MEA CULPA
by colinptucker
Why haven’t I written anything for weeks now? I could say ‘writers’ block’ but that’s just a convenient get-out, ultimately meaningless. I need to get beyond that, if I’m to understand whatever it is that’s depriving me of any creative spark. So what’s holding me back?
Suspect one: the publishing industry. My agent sent DOUGLAS BROWN, RUNNING DOWN to nine publishers’ editors last September and we’re still waiting for a reaction from eight of them. The one response – a rejection – was positive, and courteous. But until the others have delivered their verdicts I feel paralysed.
Suspect two: the field’s too wide. A historical novel? Set in the 1950’s perhaps? That dull, dull, dull decade which saw me enter teenager status? It deserves a kicking. The 1960’s can’t be understood without an appreciation of the emotional, cultural, sexual desert that preceded it. Or could I exploit my four years in BBC Radio in the late sixties, early seventies? Both these are open to comedy, which I suspect is my thing, however much I might try to present a serious face to the world. No, the world is absurd and comedy is how to deal with it.
Suspect three: the narrator. In DAR it was the omniscient author with a few drifts into free indirect style allowing Walter’s thoughts to be presented direct. DOUGLAS was first person throughout; 85% of the narrative coming from yer man himself with the remainder parcelled out to the five other narrators. I preferred this, but somehow it only seems to work for me in a contemporary setting. And I haven’t got one; only historical ideas bubble up.
Suspect four: plotting. I need a story, with an end-point, and a driver which will get me there. The route’s irrelevant, it’ll emerge, but without that endpoint… The ideas I have are all to do with territory, the fields in which the story is to be set, none with story itself. And until I locate story, I’m paralysed…
I think the 1950s are very interesting at the moment. So many are writing about the 1960s (I get loads of submissions from that period), but the 1950s are different. The 50s are that bit before memory for many of us, and yet it’s the time our parents or grandparents were young. When I watch programmes like Ask the Midwife on TV it really brings it home to me what life was like for my mother as a nurse, and also how close the war was to them. Even as a small child I thought of the war as ancient history, but now I realise it was as close to them as the time my children were born is to me – it feels like yesterday.
Having said something so damning about how the 1960s are overdone, it’s also true that a different angle on the 60s could also be very good. I love your idea of a comedy based on your time in BBC radio. That’s also very current for all sorts of reasons. The comedy would let you tackle all sorts of subjects, including the controversial ones. I remember being a teenage girl in the early 70s, and a primary school girl in the late 60s so I’m not a bit shocked about how girls and women were treated when the news reports come out about it talking about abuse. I’m tempted to say to try the comedy about 60s radio first.
It would also interest the publishers to hear you have something so marketable up your sleeve as a follow-on novel, so I hope it spurs you on to get writing if you know that it will help your first novel get accepted. It can take a long time for that to happen so I hope you don’t wait in a limbo. It’s not writers’ block, it’s the need to close the covers on that first book, which you often only feel when it’s published.
Adele, thank you for this – it’s incredibly valuable feedback, and has made me think more and more about those BBC years. I can come up with strings of anecdotes from that time which could form a sort of loose memoir but that’s not what I want to write; story is what I’m after and I now think I see a faint glimmer of light illuminating what might be a starting point. Whatever, it’s enough to get me back to the keyboard.