Writing? It's child's play.

I used to play with dolls as a child.  I gather this is What Children Do.  I used to stage grand extravaganzas, big budget, all action, non-stop thrills, conscripting all manner of household items.  Those aren't stairs, that's a cliff and there is a heart-stopping clifftop rescue going on.  That's not a mirror, it's a portal to another dimension.  The lift has broken off the Sindy house and is swinging freely: cue Towering Infernoesque disaster movie.  There were sagas that went on for weeks, if not months: the tangled on-off courtship of Barbie and Ken, the backstabbing world of the pop diva, the tragic little orphans in their garret.

Recently I spoke to a friend about this.  She seemed taken aback.  Didn't she used to play games like that? "No," she said, "I just used to brush their hair and change their clothes."

So:

Writers are born and not made.

Discuss.

Literary networking the Lucie Parish way

One of my biggest regrets about my undergraduate life (apart from studying a subject I didn't much care for in the deluded hope that it would improve my employment prospects, says she, laughing hollowly) was that I avoided Jilly Cooper.

I was shopping with a friend one Saturday.  We drifted into W.H. Smith.  There was Jilly Cooper, PR lady at her side, sitting at a table piled high with copies of her latest novel.  My friend, a great fan, was very excited and decided to get a signed book for her mum's birthday present.  At the time, I had never read any of her novels (this was at the peak of my Alistair MacLean phase).  I felt so ashamed at the thought of coming face to face with a very famous author and admitting I'd never even read so much as a blurb that I bolted out of the shop and lurked outside until my friend reappeared, clutching her trophy.

Since then I've read and enjoyed Mrs Cooper's books (I can't call her Jilly, that would be presumptous, given my behaviour).  Flatteringly, but ludicrously, Looking for Buttons has been compared to her early novels.  Yesterday I read an interview with her in the Times (to which I can't link as it's a subscription-only site) in which she championed character and good writing and generally came across as a thoroughly good egg.  I've been kicking myself about the W.H. Smith incident ever since.

Some years later, I saw Joanna Trollope sitting alone at a signing in my local Waterstone's.  I'd read and enjoyed her books.  I was too skint to buy one and too shy to approach her to say I loved her work, so I just scuttled off instead.

I am so very, very bad at treating published authors as human beings.  It's just as well that Looking for Buttons is only available as an e-book.  If I had a signing I'd be too embarrassed to turn up.




[This weekend, it's a Bank Holiday Bonanza!  Get Looking for Buttons FREE from Amazon from Saturday 25th to Monday 27th August!  It's the last giveaway I'll be holding for a while so make the most of it.]

Facing up to the publicity game

Life gets slightly weird when you publish a book.  Today I was invited to make a guest appearance on a website to promote Looking for Buttons.  Fabulous.  Except I need to provide an author photo.

Ah.

As I've said before, I'm not photogenic.  It's been over a year since I last had my picture taken, unawares, and when I saw it posted on Facebook I wailed about my Cold War-era Eastern Bloc shotputter's arms and pleaded for it to be taken down.  I can only think of one set of recent(ish) photos I can bear to look at, and then I was wearing a furry lion suit to entertain small children at my local library.

I started to wonder when this image-hungry world started to drag an author's mugshot into prominence.   Surely it's a modern phenomenon.  If I looked along my bookcase (or in fact gingerly peered at the teetering overflow pile in front of it, currently nearing six feet high), surely I would find faceless authors.

A random selection:  Terry Pratchett - photo inside cover.  John Buchan - photo on back cover.  Ngaio Marsh - photo on back cover.  Adam Hall - photo on inside flap of dustjacket.  Mervyn Peake - wonderful artist, self-portraits.  OK, maybe it's a twentieth century phenomenon.  Go back further.  Charlotte Bronte - painting by her brother.  Charles Dickens - used to be on a banknote.   Further still.  Christopher Marlowe - the Corpus Christi portait, might be him, might not, great image anyhow so who cares?  I can put a face to almost every author in my collection.  People like to know who they're reading.  I'm no different, so I really can't deny that an author photo is going to become necessary at some point.

But will anybody accept a lion who writes romantic comedies?

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.

A spell of casting

These days, if you ask a writer whether they've given any thought to the casting of a film or TV adaptation of their book and they say no, they're probably lying.

I've played the game with Looking for Buttons, bouncing various actors off friends (not literally, I must add, however much my friends would wish it otherwise).  And no, I'm not going to tell you who plays who.  But in my head the characters are real.  They don't look or sound like anyone else.

With the Difficult Second Novel, things are a little different.  Being bogged down with the plot, I've tried various ways of getting back on track.  One of these has been reworking the text as a script for radio or film.  It helps a little, in as much as adaptations have to leave a lot out so I have to cut to the bare bones of the story.  In theory this means I should have a clearer idea of which sub-plots are complicating matters needlessly.  In practice I'm still a little confused, but at least I know why.

The casting was proving problematic when I tried to replay these scripts in my head.  No-one seemed quite right.  Then the other night I had a minor revelation.  The DSN is set round about 1978 so (insert fanfare here) I need to cast it as it would have been done in 1978.

So I've done a preliminary casting (all those hours spent watching 1970s anthology box sets have not been wasted) and now when I work through the early parts of the book the pictures in my head have that slightly washed out look of seventies film.  It's not like Life On Mars.  This is a proper seventies production, possibly preceded by the Thames TV logo.  The soundtrack relies perhaps a little too much on wah-wah guitar and a hyperactive brass section.  The cast all have iffy hairstyles and there is a lot of brown floral wallpaper.  It is, in short, my idea of heaven and I can't wait to watch it.

So now all I've got to do is get on and write the damn thing.  And then build a time machine.

Ms Frankenstein regrets

I've tried to move on.  I really have.  I've bought shoes.  I've bought myself jewellery.  I would have my hair cut if the salon were open on my day off, but since it isn't I shall progress through mildly unkempt to becoming prey for yeti hunters until I can get there at the end of the month.  I've even tried a little flirtation with others but all to no avail.

I am still in love with Fergus Palmer.

Now on paper, this is no bad thing.  He is kind.  He is charming.  He is witty.  He is also very tall, somewhat Scottish and has hair of the most spectacular shade of auburn.  He's about my age, he's got a good job, his own flat, his own car.  On paper, he's just what I should be looking for in a man.

That's the snag, those two words: 'on paper'.

For Fergus, my lovely, dearest Fergus is entirely fictional, supposedly confined to the pages of Looking For Buttons, in which he isn't even the heroine's love interest.  Yet here I am, sitting here with the laptop on my knees, sighing in a distinctly piney* fashion for a figment of my imagination.

Surely I'm not the only one who does this?  I've been falling for fictional men for as long as I can remember but when I started to write I never suspected it would happen with one I'd created.  I have the nasty suspicion that part of the trouble I'm having getting going with the next book is that I've yet to get over Fergus sufficiently to produce anyone to take his place.

But isn't this what writers do?  We put together people in a curious hybrid of doll's house and photofit and if we get it right by some elusive alchemy they step right into our heads and let us report on their lives.

I just wish he'd take me out for dinner while I'm doing it.






*piney as in yearning unrequitedly, not piney as in forest-fresh