Words Unlimited

Happy Holidays

It's snowing outside as I write. I'm off to wrap gifts and to curl up with a good book beside a log fire. I'll be back on Tuesday 12 January when I'll post the first writing prompt of 2010. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the interview with Bronia Kita. Happy Holidays ...

Bronia Kita

Continuing Words Unlimited's monthly author interview series ...

Bronia Kita's distinctive first novel, The Swansong of Wilbur McCrum, was published by Picador earlier this year. Bronia talks about ventriloquism, the value of writing for 20 minutes a day and novel No 2 

PJ: From the opening sentence of The Swansong of Wilbur McCrum we 'hear' Wilbur's voice. He's so far removed from your own world - how did you manage the ventriloquism?

BK: Looking back on it now, writing in the voice of a man born in the American West in the nineteenth century seems an unwise choice for a first novel, but, I've always enjoyed inhabiting characters who are as distant from me as possible. My inspiration for the book was a Timewatch documentary about a spectacularly unsuccessful Oklahoma outlaw who lived slightly later than my protagonist, and featured some people who remembered his death, or had been told about it by people who were around at the time. Their speech patterns filtered into my consciousness. I'm not sure at what point I began to hear Wilbur's voice - fairly early on, I expect - but how to transcribe it posed problems.

PJ: Did you do any dialogue research?

BK: Researching dialogue was hard because so many of the portrayals of that time - as with any historical period - are inauthentic. In cowboy movies saloon girls seem to have access to a full range of 20th century cosmetics and hair dye, and everyone has unfeasibly good teeth. I built up a large collection of non-fiction books on the era, but didn't read many cowboy novels, as they were mostly written long after, and are no more reliable a source than the movies. The one exception was Owen Wister's The Virginian, and I also read the Little House of the Prairie series, and Willa Cather's, O, Pioneers. To begin with I used far more colloquial language and non-standard spelling, but soon realised how hard that would be for readers, so I gradually reined it in until it was much closer to standard speech, with a few dialect words and expressions repeated fairly frequently. Some of these are authentic and some I may have made up myself; even I couldn't tell you which now.

PJ: What other research did the book require - landscape?

BK: The landscape was the hardest part for me to create. I'm not good at geography and I've never set foot in the States, so I'm often deliberately vague about where Wilbur is exactly. I use a mixture of real and fictional places because it was hard to be sure how long it would have taken to travel from one part of the country to another in those days. If some of his destinations are fictional, no-one can point a finger at me and declare that I've blundered.  Besides, even if I'd been able to travel to the real places mentioned in the book, I couldn't travel back to how they were then; my job, like that of any fiction writer, was to create my own version of my characters' world, and to make it believable.

PJ: I know you worked on Wilbur over several years. Was there a time when you thought you might never finish it? What kept you going?

BK: Inevitably I grew fond of Wilbur and not only did I want to see how he turned out, I began to wish him well. The earlier drafts were much bleaker. I don't know if that always happens when you spend a long time with a particular character. Almost a decade passed from the writing of the first paragraph to the final publication date, and I certainly don't intend to spend so long on the next one! Of course I wasn't working on the novel all that time: I put it aside during the MA. I don't think there was ever a time when I thought I'd give up on it, but when I rewrote the second part it seemed to go on expanding. I began to feel like the ballerina in The Red Shoes who can't stop dancing, as if I would just keep typing until my fingers were bloody and the keyboard was smoking. Somehow I managed to reach a conclusion and hand it over to my editor and together we knocked it into shape.

PJ: How did it feel to finally realise the project?

