This takes the political biscuit

Note for my American readers: The biscuit, in England, is akin to a cookie. However, they are not the large, round, sumptuous articles to be acquired in the US. They are small, neat, and considered appropriate for elevenses (at 11am), to accompany a cup of tea and a sit down (dunking optional). It should also be noted that they may, or may not, be dunked in the aforementioned tea. For more details on this critical aspect of English culture, please see this website for weekly Biscuit of the Week reviews and critical discussions of relevance to the biscuit and tea consuming sections of society.

England is reeling. It is in political turmoil. We are devastated by the apparent lack of decisiveness on the part of our Prime Minister, Gordon “If I go I’ll take the economy with me, and if I stay it’ll tank anyway” Brown. We demand answers. We want to know the truth.

We want to know what his favourite biscuit is.

This is obviously crucial information for all of us over here in Blighty, as we contemplate an election where we must choose between the upper class twits, the middle-class twits, the liberals who’ll never get in no matter what and the pig-faced man with pretensions to being Adolf Hitler.

The story goes like this: Gordon Brown participated in an online chat with some mothers from Mumsnet. He was asked, during the course of this conversation, which biscuit he preferred to eat. He refused to state a preference, deftly avoiding the question with some of the usual political stonewalling. Like John Humphries demanding to know where the bombs are, the Mums would not let this matter go. He was asked several times to clarify the matter of the biscuit, and still he refused to state a preference.

England is thus in uproar.

David Cameron swiftly came forward with a strong declaration in favour of Scottish Oatcakes and confirmed that he would never be found to be indecisive at tea time, or indeed at any other time of the day. He was also quick to denounce the continued presence of the pink wafer in the market.

The Liberal Democrats (Rich Tea) also released a statement to the effect that they would be the ones to assure the British public that they would not be forced to go without biscuits during the recession, and that they would guarantee that the NHS would continue to supply the best in biscuits during the 9 hour wait in Emergency, never to be reduced to the decidedly bland Nice.

Biscuit preference obviously counts for a lot in a land with 2.5 million unemployed, for whom the morning drags through Jeremy Kyle’s showcase of society’s least desirable inhabitants (which at least reassures people that however bad their circumstances, at least they aren’t like them), to elevenses and the choice of biscuit has been reduced to the cardboard and plastic digestives in Tesco’s Economy brand.

The preferred biscuit of the Prime Minister might well be considered to offer an insight on his character, and many pop psychologists weighed into the debate suggesting that such indecisiveness suggests that if a man can’t step forward and claim his biscuit, can he be trusted to run the economy? Brown is well known for U-turns on political hot potatoes, and was possibly sweating over how The Sun and The Daily Mirror might interpret the selection of, say, a Dark Chocolate Digestive over a regular Hobnob.

Now, you may say all of this is a nonsense, but in the UK the biscuit is of great significance. Indeed, the eating of a biscuit could be considered an extreme sport. Apparently, more than half of all Britons have at one time or another been injured directly or indirectly by biscuits. As many as five hundred people have suffered enough harm from biscuits that they have required hospital attention.

According to the Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation, the custard cream is the most dangerous biscuit. This is a riskier indulgence than, say, binge-alcohol consumption or pot-holing. This changes the whole perception of the argument. For coming forward and declaring oneself to be a consumer of biscuits as a politician is pretty much akin to announcing that you snort cocaine of a weekend.

This is what England has come to. Once upon a time, most of the world’s map was coloured in a delicate pink to indicate the lands that had fallen sway to the great Empire, upon which the sun never set. The British led the world into industrial revolution, sparking such wondrous modernities as global warming and, by extension, Al Gore.

And now we are brought low by the humble biscuit.

I expect all over the world, countries are sitting, shaking their heads in wonder, thinking: “How the hell did they even make it past breakfast, let alone conquer the world? They can’t even eat a biscuit safely. How did they ever rule us for hundreds of years?”

It really does take the biscuit, doesn’t it.

British bureaucracy kills the English language again

Bernard Black's reaction

Oh for fuck’s sake.

British bureaucracy, hand-wringingly pathetic at all times these days, has decided to demolish common English phrases for fear that they might cause offence.

Gone with ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and ‘blackballing’ because they could be seen as sexist or racist. Apparently they’re going to get rid of ‘black sheep’, presumably because sheep might be offended by it.

I think this is madness.

It reminds me of the time that a small group of insane feminists with no understanding of linguistics wanted to rid the world of words like ‘manager’ because they were sexist. The word ‘manager’ doesn’t refer to ‘men’ but comes from the French, ‘main’, meaning hand. Ironically for a word that frequently refers to a person who does as little of it as possible, it’s actually a reference to work, not gender.

