewilderment, wondering if I’d said something I hadn’t intended. ‘How dare she!’ repeated my friend, positively bristling with indignation. ‘I mean, it’s your novel, right? Who the hell does she think she is telling you how to write it?’

I considered embarking on an explanation of the art of editing but decided I was probably wasting my time. My friend is a fully paid up member of the school that sees the artist as a semi-divine being whose unique vision must never be tampered with, even to the slightest degree. There are a lot of people who believe this – particularly in the field of contemporary visual art.

The truth is that good writing is about communication not mystification and the first person a writer needs to communicate with is his or her editor. So if your editor thinks your your second chapter is a bit stodgy, then maybe it’s worth looking at it again. It’s that simple.

One of the most famous examples of creative editing is, of course, Ezra Pound’s work on T S Eliot’s The Wasteland. Most people agree that T S Eliot was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, if not the greatest. The original draft of his poem, The Wasteland, was over twice the length of the final version. The cuts were made largely at the suggestion of fellow-poet Ezra Pound, to whom Eliot sumbitted the work for editing. Was the integrity of Eliot’s vision lost in the process? Clearly not.

Eliot had the wisdom to take on board Pound’s suggestions. Not all authors are as accomodating. I once overheard a fellow writer at a publishing party saying, with considerable self-satisfaction, ‘I told my editor, I’ve never written a book by committee yet and I don’t intend to start now’. He was an author for whom I had a great deal of respect but I saw immediately that he was probably a real pain to work with and I can’t help noticing that his sales figures have been on the slide for a number of years now.

I have a certain amount of first hand experience of what it’s like being an editor since I take part in a number of schemes to help developing writers. I do this because I believe I have something to contribute and because I enjoy it. I certainly don’t do it for the financial reward which is often fairly minimal. But every now and again I encounter an aspiring writer who, instead of considering my suggestions calmly and either accepting them or rejecting them, throws an almighty tantum and starts asking how dare I. Right away, I know that the writer in question is unlikely to have a glittering career ahead of them. Because, despite what my friend the visual artist believes, the one thing you really need to become a successful author is the ability to eat humble pie. And when your turn comes, there’s nothing else for it: you just have to get out your spoon and tuck in.

That Eureka Moment

People often say to me, ‘It must be so satisfying to hold in your hand a book that you have written,’ and of course it is. It’s even nicer to see someone else hold it in their hand, though it’s probably best to keep your excitement to yourself. I once saw a woman reading one of one of my novels on a train. I hadn’t been a published writer very long at this point and I couldn’t restrain myself from going over to tell her that I was the author. She looked at me in alarm and, clearly convinced that I was some kind of pervert, began wordlessly backing away. Lesson learnt!

For me, the most satifying part of being a writer is not the finished product; it’s when the plot starts to come together in your head. You’ve had this idea for a while that seems as if it might turn into a novel, but up until now you’ve had no more than the starting point. Maybe it’s a character or a situation, a time or a place, or even just a mood. It doesn’t matter. You can feel it there, like an itch. Every now and again, you scratch it. But it doesn’t go away.

Then one day, you’re sitting on a bus, or in a café or getting your hair cut and gears start shifting in you head. Perhaps it’s something somebody sitting opposite you just said; or perhaps it’s the colour of the wall you’re staring at. Whatever the reason, a big lump of plot starts rising to the surface of your mind, like a shipwreck being released from the depths of the ocean after years of silently gathering barnacles.

This lump of plot – I can’t think of a better way to describe it – is usually partly made up of your own experiences. You find yourself thinking, ‘Yes, of course! Like the time I was in Amsterdam and I lost my wallet and I met that French guy; my character, loses his wallet and then he goes back to the place he last remembers having it and there’s this French guy who says to him….’ And so it goes on.

