Book Learning: Good & Bad Writing

'One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose... Good writing, on the other hand, teaches the learner writer about style, graceful narration,  plot development, the creation of believable characters and truth telling.' (Stephen King, 2000, p.146)

In On Writing: Planning & Possibility, I discover what I must do to be a writer. Its pretty obvious, when Stephen King (2000) says - 'read a lot and write a lot' (p. 145). At the moment I am reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings written by Maya Angelou and Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon. King talks about learning from good writing and bad, and however much I like or dislike either book, I find I am learning from them both.

Handheld Tech & More Opportunities for Learning

Being able to read using handheld technology means that we don't have to rely solely on conventional books anymore. I have no excuses for not having time to read or not having something available to read. I can listen to a book on the bus or walking to work using my phone or read using my tablet, where a whole library is available in sometimes less than than the size of one single book. It also means that I can have a number of books on the go in different mediums and read them in a form appropriate to the situation. A paperback like The Guest Cat isn't going to strain your arm, but a kindle version is easier to read in dim light and an audio version is better when your eyes are tired from looking at print or a screen.

Of course all versions whether hardback, paperback, kindle or audio are all able to be learned from. On this occasion the two books I will examine are the handheld tech versions as follows:

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Audiobook Listened to on an Android Mobile Phone
• Getting Rid of Matthew: Kindle Edition read on Kindle fire

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I have wanted to read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for years and put it off as I had expected it to be too 'literary' or 'worthy' and finally was persuaded to engage with it when I discovered an audio version of the book read by the author Maya Angelou. It has, so far, been a joy to listen to Maya's clear voice and accent, telling her story. Although it is an autobiography it feels like fiction. It has that wonderful unpacking of characters and story which reveals plots and themes as we are taken on Angelou's childhood journey. She brings us with her exploring themes still relevant today, from conservatism to racism to child abuse to misogyny and does it in such a loving and 'graceful' way that does not bestow blame or judgement on the perpetrators but understanding and a calling to account.

If I had read it rather than listened to it I may have lost some of the subtleties of language and certainly found it slower going. Because of Angelou's clear speech and language I was able to listen to it at 3 times the speed. This meant keeping up a good pace and forward momentum. However there were times when I fell asleep with my earphones in or missed a line because of the noise on the train, where I had to rewind and find my place, finding a sense of deja vous in my return to the text. Other times, finding a great line, I would have liked to be able to turn over the page or bookmark the page without cutting off the flow, but instead had to pause and make a note on my phone. A small price to pay to hear Maya Angelou narrate her own story.

Getting Rid of Matthew

Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon was a book chosen by a book group I'm part of. I read the blurb and thought, great - something light and fun. The premise being - what would a woman do if her lover finally gives up his wife and kids for her just as she stops being interested in him - how would she get rid of him?

I though it sounded like, a bit of a Bridget Jones other-woman story. And because I remembered that book as being funny and becaue I had been assured in a review that this was a funny book, I was looking forward to some lighthearted entertainment.

So I downloaded Fallon's book onto my Kindle fire and started reading. Maybe I shouldn't have read it just after Timbuktu by Paul Auster or while I was reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I tried to take this into account, that an autobiography of Angelou's standard is in a different league and Timbuktu had the advantage of being able to use magic-realism to hear the story of a dog. However, a book with magic realism and narrated by a a dog was more believable and an autobiography had more of the strengths of fiction and both were funnier than Getting Rid of Matthew.

Female Writers Presenting Female Characters

I have not finished Angelou's or Fallon's books but so far, their female perspectives are wildly different. Not just contextually or temporally but in their roundness and integrity of character. It may be said that Angelou has it easier, in that she is describing and recounting her own life. However, to be able to present the child version of herself is an act of interpretation which many fiction writers would struggle with especially in the when it comes to finding the truth in their stories. And the limitations of having to write what actually happened rather than what would be useful for the story to have happened meant there had to be a use of form and style and language which moulded the happenings into an entertaining coherence. Fallon's main female character Helen, with all her available fictional traits and actions, has so far been just a cardboard cutout from a TV sitcom and has the plot driven cliched changes to character necessary to move an episode in a serial forward for the next week. For all the misogyny that Angelou experiences and presents in her childhood account, Getting Rid of Matthew creates a more misogynistic world promoted by the main female character herself which is not balanced or challenged by other more rounded and believable or sympathetic female characters. 

Judgement and Learning

It may not seem fair to judge the books side by side. They are from different times and genres, post-modern Chick Lit from 2007 and Literary Autobiography from 1969. But both are the first books of female writers with females as central characters. Mainly I judge them side by side because I am reading them concurrently and both are books which I purchased when I could have avoided reading them or even avoided paying for them by borrowing them. But I invested in both books literally and figuratively so feel its fair to judge them side by side as such. And learn from this comparison.

When I finish both books, if I change my mind or find more to say on the subject I will write another related post. And if I don't I won't.

But whatever I do I will learn.

On Writing: Planning & Possibilities

Possibility & Catching Ideas

I am warned, in The Craft of Novel-Writing, that if I 'linger at the planning stage' that I 'may never start the book at all' (Doubtfire, 1982, p.12). Any planning needs to leave room for the kind of organic development that can't be planned. A book should be 'fluid' and 'a voyage of discovery' that is 'full of surprises' and that it is more likely that the reader will be surprised if I (the author) am 'continually surprised' (Ibid).

This, Stephen King describes as 'an immense feeling of possibility' with which he wrote his very first story as a child (2000, p.28). According to King, 'good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere' and the writers job 'isn't to find them but to recognise them when they show up' (2000, p.38).

Doubtfire (1982) advises keeping note books handy in the planning stages, to catch the ideas as they come (p. 9-12). In 1982 when the book was written, mobile phones weren't as prolific so wouldn't be available, as they are now, at that moment you want to jot something down.