What annoys me is that this is all unbelievably phoney. The reason why this is being done is not because the people behind it are kind, loving human beings, but because they think everybody else is a lunatic five minutes from blowing themselves up on a bus. All the big fuss made around not offending Muslims in this country is brought about by people who secretly believe anybody who shares the Islamic faith is just dying for an excuse to fly a plane into a building.

The other thing about which I need to rant is the assumed oversensitivity of society. We’re all victims, suddenly. When Jeremy Clarkson stood up to the prostitutes’ protection league – or whatever it was called – I cheered. We live in a society where everybody is desperate to be offended. Say the word religion, even in a context which is not remotely offensive and a hundred religious people demand an apology because saying the word causes them offence.

As a humorist friend used to say, you do not have the right not to be offended. Although, ironically, it’s often the groups that should well be offended who aren’t. Jeremy Clarkson’s comment should have been an insult to lorry drivers, since he was implying they were all murderers. But I didn’t hear anything about the Campaign for Fair Treatment of Lorry Drivers complaining.

This all feels scarily Orwellian, like an attempt to manipulate (can I say that word? Is it sexist now? Does it imply men are bastards?) us all. Perhaps the worst part of it is that it actually creates more barriers in society than it does remove them.

Case in point. A while ago the streets were flooded with chuggers for Scope, saying they wanted to get a new word ‘disablism’ into the dictionary. In their desperate bid to highlight the way that disabled people (differently abled?) are discriminated against, it made the situation worse.

In conversation, or when you have to do anything, you suddenly become fiercely, terrifyingly aware that you might cause offence. The other day I was walking through Barton’s Arcade and ahead of me was a man in a wheelchair trying to get through the glass doors. These are narrow doors on tight springs and difficult to manage. My first thought was to go over and hold the door back so he could get through easily. Then I’m suddenly overloaded with other thoughts. What if my bid to help causes him offence? Am I implying he is less of a person because he can’t manage doors?

Men friends often complain to me that they don’t know how to treat women since the advent of feminism. Can they hold doors open for them without an invective of abuse about women’s relative ability to cope with doors? Can they treat them to a meal, can they compliment them on their looks? The insensitive bastards are still insensitive bastards, but for most men, who aren’t sexist or bastards, it’s made life with women a minefield. Well, more of a minefield than it was before. Based on my reading of late 18th century works of men on women they found us pretty damned baffling to start with.

I want to say to the world, can we all stop and take a deep breath? When we want to attack or feel victimised, can we check first that we’re not actually making a fuss over a joke, or nothing at all? Perhaps it would be a good thing for society to learn to be a little less thin-skinned, and perhaps a little more genuinely respectful of other people and their cultures.

That should be a word

I’ve been reading about the massive debate on healthcare reform in the States.

No, I’m not going to talk about that.

I happened to be looking at the comments on The Times website and came across a spelling mistake. Somebody had written “ogmnorance” instead of “ignorance.”

I think ogmnorance should be a word. It’s gloriously difficult to say, and that first complicated syllable sits in the mouth like a gobstopper.

But what should it mean?

@AnnHession thinks it should mean refer to all-encompassing ignorance, like the opposite of omnipotence, perhaps. It has to be one of the best mistakes I’ve ever seen, and I wish it was a word.

What words have you misspelled, or seen misspelled that you think should be words? And what should ogmnorance mean?

The pros and cons of using old material in new books

This is a bit of a conundrum for me right now.

I’m writing Amnar: The Inheritance, which is the second book in the Awakening series. I could call it a new draft of the old original Amnar series, except that it isn’t.

The story has shifted about, there are more subplots, more of the history drawn in from other books. However, there are some sections that are repeats of previously written material.

To some extent, I’m using the old writing in the new book. I’m also using the writing from The Awakening, the first book, which didn’t get into the final cut of the draft, or took place after I decided to end the book.

I have funny feelings about doing this.

On the one hand, it’s practical. If the writing is very good, and I think it stands the test of time, then there really isn’t any reason not to use it. I tend to write much more than is necessary and cut down, rather than under-write and have to add later.

I’ve done this a lot in the past. In writing a book, if I head off on a line and it turns out that these chapters don’t fit, they are put to the end and I use the material if it fits in elsewhere at a different point.

On the other hand, it can feel patchy. I have to be careful to make sure that I knit new and old together without there being major glitches. And it takes me out of the flow of writing and direct engagement with what’s happening while I work with the words themselves.

Over the last few days, I’ve been working on The Inheritance, which deals with a lot of complicated plot twists and turns. Quite a few of the early sections at least are just repeats of what happened in Amnar: I or the end of The Awakening before I shortened it.

