It’s getting to me now. We have had ten staying over for Christmas. Every room in the house filled with people – my younger son even burst in while I was on the loo yesterday. Nowhere to hide. Don’t get me wrong: it’s been great seeing everyone, exchanging gifts, drinking, playing games; then after a few days my brain starts to suck at itself, seeking something to ingest. There’s a grating at my temples. These are the early signs of a craving to engage once more with ideas, with material, with writing, or at least thinking around the writing.
It is a need rather than a wish. The sloth in me simply wants the easy, flop-around-the-house style of living, but I have to write, like a heroin addict has to shoot up. I guess the addict has no relish for the needle, and I do not relish my return to the keyboard - we are both drawn by the craving. It hurts if we try to resist it. And just as the addict slinks away to some hidden corner to get on with the business, so does the writer, equally furtive. I’d be embarrassed if someone walked in on me now, while we’re still officially festive.
Even the most gregarious of writers are anti-social for long periods. Some have to be forced into solitary – Dylan Thomas was famously locked in a BBC studio by a producer to finish a radio play, and again by his assistant Liz Reitell to complete a rewrite of Under Milkwood – while others have to tear themselves away: “Close the door, give out that you are not at home, and work” is what the French writer Joseph de Maistre advised.
Mostly though, it’s the craving that gets you here. I’m feeling easier already, writing this. As good as a glass of Christmas malt.
For Christmas: some quotes and quips about writers and writing.
We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Anonymous
The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.
Gene Fowler
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov
Write as if you are dying.
Annie Dillard
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
Jules Renard
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John Steinbeck
Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.
Stephen Leacock
A writer is someone for whom writing is much harder than it is for the others.
Ken Laws
I write when I am inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.
Peter de Vries
Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute.Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
Franklin P Adams
Writing is easy.All you do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler
There’s nothing to writing.All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
W W ‘Red’ Smith
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.
Burton Rascoe
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.
Charles Caleb Colton
Never use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
Editors don’t reject writers;they reject pieces of paper that have been typed on.
Isaac Asimov
Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.
Edna Ferber
When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than read
Sinclair Lewis
Punctuation is the sound of your voice on paper.
Joseph Collignan
English spelling is weird...or is it wierd?
Irwin Hill
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
Anais Nin
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
Logan Pearsall Smith
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson
How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
E M Forster
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.
William Thackeray
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by then I was too famous.
Robert Benchley
There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Flannery O’Connor
It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs.
Stanislaw Ulam
We do not write in order to be understood;we write in order to understand.
Robert Cecil Day-Lewis
Any proper writer ought to be able to write anything from an Easter Day sermon to a sheep-dip handout.
Sir Kingsley Amis
To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.You must write every single day of your life, you must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories.
Tara’s comment on my last posting, where she told us that her dreams were an important source for her creative ideas, got me thinking about how dreams influence my own writing. I realised that I have waking dreams, edge of sleep dreams and deep sleep dreams, which all work their spells in different ways.
The waking dreams are those I get when I deliberately move away from my computer screen or blank sheet and lie down (usually on the floor) to steep some subject or story line in my head for a while. What I’m intending is to concentrate without distraction so that I can work something through, but what really happens seems to be the opposite of concentration; my mind drifts, not in an entirely uncontrolled fashion, but as if I’m taking a leisurely flying carpet ride over the world I’m imagining, without a known route or destination. I apprehend rather than ‘see’ what I come across along the way, and more often than not the journey ends with a start, like an abrupt waking. Sometimes it makes me literally jump, and within moments I’m back to the page with something new to say, some direction to go in, without having consciously ‘worked it out’. A magic carpet ride.
Van Gogh's The Starry Night
I suppose what I’m experiencing is what Vincent Van Gogh meant when he said, I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. Judging by Van Gogh’s output (over 2,000 works), he must have put in a lot of dreaming. I put in a good deal of this kind of dreaming too; not nearly so much output, though I genuinely believe I do more writing when I’m not writing.
The edge of sleep dream I get at night in my bed, and almost always it’s a troubled dream that replays some problem or difficulty I am having in my writing. It nags at me like a toothache, and stops me from sleeping properly. At its worst, chillingly, it convinces me to give the whole thing up as a bad job. It’s no good. You’re no good. Blagh.These edge of sleep dreams are worryingly frequent.
Fortunately, they are usually followed by the deep sleep dream. Without being aware of it, I find that whatever the problem was seems to have resolved itself by the time I’ve woken up. It’s as if I needed the nagging rehearsal of the worry so that the deep brain can process and work on it while the consciousness has a rest. Occasionally, a deep sleep dream is capable of delivering a whole story idea apparently without the collusion of the conscious mind – a Eureka moment that is rare and precious as a new-born (and more vulnerable; the mortality rate on Eureka moments is so high the World Health Organisation really should look into the matter).
Steven Spileberg
You could of course argue that everything a writer does is the product of dreaming; certainly that seems to hold for the fiction writer, and for the screen-writer – Steven Spielberg says he dreams for a living, and he has enshrined the idea in the name of his film studio, DreamWorks.
I wrote a moment ago that I dream, then write, but, no, it’s not so clear-cut. I think every writer would agree, when the work is in full flow, there is a trance-like quality to the state we’re in; and we are in that world we are creating, unconscious of any other, as fully as we are in the deepest dream. The world is somehow already there for us. Our pen is like a torch beam revealing more, as we press on, of the roads, the turns, the travellers, the details on the page.
·Something heard or read that starts the mind turning (my interest in reading about the railway Stephenons would not have given me the urge to write a novel had I not been intrigued by the dramatic decision of young Robert to go off on a risky venture in Colombia only months after his father had installed him as managing director of their locomotive-building company – this became the main impetus for writing Mr Stephenson’s Regret).
·A stray thought that occurs while doing something else, with some loose association (the inciting incident for 11:59 came from listening to a late night radio phone-in while driving, and thinking, ‘What if...?’).
·A headline in a newspaper (started the sub-plot of 11:59).
·An evocative word or phrase (the theme for the stories I’m currently writing emerged from thinking about the folk definition of a Geordie as one born withinthe smell of the Tyne).
There are a dozen more possibilties. I suppose most could be generally grouped under the notion, ‘Life happens: something sticks.’ The trick is to pin it down when it does. I have always kept an Ideas File, and I make a new entry when anything remotely promising occurs to me – I write a note in the form of a provisional title and anything from one sentence to three paragraphs about the appropriate casing for the idea (a story? a play? a novel? an article?) and how it might develop. 99% of these ideas will never go beyond those few sentences, but I get them down quickly before they disappear altogether, and because I never know which is the 1% that I may eventually husband and grow into a capable creative life form.