BK: It's hard to say at which point the project was finally realised. Although in films writers are often shown triumphantly typing 'The end' and then bundling their manuscripts into an envelope to be sent to their publishers, in real life it's a much more long drawn-out procedure. My editor was making suggestions for cuts and changes at the same time as the cover designer was coming up with ideas and we were deciding on the blurb for the jacket and which photo to use. The moment I received the first proof copy was something of an anti-climax, as it had a plain cover that looked very boring. Seeing the finished product was obviously more exciting, but I'd already been given a copy of the jacket by then. The best moment was probably when my publicist sent me some pictures of the window of Goldsboro Books with a display made up entirely of copies of my novel. It was their book of the month for June, and they issued a special limited edition of 250 signed and numbered copies, for which I had to sign 500 sheets of paper, just in case I messed some up.

PJ: Doing the Goldsmiths Creative Writing MA part-time gave you a writing framework for two years - how did that change your writing?

BK: I gained so much from the MA. The first thing was that I became part of a group of writers who took my writing seriously. Although I'd submitted work for competitions - and had some success - I'd never shown anything to my friends and family and my daily life was occupied with caring for my children and doing my job. It was inexpressibly liberating to be around people who saw me primarily as a writer, rather than a mum or a colleague.

As I said, I chose not to work on the novel during the course, and instead concentrated on short stories. Because we were workshopping regularly I produced quite a number of these, and a group of us continued to meet after we graduated, so I've got quite a collection now.

I learned a lot from your workshops: I was particularly struck by what you said about trying to write for 20 minutes a day, rather than waiting for a time when you could devote several hours at a stretch to it. Previously I'd been beating myself up about the impossibility of producing anything of worth when I had so many other commitments, but I soon discovered how much could be achieved by writing little and often.

PJ: Life after MA - the framework has gone - what new framework have you constructed for your writing?

BK: The short answer is: none. I'm afraid that the tide of other stuff to do is flowing in again. My children and my parents require a lot of support and I'm doing what I can to publicise the book, so at the moment I'm hardly working on the new novel at all. I'm now involved in a Spread the Word project called Encompass that aims to train writers to run community workshops in creative writing. I'm hoping that, even though it's an additional commitment, it will give more structure to my working week, and I'll fit my writing around it.

PJ: Has getting published changed the way you see yourself as a writer?

BK: I think it has. I firmly believe that if you write, you're a writer; you don't need to be published to give yourself permission to use that description, but obviously I've now had feedback from a large number of people, mot of them strangers with nothing invested in me as a person, and inevitably that's helped me to take myself more seriously. People have paid good money to buy my book and to come and listen to me talk about writing it - I've even had fan mail! Before I was published there were plenty of occasions when I asked myself what I thought I was doing, but once a publisher gave me a cheque I felt vindicated. I even described myself as 'a novelist' to some young man from the bank who was annoying me. That took me by surprise, but I'm getting used to it. My passport is up for renewal next year, and I still haven't decided what to give as my occupation. 

PJ: What surprised/delighted/shocked you abut the process of getting published and getting the book to readers?

BK: The surprise was that it happened at all, the delight was the way it was received, and the money - although I did accidentally put one of my advance cheques in the recycling bin and only just managed to retrieve it before it was collected (I'm not an orderly person) and the shocking part was the growing realisation of the importance of marketing. No doubt that seems naïve, but it wasn't until I saw that plain proof copy that I began to consider the importance of a book's cover, and the need to package it in a way that will appeal to potential readers.

PJ: Can you tell us a bit about the new book you are working on? Does it have a title yet?

BK: The new book is something completely different, and probably much closer to my usual work. It's a narrative with three main points of view, made up of memories of an elderly man in a care home, his daughter and granddaughter and spanning the period from just before the outbreak of the Second World War to the turn of the millennium. At least, that's what it is at the moment; in another few months it might be something else again - and no, I haven't decided on a title yet, although I've got one for the book after that.

PJ: What are you reading at the moment?

BK: Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man, which is less strikingly original than The Electric Michelangelo, but more assured and probably easier to read. I'm finding it interesting because it, too, has several points of view in alternating chapters, two of which are those of a father and daughter.