Since I’ve been under a lot of strain but really wanted to get back to writing, it’s felt like a way to ease myself back into Amnar without actually losing myself in it completely. I still have to make sure that the material I use is good enough, but I can’t really find a reason not to use it, since it’s sitting there and won’t ever be published.

So, what d’you think?

How the books get written

So, here we go. How do you write 180,000 words in less than three months?

My basic approach to writing is something like this:

Books get written. I do my best not to get in the way of this process.

I know, it doesn’t say very much. There are so many intangibles involved in writing fiction that it’s impossible to write a complete guide and expect it to work al the time for everybody. You need to be in love with the story, the characters, you need to be able to commit yourself to it without all kinds of niggling limiting thoughts produced by the mind.

This is, nevertheless, how I go about the practical side of writing.

Starting off: the first line

The first line is probably the hardest part of any book. It’s the most important too, if only because the first few lines are the ones that have to pull readers in. They also have to pull you in.

I generally don’t start writing until I get hit with that first line. That’s a lot of carefully Not Thinking About The First line. These things always show up when you stop trying to find them – rather like car keys.

Once you have a first line, the trick is to keep going. You need a second, and a third, and a fourth. It’s pointless sitting over the first line and trying to make it perfect. You’ll never get past it. For a first draft, you need to be carried along by the pleasure of the story, not expecting to edit every sentence as you go.

When I’m writing Amnar books, I stay with the story. That’s the first priority in writing, to keep the story going, playing around with it as I go along.

Make time, don’t find it

It’s the same principle for everything you really want to do. If you really, really want to do it, you have to make time, rather than try to find it. I do contracts for a living, so most of the day I’m out of the house elsewhere consulting on client sites.

While I do take breaks between contracts to write, most of the books I’ve written were done while I had to work elsewhere during the day. The books have mostly been completed by working for two or three hours each night, which was all I could spare.

I’m lucky, in that I don’t have a family pestering for my time. Many writers – very determined writers – manage to complete their work while caring for children and managing households. My brother is a musician, and has to hold down a full-time job, caring for his two kids, and making sure he gets to do gigs and write songs is still a piority. It can be done, but you have to be committed to it.

Software and the books

I’m not one of those people who goes in for expensive writing software. I’ve been using an Apple Mac for the last five and a half years to write Amnar books. I use Word for Mac, and I tend to keep each chapter in a separate file.

This can be really annoying when it comes to doing submissions, but it’s very useful for writing the books themselves. For a start, Amnar books are too big for one file, but it’s also easy to find chapters if I need to look at just one.

Writing in order

I write in chapter order, rather than doing the bits I want to write first. I don’t generally work to a strict plan – at least, nothing that’s written down. I often write notes that I want to follow for each chapter, but I keep it as flexible as possible.

If I decide to add new chapters or themes in, it’s pretty easy to do, since each chapter has its own file.

For the most part, if I decide to move chapters around or add new ones, I’ll keep old chapters and unused writing. I’ve even kept old versions of entire books, when I go through the editing stage. I find it useful, just in case I need them or want to go back to older versions.

Writing in place

I have this thing about where I write. If working at my desk isn’t helping, then I’ll take the laptop and go elsewhere. It’s a neat trick for finding a new space to inspire.

Most of Amnar: The Awakening was written in my bedroom. I was on a tough contract and often didn’t get home until late at night, so I just took the laptop upstairs to work before bedtime.

I usually write one chapter a day, which is about 3000-3500 words. If I can’t find the right words, and I don’t have the next stage ready in my mind yet, then I wait until it comes to me.

In all practical ways, this is what it takes. More than anything else, it’s about commitment, and persistence. To some degree, it’s also important to learn to trust yourself and your own writing process, rather than thinking that there’s one way to do it that’s ‘right’. Finding your own ideal process and practices is really the key to getting it all done.

***

Want help and support to get your own book written? Find out more about my writing coaching services here.

Or find out how I could write a book for you by emailing: joely.black @ gmail.com

A conversation with a rogue idea

An idea has appeared.

They’re like little particles; they pop into existence unexpectedly, mosey around, and if you’re not very careful, they multiply. This one appeared this morning. It’s been creeping around the shadows, occasionally showing me a very specific picture, a brilliant first line and saying, “Hint, hint.”

I caught it by a claw. “I don’t know where you’ve come from, but I don’t have time for you right now,” I said.

The idea managed to produce a pair of very soulful eyes in cute retaliation. “You know you want to,” it pleaded. “You’ve always wanted to do this bit.”