As with any gardening, some plants seem to start well, then unaccountably wither and die. Others, that you thought were flowers, turn out to be weeds. (How frustrating that is for the writer/gardener; all that labour spent.)To continue the metaphor, one flower does not a garden make. It is not enough to have one idea to sustain your piece of work; you must germinate others along the way. Some of them come from the scoping and planning before you get deep down into the soil, but I’m always amazed by how much takes root and spreads right there beneath your fingers as you work, nudging with impatience as you dig channels and clear paths trying to bring some sense of order, some coherence of colours.
Stephen King, writing about writing, has also described the process as like digging, but he sees it less like a gardener than as an archaeologist slowly uncovering the bones of a huge fossil – dinosaur, or whatever – that is already there. It’s an interesting notion, that somehow the story is already there, waiting to be found. Where do you get your ideas from? The question seems to imply that there is a bank of ideas you can tap into, but what if King is right, that somewhere in our collective unconscious there are whole stories awaiting discovery? It would help explain the phenomenon descibed by many writers, and that I have experienced myself, of our characters telling us where we must go next, as if there were indeed some pre-determined track to follow.
Maybe the reason so many people seem to be fascinated by the source of ideas is that they have felt something there themselves, something tantalisingly out of reach as they have not the tools to excavate. Maybe the real answer to Where do you get your ideas from? is that they are universal, lying somewhere in all of us.
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it is not the work one is supposed to be doing.
Three times this morning I have been out to clear snow from the drive and the car. If I didn’t work from home I wouldn’t be distracted from my deadlines in this way. Except of course I would not at the moment be at any office further than walking distance because the snow has us trapped in. So, you ask, why bother with all this snow-clearing if you can’t use the car anyway? Because I look out my window at the poetic blanket, and my response is an unpoetic Agh, get out of here and the snow is saying, oh yeah, you gonna make me? Also my neighbours are already out, digging in unison as if they were on a rescue mission or a chain gang, and I can’t be seen to let the side down. How can I get into a state of exploratory solitude to the sound of scraping shovels?
Later I know Paula is going to ask me to walk down the hill to the shops with her so I can act as a pack mule for the essentials. (Milk, potatoes – how come we’re only out of the heavy stuff?) “Ah, but no, I see you’re busy – I’ll do it myself.” She sort of means it too, but she knows I’ll be going with her, just as soon as I’ve finished this.
And why am I doing this right now? This is isn’t work. (When Paula says, “I see you’re busy” she doesn’t mean this. This doesn’t come under her definition of busy. She imagines I’m writing a story for the new collection.) Yes, I know this is writing too, but not work writing; it’s... I don’t know what it is, reaching out, I guess.
Perhaps that’s my problem – too much reaching out, not enough reaching in. For example, I ‘wasted’ the best part of last Friday by going to the northern heat of the Kids’ Lit Quiz, not because I was being paid (I wasn’t) but because the organizers invited me to join an authors’ team that they hoped would add to the buzz of the event. I don’t know whether it did or not, but we authors certainly got a buzz out of licking the opposition (not the kids, the librarians’ team), and out of the infectious enthusiasm of the young people who came from all over the region to join in despite the difficult road conditions.
I enjoyed chatting with the founder and quiz master Wayne Mills, a New Zealander who takes unpaid leave of absence from his senior lecturing job at the University of Auckland to compere his competition in the UK, Canada, China, South Africa and New Zealand at all the regional and national heats as well as at the World Final. He’s been doing it for twenty years, inspired by clear evidence that his simple, engaging idea has refreshed the motivation to read among the thousands of children who take part. I didn’t ask him if he ever regrets not devoting more attention to his ‘proper job’.
I don’t exactly regret my own distractions, but I sometimes feel guilty about pursuing the more pleasurable diversions, and more often frustrated about letting the mundane or trivial suck at the time I had intended for sustained creative writing. I do recognize that all experience is part of a creative writer’s constant research, that something will be retained osmotically which could well emerge again, suppose it be years later, as a dramatic incident or character, part of a story, an article, even a novel; but I do get bothered by a sense of hours ebbing away without visible production: worthwhile words on a page.
I feel I should try to adopt the approach of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov who said, “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”
Meanwhile I can hear subtle sounds of errand-preparation and contained impatience from downstairs. Outside, the snow has started to fall again, burying the shovel I left lying out in the garden.
Writing in my last post about MacGuffins reminded me of another plot principle, known as Chekhov’s Gun. I also remembered at least one occasion when I failed to follow that principle. In that case I didn’t realise what I had done (or hadn’t done) until someone pointed it out at a reading.
The law of Chekhov’s Gun states that if you introduce some object or element into a story that you don’t make use of at the time, then you must make use of it later, or there is no point in it being there at all.
You won’t be surprised to hear that it was the writer Anton Chekhov himself who first stated the principle. In a letter to a friend he said of writing drama:
If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
Chekhov follows his own advice in Uncle Vanya where a pistol is introduced early as an apparently irrelevant prop; toward the end of the play Vanya grabs it and tries to use it as a murder weapon.
Chekhov’s Gun is a pithy reminder that everything in a story should have a purpose, and points up the usefulness of slipping in elements that may not become significant until the audience or reader amost forgets they are there.
My example of failing to follow the principle is not classic Chekhov’s Gun in that the element introduced is a piece of information rather than an object, and it is introduced in the middle of the story not near the start; but it needed to be dealt with, and I didn’t quite do so.
The information comes into Head Down, the final story in my collection We Never Had It So Good, which is about growing up in northern England in the late 1950s. In this story my central character, an eleven-year-old boy, is about to discover whether he has passed his eleven-plus examination to enter the local Grammar School. Mr Carrick the headmaster sweeps into class and proudly announces, “Only three boys in the whole of 4A have failed the test. Only three.”
As the result slips are placed face down on everyone’s desk, the boy looks anxiously around his classmates, afraid to learn his fate. He knows already that Willie Mordue, the boy with the glass eye, will be one of the three failures – he is only in 4A to protect him from bullies in the lower stream. Who are the other two?
I do nothing for a few seconds, too weak to move. At last I manage to gulp some air into my lungs and reach out, then hesitate, caught by the sight of Grant Stevens in Row B. He’s further forward than me and I can just see the right side of his face and his head down towards the paper that’s turned print side up on his desk. Grant Stevens is crying. From now on every person in this class will remember Grant Stevens as the lad that cried when he found out he’d failed his eleven-plus.
So now he knows, and we know, that there is just one more failure to come to light. Everywhere around him the boy can see only signs of jubilation. He turns his paper over to find... that he has passed. Sorry to give you that spoiler, but the boy passing his exam is not really the key point of the story, so I persuade myself I haven’t really spoiled it for you.
I read Head Down as part of a series of talks I did at Woodhorn Colliery Museum not long after the book launch. The reading went very well, and I was delighted by the audience reaction. Immediately afterwards, one woman came rushing up the front to meet me, and I smiled, expecting at least a compliment and with luck another book sale. Instead, she said to me in real earnest, “Who was the other boy?”
“Sorry?”
“The other boy who failed. I was waiting all the way through to find out. I was sure it must be his friend Chiz, but then you said he’d passed as well. So who was the third boy that failed?”
