Great writing advice from Richard Ford

OK, it's not actually from him as such (the words come from a character in his new novel Canada) but they might as well.

Not to hunt too hard for hidden or opposite meanings but to look as much as possible straight at the things you can see in broad daylight.

Sage advice, whoever it comes from

Great writing: Jhumpa Lahiri

"...it started to rain. It came slapping across the roof like a boy in slippers too big for him"

Jhumpa Lahiri A Real Durwan (from 'Interpreter of Maladies')

Books: This is How - MJ Hyland

MJ Hyland writes as well as anyone I have read. At first glance her prose seems deceptively simple, yet each sentence is crammed with detail and insight and there's not an ounce of fat anywhere in this book. What I loved most about 'This Is How' is the ability MJ Hyland has to look unflinchingly at something disturbing without judgement. At no point are we, as readers, instructed as to how we should view what we're seeing - Hyland has an incredible talent (I was going to say gift but that does a disrespect to the amount of work writing this good requires) for tilting the world slightly so we see things from another angle without telling us what to see or how to react.

This book is extraordinary and deserves to be widely read.

How I first discovered David Mitchell

In 1997 I moved down to London from the north of England with the express intention of becoming a rock star. While I was waiting for this to come about I sent my CV in to several shops in the hope of finding a job to tide me over - I got one as a bookseller in Hatchard's on Piccadilly.

One of the best bits of being a bookseller, I soon discovered, was the staff room proof table. This was where all proof copies of forthcoming books by (mostly) new writers were dumped for us to help ourselves to. Help myself I did. From this table I discovered what were to become some of my favourite books: Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor, Steve Tesich's Karoo and gems such as The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman.

One Friday lunchtime, having finished whatever I was reading, I scanned the table for a new book. One caught my eye - among the plain red, yellow and green covers was one featuring a soft black and white photo of a male author I'd never heard of. In the bag it went.

Later that evening I was meeting a friend to go to a gig - he'd brought along a friend of his (a teacher from his old sixth-form college).
'What are you reading?' she asked, seeing me shove my book back into my bag as they approached. I showed her.
'He looks familiar' she said. 'Bloody hell! I used to teach him!'

I let her have a good look at the book (Ghostwritten) and the info on its new author David Mitchell.
'It's definitely him'.

Next time I saw Karla she told me she'd written to David, care of his publisher, and he'd been in touch. I might have made this bit up (it was about 12 years ago) but I think they met when he was next in the UK.

Now, several years and a couple of Booker shortlistings later, David Mitchell is no longer a new author. In fact, earlier today I popped into Spitalfields market to check out the installation that's been put up to launch his latest book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

I haven't seen Karla for a few years now so I don't know how she's doing - seems Mr. Mitchell is doing very well though! I never did become a rock star.

Great writing - 'The Thousand Autumns...' David Mitchell

'When shaving, thinks Jacob, a man rereads his truest memoir'

'Her smile is both nettle and dock leaf"

Books: 'The Other Hand' - Chris Cleave

The Other Hand

I haven't blogged much for a while. This is mostly because I've been busier doing things than writing about them so I don't feel too guilty.

I felt compelled to write something today though as I finished a book this morning that has left me stunned by its brilliance. I don't want to say a great deal about it, just this:

The Other Hand is a book that - without any hint of cheapness or sensationalism - gently turns your head a degree or two so you can see the world more clearly.

Read it.

Great writing - The Book of Qualities

'Fear' from The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler

"Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is quite small. He has a vivid imagination. He composes horror music in the middle of the night. He is not very social and he keeps to himself at political meetings. His past is a mystery. He warned us not to talk to each other about him, adding that there is nowhere any of us could go where he wouldn't hear us. We were quiet. When we began to talk to each other, he changed. His manners started to seem pompous, and his snarling voice sounded rehearsed.

Two dragons guard Fear's mansion. One is ceramic and Chinese. The other is real. If you make it past the dragons and speak to him close up, it is amazing to see how fragile he is. He will try to tell you stories. Be aware. He is a master of disguises and illusions. Fear almost convinced me that he was a puppet-master and I was a marionette.

Speak out boldly, look him in the eye, startle him. Don't give up. Win his resect, and he will never bother you with small matters."

Blasts from the past - favourite children's books

My mum has been going through a few boxes of old books we had as kids and sent me a package with a few of my favorites, so I thought I'd share them with you.

I loved all of these as a kid and having them in my hands again with their battered and sellotaped covers was wonderful.

Thoughts on NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) is an initiative that encourages would-be writers to complete a short novel of 50,000 words in the space of a month.

Some people think this is a good idea, some are sceptical and several are downright dismissive. Here's what I think.

For staters I doubt anyone is expecting a work of genius to be written in the space of 30 days - that's not really the point though is it? What NaNoWriMo will do (for those who stick it out) is create a daily writing habit and give them the kernel of something to begin honing. Why is this important?