“That’s as maybe, but I have important stressing and fretting to do,” I informed it in as commanding a tone as I could. I didn’t want to be seduced. “Fretting takes a lot of time, I don’t have the energy for you too.”

“It would definitely take your mind off it,” the idea suggested.

“The thing is, I don’t know where you fit,” I explained, trying to be rational about all this. “I can see you’ve got potential, I know that you’re going in there somewhere, just not at the point I’m supposed to be writing now.” I paused, to let this sink in.

“I have this thing about order,” I said. “I’m not writing out of sequence here. And I don’t think you belong in the early books. You’re part of the much bigger and more incredible mystery that shows up later.”

And so it goes. I’ve been very strict about sequence. While I fully support other writers in doing things in crazy orders, I’m trying to keep to a program. This idea doesn’t yet have a place – or rather, its place is one that isn’t yet ready to be written out completely.

Yet it’s a tease, it’s so very tempting to start building in those bigger and more incredible mysteries. That’s the whole fun of working with a massive imaginary history and a great deal of story. I’ve been holding off and holding off to see whether the idea sticks. Last time I just let go I woke up two years later with carpal tunnel and a million and two words written.

Still, it’s so tempting just to go and play for a bit and see what happens. Arandes’ story, and the truth about the Nashima. Now that’s a fascinating topic and very, very appealing indeed…

And if your characters walked in the door?

What would you do if one of your characters turned out to be real?

Stranger Than Fiction is one of my favourite movies. If you don’t know the story, it’s about the life of Harold Crick, who discovers that his life is being narrated by an author. She writes ironic tragedies, and he is expected to die at the end. She doesn’t know that he’s a real person, and that she’s narrating his life, until he shows up on her doorstep – right before she types out the fatal scene.

I guess in many ways I feel protected by the fact that I don’t write about earth. It would take Amnari a lot longer to get here, and they’d have to find some form of transport, than it took Harold to get to Karen.

This is one of those times when you think about your relationship to your characters. Are they puppets you direct, or do they have lives of their own?

Mine are most definitely alive and getting on with things. Amnar has a life of its own, and I feel as though I’ve been dragged along for the ride. In a sense, they’re fully aware of what goes on with them, what they expect to happen. I’m telling their story after the fact, as it were, rather than during it.

I go back and read over the old books sometimes, and meet characters who’ve died since writing that particular MSS. It’s like encountering an old friend. I do interviews with them sometimes, but I find that the ones who’ve already died are impossible to talk to – it’s like talking to the dead. Perhaps this is down to my rather odd relationship with the world itself.

Since I tend treat it with as much reality as I did the people I studied for my PhD. I end up crying over deaths and deeply moving moments, being excited by battles and certain very powerful exchanges. No character has yet said they don’t want to die; they know their path in life, and besides, Amnari have a very different attitude to death than we do.

Still, it does make me wonder sometimes, what it would be like to reach through the imaginary wall and find reality on the other side.

The title that didn’t have a good analogy in it

I’ve been trying to come up with a good analogy for what happened to Amnar after I decided that I would start doing work on the series of structure posts. Unfortunately, the best I can think of (since I can’t think of something that puffs up dramatically when you add water) is a dinghy.

Obviously, the strain of the last few days don’t mix well with trying to be creative – even on something like a blog post.

I started writing the structure posts because I had been getting so many questions about the background to Amnar, to the point where part of me wonders if I shouldn’t start working on some kind of encyclopaedia already.

It was fine, though, and pretty easy to do a post a day, usually taking out a day or two a week to write up a bunch of them and then just post them in number order on the right day. That’s organised for you.

Except that, once I started shifting my focus away from Duum, which is the city where most of the action happened, suddenly Amnar started to grow again. It does this, every time I focus in on it again. I discover that a landscape that sat in my head one way has now stretched out from a few hundred miles to a few thousand.

Taking the time to look at the other cities makes them suddenly grow in complexity and importance. And then there are all the spaces in between. Take Nas Trinitar, for example. In my head, a vast edifice of a mountain from which the black walls of the Holy Complex jut out, all shimmering lights in the growing dark.

When I take the time to really look at it, I find a landscape the size of the Indian sub-continent full of cultures, mountains, valleys and people I haven’t even considered yet.

This is the thing about Amnar, you see. When a friend first encountered me online, she wondered why it was that I was so hooked by the world, why despite everything that had happened, I kept working on it.

The truth is, I can’t really exist without it. Being without it would be like being without my spine. It isn’t optional, and although I did try running away and doing other things for a long time, it always found a way to drag me back in. And then when I devote more time and energy to it, the thing manages to grow and fill whatever space I provide for it.