In that moment, I realised that there were three bullets in Chekhov’s Gun, and I’d fired only two. By any other measure the name of the third failure was irrelevant – it made no difference whatsoever to the story. But I had set up an expectation, at least in this woman’s mind (to be fair, no-one else has ever asked me that question), and I had failed to deliver.
Roy Peter Clark (he of the Writing Tools I mentioned in a recent post) has a slightly different take on it from Chekhov, but his point is apposite also. His prescription, which comes from advice given to reporters at the St Petersburg Times is: “Get the name of the dog.”
I hope I haven’t confused you by mixing metaphors here. If anyone picks up Chekhov’s Gun and shoots that dog, I’ll know I have.
Until I heard the word used on the radio the other day, I’d forgotten about Alfred Hitchcock’s MacGuffin. When I started thinking about it, I realised that I have been using MacGuffins of my own without putting a name to them.
I don’t think Hitchcock invented the term, but he certainly popularised it and, in his typical mischievous style, stirred some confusion when he was asked to clarify what a MacGuffin was. The story he told went like this:
It might be a Scotttish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man asks, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" and the other answers, "Oh that's a McGuffin." The first one asks, "What's a McGuffin?" "Well", the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.” The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well, then that's no McGuffin!" So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.
That ‘explanation’ was made in 1966, but about thirty years earlier Hitch had offered a slightly more straightforward definition:
"[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin'. It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers".
You could call it the object of interest, or the object of desire, except it isn’t always an object at all. Here’s a simple quiz. What are the MacGuffins in the following films and books? (For the answers, hit the Show/hide button at the end of the list.)
1. Pulp Fiction
2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
3. The Usual Suspects
4. Rebecca
5. Citizen Kane
Answers
1. The case.
We never know what’s inside the case that hitmen Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) have been sent to retrieve, but the glow that emanates from it when Vincent opens to check inside suggests something either very valuable or very dangerous.
2. The Holy Grail.
The Holy Grail has been used many times as a MacGuffin: eg Monty Python and the Holy Grail; The Fisher King; The Da Vinci Code and many more.
3. Keyser Söze.
The twist is that the chief villain of the piece, who remains elusive even to his own men throughout, turns out to be none other than the chief ‘grass’ and narrator of the story, Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey); but moments before the truth is revealed, Kint has quietly slipped away.
4. The dead Rebecca herself.
Rebecca seems to linger over all three leading characters – Maxim De Winter, the new Mrs De Winter and the housekeeper Mrs Danvers – and there are troubling ambiguities in that influence. The increasing mystery and final revelation of the cause of death drive the later stages of the novel, and De Maurier/Hitchcock manage the MacGuffin to upend our expectations.
5. Rosebud.
Perhaps the most famous MacGuffin in movie history. All through the film we want to know what newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) meant by his deathbed utterance, "Rosebud." It is not until the end that it is revealed to be a name on a sled from Kane’s childhood - a symbol, in other words, of his lost innocence.
An important point that Hitchcock makes gnomically in his story of the parcel in the baggage rack is that the MacGuffin may turn out to be ‘nothing at all’. In the simplest case it could be a red herring, put there to distract from something that will emerge as important later; alternatively, it could appear for a long time to be something that it is not, as in the wonderfully macabre Don’t Look Now where the MacGuffin seems to be a little girl in a red duffel coat; and sometimes the MacGuffin, which seems so important at first, fades away, for its purpose of giving the characters a reason to be, or a reason to be there, has been served, and the story/characters/relationships take their own flight.
In my novel 11:59 the MacGuffin is a character called Hassan Malik, whom we hear but do not see in the first few pages, and who may or may not be dead. The mystery of Hassan and his corporeal status are what drives the central plot of the novel, provides the starting-point for much of the character interaction, and helps to twist the strands of the sub-plots too. But is Hassan ‘nothing at all’? You will have to read the book to find out.
The MacGuffin may be relatively easy to identify in a thriller, but what about in a historical novel? I would say that the MacGuffin in my (not yet published) Mr Stephenson’s Regret is the title. I want the reader to be asking, which Mr Stephenson and what is his regret? There are two candidates for the first answer, George and his son Robert; and there are a fair few regrets to choose from in both cases. I do hope, however, that before the end you will have worked out what precisely the title is referring to. Just to give a little hint: apart from the title I use the word regret only once among 117,000 others in the book. I wouldn’t want you to miss my MacGuffin.
Browsing through the letters page of next week’s Radio Times I see that some correspondents are objecting to the anachronistic language in the recent series of the period drama Downton Abbey. Examples quoted include ‘allergy’, ‘hung parliament’ and colloquial expressions such as ‘Papa will hit the roof’, ‘The suspense is killing me’ and ‘just so I know’.
I guess these are accidental, unlike the deliberately modern style affected by youth-oriented period stuff like Robin Hood and Merlin. Should we get worked about it? I ask, having spent over two years on the ms of Mr Stephenson’s Regret, my novel about the Northumbrian railway pioneers. Leaving the research aside, I took longer on the actual writing process than I have ever done on previous work, not least because of my constant etymological checking; I wanted to avoid being faux-Georgian or faux-Victorian, but at the same time I challenged myself to use only vocabulary that would have been available at the time.
There is, of course, no sense in being a stickler for linguistic accuracy if by doing so you put your narrative in a strait-jacket or make your dialogue seem stilted even allowing for the restrained conventions of the time. Perhaps the risk is greater in these days when the classics are generally accessed through the modernising medium of television rather than through the words of the original novelists. The nineteenth century seems and perhaps sounds a long way away for many of today’s audience. For the contemporary author writing in a historical context, there is a delicate balance to be found between past and present, and it’s hard not to fall between the cracks.
I have reproduced the first few pages of my draft Stephenson novel below (just push the Show/hide button to reveal it). I would welcome any feedback on the sample.
Extract from Mr Stephenson's Regret
He could not apprehend this stillness before him.
Death, of course, had presented its calling card frequently enough - not so often or so rudely as in homes that knew children, but Robert had many friends and acquaintances - and thrice in six years he had worn deep mourning. For his stepmother, for his own dear Frances, and now, when most alone, for his father. The women had seemed graceful on the satin pillow, such calm repose a memory and a comfort; he had known them like this in health. George was never still. Not a year ago, prowling with boredom in Robert’s Westminster rooms, he had challenged Bidder to a wrestle and between them they broke so many of the chairs in the outer office that son was moved to send father the joiner’s repair bill. Paid promptly and with a cheerful accompanying note. Not a year ago.
The merest movement at his shoulder brought Robert back to the parlour where the coffin lay. Mr Eyre’s instinct for punctuality had trumped his carefully-cultivated discretion.
‘Of course, yes.’
Robert withdrew to give the cabinet-maker space and privacy to complete his duties, turned back at the door for one last glimpse of his father’s folded hands, and thus sent Eyre’s apprentice into a guilty spasm, caught in the act of positioning the lid for closure. The boy froze, held by his master’s glare until Robert quit the parlour.