PJ: What advice would you give to someone just embarking on a first novel? BK: Don't, at least not if you expect to make a living out of it. Only a lucky few manage that, and not many writers of literary fiction. If it's something you truly want and need to do, go into it with your eyes open, be aware that getting a book published is like climbing a pyramid: the first step is to produce a manuscript that you're reasonably happy with; the second is to find an agent who will take you on; the next is to get a book deal, then to do the rewrites, and so on. It's not like bursting into a sunlit field and skipping through the buttercups, shouting 'I've arrived!' The chances are that your agent will probably sidle up to you at the launch and ask if you've started work on the next one yet. As for the process of writing: believe in yourself, because if you don't, you can't really expect anyone else to.

Weekly Writing Workshop Prompt No 4

Want to know more about weekly workshop? Click here ...

Troubadour International Poetry Competition

Congratulations to Sue Rose who took first prize in the 2009 Troubadour Competition. 

The Troubadour Prize has quickly established itself as one of the top poetry competitions. One reason being the quality of the judges and the fact that both judges read all entries. This year Maura Dooley and Jamie McKendrick selected an impressive range of voices and forms in the 23 winners - top 3 + 20 commended. Among the commended are Jane Draycott and Christopher North.

This competition not only supports regular live readings at The Troubadour since arts funding was cut, it showcases some extraordinary poetry. Now, you can now read all 23 prize-winning poems here.

Weekly Writing Workshop Prompt No 3

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Is your Novel Really Finished?

That was the question at the heart of a workshop I ran a couple of weeks ago.

The workshop was for writers who had completed the first draft of a novel. These were committed writers with strong ideas that they'd seen through to produce a full manuscript.  For many it was their first novel.

What now?

Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright, says:  "A novel is finished at least three times - emotionally, properly and publicly. There is always rewriting to do ..."

For me - probably for most writers - finishing a novel 'emotionally' is what you do in a first draft. It can leave you exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure, both states convincing you that - bar a few tweaks - it's done!  And, anyway, won't Spellcheck do the work now?

At the end of that 'emotional' first draft you have probably got everything off your chest, you know what your novel is about.  Now the work starts.

Michelle Lovric writes novels for adults and children. She says, "the first draft is the most exciting bit, for me. All the ideas are fresh and uncontaminated by pessimism. It is always going to be the best thing you ever wrote. In a way it is without responsibility and gloriously free. It is like being in love. The second draft is more like being married."

Blinded by love, exhausted and exhilarated, many first time novelists make the mistake of sending out their work too early. Doing this risks throwing away valuable chances for your work to be picked up by an agent or editor. Are you really sending out the strongest version of your story? 

Part of the problem is the term itself. To get to the end of that 'emotional' or getting-it-off-your-chest draft might mean that you've revised some chapters ten times already.

For first timers, a key step towards really finishing your novel, is to recognise that what you have when you first complete the whole manuscript - no matter how many revisions some chapters have gone through - is a first [of many passes through] draft [beginning to look like a real book, in parts].

Ross Raisin, successful first time novelist, clearly knows what a first draft is for.

The end of a first draft is the end of the honeymoon. Time to start working at the marriage.

Weekly Writing Workshop - Prompt No. 2

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Short Story Award

What makes a winning short story?

Find out by listening in to the podcasts of the five stories short-listed for the BBC National Short Story Award, 2009.  All five will also be broadcast on Radio 4 this coming week. The podcasts are available for the next two weeks.  

Why not write a short story? You could start with either of the writing prompts above and below. Better still - What's the connection between the two images? What's the story?

Weekly Writing Workshop - Prompt No. 1

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Ross Raisin

With Ross Raisin, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Words Unlimited launches a new monthly series of author interviews. Ross talks about completing his award-winning novel, God's Own Country and gives a progress report on his eagerly awaited second book

Photo of Ross Raisin © Eamonn McCabe

PJ: God's Own County has a masterful opening - Sam Marsdyke let's us know that he's an outsider living amidst menace and neglect but he's knowledgeable about the countryside and, with animals, he is capable of caring - all of this is contrasted with the silliness of the 'towns.' How many drafts did that opening chapter go through?