I guess this was why I’d tried to stick to Amin Duum, because just the five hundred years of history up to the present time is enough hassle. Jump outside and I discover Amnar has been growing like bacteria in a culture, scrambling to take up all the space in my life and my head that it can find.

So today I’m back to post writing, and now have to deal with the fact that a lot of the characters are agitating to have the chance to discuss being Amnari, their lives, and what they do. So you’ll be seeing more of that coming up in future structure posts, since there’s no way of shutting them up when they start talking.

Being a “world wrangler”, if you like

I’m answering questions about my writing here. If you’ve been following the Amnar Structure posts, you might already be feeling baffled by how I manage to keep a handle on all the information to do with Amnar, let alone the plot of every single one of the books. This post is basically answering the various people who’ve asked about that.

Funny coloured brain

When I watched Elizabeth Gilbert talking about genius, that pretty much summed up the experience of writing and working with Amnar for me. I know other people who talk about it still requiring hard work, and that’s true, but it’s work of another kind. It’s inspired work. Even if it does leave you shaking and exhausted at the end of it.

Anyway, I tend to think of what I do as dipping into Amnar, and picking out the necessary information, as though it was its own separate storage device. What research I’ve done into synaesthesia, which is the condition I’ve had all my life, suggests that we have very good memories. It’s hard to describe having a visual, visible thing that I use to track plots, events, but that’s how it works.

It looks like a strip of film, with many complicated colours. Amnar doesn’t have plot, it has a history, so I dip in at any point, and explore what’s going on. This is not unlike descriptions I’ve read of synaesthetes who can remember things using a similar, sequential memory pattern that they can see. It’s like being able to see numbers in front of me in sequence and using that picture to do calculations.

None of this makes any sense if you don’t actually have synaesthesia, or haven’t studied it at any length. It’s also very difficult to describe.

We aren’t separate

I don’t set aside neat little areas of time for Amnar, or writing. I’m constantly thinking about in some part of my mind, no matter what else I might be doing. From the point, five years ago, when I started writing about it again, I found it increasingly took over to the point where pretty much anything and everything can spark off ideas.

I had a friend once who said I think so far outside the box that I have no box. I don’t have the same narrow boundaries or rules on thinking that most other adults seem to have. That’s probably because of having synaesthesia. Of course, I’ve been able to do this with studying and my PhD in the past, it’s not unique to Amnar. It’s just that Amnar is one whole hell of a lot bigger.

I know Amnar like I know about geography and pretty much everything I’ve ever read. Even suffering from amnesia and brain damage ten years ago hasn’t lessened this strange ability. I used to spend days preparing for essays by doing background reading, and I could remember everything each author said along with their name without actually having to look up my notes.

Since I’m always thinking about Amnar in some way that isn’t pressured or bounded by limitation on what I should be doing or thinking, I’ve had the time to learn a lot of the more basic information. I’ve known the structure I’ve described so far for ten years, some of it less so, but all of it I can remember very easily.

The private wiki, the notebooks

Anything I don’t feel like keeping in my head, I keep in a private wiki I’ve owned for about three years now. It’s built on Wikispaces, and I use it to follow up characters and specific dates of events that are fairly obscure and not part of the main history I’ve been studying.

I’ve kept notebooks or at least scrap pieces of paper with me when I’ve worked contracts or do other things. While I’m working, I can leave part of my brain to fuss over Amnar details. Pause during breaks to write things down. Pretty much anything I read or research for any other purpose will eventually inspire something about Amnar.

Exploring ideas and the writing process

There’s a quote somewhere about the importance of invisible work in creativity. I spend a lot of time doing ‘nothing’, effectively. Sometimes I go for walks or call it meditation. I listen to music, I let my mind wander, and the ideas come. I only write Amnar late at night, so I have the whole of the rest of my day left over for imaginary work, which can happen pretty much anywhere and in any way.

I suppose you could call this a writing process, but it doesn’t involve having a clear desk or sitting in a particular place or constructing characters with lists or special software. I have no rituals around writing itself unless you count “sitting down and getting on with it.”

There is, as one of my clients recently said, no secret. I seem to have been lucky in terms of my upbringing and the way my mind works. I’m not sure everything I do could easily be applied by anybody else, since most of it happens within the bounds of my skull. The most crucial thing, I think, is not setting limits, applying labels or getting pretentious about being ‘a writer’ doing something amazing or unique or brilliant. It’s just about getting on with it.

Flying Start: The video is now available

At last!

You may remember that last Wednesday I did a talk at the Flying Start rally at Manchester University. It’s quite a long talk (covering two videos). I hope you enjoy.

Part 1

Part 2