Precious About Your Art

Zoë Sharp

Next year, 2018, will be an anniversary year for me. I will have been earning my living as a writer for thirty years.

Hundreds of thousands of published words of nonfiction, and close to two million published in novel and short story form. Not a bad achievement. (Although perhaps the biggest achievement of all is not having had a ‘proper’ job since 1988.)

While I can’t take myself seriously at all, I do take my work very seriously indeed. When someone asked me only yesterday what I had planned for the day, my reply was “scribbling.” I tend to treat panels at events and festivals as stand-up comedy, on the grounds that most people want to be entertained as they’re educated.

I learned years ago, while writing nonfiction for magazines, not to be precious about it. If a sub editor wants to get your copy into a set amount of space around the pictures, then they’ll lop off your carefully thought-out closing paragraph without a second thought, and the first time you’ll know about it is when you see it appear in print.

Writing fiction tends to be different. Because it’s your story that you’re telling, the way you tell it—the voice you use—tends to be a lot more important. Moving the commas around, let alone changing the words, can have a real effect on the tone of the piece.

Fortunately, It’s rare that fiction gets mucked about with. Not without giving the author a chance to comment and accept or reject the changes, anyway. And over the last few years the only time I’ve been asked to write nonfiction has been for publications or blogs that deal with writing or writers, so they don’t tend to edit your work just for the sake of it.

But I was asked recently to write a short piece for a club newsletter about my experiences of taking the Advanced Driving Test. I did so, and submitted the piece with a request for the editor to get back to me if they wanted any alterations making.

I confess that I assumed the only reason they might need to edit it might be for length, as I hadn’t been given a brief about word-count. When I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t give it any further thought.

Until the newsletter came out.

I was surprised to see that my piece had suddenly sprouted exclamation marks, and appeared to make less sense than I remembered. When I went back to my original file, I discovered the editor had rearranged sentences within my paragraphs, and occasionally removed paragraph breaks altogether, for no apparent reason. The piece still seems to be the same length as before, but it looks terrible, reads badly … and worst of all it has my name on it.

Now, I know this is only a small-circulation club newsletter, but that’s not the point. I dislike doing things badly, and dislike even more being made to appear to have done things badly when that wasn’t the case.

Imagine if you’re a keen gardener who plants up your neighbours’ garden only to have them replant weeds instead of roses, and then tell everyone you were responsible.

I should imagine everyone has been through this experience, in one form or another, but hearing about a few right now would make me feel so much better about it …

This week’s Word of the Week is alibi, from the Latin for ‘elsewhere’. It has been used from the 17^th century to mean an assertion by a person that they were elsewhere, although in the last century it has also been used (some maintain, incorrectly) to mean an excuse.

Here's A Mykonos You May Not Know

Jeff—Saturday

A dear friend of mine—who also happens to be a reviewer—sent me a message, “More Mykonos photos, please!”

That’s a fair request, though hopefully not raised as a subtle criticism of the prose I’ve been posting of late.

That got me to wrestling with the question of what sort of photographs should I post? I’ve already posted photos of brilliant white Cycladic structures, Aegean blue seas and skies, hillside flowers, scantily clad partying bodies, and garbage dumping exposés. So what’s left?

That’s when it hit me.  Answer the question, “What’s left?”

Some on the island would say very little.  They’d point to how the island is now in service to rejoicing celebrities, as reported in a new Travel & Leisure article, titled appropriately, “The Greek Island that Celebs are Flocking to This Year.”  Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, picked Mykonos to celebrate his birthday and emancipation from the rigors of training, something our island is very good at doing.

Others see the island’s most distinctive feature—its architectural signature—as threatened by buildings allowed to adopt the passing fashions of foreign styles. They point to a just erected upscale mall utilizing non-indigenous plantings, sculptures far from Cycladic, and an underground parking garage, as establishing a foothold on the island for construction perfectly suited for LaJolla or Palm Springs California, but very much out of keeping with the island’s past.

But I didn’t want to focus on any of that. Instead I wanted to share a bit of timeless Mykonos that still exists today—if you know where to look.  So, I jumped into my trusty Jimny and headed off to places I treasure.  And here they are, but I shall not reveal their locations.  Because I want them to remain as they are, indomitable optimist that I am.