RR: The first chapter probably took more drafts than any other.  This is in part because of the importance of the beginning to any novel - you really want to get it right - and partly due to process.  I finish my first drafts beginning to end before starting to redraft. So I found (as I have now found with my new book) that when I re-read the opening, it was quite distanced in style and information from what I eventually knew by the end of the first draft. It needed a lot of re-working.  As well, at the very start of writing the book, it was this chapter I played with before any other, when deciding between writing the narrative in 3rd person or in 1st.  I am now so familiar with that beginning that I have become completely desensitised to it.  Just the thought of it makes me want to fall asleep (again, part of the process - until not long ago, it did still excite me).

 

PJ: The distinctive voice of Sam is crucial to the success of the book - can you tell us a bit about your research into dialect?

RR: I was quite a way into the story before Sam's voice started to become more idiomatic.  As the character became clearer to me so did the rhythm of his language, and it was that rhythm that quite naturally led me to start toying with dialect words I already knew.  I then read books about local dialect, and talked to people in the area to develop more of a lexicon.  Most of the phrases and sayings in the book are made up - they just felt to me like things that he might say.

 

PJ: Also crucial to the success of the book is the way Sam retains the readers' sympathy - he's as sinned against as sinning. What research, if any, did you do to understand so well the mind of a sociopath?

RR: Not that extensive.  I wanted to keep to my own ideas and motivations rather than making him a symptoms ticklist.  Most of the research I did do was to do with sociopathy and the law - mental illness and liability.

 

PJ: Sam's knowledge of place keeps the reader interested and sympathetic towards him. Was your own desire to write about that region a motivating force with this book?

RR: Probably not at the beginning, but it became important to me.  At first, I was so involved with thinking about character that everything else was somewhat incidental.  I do think that, as I fleshed him out, he couldn't belong to anywhere else but the place he does. In a way, his Yorkshireness is an extension of character.  To write about the countryside was an important factor (he is a farmer, so that was always going to be there), partly because there aren't many good novels set in the countryside.  This wasn't something I really thought very much about at the time, but I do now.

 

PJ: You started the book on the MA at Goldsmiths - can you describe your writing life after the MA - how did you create a working practice than enabled you to finish the book?

RR: By burying myself into the writing of it.  I worked almost every weekday at it, as I still do, and did my money job in the evening.  I wouldn't like to tell anybody what they should be doing, because everybody has their own way, and their own job restrictions, but certainly for me I have to invest heavily in it rather than doing it piecemeal.

 

PJ: The voice of Sam is so strong and having heard you read you clearly enjoy reading to an audience. Does meeting your readers feed the writing? Or, perhaps sustain you as a writer?

RR: I think it's too early for me as a writer to know that yet.  I enjoy meeting readers, and feel embarrassingly grateful to them, as most new writers do, but I certainly don't think about them while I'm writing.  As for who I am writing for - myself, readers, my bank account - God knows...that's way too hard to answer.

 

PJ: The book was very well received - short-listed for every prize, some of which you won and then the came the title Sunday Times Young Writer of The Year 2009. How did that affect your writing?

RR: I don't think it has.  I understood quite quickly the silliness of the prize thing, how arbitrary it is, the luck it involves, its relevance.  That said, if I don't get nominated for any prizes for my next novel I will probably be hell to live with.

 

PJ: You are in the process of finishing the second book - was that harder or easier to write?

RR: It has been harder, no doubt.  Why?  Hmm.  I like to tell myself that it has nothing to do with the first book, and have done quite a good job of convincing myself.  There are a number of reasons, I think.  For one, this is a harder book, set in a place I had no previous knowledge of, in a style that is quite restrictive and hard to manage.  I have a deadline now.  And, whatever the external pressure that comes from being a published writer, there is also an internal pressure, partly to get it right, but also, and this is quite significant, a pressure to enjoy it.  To be excited and inspired by the work that you are sitting down to each day.  This is probably due to a realisation that now, however long it lasts, this is your career, this is what you do.