In the hallway, Eyre’s business partner John Robinson waited, idly brushing the nap of his hat. Its weeper trailed almost to the floor. Robinson had a ruddy complexion that spoke more of butcher than draper. Red-skinned cheese to Mr Eyre’s chalk. No amount of black crape could solemnify this man’s demeanour, though he was not so much blithe as brash. He delivered solicitude with an air of familiarity that seemed to Robert inappropriate, and ultimately self-serving.
‘Ah, sir, your papa,’ he said as Robert came near. ‘What a man he was.’
It seemed an innocent enough remark, but Robert found himself provoked by it. ‘Forgive me, Mr Robinson,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to wait for my father’s interment before I discuss his character or achievements in the past tense. I still have him close about me.’
‘Of course, I could not agree more,’ said Robinson. He failed to repress his smile as he studied the effect of the polishing on his hat. ‘The sentiments of our town exactly. We all feel especially close to Mr Stephenson - I refer to the late lamented Mr Stephenson saving your presence, sir - very close indeed at this time.’
Robert wanted to say that was not what he meant at all, but the undertaker continued. ‘Remarkable how the whole of Chesterfield is closing for the duration, sir. Such is our respect.’
‘I saw some notices to the effect.’
‘Mmm. From twelve till two. Quite soon now.’
They fell silent, eyes averted, as if listening for the sounds of the town closing beyond the gates of Tapton House. What could be heard instead were the quiet murmurs of funeral guests gathered in the drawing room, waiting the summons to take their respective places in the cortège, and the tap of hammer on nail from the room behind them. Robert felt for his waistcoat pocket, recalled he had left his watch wrapped in a handkerchief in his dressing chamber, and looked across to check the time on the longcase clock in the hall. It was stopped, marking the time of his father’s death. A nerve quickened in Robert’s temple, and he looked quickly away again, to witness Robinson in a frank appraisal of his client’s mourning-clothes. Unabashed, the man smiled genially.
‘Black Peter’s?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘I imagine they would be your supplier, sir.’
‘Jays’ of Regent Street.’
‘Ah, Jays’. A reputable firm, but I like to think we do as well, sir, in a provincial sort of way.’
‘No doubt.’
The undertaker straightened his own cuffs. ‘I’ll hazard the greater part of this afternoon’s procession will bear witness to that fact. I mean, as to their elegance, including the neighbourhood gentry and members of the corporation, not merely the town officers whom we have fitted, so to speak, in common, as becomes the pomp of the occasion.’
Robert winced on his father’s behalf at pomp, but had no time to voice an opinion before Robinson leaned in to him somewhat to say, ‘On which note, I have taken a certain liberty, sir, notwithstanding the letter of your instructions but, I’m sure you’ll agree, very much within the spirit of this sombre occasion, to employ a modest band of mutes to precede your father’s hearse in suitably sober fashion. Just four, to be precise. It is usual.’
This was the latest of the upstart’s repeated attempts to make the funeral more elaborate than his client believed necessary. Robert muttered testily. ‘I asked for no mutes.’
‘Which of course I noted, sir.’ Robinson was imperturbable. ‘But being privy to the arrangements made by the mayor and the corporation, I felt emboldened... Why, the procession is likely to be three hundred strong.’
‘Is that not pomp enough, without mutes?’
‘My further consideration was for the horses, sir. As you know, they are not so biddable as your locomotive engines. My fear is that the hearse may break off somewhat from the pedestrian traffic, should we not have our trained mourners marching in front to act by way of a check on the progress of the hearse. I believe your father used to do the same with men and flags, when the railways was new.’
Robert could not stop himself rising to the man’s impertinence. ‘Quite wrong, sir, except where appointed by interfering bodies who thought they knew better. My father dismissed them as entirely unnecessary. Such is the case with your mutes. You may stand them down; I neither wish to see them today, nor tomorrow as an item on my bill.’
‘Well, that is a loss,’ said Robinson, though whether he meant for the event or for the account was not clear until he risked a final throw. ‘I may be a little out of touch with London society, but I’m sure if your poor father could still be present with us he would turn a phrase often employed in our community. Expectation is duty. He appreciated more than most how Tapton and the great houses are looked upon to help define the better...’
‘Don’t...’ By now Robert was struggling to contain his emotions. ‘Do not, sir, presume to lecture me on my father’s opinions. It is clear you knew him very little. I can tell you now, Robinson, that these arguments you have laid before Mr Robert Stephenson... If indeed you had the chance to put them rather to Mr George Stephenson, there is every likelihood that you would have been knocked down to the floor. I do not speak metaphorically.’
I was commenting on a writer's sample yestrday, and I referred him to some advice from a book I have found extremely useful, so I thought I would mention it here.
I came to this book via Roy's audio programmes on iTunes U (which are also excellent, and free to download). I had never heard of him before, but was so impressed by the extracts that I bought the book - which is even better. Very accessible, yet not at all superficial, each tool is illustrated by hit-the-mark examples. This is a practical guide that will improve any writer's work, at any level or genre - I know it has improved mine.
I appeared at the Books on Tyne Festival in Newcastle last weekend – congratulations to Anna Flowers and the rest of the team for organizing this excellent event.
As well as my own spot I was part of a panel of authors and publishers asked to conduct an advisory session for aspiring writers looking for a publisher. I was struck by how much interest there was – the room was packed out. Is it the recession, or have there always been so many people desperate to see their book in print? We tried to be helpful but honest about the current situation, and I’m sure we must have disappointed some of those hoping we would show them how to unlock the entry to the world of publishing.
In truth, not only is there no magic key, the doors are fewer every year, and the entries to those that remain seem narrower. The posh places have closed their tradesman’s entrance, and the concierge at the front is trained to scan for well-known names. Only celebrities have an automatic right of entry, not just for their ghost-written autobiographies now, but for their ‘novels’ and their lifestyle… stuff. Meanwhile libraries close, bookshops go to the wall, and those that survive do so on, well, the celebrity flim-flam, mostly.
At this point, we should stand up and applaud the small independent publisher struggling against the odds to produce real books. I honestly believe (and said so at the festival) they are helping to preserve literature in our age, and without them regional writing would no longer be seen in bound format. Their job is getting even harder now as writers spurned by the big publishers add to the mountain of manuscripts dropping through their letter box, and the bookshops struggle to find space for their titles among the tables and shelves laid out with 3-for-2 promotions. How long can these overworked independents keep going on zero profits?
If there is one light of optimism to hold out in the gloom, it is coming from our computer screens. While I acknowledge that the on-line-retailing revolution has played a large part in the decline of the high street bookshop, and in driving down prices to the detriment of author and publisher, for the aspiring writer there is more to cheer than fear from what is now available to them at fingertip reach on the internet. They can get constructive feedback, good advice, and a chance to move away from the closed doors of the traditional publishers to a new window of opportunity.