I love that experience. But that’s still not the best bit. For me, the reall thrill is when two or more lumps of plot suddenly come to the surface. You don’t necessarily see the details of how they’re going to fit together, at least not immediately. You just know they are going to, and that the whole big stew of possibilities that’s been simmering away in your imagination for all these weeks is actually going to turn into a viable story.

I get so excited when this happens, I rush to the nearest computer to get down as much of it as I can while it's still fresh. Once, I was in the bath and I jumped out without waiting to even wrap a towel around myself. (Don’t try and visualise it!) I rushed into my study but the moment I put my wet foot on the polished floorboards, my leg arced out from beneath me and I came down on the ground with an almighty thump. I knew right away that I’d broken my ankle. But it didn’t stop me. I crawled over to the desk, pulled myself up onto the chair and began hammering away at the keyboard. Only after I’d got it all down, did I ring for a cab to take me to Accident and Emergency.
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The Inspiration Test

I recently read a blog by a young writer who was depressed because he or she (I don’t know which) wasn’t feeling inspired. So I thought I’d address the thorny issue of inspiration once again. It’s something I used to worry about a great deal when I was younger and I know that some people never get past it.

I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was still a child and whenever I mentioned this ambition to adults they would always say the same thing: ‘Well, if you’ve got something to say, it’s bound to come out in time.’ This comment was meant to be encouraging but it invariably had the opposite effect on me. I used to think, ‘But what have I got to say?’ I got it into my head that only if I discovered some important truth about the meaning of life, could I ever hope to fulfil my ambition of becoming an author. For years I despaired of learning this truth.

Then one day I read that the secret of being a successful writer was to write what you see. At first, this only confirmed my worst fears and I asked myself, ‘What do I see that’s so special?’ But then it struck me: everything I see is special because it’s unique to me; it’s my particular point of view. All I needed to do, I realised, was to have confidence in my own observations and describe my experience of the world.

Of course, that didn’t answer the next question that confronted me. How do you come up with stories? But in the end I worked that one out too: you make them up. That’s what writers do, after all. They make up stories and tell them in their own words.

So what about this business of inspiration? Does it even exist at all? Well yes, I think it does. But I also think that a lot of people get confused about what it means. Last year, for example, I was giving a lift to the friend of a friend of my daughter – let’s call him Roger. Roger is the kind of person who likes to think he knows a great deal about literature. On this occasion he was very drunk and determined to talk to me about writing, even though I just wanted to get home and go to bed.

Roger could write a book, he informed me. Nothing would be easier. But he wasn’t prepared to do so at the moment because he had no intention of writing something commercial. He would rather die than do that! No, he was only going to write when he had something worth saying - when he felt inspired.

A few years ago I carried out my own test on the phenomenon of feeling inspired. This is how I did it. I did a page of writing when I felt inspired and put it in a drawer. Then, a few days later, when I was feeling uninspired, I did another page of writing and put it in the same drawer. Three months later I took them both out of the drawer and I couldn’t work out which was which. I tried to tell Roger about this test but he wasn’t prepared to listen.

The truth is that feeling inspired often has very little to do with the quality of the writing you produce and a great deal to do with your physical state at the time. Maybe you’re experiencing a caffeine buzz, or coming down with a virus, or falling in love, or suffering from a hangover.

Real inspiration, on the other hand, is something that comes through the process of writing itself. It happens when you stop agonising about whether you have something to say, whether you feel inspired, whether you have any talent, whether or not you are going to succeed, whether you are superior or inferior to other writers, and all the other nonsense that fills people’s heads (mine included), and just get on with the process of trying to devise stories, create characters, develop plots, describe settings and manufacture dialogue.

If you do that, inspiration will eventually arrive on its own. It will come because in the act of writing you have lost the burden of self and in doing so you have at last made yourself into a true servant of the muse. As soon as you reach that point, inspiration will begin to flow like water bubbling to the surface from some deep underground well.

The Sweet Smell Of Success

Early in my career I remember meeting the prolific and highly talented children’s writer, John Rowe Townsend. He asked me what I was working on at the time and I said, ‘Oh nothing really.’ He smiled sceptically. ‘Oh come on, Brian,’ he said. ‘We’re always working on something.’ He was right, of course.