 

PJ: Can you tell us a bit about the new book? Does it have a title yet?

RR: No title, or character names.  I am just beginning my second draft, so I should probably nail these things down, although I didn't with my first book until after it was finished, so I don't feel in too much of a rush.  The novel is set in Glasgow, and concerns an ex-shipyard worker whose wife dies just before the book begins.  She has died of an asbestos related illness that she contracted decades ago while the husband was working on the yards.  The narrative follows this man, and what happens to him as he grieves, withdrawing from the house, then Glasgow, and eventually becoming homeless. It doesn't take a lot of brain-searching actually to realise that this is another reason it has been difficult to write.  It's not a cheery thing to sit down to every day for three years.

 

PJ: Yorkshire dialect and now Glaswegian - that's quite an exercise in linguistics.

RR: I've always been interested in linguistics, which I studied a bit as an undergraduate. But I think it has to do with a kind of genuineness, an honesty of narrative. This second book is a close third person narrative. It would seem odd, given that the character speaks in an idiomatic way in the dialogue, not to represent that in the narrative. It helps also as a yardstick in finding your character. Because language is so ingrained in character, as you learn more about their language and the way that character uses language, then you learn more about that character.

 

PJ: A middle-aged, homeless Scott - Where did the idea for the second book come from?

RR: Doing some studies into homelessness and working backwards from there. Wanting to take on the stereotype of the elderly Scottish homeless person. How had that person become like that? There is a political interest, also language but it always comes down to story and character - how did the character get to be like that? And the other side of that - how then does society deal with him?

 

PJ: You talk about first and second drafts - can you say a bit more - do you work through a first draft with no looking back?

RR: I'm on the second draft of the new book, just going back to the beginning to start again. I know a lot more now, it's changed markedly. I'm prising nuggets from the first draft. I've changed the tense from past to present. In the first third of the first draft the language wasn't very idiomatic, then it became strongly idiomatic, and finally the last third of the book settled to a voice that felt comfortable in between the two. In that first draft I've learned all about the main character's history, his back-story.

 

PJ: What is a satisfactory day's work - do you count words or time?

RR: Words, unfortunately! I try not to but I find it impossible not to think about words all the time.  I aim for 1000 words for the day...

 

PJ: you talked earlier about the importance of enjoying the process - how do you keep up the enjoyment level?

RR: Part of it is that excitement of following through an idea you are curious about.

 

PJ: I suppose you have the added incentive that you know it will be published. What do you say to someone who is not writing to fulfil a contract?

RR: I was on my second draft of God's Own Country before I found an agent. I'd worked for two years alone. I was just interested in the idea, the story, that was what excited me.  I wanted to complete it. The idea of completing a big piece of work that might take a few years - that's exciting in itself.  I hardly ever thought about publishing - it was there but I tried to compartmentalise it. It's dangerous to bring those thoughts to the writing session. It's hard not to, but for the most part, I manage keep those thoughts away.

 

PJ: What are you reading at the moment?

RR: Just finished Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing.  An incredible book.  As is Legend of a Suicide, by David Vann, a new writer from the US who I plug at every opportunity, because books like this don't come around often enough.

 

PJ: As a writer, did you admire in those books, what was nourishing to your own writing?

RR: Economy. Especially the David Vann. Both those books use language and emotion economically. Both very honed.

 

PJ: What advice would you give to someone just embarking on a first novel?

RR: Give it the time.  Which is kind of shorthand for: give it plenty of redrafting.  And enjoy it as well.  This is important.  You don't just write it for the sake of it, or because you have randomly committed yourself to the task, you do it because, for whatever reason it is, you want to write it.