­—Jeff

The Character Map

                                         

                                                  Does the monochrome effect add mystery?

About 3000 years ago I did a blog about names and what images certain names can conjure up. Often I have to try a name on a character like a hat to see if it fits. Nigel St John would never come from Glasgow, neither would Richard St John but Robert Guthrie is very unlikely to be English and Lilly Knickerhammer is likely to come from a place where the capital city  would boast a about their excellent ski jumping facility. It will be in the town centre between the taxi rank and the off licence (liquor store). 

                                      

                                             Does the sepia add age?

                                       

                                              Rich colour filter seems to add aroma.

So it's then a little awkward when a character name goes up for auction. It's even worse when it has been bought by a family so their dad can go in the novel. And the writer knows the dad.

That happened to me two weeks ago in a an auction for the local hospice.

                                             

                                               heightened realism with high colour?

 I am 30 000 words into the book- and stuck!

                                            

                                                        Back to the 60's?

Previously, a lawyer in Glasgow bid successfully to be in a novel of mine. So far so good. He took on the persona of a young detective who bobbled about and did his stuff.  I did have a wee pang of conscience when I wrote that character involved in a sex scene that lasted a couple of lines. I emailed the real owner of that name and asked him if he was okay about it. His response was, if he was involved in the sex scene ,it would go on for the entire chapter at least.

                                            

                                                  Does the fade add melancholy.

           

So I killed him a few pages later. ( The fictional one not the real one. I'm an osteopath not a psychopath)

                                              

                            Don't know why but this looks like a hit man is ready to focus in...

But you don't mess with Ramsay.

 I think I stabbed him, or ran him over, or maybe both knowing me. 

So now, it's happening again with this book WT The Sideman. I've known this man for  20 years and as I know him so well, it's really affecting my writing of the character. As the book goes on, the character is slowly evolving to be him rather than be the character I set out to write. And no matter what I do, it's in my consciousness that it's HIM. 

Talking about it at Bute Noir, it was suggested that I call the character something else and then do a  find /replace at the end. I think that might have worked if the novel was already written but all this went on right at the start of this novel so I’m kind of stuck with it.

People do have great fun with it of course. One very famous person in Scottish medical legal circles buys the right to use her mother in laws name and requests that the name be used for some low life crack cocaine addict whore who ends up dead in a skip somewhere near the Renfrew Ferry, pecked by seagulls and nibbled by rats.  Then the  finished book is  gifted to the mother in law at Christmas. This has been  going on for a few years now and the mother in law still hasn’t twigged that this is not a coincidence. To be fair I do think great care is taken over spellings and variations of the name just to confuse the issue. But it's one way to liven up Christmas dinner.

                                   

But all this is better than a book having no characters at all, cardboard cut outs who walk on stage, say their piece and walk off again. Agatha Christie is often accused of having characters that are little more than plot markers to carry out the plot but I’ve never seen them that way, or maybe my imagination just paints them large in my mind. 

                                    

I wish it would do the same with the character who may or may not be my friend's dad, Mr Alistair Patrick. And there’s another annoying thing. He could just as easy be Patrick Alistair. So when his superiors are being terse with him and using his surname, it has no effect whatsoever as they just call him Patrick.

                                              

I’ll just finish this blog on a personal note, I’ve a book coming out on 30 November - The Suffering Of  Strangers -which is right in the middle of National Book Week Scotland so I am here, there and everywhere that week. I am appearing at Bloody Scotland interviewing the testosterone panel; Simon Kernick, Simon Toyne and Hayden Beck so my heads full of Glocks, explosives and man's stuff. The next morning I am on a very intellectual panel with very little testosterone, all female including the lovely Lisa Brackmann, Alex Sokoloff and her from Arachnophobia.

                                     

We are also doing the play again so Letitia  Luvibody is alive and well and I believe the author is working on the sequel, Carry on Sleuthing 2 Murder at the Knickerage where the case is investigated by Inspector Smalls. 

                                     

I suspect that humour might not travel well …..

I suspect that at least 2 of my fellow bloggers can place where these pics were taken within a couple of yards.

Caro Ramsay 25th August 2017