One of my favourite poems

Vinegar

sometimes

I feel like a priest

in a fish&chip queue

quietly thinking

as the vinegar runs through

how nice it would be

to buy supper for two.

Roger McGough

Love it!! 

How I write

As I have said, I have been asked several times how one goes about writing a novel. Well, the internet is full of people with far better credentials than I all offering advice. There is no one simple recipe which, if it is rigorously followed through, will turn out a coherent and satisfying 375 page novel at the end,  so I will just talk about  how I approach it.
 To start, I have to have an idea, something that gives me a buzz of excitement and I hold onto that. I believe that if I have a good beginning and a firm grasp of the characters, the story will tell itself as I work on. When I start writing a book I know the beginning and what probably happens in the end, but I have only a vague picture of something going on in the middle,  unless my story is based on a detailed real-life event. By not planning it, I allow for things happening that I never would have thought of, just because the story wants them to happen. The danger, of course, is rambling. Having a ready-prepared plan might make you feel safe, like having a really good map when you are going cross-country. The problem is that characters have an impish way of doing their own thing and changing direction half way through the writing of a story or a book so that you could find yourself – metaphorically speaking - in a clanging, clamouring, built-up inner city area instead of in the scenic country road you had planned to be driving along! Actually, those people who plan in advance like this are rather thin on the ground.  I’m told that even the writers of detective stories often only have jotted notes about the order in which they need to reveal the clues.
 I type quite fast using my two middle fingers, but I hand-write much faster. The downside of this – and the reason I don’t do it all the time – is that I seem to go into a sort of elated trance when scribbling away, thinking as I do it that this is so good; this is going really well – then I am brought down to earth with a bump when I read through it. It usually seems that I just got carried away and that much of what I wrote is going to be of absolutely no use at all. It is really profitable to keep a notebook handy for jotting down odd notes, which often seem to pop into my mind whilst doing mundane tasks like  cooking or ironing and which pop out again very quickly if they don’t get written down. I can be mowing the lawn or peeling the potatoes or waiting for the bus when just the right phrase pops into my mind or I have a ‘Eureka’ moment about how to solve a tricky plotting problem, or suddenly I know exactly what x said to y when previously it wouldn’t come to me. Some people write down phrases or paragraphs in their notebook, or even write whole chapters and file them away until they find a use for them or until they have a need for inspiration. Sometimes, of course, there never is a use for them – it’s reported that Joyce Carey had a whole chest of drawers filled with chapters out of books that he never got round to using!
 

I accumulated a lot of facts in my notebook, but discarded a great deal of them. The reader needs to be involved with and driven along by the pace of the story, so one can’t allow detailed description to weigh too heavily or to slow things down. Having worked on it, I have developed a great admiration for writers like the wonderful Hilary Mantell, Philippa Gregory, and Alison Weir who produce historical novels packed with period detail and atmosphere. Often but not always, I tend to write and then research and check the detail afterwards.  Having a general familiarity with the decades covered in ‘Someday, Maybe’, I was confident to start with, but realized as I went on that my long-term memory is very far from faultless! Mistakes were inevitable and quite a few details had to be checked. What music was popular at just that moment in time? What was being broadcast on the radio at such and such a time on such and such a day? What kind of radio might it have been? What film might Cathy and Fred have gone to see? Was the treatment of Mary and the medical information correct? The writer of a historical novel wants the reader to be wholly ‘in’ the period that he or she is writing about. That period detail must be accurate. There was a long list of details that needed to be checked, homework to be done; experts, the library, Google and internet pages must be consulted. Visits had to be made.

Then, if one wants to write, on must – well, write! I try to do at least a few paragraphs every day, even if I discard them the next. As time has passed, I have accumulated a wobbly array of shoe boxes on my office shelf, each one containing a screenplay or a novel, finished or unfinished, as the case might be. Sometimes, of course, they don’t go anywhere. Sometimes they end up in one of several half-empty boxes. I don’t want you to think that each time I sit at my desk I confidently set down another thousand or three words with a flourish. I don’t. It’s amazing how many things suddenly acquire importance when you are faced with some writing to be done: those clothes that just won’t wash themselves; the roses crying out for pruning; that letter that simply must get to the post… Now the children are long gone, but the husband needs attention. Time passes.

A big thank you to all involved at The Cafe on The Green, Cheriton and to all those lovely people who came along and who bought a copy of one of my books. If you couldn't make it, my  next book signing will be between 10 a.m. and 12 at the Alresford Library, Broad Street, Alresford  on Saturday morning, the 20th September. See you  there! 

Several people asked, 'How do you go about writing a novel?' I promised to give it a bit of thought so stand by for a little bit on the subject in my next.

... at The Cafe On The Green,Cheriton, Hampshire this Thursday morning, the 4th September.

  Don't forget! 

New Novel 'Moving On' release on the 4th September!

Moving is so much more than moving.

