Tag Archives: Virginia Woolf

Mrs Woolf, the word birds & moments of fear

01 Sunday Nov 2020

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In the interests of honesty, the following quotation isn’t one I ‘randomly’ came upon during my morning dip into Mrs Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary. I deliberately searched for it. I know the book well enough to roughly recall where to look for what I need when it’s specific.

Two chapters away from finishing my fourth novel, Only May, I’m acutely aware of how I need to take it slowly and get it right. This is the shortest book I’ve written, the most compact in terms of scale. It takes place over the course of the month of May. Four weeks to tell a story doesn’t afford a lot of leeway to create a viable plot. It’s easy to obsess over the minutiae, at the expense of moving the story on. And because it’s a little lighter, wordwise, the temptation to rush is ever present.

“I shall solve it somehow, I suppose. Then I must go on to the question of quality. I think I may run too fast and free and so be rather thin.“

What with one lockdown and another, I’ve found it easy to stick to a writing schedule. In fact, I’ve been up with birds these past few weeks, eager to see what my feathered friends have left for me. They haven’t disappointed.

The best thing about writing a novel is the way, in spite of the fear, there comes a point when you allow yourself to believe it might be working. For a while, when I hit the halfway mark I’d convinced myself I was kidding myself. And it was a character who saved me – one who I had initially introduced simply as a convenient hook to hang my central character’s dawning realisation on: her conviction that things were not as they seemed. She has developed into a crucial reality and a woman of solid substance.

The fear by the way is real. I’ve scribbled about it before. How sneaky it is, how insidious. And yet how necessary. Once we begin believing, because we’ve had three books (pick a number) published, we might be a legend in our own lunchtime, we’ve lost our way.

Which bring me neatly to ‘the question of quality‘ Mrs W refers to. She means editing. She means structure and shape and how the thing sits on the page. Wordcount notwithstanding, once I have these final chapters down, I shall have to mess it up. (Technical publishing term – honestly.)

May is my new favourite (sorry Other Characters) largely because she has challenged me. For a while I wasn’t sure where we were going. She did. I’m so pleased I trusted her.

Odd numbers & beautiful spaces

28 Sunday Jun 2020

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Checking my desk diary, I see the number “99” – circled. (I was never going to make a thing of an even number now was I?) Day ninety-nine then, in my personal cycle of hibernation & I also checked how long it’s been since I wrote anything here. Two guest posts notwithstanding, the last time I scribbled a word about my writing was 26 April!

Nine weeks then & I’m still avoiding words like ‘isolation’ & ‘lockdown’ simply because I feel neither isolated nor locked down. After however many weeks ninety-nine days add up to, some days I do feel alone. And much as I insist (truthfully) that being this way is second nature to me – I’m a writer, it’s what we do – ninety-nine days in, I’m missing certain people.

Mrs Woolf had a few perfect words for it. On the matter of ‘certain friends’ she wrote: I love them when they aren’t there – they leave beautiful spaces behind them.’

Family notwithstanding (when I finally get to hug my daughter, she will need to check her ribs) it’s my friends I miss. Not least the ones who write, those whose idea of heaven is hanging out, over tea & cake, nattering about writing.

With the plot of my newest endeavour flinging itself off on the inevitable tangents, I miss my writing group so much, Thursdays now feel like lost days. Not entirely – Janey (Eliza Jane Tulley) & I converse regularly. But it is never going to be the same as sitting opposite one another in our favourite cafe, notebooks on the side, ready to disseminate our latest offerings. That ‘beautiful space’ at our special table, is hers & mine.

And so I press on – by myself – occasionally startled by the moments my imagination conjures for this new story. It’s so off the wall quirky anyway, the digressions barely faze me. Being able to explain them (or ask Janey for her input) is still a true frustration.

Okay – this new one. I was going to say I thought long & hard about writing a story largely in First Person Present. It isn’t true. I thought about not doing it for as long as it took to rewrite the first chapter in Third Person & realise my instinct was right. FPP it is. And I love it. It’s challenging & even though the going is far, far slower than I first envisioned, I am making progress with my quirky story.


