The strange pleasure of writing fiction
Oh dearly beloved, I have news, I have news.
This isn’t news of some new lovely Jericho thing; it’s the opposite. I’ve been busy for a long time with all things Jericho. Admin, tech, staffing, products, finance, blah. And now, those things are all still busy and thriving. But –
Increasingly, those things don’t need me. I have people more capable than me in most of the roles that matter. When we have weekly e-meetings, and someone asks me, “Anything from you, Harry?”, I mostly now just say no.
Oh the bliss of that no. Because, for well over a year now, I’ve had a half-finished Fiona Griffiths novel on my computer. It’s a novel under contract too, albeit contracts with deadlines that I’ve felt able to ignore. (Douglas Adams said: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – that’s never been me before, but Jericho hath made it so.)
Any case, point is, I have some time available again and I have restarted work on the book that will one day be THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD. It’s a joy to be writing again. It’s a joy to re-encounter the whole set-up I’ve built for myself – Fiona Griffiths has to investigate a crime that seems to emanate from a secure psychiatric hospital on the west coast of Wales. She’s had some bad personal experiences of psychiatric hospitals herself. And this one is stuffed full of ex-Special Forces veterans, with scrambled brains and a remarkable capacity for violence. And – well, there’s a whole plum pudding of ingredients, which I’ve assembled mostly because I think they’re yummy.
So: it’s a pleasure to be back.
The biggest pleasure? It’s to be with the characters again. Fiona especially – she and I have walked together for three quarters of a million words so far and there’s plenty of road still ahead of us.
Coming back after this long away, I realise that the relationship we writers have with our characters IS a real relationship. That is, it has elements of actual love in it.
You think that because the character isn’t real, the emotions can’t be either. But they can. It’s not like parent/child love, or romantic love, or human/dog love, or anything like that. It’s its own thing. It’s writer/character love, and it’s one-way only, but it’s real. If by some weird twist of brain chemistry I was prohibited from “seeing” Fiona again, I’d have a real bereavement, a genuine loss. And now that I’m back with her, writing actively, not just thinking wistfully, it’s like an old friend has flown in from Australia after years away and we can pick things up again, almost exactly as they were when we left off.
To have that kind of loving relationship on tap is a kind of gift. Writers have it. The rest of the world (poor saps) are forced to rely on real people, with all their flaws.
That’s not the only pleasure. For me, there’s a pleasure in writing. There’s a painful pleasure – or a pleasurable pain – in plotting. There’s a lot of pleasure in editing and re-editing. I like most of the stuff around publication too, whether trad or self-pub. And, though I’ve been off the circuit just recently, I love the crime writing scene. I love the writers and the gossip and the booze and the inclusive insiderishness of it all.
By about this point in an email, I occasionally check myself. Have I actually delivered any actionable and useful advice, or have I just waffled around talking about boxes full of elegantly dressed women and other such nonsense?
Mostly, I pass my actionable advice test with flying colours. This email, so far, flunks completely.
Useful advice for you to take home and cuddle at night:
Nada.
Zip.
A big fat socially-distanced zero.
Except, here’s the thing.
Your happiness – your many and varied sorts of writing happiness – all matter. You need to cherish and nurture them. If you notice one of them wilting, you need to figure out what’s going on and fix it.
Partly, that’s just a question of good life management. If a thing doesn’t make you happy, then twizzle it around until it does. That’s all the more important with things connected with writing. Writing is, in most cases, badly paid enough that you have to love it for its own sake. If you’re a hedge fund manager who doesn’t much love (erm) funding hedges, I’m sure the other compensations are plentiful. That’s not the case with writing.
But also: you will work better and faster and with stronger outcomes if you love what you do. Take the editing process. If you love that, as I do, you’ll be reluctant to leave the task until it’s really truly done. Things that were not quite right in the first or fourth draft manuscript start to glitter and shine. If editing is just a chore to get through, you’ll almost certainly end up finishing a good bit before you should.
So find your happy.
That is the actionable advice of this email. Find your happy. If you love some parts of the writing process and hate others, then look to see how you can transform your experience of the parts you don’t like. Do you gamify it? (“Hmm. I don’t like editing, but today I’m going to see if I can find 5,000 words of unnecessary text to cut. Ready, steady, go…”) Do you just add kindness? (“Right. I don’t usually let myself work in a coffee shop, but while I’m editing, I’m going to do it with coffees and muffins every day until I’m done.”) Do you just add self-love? (“You know what? I didn’t like this, but actually I can see this book starting to take shape and I’m genuinely proud of what I’ve accomplished.”)
Or whatever. But find your happy. Your work and your characters will be grateful for it.
Here endeth the epistle.
But what about you? Do you love writing? Or is it more pain than pleasure? What parts do you love and which would you willingly ditch forever? let me know in the comments, and we’ll all have a Heated Debate.
Thanks Harry.