Many new writers are buoyed by the reaction of family and friends to their efforts. ‘This is really good – you should try and get it published.’ But what is the objective value of an appraisal by someone bound to us by love and loyalty? And how far can we trust their critical judgement? By joining a writer’s forum on the internet (there are several, easily found) a writer gains access to a network of new ‘friends’ with a mutual interest in sharing feedback. They will not be held back by considerations of love and loyalty from expressing a genuine opinion, often better-informed than those close to us because they usually are or have been in a similar position to the writer. There is a lot of experience and wisdom out there. A word of warning to the thin-skinned: objective criticism can be painful, though forum etiquette will normally keep conversations civil. Feedback from these quarters is usually very constructive, there is also a good deal of general advice on these sites, and they can act as signposts to opportunity.
One site which is garnering favourable reviews (though I have no direct experience of it) is authonomy, which I believe is sponsored by Harper Collins. Here, writers are encouraged to post up drafts of their complete or incomplete manuscripts for others to review. The most popular are listed as top-rated. There are writing tips and other advice to be found on the site. authonomy is visited not only by would-be authors but (allegedly) by agents and publishers too. Certainly there have been instances of authors being published as a consequence of their work appearing first at this site.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the e-book revolution, and specifically publishing in the Kindle format courtesy of Amazon’s digital text platform. For some writers, self-publishing is their preferred route, or the only one left available to them after rejection by the publishers. Always risky, this has proved very costly in the past; but what if all the costs of setting and printing are taken away by the chance of self-publishing an e-book? This is exactly what the Amazon digital text platform does. That completed novel of yours could be available and on sale world-wide within days at no expense but a little time and attention spent converting the manuscript to Kindle format. Amazon does the final conversion, but the careful writer will read the technical guidelines diligently first, and get advice from yet another forum connected to the site.
So there are reasons to be cheerful even in these pressed times. Good luck with your efforts, whether you are going to take your chances down the traditional route, showcase yourself on authonomy, or try self-publishing to Kindle. Remember, though, especially if you are self-publishing, making your book available to buy is only half of it; just when you’re thinking you have unlocked the door at last, you find yourself in a long, dark tunnel. You know your readers are in there somewhere, but how can you find them? More importantly, how can they find you? We have already discovered there is no magic key. Is there a magic lamp labelled ‘sales and marketing’? Er, no. Or if there is, it takes an awful lot of rubbing to make it work.
Every fiction writer has to find a particular ‘voice’ for his or her story. There may be several ‘voices’ in the book (most often carried in the dialogue) but there is usually one prevailing voice that carries the narrative.
(An exception that proves the rule: I have just written a short story that alternates between two prevailing voices, but that is fairly unusual.)
More often than not, the ‘voice’ comes from the central character or protagonist of the story. That is especially true (or especially noticeable) if the novel is written in the first person; usually narrated by the central character. Not only do we understand the story is to be told by that character, but is also to be seen through their eyes. (Which can make it awkward when it comes to key scenes where they may not be around, or if it strains credulity that they are around – read Wuthering Heights for some particularly awkward examples.)
But a story that is written in the third person will also usually have a prevailing voice, either one of the characters or a consistent ‘authorial’ voice.
I give myself a challenge with the material I write, because I like to experiment with different genres and different ways of telling stories. So my ‘writer’s voice’ is always changing.
I want to illustrate this by extracts from three very different books of mine. Including the extracts could make this post excessively long, so I have used a show/hide button for each one. If you would like to read or even glance at the extract just click the button and it will appear - click again to hide it. Or you can skip altogether if you prefer.
These stories are written from the point of view of a junior school boy growing up in a northern mining town in the late 1950s. Here's a further ‘voice’ complication: the stories actually come from the narrative voice of a grown man remembering his childhood emotions and experiences. As I'm writing this post on November 5th I have chosen an appropriately seasonal extract.
Extract from Uncle Barney’s Box
My least favourite firework of all time was the Golden Rain. The most frustrating was the Catherine Wheel. The best was what we called the Jumpy Jack.
The Golden Rain was just a tiny tube you stuck in the ground. When you put a match to it all that happened was a feeble shower of sparks would come out about six inches high. You kept expecting it to do summat else, but it never did. This shower just went on and on then fizzled out.
When we were buying fireworks we’d never pick Golden Rain or Silver Fountain which was the same thing only with different colour sparks. But they’d always be in those two and sixpenny boxes you could get that were already made up.
We’d never buy them. Apart from the measly fireworks inside they generally had pictures on the box of posh-looking kids with school caps and ties looking all rosy-cheeked and having a jolly good time. They must have been easy pleased. Some of the boxes even said ‘No bangers’ like it was a recommendation. Why would you buy a box of fireworks with no bangers?
We always got ours from Rodway’s or Moore’s where they were loose and you could pick what you wanted. Anyway we hardly ever had as much as half a dollar at one time so we bought just a few pennies’ worth here and there to keep under the bed ready for Bonfire Night. Except for bangers of course, which we set off whenever we could.
We loved rockets, Roman Candles, Aerial Bombs and Jumpy Jacks. We always bought a couple of Catherine Wheels hoping at least one would work properly when we pinned it to the clothes prop, lit it and gave it a turn to start it off. There was nowt better than a Catherine Wheel whizzing round with the colours changing and the sparks whooshing out the tail, but mostly they either hung there without spinning while the sparks fizzed onto the ground or they dropped off the clothes prop altogether and burned out in the weeds.
Jumpy Jacks, though, were fantastic. They were stubby and squiggly. You lit the fuse at one end and every few seconds the fizzer would bang and jump all over the place. You never knew where it was going so you could never really get out of the way of it. The best fireworks are the ones that scare you and the ones where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. That’s why Jumpy Jacks were great.
The best Bonfire Night we ever had was when Uncle Barney from Yorkshire won the pools. It wasn’t a fortune, not like that Viv Nicholson woman a couple of years later who said she was going to spend, spend, spend and finished up in the Sunday papers. I suppose his win was less than a hundred pounds but we didn’t know a thing about it until this huge parcel arrived.
As far as I can remember we’d never had a parcel through the post before, not even Mam and Dad. Never a parcel and never a telegram. And this one’s not even addressed to them, it’s addressed to me and Malcolm and our little sister Jeannie.
We rip the paper off like it’s Christmas and find a big cardboard box underneath with ‘Fairy Snow’ and the words ‘whiteness plus mildness’ half covered over with brown tape. Mal cuts through the tape with his pocket knife and opens up the box.
There’s a note from Uncle Barney but we hardly notice it. We’re busy drooling over the best stash of fireworks we’ve ever set our eyes on. Spangled Star Bombs, Traffic Lights, Spaceships, Mount Vesuvius, Screamers, Jack in the Box… There are bigger rockets and Roman Candles than we could ever afford, a Triangle Wheel and a Mine of Serpents you’d need two hands to carry. Plenty of bangers and Jumpy Jacks. But no Golden Rains. Uncle Barney knew how to buy fireworks.
