Gottle of geer

"Find your voice!" the writing handbooks say.  Which is fair enough.  But there's more.

"Find the voice of your characters!"  OK, yes, reading it back they seem to be distinct personalities.  Next.

"Find your narrative voice!"

Ah.

Looking for Buttons was written in the first person, narrated by Kate, the central character.  I like first person narrative, I like its immediacy and intrinsic bias.  It's why I prefer Ice Station Zebra to Where Eagles Dare, although filmwise I'd call it the other way.  (Yes, I do realise that writers of romantic comedy do not as a rule cite Alistair MacLean as their writing inspiration, but I am nothing if not, erm, yes, you could say odd.)  The Difficult Second Novel, which has more in common with MacLean and Adam Hall than with Looking for Buttons, has a first person narrative.  So, first problem - does the narrator of the DSN sound too much like Kate, i.e. do both books in fact just sound like me?

The Difficult Third Novel is shaping up to follow Looking for Buttons into the chick lit genre, but it's written in the third person, with an all-seeing impartial narrator (a bit like David Attenborough, only without the charm and erudition).  Reading it back, it's OK, but it's not quite right.  So, second problem - should I rewrite it from the point of view of the central character and see if that sorts it out?  Which itself brings me to the third problem, which is actually the first problem all over again.

I feel I should draw a flow chart at this point, but that's just the latent scientist in me, and if I sit quietly with my copy of Doctor Faustus for a minute the feeling will pass.

It's not enough just to put words on a page in the right order.  You've got to throw your voice at the same time.  But if you don't get it right it turns into a boomerang and comes back to clout you round the ear.

It's enough to drive you to drink a gottle of geer.

At the end of the day, you need clichés

Flick through any guide to writing and the chances are you'll come across advice along the lines of 'Avoid clichés like the plague'.  Good advice, but I think that clichés can be useful shortcuts if you handle them properly.

Chick-lit is commonly held to be a grab-bag of hackneyed characters and scenarios: the ditzy heroine, always unlucky in love; the unobtainable perfect man; the all-too obtainable wrong 'un; the wisecracking best friend; the difficult relationship with a parent; the misunderstandings and complications that drive the plot along.

Having written that, my first thought was, "Oh hell, how high does Looking for Buttons score on the clichéometer?"  My second, gingerly relieved thought, was that this is the whole point of this post.  Yes, there are familiar people and scenarios but using something familiar doesn't make it dull (I hope).  The general framework is familiar, I grant you.  That's what the reader wants, that's what tells them it's their sort of book.  It's what you do within that framework that makes the difference.

When you take a romantic comedy and boil it down, you end up with a fairytale, shorn of its gorier elements.  We're brought up on fairytales.  Is it any wonder that we still want to read them when (if) we grow up?

Books offer us a happy ever after.  If you have to resort to a kind of cultural shorthand to reach that point, is that so very wrong?

[PS  This blog has just passed a thousand hits.  Thank you very much for reading it.]

A rather angsty post

I am having a bit of wobble at the moment.  Technically, I should be all smiles.  Looking for Buttons is out in the world, selling fairly steadily.  I am A Published Writer, albeit a DIY one.

But.

But but but but but.

It's said that everyone has a book in them.  What if Looking for Buttons is the only one I have?

I want to write.  It's what I do, spinning yarns when I'm not knitting them.  That's the image I've always had of myself.  But when I sit down at the keyboard I can't string a coherent sentence together.  I've re-read what exists of the Difficult Second and Third Novels.  They seem to have been written by someone else.  It's like watching Bradley Wiggins win the Tour de France.  I can ride a bike but no way could I do that.  I get the same feeling as I run my eye along the bookcase.  I've lost my writing nerve and with it part of my identity.

I hope this is just a temporary blip.

Heyer today...

When you find a writing style that works for you, it's very tempting to stick with it.  That's fair enough.  Developing a distinctive voice is part of maturing as a writer.  And perhaps one day your book will be published and you start to think about what comes next.  The question then is whether you've got more than one book in you.  Maybe you have, maybe you haven't.  But what if your readers just want the same book over and over again?

At the moment I am trying to read my way through my bookcase overflow pile, mainly for health and safety reasons as it's taller than I am.  I'm being very strict.  Once I've read a book it goes to charity, unless I have a compelling reason to keep it (i.e. it's written by Adam Hall, my hero - and yes, I'm aware that he might not be the obvious inspiration to a romance writer, but nevertheless, he was the guv'nor).  The last book but three was a Georgette Heyer.  I've read a fair few of her books over the years and time and again the same characters crop up: the sensible heroine, usually grey-eyed and on the verge of being left on the shelf; the semi-rakish hero, rich, titled and needing to be taken down a peg or two; the daffy ingenue; the young rascal; the bitchy socialite; the scheming in-law.  I need to be more scientific and read them in publication order, because I can't yet tell if she was writing to a formula or if she just got trapped by her own popularity.

I'm not necessarily complaining that the books sometimes seem a little formulaic.  The best ones are very good indeed and had me willing the hero and heroine to get together (I loved Sylvester).  They're well-written and entertaining, with an extensive lexicon of Regency slang (ever been "bosky as a wheelbarrow"?), and sometimes it's nice to know what you're getting.  But it's interesting all the same.  A little further down the now-teetering overflow pile is one of Heyer's crime novels.  I'm looking forward to seeing how she tackled that genre.

I have a bet with myself that the heroine will have grey eyes.