I remember the first moment one of my readers spoke about my characters as if they were real people. We were warming up ready to play a football game and he just started talking about it, mentioning them by name and motivation. And we all know, speaking to an author about their characters is like asking a hedge fund manager how much a good hedge costs.
It was a magical moment that made me believe I had a shot at this business.
Thanks for your inspirational insights, Harry. I hope Fiona won’t mind too much if you spend some time with us too. But better see to her first, we’ll wait.
My characters are real to me and I wouldn’t be too surprised if one of them just came in through the door while I’m writing.
The best moments about writing are when readers get the subtitlities in my plot or laugh at jokes. Or when they keep asking me if I’ve written some more and want to know what happens next. Also good feeling being longlisted in two competitions (I’ve only ever entered three) gave me the urge to try harder. I told myself “You know what? You could do better if you weren’t so disorganized.”
I love writing and all things writerly, specially reading excellent writing, but my own is not (yet…) in that category. Will it ever be?!
I think I’ll hate all the publishing & marketing stuff, I’d rather give the book away…
Publishing is the process of getting readers! You’ll love that part too …
Over lockdown I decided to write a YA Sci Fi book to slot between the two I’d written years ago (first plus sequel) to make a series – I’ve been paying attention to the Self-publishing course – THANK YOU!!!. I wondered how it would be – I haven’t spent time with these characters for a long time – done a lot of other writing since. I finished the first draft yesterday and it was the best experience. I know those people, it was just as you said, the years vanished and we picked up where we left off. I’m sorry it’s finished.
Thank you Harry. You have encapsulated my feelings for my characters. I run the gamut of emotions when they write about themselves. I enjoy their triumphs and cry (proper tears and everything) at their losses, especially when they need to say goodbye to a character who needs to move on,
When a reader speak of them as real people, it is, as Tom Baldwin says, a magical moment. My best one is when a nine year old told her Mum she wanted to go to school on World Book Day as a character in my Middle Grade series, Ghost Alert!!, – as a dog called Deefer.
When I suggested killing off this wonderful minor character in Book 2, there was such an outcry in my focus group that I knew they loved him too. They begged me to kill off a very nasty girl instead, which, of course, is impossible. You don’t kill off your best villain, do you? But the investment in my characters was encouraging and heart-warming.
The most painful part for me is the blank sheet of paper, the clumsy first attempt. The most creative part is the editing especially when the words finally come together in the draft which makes you feel I can do no more; it is what it is. It needs other sets of eyes.
I love the Leonardo da Vinci quote: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Hi Christine,
I share with you my involvement with characters and sometimes I also let them write themselves. I sit back and listen to them. Great way to let the story take shape. When I have a plot problem I ask them how they are going to sort it out. It works.
The blank page has never daunted me, on the contrary. I allow myself to write badly, to scribble and experiment. I often start something big by scribbling on the back of envelopes or even on the margins of newspapers or till receipts, when no other suitable bit of paper is around. When I get to the pristine blank page, I’m ready to go… at full speed.
I agree with DM Costa. I was writing a about a certain group of characters, Then took a 10 year hiatus from writing and worried that my characters would not welcome me back. It turns out there was no need to worry my voice returned there is no discernible difference between my earlier work and now. My characters not only welcomed me back they embraced me. Yes I agree you must sometimes just go for the ride and let your characters lead you. They have done things I never dreamed of and in some ways complicated my story lines, made them richer in many ways, so always listen to your characters, they know better than you what’s going on in their world.
Bob Eberth. I agree on the need to listen to your characters and let them lead the way sometimes. I’ve written five novels, three of which have been published so far. I always end up listening mainly to the main female character because I find women much more interesting than men. I started writing my Nordic noir novel four years ago and thought I was doing alright, but then Kajsa, a policewoman with a dark secret, entered the plot out of nowhere on page 45 and took over, hence the name change to Kajsa’s Last Bullet She did things I never expected would happen. Her personality dominated the plot. The novel, self-published with the help of Ingram Spark, has sold in eight countries, no big volumes, but still. I was visiting a friend in Austria last year and he had read the book. We discussed the story and he jokingly asked for Kajsa’s contact details because he was fascinated by her.
Hi Harry, we all live in hope. Life is what you make of it. I hadn’t planned properly and was in danger of finishing what would have been a novella. So, when I hit a total block, I jumped ahead to see what would happen. What would happen to the police enquiry, how would it evolve. The co-protagonist (A literary agent – perhaps a dangerous selection) wakes up in hospital to find the love of his life, ships that pass in the night, that he hasn’t seen for seven years and their six year old twins, at his bedside. And they all talk to me. Sometimes they won’t shut up. However, I now know where I’m going.
I understand how Ronald Regan must have felt when, towards the end of his political career, he made speeches and included quotes from people he had known only to be informed that they were extracts from his early films and not REAL people. How dare they?
I’ll be there tonite!