The Mindful Writer

So you want to be a writer? According to popular mythology, all you need to do is hole up for a weekend or three, drink copious amounts of coffee and/or smoke a lot of cigarettes and put pen to paper. Words of genius will instantly pour out of you. After that comes The Auction, which will make you rich, and The Film Deal, which will make you famous. For impatient binge writers, there is plenty of advice out there, from writing a novel in a month (NaNoWriMo) to producing a book in a weekend.

Published under the Creative Commons licence.
Site: Rubin Museum of Art, Date 22 October 2017, Author FMdesign (Frank Murray)

But what about the pain and pleasure of writing itself? Or the pure love of invention? And the way that writing, like meditation, can help you find your personal equilibrium? Writing is in many ways the ultimate mindful occupation and recording your thoughts regularly can help transform your life. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to reap the rewards. The essential point is that each day you check in with your work, and each day you learn something from it. Writers have been talking about this for decades, and yet somehow the idea of the lone author instantaneously producing work of undiluted genius is an enduring fantasy. Such outpourings do happen, but only after years of apprenticeship to the craft and discipline of writing. 

As Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: ‘What one wants for writing is habit...It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles. Going at such a pace as I do must make the most direct and instant shots at my object, and thus have to lay hands on words, choose them and shoot them with no more pause than is needed to put my pen in the ink. I believe that during the past year I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea.’ The trouble with our own ‘casual half hours after tea’ is that such practice can seem more like limbering up for a marathon we will never be asked to run than an activity which is valuable for its own sake. The besetting issue for most writers is that their work is only validated by publication – or so it seems. Until then, writing is a mere hobby, and we are struggling amateurs. 

But there is so much to enjoy. Each stage has its own rewards, even the supposedly preparatory and relatively uncreative period of research, as the novelist Marina Warner has observed – she finds the smell of book dust inspiring and libraries give her a sense of escape. In fact, it’s my experience that research is essential to the creative process, allowing ideas to connect with our imagination and find their own strange logic. We don’t have great canvases to splatter with oil paint, or the thrill of mixing colours, but we do have the tactile reality of paper, books and pens, the fascination of field trips and research interviews and the excitement of serendipitous discovery: the way that a single object can invoke a whole world. Writing is a physical activity as well as a mental one, and every day can be a discovery.


Published under the Creative Commons licence User: (WT-shared) Cai at wts wikivoyage - Own work,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23279837

There is also something restorative and exciting about tapping into your unconscious, developing ideas that are rooted in your obsessions or memories. All artists work with both the external world and their internal consciousness, and this is one of elements of the creative process that is difficult to describe – my view is that each writer will find their own way of combining these elements to a lesser or greater degree, and they will find these solutions via a process of trial and error and experimentation. No agent or editor can tell you how this works, and it’s an innately private and personal matter in the first instance. Notebooks and daily writing help the process along. Author and writing guru Julia Cameron advocates writing ‘morning pages’ first thing each day, and many writers make this part of their practice. One such writer is Hilary Mantel: ‘At this hour one writes easily, without strain or effort,’ she writes. ‘There is no sense of the words being graven in stone, or that sense of making a commitment that can be so paralysing. Sometimes what is written at this hour isn’t used, but is invariably free from constraint.’ (The Agony and the Ego, Clare Boylan, 1993).

This communing with you inner self isn’t necessarily spiritual, but has some similarity with yoga practice or morning prayer – it’s a way of getting beyond ‘dailyness’ and finding patterns and symbols that have meaning. And this meaning may be personal in the first instance, but can ultimately be communicated to other people. Creative writers often undervalue this part of the process, and there can be a sense of pressure to rush towards completion. But this is short sighted – and prevents us from working to our fullest potential. We can learn from the process of visual artists, who see process as an integral part of their daily life as well as a component of each finished work. GraysonPerry describes his creative process as his ‘mental shed’ which gives him a sense of security and a safe place from which to look out of a window ‘onto the world’. 

My favourite writing space is a moving train, looking out at a passing world. This makes me feel as if my writing is moving too, and what I write is delible and malleable, like Hilary Mantel’s dawn drafts. This creative sketching is a way of finding a pattern without imposing one, of evolving a loose logic that determines its own shapes and connections. Raw experience, random impressions, childhood memory, all of this can be forgotten and revisited, twisted and repurposed. At its best, this process can take us into the ‘zone’ in which we transcend the limitations of self and find an equilibrium that allows our creative imagination to flourish, disappearing into our own ideas. Rather than rushing this period of our writing process, surely we should cherish it, and learn how to nurture our developing ideas. Not only does this benefit our finished work, it is a life enhancing process in itself. 

