16 Thursday Apr 2015
Posted in Books, Scribbling
Tags
Emily Dickinson, joseph conrad, Josephine Tey, Robert Bolt, Rodney Bolt, Ros Barber, Steven Runciman, Writer's Envy
Not necessarily my favourite books… well, some of them, yes – but for the rest… Let’s say, seven books that, for one reason or another, I can dream of having written myself.
1. Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. Yes, yes, I know. But it’s a matter of power, depth, beauty and intensity… Continue reading
09 Thursday Apr 2015
Posted in Scribbling
It’s becoming clear that my novel doesn’t proceed as smoothly as I hoped – at least, not since I hit the 45000-words mark.
After that there was London, and after London there was a snag, and after the snag there was Easter, with a bunch of relatives and guests descending on us, and after Easter… Continue reading
19 Thursday Mar 2015
Posted in Scribbling, Theatre
I find myself wanting to rewrite things.
Plays, especially. Plays that were staged with good success – one even published…
But now I want to rewrite them, because seeing them staged made me aware of rough edges, mistakes, things great and small that need some more work. And because years have passed and I have learnt a few things since.
Somnium Hannibalis is a stage adaptation of my novel of the same name.* Hannibal Barca, the Second Punic War, the price of all-consuming dreams… An intense little thing – if I say so myself. It had several runs over four years, it played well, and I loved it very much, but now… I want to write it again, to change things, to shift the characters around Hannibal, to have things happen onstage more. It’s not that I have grown to dislike it, but I know how to make it so much better.
Of Men and Poets is a play on Virgil – or rather, on the fate of the Aeneid after Virgil’s death. It was a commission, and it opened rather grandly, back in the day, to the presence of Seamus and Marie Heaney, Peter Fallon, the Gotha of Europe’s Virgil scholars… Then it had a good run and was published. And it wasn’t bad – but I was so green to the craft when I wrote it, and it shows in a hundred little ways. There are many things I know now, and wish I had known back then…
And of course I couldn’t know, because a good deal of it I learnt by sitting backstage or in the audience through show after show, and getting a feeling for what works and what doesn’t, and discussing things with directors and actors… So many lessons that I can and do use in writing new plays – but those old things, they were stories I loved (even though I panicked at first when I was commissioned a play on the damn Aeneid), and it seems a pity to leave them like that. They feel unfinished, and I want to work on them some more.
After the first run of Men&Poets, I told a friend I’d have to do something with it, sooner or later. He stared at me because, he said, he had trouble imagining that a published play could be regarded as unfinished.
“It is on paper, you know…”
Well, it wasn’t unfinished when I delivered it to the company and the publisher – oh, it felt finished enough. It was only later, that it grew unfinished again. And I have a notion that, the more I learn about playwriting, the more unfinished my old plays will become.
And also that, even after I rewrite them, sooner or later they will grow unfinished again, because this is how it works. If I’ll go on rewriting again and again, or what will be worth rewriting… well, this I’ll decide – or learn – as I go. As I rewrite.
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* And yes, the Latin title was one of those mistakes…
10 Tuesday Mar 2015
Posted in Scribbling
One of my favourite pieces of K-wisdom – to be kept in mind to stave off a temptation to obsess over the proper rules of storytelling.
19 Thursday Feb 2015
Posted in History, Scribbling
Bishopsgate.
Bishopsgate, damn it – not Holborn. Bishopsgate.
I seem to suffer from a curious affliction that makes me read “Bishopsgate” and understand “Holborn.” Repeatedly. For weeks – and, what’s worse, for chapters. Continue reading
12 Thursday Feb 2015
Posted in Scribbling
Oh, the notebook – the vital, lovely, indispensable notebook!
It’s taken me ages to learn to always, but always have one at hand. Ages and endless frustration (and a certain amount of tears) over lost ideas, scraps of descriptions, book references and all sorts of things – things that never became notes, because I didn’t have the means to jot them down at the moment. Continue reading
29 Thursday Jan 2015
Posted in Scribbling
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Technically speaking, I’m not procrastinating – and I have a red wordcount bar to show for it. Down there, in the left bar – see? To make a long story short, let’s say I gave myself a goal of 1500 words-per-day, and nine thousand and something words in five days means I’ve been meeting it, and then some.
Therefore, no: technically speaking, I’m not procrastinating.
