Faking yourself

How often do you fake yourself? The job interview or any scenario which requires you to fit someone else's mould. It's the same with writing. The book has to meet a certain criteria before it will be accepted for publication. That can be anything from the way it's written to how the characters are presented, to the storyline. My protagonist, Alan, had to be changed to fit the criteria of a hero. I had to make him bolder in some scenarios where I'd made him falter, yet I still had to make him believable and real. Sometimes, when the book was returned from editing, there'd be comments in the margin saying, 'What a wimp!' I couldn't make Alan completely flawless. He goes under a lot of strain in the book. It would be unrealistic for him not to crack up. Without giving the ending away, when I first submitted the plot for appraisal, I was told the ending was too sad. I had to change it to satisfy the reader. Then again, one of the lessons I learned while writing is that you are not writing to please yourself, you are writing to entertain an audience.

I was mentored while writing 'Beneath the Perfect World' and I ended up writing to a formula. Don't get me wrong, the end product was a hell of a lot better than it would have been had I kept to my own writing style. I experimented with metaphors, thinking to gain respectability I had to be Thomas Hardy. It came out far too contrived and then a critique pointed out, Hardy wouldn't be published if he submitted his work today. One thing my editor told me was that I need to let my own voice come through more. I would have thought after all the scrutiny the book went through, I would have got it right by now. Like many pop bands, the second album is usually better than the first. Not always the case, but it's more polished, the band fuse better. The songs are more catchy. The third album just about sustains it then the band reinvent themselves.

True with writing. You perfect your style when you write the first book then polish it for the second. Pressure to meet a deadline for a publisher can mean subsequent books are not as well crafted as early novels. What the hell, the writer has earned an international reputation.

My next book will be more how I want it to be. Not that I've earned an international reputation. I want the protagonist to be flawed and work hard to win the respect of the reader. He's going to do some dodgy things but I think this will make him more interesting. There won't be a happy ending, but that doesn't mean the reader isn't satisfied. This is the prequel, though, to 'Beneath the Perfect World'.

Michael Gove

What else can you do other than just  put your head in your hands when you hear Goves latest educational policy. Banning American literature from the English Literature syllabus? What the hell! Does he think writers from other nations can't write and have nothing to offer in terms of cultural enrichment. He may be thinking by forcing young people to read Victorian literature he might be injecting these feckless youths with a bit of moral fiber. Umm, yeah. Pick pockets, armed robbers, drunkards, unmarried mothers, murderers and a bit of antisemitism thrown in for good measure. Makes George shooting Lenny in the back of the head a bit lame. Okay, 'Of Mice and Men' does have a brothel, oh yeah, and Curlly's yellow jackets. That might be going a bit too far. All literature has a place and will always be critiqued from the social-political viewpoint of the reader. Reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not going to turn everyone communist. 

As an English person writing in New Zealand, where does that leave me? Thankfully, I didn't write my book for a GCSE syllabus, but neither did Hardy, Dickens, Elliot, Steinbeck, Miller or Harper Lee. They were chosen for their artistic merit and the salient messages about the society they lived in. Writing in New Zealand, I've met some brilliant writers who struggle to gain recognition simply because of where they are based. If I go back to England to write my next novel, does that make me a better writer?

In the 80s, when I was at school, we were fed Victorian Literature and Shakespeare, to the point where I was led to believe nothing else had any value. When I started writing, I thought I had to be like them to be any good. When the first draft of 'Beneath the Perfect World' was critiqued, I was told Thomas Hardy wouldn't get published if he was writing today. So why does Gove want us to teach young people this is good writing? By modern standards, it's verbose, contains too many elaborate descriptions and relies too much on exposition. Modern writing is driven by the character and the landscape is an integral part of the protagonist.

I enjoy Victorian literature but after writing my own novel, and learning the craft of writing, I thought Hardy was hard work. My editor would have cut out the verbiage and cut the word count down by half, without reducing the story content. There's plenty of modern writers who explore the human condition just as well as Hardy and Dickens; but please Mr Gove, allow our young people to read something they can relate to.

Silent Characters

I've always been intrigued by the role of silent characters in novels. That's why I decided to put one in my novel, in the form of Alan Bell's former girlfriend, Louise. She appears again in silent form in the prequel to 'Beneath the Perfect World' which I'm currently writing. Although you hardly see them in their own right, they strongly influence the main plot; they mainly appear in the flashbacks, memories or thoughts of the main characters. They are like an omnipotent force driving the story line. Eva Smith in 'An Inspector Calls' changes the whole political outlook of the younger characters in the play. Fanny Robin in 'Far From the Madding Crowd' does more harm dead,despite being pathetic when she's alive. She determines the fate of Bathsheba and Francis Troy. She has the trait of someone who will inherit the earth. She's meek. Hardy's religious statements are embedded in her role and it's interesting how, rather than damn a sinner, like he does in his other novels, he gives her power in the afterlife. In all three texts, the silent character is dead. Each one testifies to the old saying, 'You can't fight a ghost.'