(Based on an article I first published in Bookanista http://bookanista.com/mindful-writer/)

What IS historical fiction?

I've just finished chairing a series of seminars about historical fiction for the Open University. (There's more about this series here.) There were six speakers, all brilliant and all with a different angle on historical writing and the way in which it relates to other forms of fiction - and to different academic disciplines. I'll be posting in more detail about the subjects we discussed in the next few weeks.

It may seem pretty straightforward to come up with a definition for historical fiction - surely we are simply talking about any story that is set more than 50 years ago? But even that is open to debate - Jerome de Groot, one of the seminar speakers, includes Alan Hollinghurst's  'The Line of Beauty' in the genre, whereas the Historical Novel Society insists that the 1980s are too recent. Whatever the cut off point in terms of time, it's also the case that this is a vast compendium of a genre. 

There are infinite possibilities for writers of historical fiction. It includes straightforward generic writing such as Tudor bodice rippers, and experimental writing like Ali Smith's 'How to be Both' which was the winner of this year's Goldsmiths prize for experimental fiction as well as being long
listed for the Booker.

I'm interested in the way in which this genre can be bent and shaped by different writers, and the way that it develops and morphs with time. I'm also interested in getting well away from the idea that this is a cosy or conservative genre, in which writers are playing safe. 

As Hilary Mantel says: ‘A relation of past events brings you up against events and mentalities that, should you choose to describe them, would bring you to the borders of what your readers could bear. The danger you have to negotiate is not the dimpled coyness of the past – it is its obscenity.’

Some stories may be more brutal than others, but the ‘obscenity’ of the past fascinates writers – war, murder, fear, oppression, loss, invasion, imprisonment and bereavement all feature in 21^st century historical fiction, as does squalor, both moral and physical. And just as no subject is off limits, neither is any period, or any form of experimentation. Historical fiction is not an escape from the modern world, it can enable us to see contemporary life more clearly.

Like all writers, I am learning all the time, and this seminar series taught me a lot. What I’ve learned in the last couple of months is that the challenges and complexities of writing historical fiction relate to writing set at any time, and to any comprehension of the past, whether recent or remote. Put simply, this is about what can be known, how we can know it, and how that knowledge can be communicated.

Will this make it easier to write my next novel? Probably not. But I am certainly fizzing with ideas not only about the subject matter, but also about ways in which this story can be told. 

Top 10 tips for historical fiction

Okay, so my new historical novel 'Dark Aemilia' comes out next month, and in this blog I'll be focusing on historical fiction and all things associated with it. Here are ten suggested 'top tips' which I hope might be useful both for new historical writers and people already writing in this field who want some fresh advice. I'll be fleshing these out in ten posts over the weeks leading to the publication date.

1. Know your field. Read everything, visit museums, find physical objects that inspire you, talk to family members, watch documentaries and films, pursue all lines of enquiry that are relevant to your chosen period or subject. Be an anorak, it’s more fun than you might think!

2. Be bold. Don’t be intimidated by the facts, or the personalities that you discover. The facts are a starting point, not a straitjacket. Remember that even biography is an inexact science.

3. Tell a good story – character and plot are just as important in this genre as in any other. Don’t make the mistake of letting the setting dominate everything else.

4. Think laterally. Is your story a romance or a thriller? If so, borrow from these genres. (Try and avoid a zombie mash-up if you can, this is as passé as Jeremy Paxman’s beard.)

5. Put your reader in a time machine. If you have found a way to immerse yourself in the period, try to give them the same experience.

6. Be succinct. Less is more in historical fiction – don’t get bogged down in long descriptions or expositional dialogue.

7. Look for ‘the gaps in history’. Hilary Mantel has talked about using the unknown in history, the unrecorded and forgotten moments. You can do the same thing. You can also search out periods that are less popular than the Elizabethan era, or more distant in time.

8. Character, character, character. Why is ‘Wolf Hall’ so successful? Or ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’? They are all very different in their approach, but all have vivid and believable characters that the reader cares about. Even an apparently unsympathetic character like Thomas Cromwell becomes engaging and absorbing when we are party to his thoughts and fears.

9. Develop genre awareness. If you want to write a Tudor crime thriller, make sure you read C.J.Sansom. If you want to write about the life of Charles II, read ‘Restoration’. And so on. If you are worried about your style being influenced when you are writing your own book, then stop reading other writers during this period, but it should definitely be part of your preparatory research.

10. Read outside the genre. It’s essential to read as widely as possible and as eclectically as possible if you want to write well and raise your game to the highest possible level. Historical fiction is not just a ticket to escapism, it’s a vibrant and varied genre in its own right. 