Well...everyone (and I mean everyone) tells us that to be a good writer you need to read. Doesn't it therefore follow that to be a good reader you need to at least try writing? I'm a musician and know plenty of people who play music purely for fun whilst, at the same time, increasing their understanding (and therefore enjoyment of) music as a listener. We don't expect everyone who owns an acoustic guitar to release a major label album and land a publishing deal so why is it such a bad thing if people have a go at writing for pleasure and (hopefully) in the process become more involved as readers.

It seems to me that writing should be exactly the same as sport, music, whatever - it's fine to do it for pleasure and not just for profit. 'Unpublished novelist' carries a far greater stigma than amateur musician and that seems ludicrous. The cliche is 'everyone has a book in them'. I believe that's probably true in the same way that I believe everyone is capable of making music. Does that mean I think everyone has the skills to get that novel out? No. Would I want to read them all if they did? No. Some people have a crap book in them - doesn't mean they shouldn't write it.

I'm a firm believer that the arts are for all of us and that we should be encouraged to have a go at whichever takes our fancy. Will most of us get to Carnegie Hall/The Booker Prize dinner/Wembley Stadium. No. Does that matter?

Great art changes the life of the audience - bad art can change the life of the artist. That's enough.

Great writing - Song of the Lark 3

"...what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?"

Great Writing: Willa Cather - Song of the Lark #2

"Scarcely anything was attractive to her in its natural state - indeed, scarcely anything was decent until it was clothed by the opinion of some authority. Her ideas about habit, character, duty, love, marriage, were grouped under heads, like a book of popular quotations, and were totally unrelated to the emergencies of human living."

-----

"The wall-paper was brownish yellow, with blue flowers. When it was put on, the carpet, certainly, had not been consulted."

Great writing: Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark

"The frail, brightly painted desert town was shaded by the light-reflecting, wind-loving trees of the desert, whose roots are always seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of rain"

Books: The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

Buy this book - it's brilliant.

Slightly longer version...

I started writing as part of my day job. At first it was bits of copy for web pages and the odd page or two of text. Gradually it became a bigger part of the job and I edited a magazine for a few months, edit and write a regular newsletter and also wrote a book (The Essential Guide to Flatsharing).

The more I needed to write the more I needed to know how to write. Writing for the web requires a definite sense of brevity and knowing how and what to edit. The Elements of Style is a great guide when it comes to this. The main focus is getting people to write well and cleanly which is a real skill. Don't get me wrong, I love reading novels that use language with flair and style and some people pull that off brilliantly - some people. Otherwise I'm more impressed by writers (and Mark Haddon is a great example of this) who are good at stripping away anything unnecessary and just getting on with telling you a story.

This little book (for little it certainly is) practices what it preaches. Read it on one go, carry it round in a pocket for unexpected train delays, keep it by the loo...wherever you dip into a book have this book to dip into.

I've just finished my first novel and the amount of editing I've done as a dirct result of this book is huge. I'm not claiming I'm an a amazing writer (I have a long way to go to even get close to competent!) but I'm learning more as I write (and read) more.

Buy this book, read it then re-read your writing and see what happens. Every writer should own a copy of this book - whatever they write.

Books: Songs of Triumphant Love - Jessica Duchen

Songs of Triumphant Love

I'd already read Jessica Duchen's Hungarian Dances and very much enjoyed it. When I started the research for my 2nd novel I had stumbled upon Jessica on Twitter and thought, as an author and music writer, she may be able to point me in the direction of some good novels that featured opera singers, so fired off a quick Tweet. I soon got several replies mentioning books she thought I should read, plus "my latest, Songs of Triumphant Love, is about an opera singer." So I ordered a copy.

Having read the blurb I instantly worried that Jessica had already beaten me to it and written the book I had in mind ("feel the fear and do it anyway!" she was kind enough to encourage). Only one way to find out - I started reading.

Now, first up, there are two things wrong with this book - neither is the fault of the author. The first is the jacket design which, while beautiful, is entirely intended to make the book look as close to The Time Traveller's Wife as possible. The second is the blurb. I know its hard to sum up a novel in a few words but the summary on the back cover really doesn't do justice to the breadth and depth of this book. If I'd picked it up in a bookshop, never having heard of Jessica, I'd probably have put it back, thinking it was likely to be a bit...well...floppy!

No so. This is a wonderful book that somehow manages to do what a good book should; it takes a personal story, complicates it with inter-personal relationships then offsets the whole thing against the extra-personal to connect with the wider world. Songs of Triumphant Love pokes a hole in the fabric of the universe (like the crack in Terri's front wall or the rip in her silk dress) and lets us peer in, allowing the reader one of those rare moments that can only be achieved by art in which we see that (as Walt Whitman would have us believe in Song of Myself) we are all part of a bigger picture and nothing is in or of itself alone.

Cracks (in walls, dresses, sanity, voices) are a powerful image. As Leonard Cohen puts it "Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

I loved this book. I've realised that, while mine will probably have some overlap in terms of theme and setting, it's going to be a totally different novel and is worth writing for its own sake. It will, undoubtedly, be a better book than it would had I not read Songs of Triumphant Love.