Here are some points to note about the 'voice' I use for this extract: it is written in the first person (the same voice is used for all the stories in this collection}; the past tense is used for what we might term 'the set-up' and switches to present tense for describing the action, which should provide more immediacy for the reader; the vocabulary generally avoids dialect terms, except for the use of the odd word, phrase, filler or shortened form (that say ‘North East’ and ‘child’) to colour the ‘voice’ in the narrative as well as the dialogue; all these complexities of voice are designed to work naturally on the audience's inner ear even in silent reading. On this last point, I do a lot of public readings of my work, and this helps to assure me that the 'voice' is coming through, as do the read-alouds I sometimes offer to myself as part of the writing process.
BOOK TWO: MR STEPHENSON’S REGRET
(finished, but not yet published)
This is a historical novel about the railway pioneers George and Robert Stephenson. It is written in the past tense and in the third person, but the prevailing ‘voice’ throughout the novel is Robert (very occasionally and in specific circumstances the 'voice' shifts, along with the point of view, to one of the other characters). A challenge I gave myself in this book, in trying to provide a sense of the times, was to use only vocabulary that was available at the time, though I have tried not to be faux-Georgian or faux-Victorian.
Briefly the context of this extract is: Robert Stephenson, George’s son, is only 19 here. He is in London, shortly before he leaves to go to South America (early 1820s). He has met a fairly well-off and well-educated but decidedly rakish chap called Travis, who is about to introduce him to the delights of an opium den run by a Mr Chung. (It’s a historical fact that Robert smoked opium for most of his adulthood.)
Extract from Mr Stephenson’s Regret
Travis turned off the street through a narrow arch, and Robert, after only a moment’s hesitation, followed him into near-darkness.
‘Take care with these steps,’ Travis warned, which was as well because they were very uneven and treacherous.
At the bottom of the steps a single guttering candle, jammed into a crevice, dimly revealed a doorway screened only by thick matting, which was kept there by heavy stones laid across the low roof. Travis pushed through, calling, ‘Customers, Chung.’
Robert, too, ducked under the rug, to have his nostrils assaulted by a powerful sweet and sickly smell. It was as if some sort of sugary mixture had been burnt on the stove. This idea was reinforced by the fug of smoke or fumes within, through which a stunted figure was emerging - not Mr Chung as this was a female, a child not more than ten years old, who carried a candle to guide them into the room, relieving each man first of a shilling.
When Robert’s eyes adjusted to the interior he saw an assortment of low divans and mattresses littering the floor, with the spaces between them covered in faded oriental rugs. A man was lying on a mattress next to the wall, apparently asleep, with what looked like a wooden flute fallen across his chest. At first Robert thought the sleeper was the only occupant, then he noticed another man reclining in a hammock slung under the blackened ceiling in the far corner.
The girl moved to a mean fireplace on the other side of the room and knelt to resume the task that had been interrupted by the arrival of the latest visitors, stirring a pot that simmered on the hot coals. Robert was wondering where Mr Chung could be, when he appeared suddenly before them, presumably from some recess at the back, bowing his head towards his finger-tips in the servile manner that orientals often adopted in the presence of white men. He was every inch (though not many of these) the archetypal Chinese peasant, from his soft skull cap to his straw shoes.
‘New man for you here, Chung,’ said Travis. ‘Give him your best pipe.’
The Chinaman nodded vigorously and scurried back to his alcove to search among his smoking tools for his finest offering, though Robert was very doubtful of what he was finally given: a long yellow bamboo that did indeed look like a flute except for the cup of dark baked clay that fitted into a spigot hole at the end. It was ancient, stained with the draw and spittle of many years’ smoking. Travis laughed at Robert’s involuntary grimace.
‘Believe me, friend, there’s more satisfaction to be had in a ripe, well-saturated instrument, seasoned over the years by the best opium, than any virgin pipe, however elegantly carved.’
Chung, meanwhile, had taken possession of two little gallipots, filled by the servant girl from the sediment at the bottom of her cooking pot. This stuff, which looked like thin treacle, was the source of the burnt sugar smell, mixed with the aroma of laudanum. Chung used an iron bodkin, dipping the tip of it into the gallipot then holding it to the flame of an oil lamp until it almost hardened. He repeated the process several times until he had gathered a globule about the size of lead shot, which he dropped into the bowl of Robert’s pipe. Travis demonstrated how to light the pipe from the lamp flame, and the young man was ready for his initiation into opium-smoking.
He perched on one of the low divans, too restrained to lie down, so that his knees stuck out awkwardly either side of the long pipe. There was no mouthpiece; the stem was sheared off, leaving a hole to suck at, which Robert did tentatively at first, then harder so the black smoke rose too quick up the stem, making him cough horribly.
‘Don’t waste it,’ said Travis, who was stretched out on a mattress next to his feet with his own pipe.
Robert tried to be more economical with his breathing, sucking then expelling the smoke gently through his nostrils. The pipe gurgled. Robert could feel the veins in his forehead thickening, and his face taking on a warm glow. Gradually the sensation of warmth entered his brain, lulling him into a reverie that had no images but pleasant patterns swirling around him. He felt at one with this sensation, and remote from it, a spectator and a participant. By intervals the patterns quickened in a way that captivated him. He began to discern shapes he could only describe to himself as exotic; shapes with no edges, undulations merely. He was drawn into a weightless journey that ended when the patterns opened into a place of perfect serenity. Robert let the pipe fall and relaxed full length on the couch, giving himself up to the tranquillity that underlaid exquisite sleep.
Here are some points to note about the 'voice' I use for this extract: the writing is in the third person, but the reader experiences the scene through the mind and eyes of Robert; past tense is used throughout, but here it might be described as active past tense as the action seems to unfold more or less in real time (no historical summary in this extract); in contrast to the first extract, here we have sentence structure which is much more formal and standardised, even in dialogue; the long, flowing descriptive sentences near the end of the extract are there to aid the sense of Robert's dreaminess.
Another contrast in style, this is my newly-published novel, a contemporary thriller set in an unnamed city in the North East of England. It is written in the first person and mostly in the present tense. The 'voice’ of 11:59 is the central protagonist, Marc Niven, an educated Northerner who is a late night phone-in host on a local commercial radio station.
My challenge in this book was to find a style and language that not only fitted the character, but was appropriate for a story that reaches at times into the city’s underworld. Elsewhere in the novel there are some fairly graphic sex scenes, there are some pretty nasty characters, and (without being gratuitous) the language and attitudes had to fit. (Perhaps appropriately this posting is written in the month that sees the 50th anniversary of the landmark trial of Penguin Books for publishing the allegedly obscene Lady Chatterley's Lover, but relax, there is nothing shocking in the extracts I've chosen.