Words, Numbers & Discipline & Freedom

When planning to write a novel its good to keep in mind the average length being anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000 words (Doubtfire, 1982, p.10) and according to Writers & Artists a 'typical paperback' will be 80,000 to 100,000. 

Doubtfire (1982) looks at a book of about 70-80000 words and suggests breaking it into 30 chapters of around 2500 words (p.11). The 1-30 method, as advised by Winston Clewes, involves writing 1-30 down a margin of a page and by the 1 put a 'possible opening' and by the 30 an 'idea for an ending' and by the other various numbers 'brief notes on some highspots of the story' (Ibid). It doesn't all need to be planned, but as you write, more notes by the chapter numbers and changes and more notes again will help to sort any 'muddle' out, and help to 'plan a strong back bone for your book and build towards a powerful climax', which can also change as appropriate (p. 12).

Irving Wallace (1969) in The Writing of One Novel considers that 'Every author prepares for a book in the way that best suits his psyche' (p.56). Wallace liked to plan using an outline, which he considered to have the 'virtue of being creatively thought out, worked out, disciplined, in the authors mind and on paper...' (1969, p.60). However he recognises that a novelist 'who plans too carefully in advance' could create such a 'rigid mold that he leaves no room for hisimagination to soar freely or for new ideas to root and grow...' (Ibid).   

Marathons, Toolboxes, Training & Work 

When Guy de Maupassant (1888) showed Flaubert some of his early writing, Flaubert saw 'a certain iintelligence' but wasn't sure if he would go on to develop any talent. Flaubert (Ibid) advised him: 

'Talent...is nothing other than a long patience. Work.'

Francesca Bell in Being a Writer, uses Haruki Murikami's analogy for writing a novel as running a marathon and considers the 'writer has to be fit for purpose and stamina is part of that fitness' (2015, p.268).

How do you train to be a writer? William Boyd in Notes on Becoming a Novelist considers that he found the 'right thing' to do to be a writer was 'writing as hard as [he] could, fulfilling [his] apprenticeship, making mistakes and learning from them' (2015, p. 291).

This apprenticeship carries with it a toolbox. Stephen King (2000) talks about the writer's toolbox of skills in vocabulary, grammar, style and form and says if you want to write to the best of your ability that 'it behoves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so that you can carry it with you', then he says when you are faced with something hard 'instead of getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work' (p. 111). 

Do Two Things

Stephen King's  (2000, p.145) advice is:

'[I]f you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot' 

King reads 70-80 books a year. I looked at my list since starting this blog in September and wondered if I was in the right ball park. By the 19th of February in Reflections on Reading I had read 19 books and since then I have read Timbuktu, The Drowned World, The Guest Cat and The Rosie Project. That's 23 books in 6 months, so in a year, at the same rate, I will have read 46 books. It looks like I have some catching up to do.

When it comes to writing, in the last six months I have attended a writing class, been editing my novel, have written a short story, some poetry, essays for an MA and written over 80 blog posts like this. King (2000) likes to get in 10 pages or 2000 words a day (p.154). However, if that is his only job I would imagine it being easier than when he wrote Carrie in between wash cycles at work. I feel like that's what I am doing and its hard work. I want to be writing all the time but when your eyes are closing and your head is dropping over the keyboard its hard. But there you go - no one ever said it was going to be easy. And all the cliches I drag out to young people I work with about hard work and achievement come to mind and I am chastened.

And I plan to read a lot and write a lot...more.

 
References: 

Boyd, W. (2015) Notes on Becoming a Novelist, Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2015, Bloomsbury, London
Brill, F. (2015) Being a Writer, Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2015, Bloomsbury, London
Doubtfire, D. (1978, 1982) The Craft of Novel-Writing, Shocken Books Inc, New York

King, S. (2000) On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Scribner, New York
Maupassant, G, (1888) 'Le Roman', Preface to Pierre et Jean, cited in Allott, M. (1959) Novelists on the Novel, Routelege, London
Wallace, I. (1969) Writing One Novel,  The New English, Library, London

15 Reasons for Reading

'The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you.

 And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.'

 Alan Bennett, The History Boys

15 Reasons for Reading: ART LEARNING INTELLIGENCE EXPLORATION HOPE COMPANY COMFORT EXPERIENCE IDENTITY SENSITIVITY EMPATHY ESCAPE PORTABILITY MAGIC WRITING

Art, Learning & Intelligence

Art: 'A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

Learning: 'How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.' 

(David Thoreau, Walden)

Intelligence: 'If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.'

 (Albert Einstein, cited in Neil Gaiman's lecture , Guardian, 2013)

Exploration, Hope, Company and Comfort

Exploration: 'The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.'

Hope, Company and Comfort: 'So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.' 

 (Road Dahl, Matilda)

Experience, Identity, Sensitiviy and Emathy

Experience:  'You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.' 

  (Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary)

Identity: 'My life is a reading list.'                                                                      

 (John Irving, Prayer for Owen Meany)

 
Empathy: 'Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.' 

(Aldus Huxley, Brave New World)

Sensitivity & Empathy:  'I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.'

  (John Connoly, The Book of Lost Things)

Escape, Portability, Magic and Writing


Escape: 'To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.' 

 (Somerset Maugham, Books and You)

Portability & Magic: 'Books are a uniquely portable magic.' 

 (Stephen King, On Writing: Memoir of the Craft)

Writing:  'For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.' 

(Virginia Woolf, Orlando)

ART LEARNING INTELLIGENCE EXPLORATION HOPE COMPANY COMFORT EXPERIENCE IDENTITY SENSITIVITY EMPATHY ESCAPE PORTABILITY MAGIC WRITING