Columns – Writing Quips and Tips
A writer passes on the lessons she’s learned to make your writing better. Jo-Anne Richards muses on the challenges and excitement of a writer’s life.
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Writing Quips and Tips
Reading for pleasure? Oh the horror…
Giving a book talk recently, I was asked most severely by a member of my audience whether my last book had a message. “It is surely not written just for … entertainment.”
I know we read for all kinds of reasons, but seeing books purely as the means to enhance moral virtues is, in the end, going to make reading unsustainable. It works against the idea of building a strong culture of reading.
There’s nothing wrong with reading for pleasure. I know I’ve touched on this in recent blogs, but I thought it worth returning to, not just because I feel strongly about it, but because I wanted to show that it’s not just my own lonely crusade.
Writing Quips and Tips
Reading builds empathy
I fear for a society that doesn’t read.
Lately I keep coming across people who maintain, with a certain pride, that they never read. Okay there’s some self-interest here. I don’t like to see writing as anachronistic or arcane.
But we don’t want to become a society unable to concentrate on anything longer than a blog. We don’t want to be an ignorant society.
Readers learn without realising. Off the top of my head, just this year and entirely through fiction, I’ve learnt about consciousness, about Tudor society and the role of Thomas Cromwell, the gritty underside of Edinburgh, about mathematicians and the behaviour of chimpanzees, about sexual ambiguity and genetics.
What I fear most is that, when we no longer read, we lose the ability to enter different worlds, to place ourselves in other people’s shoes. Nothing makes us identify with other people quite like accompanying them on a life journey.
I fear that a society that doesn’t read is a society that lacks empathy. And that we can’t afford to be ...
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Writing Quips and Tips
Does serious = obscure?
In a recent interview, I was asked about the “abiding division between ‘literary’ and ‘popular’ novels”. I was asked whether I thought my writing managed to span the division. And whether I considered it interesting to apply these kind of labels at all.
Perhaps because we’ve faced some pretty serious issues, I think our society has tended to obsess a little more than most about whether a writer happens to be “serious” or not. Obviously, I’m happy if my writing is seen to straddle the great divide. I try to be accessible. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to grapple with interesting issues and themes.
But why do we find it necessary to enclose fiction into these restrictive boxes? We make excuses for reading genre novels. We feel vaguely ashamed if we’re not seen to be reading something deeply obscure ...
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Writing Quips and Tips
Dealing with Difference
I was recently consulted by a writer who worried about working with a protagonist of a different race.
This relates slightly to last week’s blog, which discussed our propensity for applying rules to what writers “ought” or “ought not” to be writing about. If that had been his concern, my answer would have been much shorter. I don’t believe in rules. Explore what you feel moved to explore.
But his question had more to do with whether he could succeed; whether his character would be credible. Perhaps we tend to be overly self-conscious about protagonists of a different race, or class or even gender. We tend to focus anxiously on the differences and forget the similarities. (After all, men are human too) ...
We run face-to-face and correspondence writing courses - see www.allaboutwritingcourses.com for range and dates
Writing Quips and Tips
Too many rules
We may be a lawless society, but we can be very rule-bound – particularly with regard to writing.
People often engage with both fiction and non-fiction on the basis of what “ought to” have been written, and in what way. You may have come across this attitude in reviews, sometimes even with a sense of outrage that, say, a certain class or race of character was portrayed in a certain way.
There is also sometimes a tendency in writing groups for members to criticise a central premise or theme. They believe a piece of writing to be too right wing / too left wing / too white / too black / too feminist / or simply to give “the wrong message”...
• We run face-to-face and correspondence writing courses - see www.allaboutwritingcourses.com for range and dates
Writing Quips and Tips
A book is a cathedral
A book is like a cathedral.
This isn’t my own idea. I found it in a piece on writing by Philip Gerard. But I do like it.
If the cathedral is the solution, what is the problem it was meant to solve? Chances are you’ll say: “To give glory to God” or to create “a majestic object of beauty”.
And you’d be caught in our “narrow Romantic aesthetic” without even being aware of it . You’re thinking about the cathedral’s effect on you, the message it gives you in its completed form. In other words, you’re thinking like a reader.
Those creators of the cathedral were thinking less about faith, legacy or the message they were trying to impart, than the prosaic details of load-bearing walls, holding up the middle, and how to light it.
Writing Quips and Tips
Getting back into the zone
Okay, here’s a really practical little tip that helped me recently. It seems obvious, now I come to write it down. But I never thought to do it before.
Last week I wrote about having a break from your writing, and touched briefly on getting back into it.
It’s not as easy as it seems. First you have to break the resistance, which makes it seem absolutely urgent that you tidy the linen closet or tackle some project before the deadline looms too near.
I don’t have any real answers for that, except that you set aside the time, ring-fence it, don’t allow anything to intrude, and force yourself to start at the beginning. I’m a great believer in rewards. Offer yourself a treat if you manage to get right through it and write even a line or two.
I don’t think you can throw yourself right into the next chapter when you’ve had a break. Besides the fact that you might have forgotten all their names, and may not remember the threads you have waving about in the air, you have to get back into the zone. Every book has a “state of mind”. Find that, and you’ll be back into the voice and world of your characters.
Writing Quips and Tips
Absence doesn’t make you fonder of your writing
For me, absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder - of my writing. I don’t know what it is about me, but the more I don’t look at my writing, the more convinced I become that it’s awful.
Even a week’s break can make me anxious. And because I’m in the sad position of actually having a day-job, that happens every week. I have to read back a couple of chapters, as much to reassure myself as to remember exactly where I was.
You do flow better when you can write regularly. But clearly, if you’re busy on a long project, there are going to be times when you can’t write: a big project comes up, you go away, a major personal event holds you up … or maybe you lose confidence for a while.
I read some advice recently that suggested you “visit” your project regularly, even if you aren’t writing. Glance back over it, keep it in mind. It probably would be a good idea - it might stop you (if you’re anything like me) from convincing yourself of its general unworthiness.
Writing Quips and Tips
Changing and growing
Someone asked me the other day whether I always wrote the same way – and the answer, of course, is no.
I’ve said this often: sometimes it feels as though it’s flying, as though I’m a conduit for something larger than myself. Sometimes it plods, it drags its heels. But other things happen too. (It’s called life.)
We change, we grow, and it’s ridiculous to think our personal lives won’t affect our writing. Every event in our lives changes us a little bit. It’s going to change the way we see the world, and the way we express it.
The events themselves may creep into our writing in a way we didn’t quite foresee. I once had a huge fight with a good friend. The next day I was writing about a husband and wife. Almost of it’s own volition, some of the aspects of the fight crept into their relationship – and worked very well, I thought.
But I mean more than that.
Writing Quips and Tips
Rules of Engagement
It’s something to do with the nature of creativity, I suppose. But people in writing groups share intimacies.
They may not intend to write about themselves, but somehow the creative process forces them to introspect. It makes sense. How can you begin to understand the motivations of others, if you haven’t looked starkly at yourself?
Writing itself is an extremely personal process. Bringing it into the open can make the most confident person feel exposed. It know it has to happen eventually and you understand that you shouldn’t take criticism personally (Yeah right!).
Okay, let’s say no more about that. We all pretend to be mature (some more successfully than others), but deep down we all want to kill anyone who suggests we murder any of our babies.
We recently ran a creative writing weekend during which participants expressed fears about having exposed themselves. They felt incredibly vulnerable. We’ve always talked about the way to behave in writing groups. But this group made us realise that perhaps we should formalise it.
