Hanging with the real writers!

“I think it is important to note that the novel, as a piece of art, which it undoubtedly is, does not just happen. One needs to give birth effectively to the creative process. One needs to isolate oneself and centre oneself in aid to feel the true creativity of the narrative process as it begins to flow. One, inevitability, has doubt that the surrealism and the underlying metaphors of the book will be miscast and indeed, misplaced in a world that is not yet ready for that juxtaposotioning of the narrative framework and the imaginative text when it is considered by, and indeed constricted by, the narrative prose.”

I think they went on to say a whole lot but I was asleep by then.
                            

I am jesting of course, but it is interesting when crime writers (the lovely lot that we are) get together with OTHER WRITERS. Others including the romantic fiction writers (  you can recognise them by their  expression of eternal disappointment;  imagine spending  your entire writing life dealing with Colin Firth getting out the water in that shirt, when  in real life you are married to a Glaswegian  bloke.)

                                       
 The nature poets always look as if they need a wash and as Billy Connolly would say, they have a wee dent in the back of the leg where a border collie usually walks.  The performance poets, I have noticed, are thin faced and have a tendency to wear jaunty hats.  I have no idea why. They do wave their arms about a lot. And are usually very grim in their subject matter; “I  am a foetus and I was pulled   from the womb screaming by an accountant on a number 12 bus going round the Elephant and Castle”. You know the sort of thing. (Actually the number 12 bus goes to Dulwich.)

 And then there are the nodders. Few crime writers are nodders. Nodders belong on late night chat shows on channel 4, on a black sofa, dimly lit studio, they whisper rather than talk and take everything very seriously indeed. Especially  themselves.
                                  

So for Book Week Scotland, I had a few events all over the country, mixing with other writers. One performance poet had us doing an impersonation of slightly disappointed heather (the shrub not a girl called Heather.. or maybe it was….).  They all, apart from me and the last one, talked very earnestly about their work and I wondered what they were like to work with as a writer who gets paid to do what they do. My editor and I have great fun. I  think I am an easy author to work with, writing a book is really a team effort with plots and  covers, tweaks and the dreaded semi colon. 

But overall, the other writers did say, (or seemed to say) that the writing was  almost a passive process – they had to wait to see if it happened, when it happened they would type out the results.

 So I am going to try that for the next book- just sit and wait until it comes along. I am going to sit in the dark and nod a lot.

Caro 20th Dec 2019