Still, what do you call it when you tweak commas, and make yourself multiple cups of tea, and hunt for designs of Tudor mullioned windows through the Internet, and check your email again and again, and re-read an old play to make sure you are not recycling ideas too shamelessly, and mind your novel-related board on Pinterest, and plan what you’ll be writing between first and second draft, and do all sorts of things until you have an hour (or less) left before rehearsals/dinner/class/work/whatever – and then, in that hour (or less), pound out eight or nine hundred rather nice words?
And then you repeat the proceedings a couple of times a day, and end up breezing past your daily goal – all in panicky or sulky one-hour spurts of activity…
Yes, tell me: what do you call it, exactly?
I’m beginning to fancy “Microprocrastination” as a name – and yes, it seems to work at some level, and no, this doesn’t make it any less foolish and irritating. Because work it may, but in a this higgledy-piggledy way… There may be a method to my madness, but madness it is.
At whatever time I call it a night, I cannot see my met-and-exceeded daily goal without wondering : what if I had written all the time? What of the hour I squandered over those cursed windows? What if I had written instead of pinning like mad? 
Hence, I manage to write at a fairly reasonable pace, and be frustrated at the same time. I don’t procrastinate, and I do. I need to be under pressure, but I only manage to create the artificial pressure a couple of times a day… And believe me, I don’t feel spectacularly sane, when I watch myself writing things like this.
Ah well. What about you? I won’t ask whether you procrastinate – please, leave me with the fond delusion that everyone procrastinate at least a little, at least sometimes. What I ask is: how do you procrastinate? And do you ever microprocrastinate?
10 Saturday Jan 2015
Posted in Scribbling
We have all been told countless times how vital it it to write a good beginning. A beginning is no red carpet, no invitation card… A good beginning grabs the reader by the troath, drags them in, and never lets go until they are properly hooked, and in for the duration…
Yes, we’ve heard it all.
How do you do that, though? By setting the scene, the mood, the voice. By showing the right amount of action, by introducing your characters just so – and, when you are writing historical fiction, by establishing the time period as an interesting place to visit.
Marie Savage wrote this interesting article on the subject, as a guest post for The Bookbinder’s Daughter blog. Check it out – and, while you are there, have a look at this very nice book-blog with an eye for great historical fiction.
08 Thursday Jan 2015
Posted in Books, Scribbling
I know one thing I want when it comes to my writing.
Well, of course I want many things – one does. But these past days, as I took my two-day reading holyday (which happily and unexpectedly blossomed and became three days instead), I realized this particular thing: I want to write something that leaves the reader book-lagged.
You know what I mean: when you finish a book, and start the next one – and feel out of place, because you miss the one you just finished. As though you had traveled from one place to another, and couldn’t quite fit in the new place.
Finishing Sutcliff’s Simon, and missing the Civil War as I followed Thomas Dallam in his voyages. And then finding my sea-legs, and settling down – which is a bad choice of image for what is essentially a book of travels – and then missing Dallam very much as I went on to read Beagle’s Tamsin, all the more so because Jenny Gluckstein’s tale begins in modern-day New York. And then realising that all that modern-day New York, and the skilful foreshadowing was drawing me in so very well, and loving the whole thing so much that, for the third time in as many days, I’m book-lagged again.
And yes – this is what I want to do. To make up a world so vivid that the reader can feel it, and people so engaging, and stories so engrossing that the reader will miss them, afterwards. And have trouble adjusting to the world, people and stories of the next book. Or play – of course.
I’m off to write a good deal this year. I have plays in mind, and both monologues and short stories have developed a habit of just cropping up, and demanding to be written, and this is the year I go back to novel-writing, as well. A good deal of writing, yes. And while I’m at it, perhaps book-lag/play-lag is not a bad thing to strive for.
02 Tuesday Dec 2014
Posted in History, Scribbling, Theatre
You know the jig, the lively dance that, back in the day, used to end all performances, no matter how gory or tragic? Well, I’m writing a meta-Shakespearean play so I can put a final jig into it.
No, actually it’s not quite as unhinged as it may sound. This is for the Other Company – the one of the Centipede. They asked for some Shakespeare of their own – just not quite Shakespeare, if you see what I mean.
So I’m writing them this theatre-within-theatre thing, and putting in a jig – because I’ve always wanted a jig, and this time I’m having one, so sue me.
And just so you won’t think I’m badly deranged, here you can see what it is all about, and here is an article on the subject.
And of course, there is no way I’m going to have anything even near this Globe-y perfection – but still, it’s well worth writing a play for the sake of it, don’t you think?
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