If you are going to be in the area of Cheriton, Hampshire on Thursday morning the 4th September, do come along to The Cafe On The Green where I shall be holding the first book signing for my new book, 'Moving On.'

If you can't come along on that date, the next opportunity to have your copy signed  will be at  Alresford Library in the morning of  the 20th September.

This story is rather different from the last book. Whilst once again it is based on something that did really happen, I have allowed myself greater play with the story line than I did with 'Someday, Maybe.'  In 'Moving On', not only the characters and the settings are imaginary, but the storyline as it develops is imaginary too. In 'Someday, Maybe' the characters and the settings popped out of my mind but the story and the outcome were true.

 Are you selling your house? Have you rid yourself of all those favourite knick-knacks, painted everything a desirable shade of beige or grey, put on a continually brewing pot of fresh coffee and cleared the house of that clinging smell of damp dog? Well, you’ve seen the How-To-Sell-Your House programmes; you know how to do it. ‘Location, Location’, Escape to the Country’, Houses Down Under’, Fantasy Home by the Sea’... You must have seen some of them as well, those television shows in which a family purports to want to move house; anyway, you know the kind I mean. Judging by the number of such television programmes, we are all fascinated with other people’s houses - fascinated by our own houses, too; if we haven’t got one, we want one, and if we have one, we want a better one, or bigger one, or a smaller one, or an older one or a younger one or one with more storage or more garden or less garden or a conservatory or an extra bedroom - anyway, a different one.  Few of us are fortunate enough to be entirely satisfied with what we have.

 

Take Valerie Bryce, for instance. She’s the main character in my soon-to-be-released novel, ‘Moving On’. Valerie has found herself no longer entirely satisfied with the house she and her husband Andy have been living in for the last forty-odd years. She has been yearning for somewhere new. She has wanted to be nearer the family. She has just been wanting to move. She’s so thrilled when an opportunity do so arises, an opportunity which will satisfy all her wishes. Andy? Well, Andy has his reservations about moving, and the decision to move has taken a bit of getting to and she is worrying a bit about that, too, but even so!

She can't wait.

An Easter poem for you.

Happy Easter! I'm a little late, but better that than never. I love this dialect poem by nineteeth century poet William Barnes! Try reading it aloud:-

 

Easter Zunday

 

'Last Easter Jim put on his blue
Frock cwoat, the vu'st time-vier new;
Wi' yollow buttons all o' brass,
That glitter'd in the zun lik' glass;
An' pok'd 'ithin the button-hole
A tutty he'd a-begg'd or stole.
A span-new wes-co't, too, he wore,
Wi' yellow stripes all down avore;
An' tied his breeches' lags below
The knee, wi' ribbon in a bow;
An' drow'd his kitty-boots azide,
An' put his laggens on, an' tied
His shoes wi' strings two vingers wide,
Because 'twer Easter Zunday.

An' after mornen church wer out
He come back hwome, an' stroll'd about
All down the vields, an' drough the leane,
Wi' sister Kit an' cousin Jeane,
A-turnen proudly to their view
His yollow breast an' back o' blue.
The lambs did play, the grounds wer green,
The trees did bud, the zun did sheen;
The lark did zing below the sky,
An' roads wer all a-blown so dry,
As if the zummer wer begun;
An' he had sich a bit o' fun!
He meade the maidens squeal an' run,
Because 'twer Easter Zunday.

 

 

Moving On

I promised to say a little about the novel that is in the pipeline -

 

 

 

 'Moving On'

 

 

 

 

This story is rather different from the last book. Whilst once again it is based on something that did really happen, I have allowed myself greater play with the story line than I did with 'Someday, Maybe.'  In 'Moving On', not only the characters and the settings are imaginary, but the storyline as it develops is imaginary too, whereas in 'Someday, Maybe', the characters and the settings popped out of my mind but the story and the outcome are true.

To give you a rough idea of what it is about:-

 

 

It’s moving day and a very exciting day, too, for Valerie Bryce! Fancy, not only moving in with their daughter Susie and her family – she’s been expecting that to happen sooner or later now that she and Andy are getting on a bit – but moving from the dilapidated northern seaside town in which they have lived for well over forty years into a wonderful, listed house with a swimming pool, set in extensive gardens in a delightfully pretty village in the rural south of England.  Well, it looks lovely in the brochure, they haven’t actually seen it yet, but still. . .

 

Andy? Well, Andy has his reservations about moving, and the decision to move took a bit of getting to and she is worrying a bit about that, too, but even so!

         All decisions are made with an objective in mind, and Valerie’s objective is a comfortable, peaceful and contented old age in the bosom of her family. Sometimes, though, things don’t turn out in the way anticipated...

 

 

I hope very much that you enjoyed 'Someday, Maybe' (and if you haven't yet read it, it is available now from Amazon and other online booksellers and on Kindle)

 

I'm not sure at the moment what date 'Moving On' is to be released, but I will let you know as soon as possible.