The Hilary Mantel method

Hilary Mantel is one of my greatest inspirations. She is an extraordinarily versatile novelist who has written many contemporary novels as well as her Booker winners, including Beyond Black, the story of a medium which presents the spirit world in forensic detail. This is one of my Desert Island books. (My rationale being that if I were sent to a desert island, I would take eight books and one record.)

I have now read both Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, and there is no doubt that Mantel deserved her double Booker. Not only does she create a plausible, tangible sixteenth century reality, and populate it with characters who are credible both as Early Modern humans and people we can understand, she raises the game for all writers of historical fiction. The question of what is factual and what is imaginary, what is invented for the benefit of modern readers and what is ‘authentic’ is one which we all need to address. We might not find an answer to it, but we can only write with fluency and authority if we know enough to imagine with confidence. And Mantel meets this challenge with magisterial brilliance. Speaking at the Novel Approaches to History conference at the Institute of Historical Research in November 2011, Mantel commented:

What happens in most historical fiction is – the author dresses up twenty-first century figures in the costume of the period. Conventional historical fiction – offers moral teaching about the lives of women. I did not want a cocked or disguised way of writing about the present. The past has a value in itself. Fact and fiction are not two neat categories. If I were to distinguish fact from fiction in Wolf Hall, I would have to footnote every line.

Mantel is interested in the aspects of the past that historians cannot access.  This is what she calls ‘the activated Power of Rumour’ and this is where an author’s imagination can operate, free of accusations of inaccuracy. 

She argues: ‘I can operate in this “off the record” area. So much of what we have now – pageantry, painting, gift giving culture – is what is demonstrated or shown. I am more interested in what is going on on the back stairs, what is said behind the hand. I might be able to make my readers feel what it was like to live through those terrifying days. I will walk you forward with the characters who don’t know the end of the road.’

Wolf Hall shows Thomas Cromwell’s vulnerability – his wife and daughters die suddenly of the sweating sickness. At the start of Bring up the Bodies, we learn that he has given his daughters’ names to his falcons. He sees them plummet from the sky to kill their prey. (The opening sentence is: ‘His children are falling from the sky.’ I would challenge anyone to stop reading after that.)  Cromwell trusts his instincts more readily than his fellow man. At Henry’s request, he schemes against Anne Boleyn without knowing what the outcome will be. (Henry, becoming toddler-like in his bulky infirmity, is trammeled by his own power.) Cromwell must act to end the marriage he worked so hard to broker. His is a ruthless but inexact science.

His view is partial, sometimes confused; his surroundings are shadowed and obfuscated.  He is Master Secretary – he can do anything in the service of the King, even arrange for the removal of inconvenient wives. But the removal of Anne is messy. Witnesses may be lying. The accused may have confessed because they were tortured. His own position is insecure, just as Anne’s is insecure, and her downfall may bring about his end. (If Anne Boleyn wasn’t safe from Cromwell, the courtier Wriothesley asks, how does the King know he can trust him?)

The reader is similarly unsure and half-informed, caught between light and darkness. I tried to describe Mantel’s style to someone recently, and talked about seeing her characters though mullions of dark coloured glass, vividly but incompletely. So I was pleased to find almost this same image towards the end of Bring up the Bodies: ‘Perhaps, caught in the little panes which distort and cloud, Wriothesley sees a dubious image: confusion, fear, emotions that do not often mark Master Secretary’s face…’

In the third volume of the trilogy, we will find out that things end badly for Cromwell. This is not a spoiler, as history has already done this job for me. The point is not what happens, but how. And in Mantel’s ‘off the record’ area, the ‘how’ can be imagined with truthful clarity.

Write what you know?

‘Write what you know’ – now there’s a sterling piece of advice. I’ve passed it on to quite a few students in my time. A little experience, an injection of actual pain, something that’s stirred the surface of your life – this is the stuff of good fiction, there is no doubt about it.

But writing what you know can mean sticking to the boring and familiar. Audacity and curiosity are also essential features of effective writing. Writing what you don’t know opens new worlds of possibility – you can write about anything you like if you take the trouble to find out about it.  And these two elements: of knowing and not knowing can work together. Experience combined with empathy can take the writer – and the reader – to the most exotic or remote places and to forgotten worlds. 