I am going to provide two extracts from 11:59. First, the opening couple of pages, set in the studio just before midnight. The ‘inciting incident’ occurs here; watch out for it. We also begin to get the measure of the type of character Marc is, or at least we think we do.
Extract I from 11:59: The Opening Scene
Ambient noise on the talkback line, then Marni’s words come through.
“IRN’s standing by.”
I smile at her through the glass and she presses slender fingers briefly to her throat, acknowledging the catch in her voice. Still getting used to the speaking parts. I wink and glance at the studio clock as I ride forward on the fader to the mike.
“Exactly ninety seconds to midnight and the news. Less than two minutes to dig yourself out of a hole, guys. And women too, of course…” grinning at Marni. “We’re not the only ones who forget. Quick as we can, let’s see how many more relationships we can rescue before we all turn into pumpkins.”
I fade in a driving music bed for urgency and look up at the first name flashing on the screen. “Graham on line 3, do you have a message of undying love for your partner?”
There’s the usual startled pause before a hesitant Scots voice says, “Aye, I have, Marc, yes. I’d like to say Happy Valentine to Chris, please.”
“Chris. Is that a man or a woman?”
Marni looks quizzically through the glass at me and I shrug, mouthing ‘Whaa?’ as Graham answers. “Oh, she’s a woman, aye. Christine. My girlfriend - fiancée actually. Christine Proud.”
“And is she proud of you, Graham?”
“She will be now, I reckon, with speaking on the radio.”
“Well, Graham, be sure to come back on when we’ve a little more time to chat. Thanks for your call, and give my best to your lovely lady Chris. We have another lovely lady on line 1.”
“Is that me?”
“I don’t know, is it?”
Line 1 squeaks to someone next to her. “Ee, I’m not sure if I’m on or not.”
I shake my head and look across to share the wind-up with Marni but she’s turned away at her keyboard, logging names and numbers as more green lights flash at her elbow, demanding attention. Marc and Marni, it’s a perfect fit. My eyes stay on the sheen of her blonde hair as I talk to line 1.
“How many Valentine cards did you get today?”
“Who, me? None. Is that Marc Niven?”
My eyes flick back to the screen. “Is that Emma?”
“It is, yeah. I’m a first-time caller, Marc.”
“And who’s that with you, Emma?”
Giggles. “Oh, it’s just my friend Julie.”
“And who’s the friend you’d like to give a message to?”
“Well, he’s not really a friend. Not yet anyway. Just a lad I know from work.”
“What’s his name?”
“Daniel. Dan.”
“And where do the two of you work?”
“Tescos in Long Valley.”
“Oh, I was in there the other day.”
Trying to picture Emma at the checkout. Dan stacking shelves probably.
“You know, they had a whole aisle stuffed with Valentine cards. Hey, Daniel from Tesco in Long Valley, where’s Emma’s card?”
More giggles from line 1. Marni looks round and smiles, peeling her headset off, strands of hair still clinging to it.
“What do you want to say to Daniel, Emma?”
“Well, just to let him know I like him an’ that, and if he wants to go for a drink or whatever he only has to ask.”
“There you are, Dan, you only have to ask, cos Emma’s gagging for it. Can we fit a couple more in before we go to the news? Let’s talk to Hassan on line 2.”
Marni’s making cup-tilting signals at me as I’m doing the cross-fade. I nod back.
“Who do you want to give your heart to, Hassan?”
His voice is steady and serious. We get all types. What possesses these folk to call up radio stations when they should be tucked up in bed? Or while they’re in bed.
“I should like to send all my love to Amina. Amina Begum Khan.”
Marni leans over the desk to draw big letters with her finger on the glass. T followed by a C. She draws her C the wrong way round from my point of view. Then she straightens up and poses with her palms out, questioning. Cute.
“Amina, is it? Nice name. Wife or girlfriend?”
I trump Marni’s mime with one of my own, standing to make the little teapot shape, gay as I can make it. Marni cups her chin in her hands and does a stage school pout, then turns to leave the ops room. Our little bout of theatrics has left a vestige of a wiggle on her bum, sexier still as she’s unaware of it.
I’m watching Marni out of the room, still standing as I cross-fade to line 4 and lean into the mike again.
“Excellent, thanks for calling. Now we’ve just got time to squeeze in…” peek at the screen “…Jed. Who’s the last lucky lady tonight?”
Silence.
“Jed?” and ‘Shit’ nearly out loud when I glance down to see my hand resting on the wrong fader.
Here are some points to note about the 'voice' I use for this extract: we are firmly in the mind of central character Marc, first person present tense; the vocabulary is casual, informal, a tiny bit of technical language to establish the radio studio context and his familiarity with it, some DJ-speak; incomplete sentences; very importantly, lots of internal monologue - we live a lot in Marc's head in this novel, and it's not always an attractive place to be - emphasing his egoism, his sexual preoccupations, underlying sexism, slight coarseness. Did you get the 'inciting incident’? Have I managed to make it credible that Marc missed it while he is distracted with Marni? We later find that his former studio assistant Sam was his former partner, who has left him for a reason left unexplained until much later.
Here is some brief context to the second extract from 11:59: as a consequence of his failure to react to what Hassan says, and because he subsequently tries to cover it up, Marc is suspended, and the story gets into the local paper. Totally disillusioned, he seeks solace in drink in a city centre dive of a pub called The George. In this extract we should recognise he is getting steadily drunker – the language also deteriorates.
Extract 2 from 11:59: Marc gets drunk in The George
There are two things about pubs like this that save at least a few of them from being swept away by city centre yuppification or laid waste under the weekend stampede of teenage bingers. The first is that occasionally - working almost incognito, camouflaged by the surface grime and general dilapidation – there will be a landlord who actually cares about the quality and taste of the beer a whole lot more than he does about the marketing, or the customers, or the housekeeping. The second is that they can just about survive by accommodating misanthropes and misfits, low maintenance loners who compensate for not buying generous rounds for friends they don’t have by staying the course, drinking steadily and repeatedly at the same three-legged table from early doors till the bell tolls. Tonight The George and Marc Niven are made for each other.
With the horse-racing long since finished the TV channel has been switched, not to Sky Sports News or MTV as in most other places, but to ITV 1, where it plays with the sound turned off over the heads of the drinkers, its tawdry images clashing with the dinge below. I watch the screen only when the adverts come on, struck by the mute sexiness of Andrex toilet paper cascading down some stairs, a girl’s finger on the capstan of a roulette wheel, a dolphin in blue water. Otherwise there’s plenty to divert me from sluicing down my Black Sheep too urgently as the night wears on - there’s fluff to gather from the bench seat I’m sitting on, drips to soak up with a beer mat after I’ve separated the layers of card to make the mat more absorbent, brand names to mull over on the coasters and behind the bar, a maze of soldering to follow with my eyes from one end of the imitation stained glass feature to the other, then back again. I can even watch the levels going down in other glasses; that’s a good guide when you’re drinking on your own, like having company.