Image © Adam Oehlers

It too takes up a beautiful space, the writing space I have to fill because not writing isn’t an option. A space I know, were she around to see me loving this story, Janey would get.

Bluesky days… ‘the being and the doing…’

26 Sunday Apr 2020

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The weather is glorious. Clear blue skies & a bird song soundtrack, tempting me out of doors. Not a day passes when I don’t feel grateful to live in a small rural town with access to the countryside. Not that I’m walking in all my favourite places. Staying safe never felt more crucial.

In these locked down days you’d be forgiven for thinking a vast number of words have been written. However, like my physical rambling, the writing mileage has been abbreviated too. Although I’m showing up most days, my train of thought has been interrupted. Instead of pushing on with the story, I’m obsessing over the first few chapters, rearranging the same words on the page, indulging my inner perfectionist. And when I’m not doing that, I’m veering off into the nineteen-fifties, researching village school education, chapel graveyards & the business of bees. (Did I not tell you? There are bees in this book. Magical ones…)


In this new, unreal reality the best I can do is validate the way I’m currently working because it’s better than not working at all.

It’s my habit to open Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary each morning, at random. This, from 1935 was yesterday’s offering.

A very fine skyblue day, my windows completely filled with blue for a wonder … And I have been writing and writing and rewriting the scene … What I want to do is reduce it all so that each sentence, though perfectly natural dialogue, has a great pressure of meaning behind it.  


There’s only so much fine-tuning I can do though, before I shall be forced to crack on. It’s not as if I don’t know what comes next. I know a good deal about this story. My central character is smart & wild. The aforementioned bees talk to her. And this book has chapter headings which I have never written before although I’ve always fancied the idea. It has a title too, which pleases me hugely. A title I’m happy with connects me to the book; makes it feel more substantial, even though, in terms of word count, it isn’t.

Time enough to worry about how many words. What matters is there are some. And in these extended alone times, I ‘need not’ – to quote Mrs Woolf again – ‘think of anybody.’ I can be myself, by myself…

For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others … and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.

From: To the Lighthouse

The strangest adventure indeed. If I only scribble half a page of notes each day, or rewrite the opening to chapter whatever seventy-billion times, I’m doing something.

Being present, chewing the end of my pencil, staring out into the skyblue day…

Hibernation & the muse…

22 Sunday Mar 2020

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A few of you who follow me may recall my somewhat occasional & fanciful notion that Virginia Woolf is my muse. My admiration for her writing has sometimes led me to place imaginary trays of tea & buns outside her metaphorical door, with the aim of persuading her to lend her genius to my lesser & more lowly pursuits.

Right…

In other, more realistic, muse-related ramblings, I call on my word birds. And let’s be honest, they’re far more likely to aid me than the ghost of Mrs Woolf.

In these odd times, I confess to having struggled over the past week. Largely due to political shenanigans. (Let’s not dwell – this is a blog about my work, not my ‘men in grey suits where are all the women and the joined-up thinking?‘ observations.) Trying to get my old head around the new regime & telling myself, there is always the new story to write!

The interwebs have been awash with writer-focused memes, not least the one about how Will Shakespeare penned both King Lear & Macbeth during the plague. Aimed, I’m sure, at reassuring us that all we need to do is ignore the firestorm, hibernate, knuckle down & crack on with the latest book. All well & good but the reality is, anxiety is a poor bedfellow for the muse.

I’m hearing many stories, online & from my writer friends, about how they’re struggling to concentrate. How the plan to use this enforced time of solitary existence to write is already falling by the wayside.

A few weeks ago I began writing my fourth book. I love it to bits & if it isn’t quite writing itself (that would be a trick worthy of a witchy woman!) it is coming along nicely. Having lost some of my hwyl for the act of writing per se, rather than the story, I know this is a crucial moment. It’s an opportunity to write a story that wants to be written. No excuse not to. There are weeks, possibly months of this hibernating lark ahead of me so a grip must be got!