None of this is easy, though. When I started writing novels I thought I would be writing books drawing on social observation and the world around me. So I wrote two novels based on my take on contemporary life, featuring the war between the sexes, modern hypocrisy, etc, and thought this was my territory. But the books didn't sell enough for my publisher's liking, I was out in the cold once more, and I therefore decided to Go Historical.  I grew up reading Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece and Ian Serraillier, and loved the sense they gave of entering a time machine and flying back into history, tactile, sensory, vivid, convincing. I was sure I’d enjoy immersing myself in the past. The only problem was that I didn’t know very much about this place: The Past. Any of it. My knowledge of history was based on the Ladybird books, a selection of melodramatic 1970s movies including Anne of a Thousand Days, Nicholas and Alexandra and A Man for all Seasons and my O and A levels. My O-level focused on the Industrial Revolution and the social legislation which followed. 

There was also some Napoleonic business thrown in. I did well at this: I liked and believed in the idea of social progress. (It was the 1970s.)  My A level was a disaster. I became mired in the detail of the French Revolution, and the blood and horror got lost in dates and times of day and the minutiae of shifting alliances. The American War of Independence was just boring generals and pointless battles. My teacher, Mrs Cheer, used to steeple her fingers in what I considered a complacent manner while talking about The Battle of Ticonderoga, and I would stare dumbly at her, steeped in a horrible teenage knowledge of my own mortality.  (I just Googled this battle and there are four different possible options: this can’t have helped.)

 

So when I began a novel about William Shakespeare and Aemilia Bassano – the novel which became Dark Aemilia – I had to do One Hell of A Lot of Groundwork. Mrs Cheer would probably be proud of me, if not a little surprised. (I got a C for History instead of my predicted A. It still rankles.) And I now really do know quite a lot about Early Modern England, though not quite as much as I did when in the throes of writing the novel.

This was meant to be a post about the genius of Hilary Mantel! Watch this space...

HOW TO BE A BLOG WRITER

Aha, I have detected a flaw in this blog. It doesn't tell you how to be a writer. Two reasons for this - or maybe three. Number one: it's complicated. Number two: where to start, blog-wise, having written a whole book on the subject? And number three - I am blog-phobic. It's the style of writing I am least comfortable with. Blogs are not diaries (weird, introspective, libellous, insane), but neither do I think they should be press releases, a constant dribble of PR about "I, an Author". (Boring, tiresome, witless, inane.) So I grind to a halt, wondering who reads this stuff anyway, worrying about Wrong Notes and sounding too negative or too smug, or as if I am being overly self-conscious about either of these things, and so...

Anyway, I have put all this behind me now. Strictly professional. I have the book to hand, and I'm about to give you some excellent advice, in bite-size chunks, and really do please feel free not to buy the book, or, if you do, not to put an excellent review on Amazon.

Hilary Mantel wrote "Wolf  Hall", I heard her say recently, because it was the book that didn't exist that she wanted to read. On a slightly less high-flown level, I wrote this book because it was the book that didn't exist that I needed to read.

In 2004, I was Published for the first time, which seemed like it ought to mean something, this being the pinnacle of my ambition. But I was isolated and confused. I was waiting for someone to sprinkle fairy dust on my life (as if I was a Pippa Middleton table setting) but there was no fairy dust in sight. I wanted to be a Writer, not just someone who was published by accident. I needed help.

And so a few years later, I set out to write a book that would offer the friendly guidance I hadn't had when I started, and which had taken me years to find. Which is why the book is about "being a writer" not "doing the writing".

Not because I don't care about writing myself - I care more about this than any other part of the Writing Life - but because I know from experience that finding your neutral space is easier if you aren't in a state of sheer, blind panic or the Pits of Despair, the habitat of all too many writers.

Novel approaches to history

Right, so today I went to a conference about historical fiction and learned quite a lot, not least of which being that my book might/should hold its own in this field, which is cheering. But as usual with these things the whole area is Dogged by Definition.

For instance: how do you define "historical fiction"? What differentiates a historical novelist from any other sort of novelist telling a fictitious tale set in the past? What is a Fact, and how it it pinned down? (Like a butterfly on a board?) Does the imagined truth of fiction take us to places that the "proven" truth of historians cannot go? To what extent are historians story tellers anyway? To what extent are myths false, and to what extent do they illuminate the way?

All of which related to my own story about the Dark Lady Myth, the idea that Shakespeare wrote his most violently emotional sonnets to a mysterious femme fatale, in a state of morbid sexual despair. And here is a Nicholas Hilliard portrait that may or may not be one of the possible Dark Ladies, my heroine Emilia Bassano:

Ate biscuits, ingested caffeine, listened and scribbled, did not ask any questions. I think I feel, like many writers of historical fiction who are not historians, that I might be found out. And yet, the most inspirational speakers were those in exactly this same position: Hilary Mantel and Stella Tillyard. And in the coffee break talked about the politics of maps, and maps that lie... Absorbing in a way that things can only be when you feel a story brewing.

Oh and the conference was this: http://www.history.ac.uk/historical-fiction