I finished the third book in my fantasy trilogy last week and, despite my stated intention of taking a few weeks off, this morning at eight thirty I found myself sitting down at my computer and beginning work on my next Victorian ghost story. The fact is, I just can’t leave it alone. Or perhaps it would be more true to say that it won‘t leave me alone – whatever it is.

People sometimes ask how I got my first story published. That’s not the same question as, 'When did you first decide to be a writer?'. The decision to be a writer came very early on, when I was still at school. But the reality of getting something published happened when I was at university and it came about almost by accident.

I decided to go to Morocco during my Summer vacation. I was a bit naïve in those days and I wasn’t careful enough about what I ate and drank. Unsurprisingly therefore, I quickly became extremely ill. Soon I was too sick to leave my room. I was staying in an incredibly cheap pension and there was nothing to do except lie on my bed and watch a solitary cockroach climbing up the wall, falling off, climbing up again, falling off, climbing up again…

Foolishly, I had brought no books with me, but a previous guest had left behind a copy of a now-defunct magazine for young women called Honey. After a while, I picked the magazine up and began idly to leaf through its pages. Most of the articles had little or no appeal for me; but there was a short story and, out of boredom, I read this several times over the next few days - so many times, in fact, that there came a moment when I stopped thinking about it as a series of events happening to a number of characters. Instead, I saw it as pure structure.

It was a revelation, a bit like the moment near the end of the film The Matrix when Neo suddenly sees the agents who have been pursuing him throughout the movie, not as individuals but as lines of programming code. Like Neo, I was no longer deceived. I knew how the story worked and with that knowledge came the realisation that I could write something similar. I immediately vowed that if ever got back to England (and this didn’t seem a complete certainty at the time) then that was exactly what I would do.

Fortunately, I did make it back to England and after a couple of months recuperating I had a go at writing the story. I used a structure similar to the one I had observed in the magazine, though I added details of my own. For example, I based the villain of the story on my flat-mate’s girl-friend, whom I disliked intensely because whenever she came to our flat all she did was eat our food, mock me (perhaps justifiably) for my lack of fashion-sense, complain to my flat-mate that he never did anything interesting, and then go away again. Because I felt so strongly about her, that gave the story power. When it was finished, I sent my story off to Honey and a few weeks later the editor wrote back offering to buy it. Fame and fortune beckoned! (Or so I believed at the time.)

So here’s my question? Why was my first attempt at getting published such an unqualified success? You’ve probably worked it out already. But in case you haven’t, I’ll tell you. It was because I understood exactly what kind of story the magazine wanted. I had done the research. I hadn’t set out with that intention; illness and boredom had been the catalyst; nevertheless, I had studied the market as thoroughly as any would-be entrepreneur.

So when people ask me if I have any tips for aspiring authors I tell them this: read, read and then read some more. It’s the only foolproof way to find out what publishers are really looking for.

The Other Author

I have had a number of emails from readers enquiring about publication dates for forthcoming books. So here’s the list for 2008. In the UK The Haunting Of Nathaniel Wolfe will be published by Orchard Books in August and The Mendini Canticle (Book 3 of The Promises Of Doctor Sigmundus) will be published in September. In the US The Cracked Mirror (Book 2 of The Promises Of Dr Sigmundus) will be published in December. (This book is entitled The Gallowglass in the UK.)

When I tell people these dates, they invariably ask why it takes so long for the publisher to release a book. ‘What do they do with it for all that time?’ they demand? It’s a question I used to ask as well. But, of course, the answer is obvious when you think about it. A former editor of mine put it like this. All authors like to believe that they are the only one who matters to their editor, that they are, so to speak, involved in a monogamous relationship; unfortunately, the truth is that all editors are secretly conducting extra-marital affairs. The Other Author is always waiting in the wings.