A myriad muses (musii?) for all my writer friends! And whether the shade of Mrs W likes it or not, I’m calling up one of my favourites quotes.

Onward & sideways as my mum used to say. Apposite on Mother’s Day too! I kissed her picture this morning & like to imagine, she kissed me back.

The art of non-linear writing & not being scared of bears

24 Sunday Mar 2019

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Apropos my notebook post, I’ve been chatting with other writers about them. More importantly, what goes in them. As Jan Baynham pointed out in the comments, pretty or plain, it’s what we put on the pages that counts.

If I slack in my writing routine – which in spite of a level of self-discipline I sometimes do – my defence is often that I’m still scribbling notes. My handwriting is quite striking but it has wings. It isn’t very well-mannered & spreads itself. This is why I prefer unlined notebooks. I’m a big dismisser of lines in any case. Ever since, as a child, I read Lines and Squares by A A Milne, I rebelled! Bears didn’t scare me then & I still eschew lines!

bears

In my unlined notebooks I can ramble at will & do. It makes for a decidedly scattered approach to story construction mind. There’s no method, no ‘Once upon a time – Middle bit – The end’.  But I enjoy the challenge of unravelling the random & making it fit. Coming across scenes I wrote months previously, & only half remember, delights me. And they often provide answers to issues I’m trying to work out. Oh yes! Already sussed that! (Long term memory, dear reader – par for course?)

I have no idea if my way is a recognised way of constructing a story. It works for me is all I know.

Mrs Woolf had a few words for it…

Arrange VIRGINIA

I have 27,000 words down of Underwater the Stars Shine Brighter. Some drifting & without direction, others quite orderly & pleasing; none of them pandering to bears. (I know – almost a dreadful, dreadful pun…)

Showing up … with a new notebook.

26 Friday Oct 2018

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“[I] am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles.” 

Virginia Woolf was talking about her diary. She could just as easily have been referring to her books. She often had a haphazard relationship with both. As do I. Although, unlike Mrs Woolf, I keep a sparse diary these days. More a daily, brief note frankly. My writing style is equally random. All over the shop to be honest – rarely linear but it works for me, so onward & sideways…

My third story is out on submission. It’s time to show up & write another. And so I bought myself a new notebook. Partly because I need one & also because the focus for #Book 4 has shifted hugely. It already exists in a complete first draft. The writing of it has happened over a period of several years. It’s been a thread, winding in & out of Ghostbird, Snow Sisters, a story about a fire-ruined house & #Book3. (Don’t ask – I’m terribly superstitious & until/if, too terrified to reveal the title.)

#Book 4 then kept getting eclipsed. I wondered at one point if it was one of those stories that wasn’t meant to be written at all. But I kept going back to it & to Grace, the central character. Grace is unlike anyone I’ve written before. She’s older for one thing. I’m very keen to write an older woman protagonist & I’ve been thinking about Grace a lot over the past week or so, wondering if I can finally write her & do her justice.

arthur-rackham Fair Helena

There will be a selkie too, although not in the way most people imagine. Mine bears very little resemblance to the ‘conventional’ selkie myth & she’s never been near the sea…

The distance between my original vision for this story & being ready to write it properly means it was inevitable that aspects would change. And so it’s proved. This is the best time of year for me to write. Darker evenings, lush morning mists, nights drawing in… So yes, bought myself a new notebook…

Into the stream…

02 Sunday Sep 2018

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I may not be blogging much for a while.

Structural edits are in. The End as I know it becomes redundant. One thing’s clear – I don’t always begin at the beginning either. Not the right beginning at any rate. Or end the way I’m meant to.

I’m off then, to wander – less aimlessly I can only hope. Re-assemble this story & say what I meant to, at the beginning, when I first had the idea.

Writers do a great deal of wandering off. What Virginia Woolf described as, ‘the line of thought [dipped] deep into the stream.’ The perfect metaphor for editing.

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See you, dear reader… I have to sharpen my pencils & grab my galoshes.