Three or four refills in (maybe five, who’s counting? anyway, I’m kind of on holiday), when a group to my left have supped up and gone, I shuffle along to where two benches meet, and sit in the angle between, resting a shoulder blade on the back of each bench. It’s a secure place, and it gives me a director’s view of the pub. I may have inadvertently said “Action!” out loud as that thought occurred. Someone standing with his back to me turns and looks, as if he’s just seen a flash bulb go off, then says something to his wife, or girlfriend, or mistress, who looks over at me too, just for a second. His floozy, maybe, that’s what they’d call them in the 1950s when this pub had its heyday. She looks the type.
Once I’ve drained my glass in this new position I have a difficult dilemma. A fairly sizeable group has just wandered in from some event next door and The George is enjoying (putting up with) one of its rare busy half-hours. There are a few people standing now, in twos and threes, since there’s not enough space for them to sit together. I don’t want to give up this hard-won seat, but it’s time to go back to the bar, and I also need a pee.
I’ve been a bit foolish to empty my glass, because whether I leave it on the table or take it with me to the bar, whichever, it could be interpreted as quitting, and one of those groups might take over my table and this whole section of bench, whereas (I say this word carefully to myself, developing my argument like a logician) whereas if I’d left just the right amount of beer in the glass I could have kept my claim staked while I got another. Too late for that now. I’ll just have to take a chance, leaving my coat on the seat sufficiently spread out, like a German towel, and hope they take the hint.
I leave my empty glass on the table as an extra deterrent and walk very deliberately to the bar, to give everybody the right signal, but then I sneak off to the Gents before I order, not wanting to take my drink with me to the toilet or to leave it on the bar where it might get spiked or spat in, you never know.
It’s a cramped bog, and there’s already somebody at one of the two urinal bowls. I try the lav door but that’s locked, so I have no option but to stand uncomfortably close to this tallish bloke to pee. As I pull it out he turns his head just like John Cleese in that ancient ‘I look down at him’ sketch. He’s quite shameless about it. I have a sudden urge to get back at him for this by pissing on his shoes. I’ve started to swivel when he suddenly zips up and steps away, leaving me to spill a splash of piss on the floor as if it was an accident instead of a protest. He gives me a look of contempt on his way out, but it’s him that doesn’t wash his hands.
After I’ve negotiated my return to the bar and ordered, and I’m turning to get my bearings for taking my fresh drink back to my seat, I see the worst has happened. Two couples that had been standing facing each other nearest my table have taken it over, one bloke squeezed between the two women in my director’s place and the other one perched on a stool the other side. As I come up holding my beer I see that my coat is lying folded across another empty stool next to them.
“Saved this seat for you, pal,” stool bloke says, like he’s doing me a favour.
“No thanks, I’ll just stand. Going in a minute,” I say, nearly spilling my full pint as I reach over to grab my coat and hang it on my free arm. One consolation is that the wanker from the Gents is not with them. They do seem to be looking at me funny, though. At last the uglier one of the women says, “We were just talking about you, actually. You’re that man from the radio, aren’t you? The one what does the phone-ins.”
Not any more, I’m thinking, but not out loud, or was it? Then I’m wondering whether they know me cos they know me or cos they’ve seen my picture in tonight’s paper. Was it just tonight? It seems longer ago than that. Longer ago and farther away.
“Is it you, then?” says squeezed-between-two-women bloke.
“I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together,” I say, cleverly.
“Eh?”
“I am the walrus.”
Pretty woman gives a little smile. Which one does she belong to? The smile was definitely for me, either way. I sit down on the stool and push my glass onto the crowded table, slopping the beer a little.
“Marc Niven,” I say, to her only.
“That’s the name,” ugly sister pipes up. “I said it was Marc summat. You were in the paper today, weren’t you?”
“Was I? Dunno. Never bother. Regular currants.” My brain said occurrence but my voice definitely said currants, I heard it. I take a gobful of beer and roll it around with my tongue to get my mouth working properly.
“Drowning your sorrows. You got sacked, didn’t you?” says the guy sitting in my place, who looks like a sleaze ball.
Slight burp as I swallow to answer, nothing they would notice. “No such thing. They made a cock-up. I told them, sort it out, not coming back till you do. Position to do it, see. Man of my…” What am I talking to him for? I turn back to smiling girl. “You listen?”
“Sorry?” Leans forward a touch. She has this cute way of raising her eyebrows.
“You listen my show?”
Sleaze ball sneaks his arm behind her, his fingers fiddling with her hair. I can tell she’s embarrassed about him interfering with her like that cos she’s blushing, but she keeps her attention on me.
“I’m not really a radio sort of person,” she says. “What sort of music do you play?”
“What sort of music do you like?” She really is a looker, close up.
“Oh, I don’t know, all sorts really. Charts stuff.”
“Tell you what, tell you what, have you got a pen? Anybody, pen?” I lift up my glass to bring the coaster out from underneath, taking another mouthful while the beer’s handy.
“Christ, he’s going to give you his autograph now,” says sleaze ball, grabbing pretty girl’s shoulder and pulling her towards him. Prick. Stool guy gives me a biro he finds in his jacket pocket and I hand it across the table with the beer mat.
“Just write your name down on there, and any song you’d like. Pick a song, any song. I’ll play it for you, my show. Don’t normally do requests, but for you. Happily.”
“Thought you didn’t have a show,” says the other one, put out cos she hasn’t been given the chance.
“Soon. Next time,” I tell my one. “’Fact, put your number down and I’ll phone you when it’s coming on. Personally.”
“Fuck off,” says sleaze ball.
“I don’t think I can write on this,” says pretty girl, holding just the corner of the beer mat with her finger tips. “It’s a tad wet.” The others laugh at her, which hardly seems fair.
“No worries, no worries,” I say. “’Nother one here.”
I scrabble among the cluster of drinks on the tables, feeling for a dry mat. That stupid prick opposite must have had his glass too near the edge. It gets just the slightest nudge from my knuckles and it topples off the table, dowsing his crotch with lager. He jumps up, yelling, and makes the whole thing worse by kicking his leg against the table, sending more glasses flying. Now everybody’s up, backing away from the mess. It’s like somebody’s just vomited in the middle of a crowd. The rest of the pub turn round to stare at us.
“You rat-arsed fucker,” yells sleaze ball, trying to put the blame on me as a pissed-off barman emerges from behind the counter with a mop. In the background I can see John Cleese whispering some poison to one of his gay crowd of gawkers. I’ve had my fill of the lot of them, so I pick my coat out of the puddle under the table and leave.
The main challenge here was to put across a sense of Marc’s drunknness, not only in his direct speech, but increasingly as the scene unfolds in his descriptions, and his perceptions of what is happening – at the same time, I am tipping the wink to the reader that Marc’s interpretation is (I hope comically) at odds with reality.
It has been my intention, with the help of these extracts from three very different products of my wandering muse, to try and make some sense of what I mean 'the writer's voice'. Let me know if I have succeeded in any degree.
