On Serendipitous Books…

It’s always interesting when a friend puts a book into your hands and says, “Have you read this?”

It happens to me quite a lot, and I usually make the effort to read the book, even if it’s not the type I normally read – well, especially if it’s not the type I normally read. I regard this sort of happenstance as a message from the gods of helpful things saying, “Try this. It’ll do you good.”

As a writer, of course, words are my stock in trade and reading something outside my usual comfort zone gives me a fresh view on interesting ways to string them together.  It really is good for me, then – but I do need a serendipitous push to get me started. So when my friend Diane turned up at the Off the Cuff writing group waving an unfamiliar book, I made an undignified grab for it.

The book was P D James’ The Children of Men. Now this is a famous book written in the early 1990s, made into an even more famous film later on.  I had managed to miss it in both incarnations. If you haven’t met with it I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s one of those depressing visions of the near future that I generally avoid. I do like a happy ending, after all.

For all that, I thought it a wonderful book; harrowing, for sure, and especially so for showing many of its characters in ordinary, recognisable domestic situations. As you’d expect from P D James, it’s beautifully written: the unhurried prose, perfect pacing and sense of gradual realisation that comes over the reader feels effortless. As a writer, I know it isn’t.  It’s the kind of book you put down in reading to stop and have a think. I did. It’s not an easy read, and I don’t think I shall want to read it again, but I won’t forget it. Some books just stay with you, and this is one of them for me.

So do go and read something from outside your comfort zone now and then. It’s good for you. I certainly shall.

My Larus series are now all available in paperback. For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l 

An Organic Way to Write

Here I am, this week, in the strange no-man’s-land between the completion of one book, and giving serious attention to its sequel. The completed book is still being edited, of course, and the story is still very much on my mind.

This particular book has been written in ‘real-time’: the story begins in September, which is when I began writing; it finishes in February, and so did I.

The seasons have changed as I was working, and I let those seasonal changes creep into the story. It’s a very natural and organic way to write. I used the things I saw on my twice-weekly visits to the café on the beach, too. The turnstones picking their way among the shingle named a boat in the story – the Turnstone of Sheppey; the stone fish carved into the wall of the Chesil Beach Centre named an inn – the Fish in the Wall; the very skylarks singing over the Causeway as I walked found their way into the tale. When the real skylarks sang above my head, they sang in the story, too. Natural and organic, as I said.

The real-time writing has been an adventure in itself in many ways, and made me feel a special sympathy for the characters when they suffered in the cold easterly winds. They and I have weathered the winter together, and all lived to tell the tale.

The result is Whales and Strange Stars, a very special book for me, and I’m very proud of it.

 

The Larus series are now all available in paperback. For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l 

When the book’s finished…

This week I wrote a significant phrase. Two words, one syllable apiece. ‘The End’. After many months of thinking, trying and testing out, I settled down to write my novel last September. On the last day of February, I finally wrote those two words.

Nobody will be more relieved to hear this than the other members of my writing groups here in Weymouth. ‘Long-suffering’ is an expression created especially for them, I think. For the past six months, instead of presenting them with a series of nicely-crafted short stories, as I’m supposed to, I’ve fobbed them off with what has come to be known as ‘a bit of book’. It’s a bad habit, and I shouldn’t do it. But it’s intensely soothing to share fragments of the story that’s trying to beat its way out of your head. It also helps to establish that I’m not writing complete gibberish – it provides a firm foundation through the common sense of others. So I’m afraid I’m more than likely to re-offend.

Still, I can now give my writing friends a bit of a break while I edit Whales and Strange Stars, and perhaps even a properly-written story or two – at least until the compulsion to write another novel overcomes the resistance to putting myself through any such thing. Before that I have plenty of reading and research to do. So chin up, folks, and relax. You won’t be hearing the dread phrase ‘a bit of book’ again from me any time soon. Er, probably.

 

The Larus series are now all available in paperback. For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l