In praise of publishers

08 Sunday Jul 2018

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process

Who knew, dear reader, that at an age when a good many women are settling into a version of retirement, I would be getting my first traditional publishing deal? Back in 2016, after what seemed like a lifetime, that is exactly what happened. And in 2017, I did it again.

There was – because there always is – an element of luck attached to both events. I was lucky to have access to the Meet the Editor scheme, hosted by the press that would eventually publish me. I was fortunate to be mentored by an editor with an astute mind & an eye for something on the quirky side. And finally, I found myself in the hands of a ridiculously small & hardworking team willing to take a chance on me.

In a world where getting a traditional publishing deal is as rare as a Kate Bush gig, I remain grateful. Genuinely so. I’m lucky to be published. Lucky to be so well looked after, to have my words treated with respect, my responses to editorial differences thoughtfully considered; to be involved at every stage of the publishing process. If the past few years have taught me anything it is this: those of us who are traditionally published by reputable presses are immensely privileged.

Since I was published, in many ways my life has changed beyond recognition. It’s still amazing to me & each day I count my blessings. I love it when people smile & say, ‘I read your book. Wow! Well done!’ Yes, I’ve worked hard but being published doesn’t make me special, it makes me fortunate. Makes me want to write more, be “full of work” & regardless of the future, remain indebted to my publisher.

This morning, as I often do, I opened A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf at a random page. This is what I read:

“The dream is too often about myself. To correct this; and to forget one’s own sharp absurd little personality, reputation and the rest of it, one should read; see outsiders; think more, write more logically; above all be full of work; and practice anonymity…”

virginia-w

#TeamHonno

‘A note…*

01 Sunday Apr 2018

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process.

A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf is a book that accompanies me. By that I mean, it’s a companion. I don’t take it with me when I go shopping, but I don’t stay away from home overnight without it. My copy is heavily annotated (in pencil) & I return to it over & again. This morning, I opened it randomly, at Wednesday, November 14th, 1934.

* ‘A note: despair at the badness of the book: can’t think how I could ever write such stuff – and with such excitement: that’s yesterday: today I think it good again. A note, by way of advising other Virginias with other books that this is the way of the thing: up and down – and Lord knows the truth.’

The passage is underlined & the word ‘Rewriting‘ written in the margin. This writer has been here before, methinks [knows]!

I’m indulging myself in a moment of angst. Even though I have it all – blocked in & laying the foundations (in some instances, the detail) for the final chapters – I’m still beating myself up over this story. I oscillate between ‘the badness‘ & ‘thinking it good again‘ like a wildly out of control lighthouse beam. (To the Lighthouse? Some puns have no sensitivity whatsoever…)

woolff      woolf diary

Mrs Woolf said this too: ‘My head is a hive of words that won’t settle.’

Hives & lighthouses, bees & beams. Whatever, it’s all absolutely in my head.

Onward & sideways.

 

Blogger love & not being ‘impeded…’ *

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process

The other day, Anne Williams said to me that during the course of the blog tour for Snow Sisters, ‘…you’ve made many new friends…’  It certainly feels that way. The tour covered twenty dates, which is twice as many as I booked for my first novel, Ghostbird. From Anne herself, who kicked off the tour, to those who brought it to a close (& kept the momentum going – not the easiest of gigs), I have been utterly blessed. First & foremost by their professionalism & generosity. Book bloggers do this for nothing! And Book Connectors bloggers are the absolute best.

Oh my heart! You women took such care of my ‘sisters’ & I’m indebted to each & every one of you. I’ll never forget any of you, for your kindness, friendship & dazzling reviews.

Writing Snow Sisters was my second foray into the world of ghosts – a world tilting at the quirky with a dash of Welsh Gothic, attempting to place it in the mainstream. It’s unlikely I will – until English bookshops start stocking books published in Wales, with Welsh themes – mythological & modern – those of us who take our inspiration from this magical, gutsy, singular country will sit on the sidelines.

We’ll have our notebooks at the ready mind – pencils sharpened, alert to what comes next: writing, always writing. As for me, I’m already listening for my word birds, already in love with my new ghost.

* “I will not be “famous,” “great.” I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”
~ Virginia Woolf

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