I’m very pleased to be planning a new real-time, in-person workshop for 26 November: Reawakenings.
It’s been nearly three years since we last met at a Words Away workshop! And a lot has happened since then, so for this first workshop I thought we could explore some of these changes in our writing. There’s some darker stuff there, of course, but it also gives us plenty to think about in terms of transformation and creativity and coming out the other side. Plague and war and sourdough starter: meet notebook and pen.
We’ll draw upon the ideas of sleeping and waking for our focus: slumber, hibernation, dreams, nightmares, rebirth, recreation, the interactions of the conscious and the subconscious minds. I’m currently gathering some short readings – probably some Natalie Goldberg and Robin Wall Kimmerer, perhaps some Tove Jansson, almost certainly a reference or two to Brokeback Mountain. I might bring in some Buddhist psychology I’ve been studying over the last couple of years, and we’ll also use the Four Elements as a holistic creative framework.
Kellie and I are particularly excited about a super new venue in the heart of the West End: the Phoenix Garden. A couple of months ago, as I was taking a short cut behind Shaftesbury Avenue to the bookshops of Charing Cross Road, my eyes were drawn to Tibetan prayer flags behind the railings of a little pocket park. I realised in fact it’s where I once ate fish and chips – or was it a cream cake (or maybe both?!) – when I met up with an old friend. Since then it’s had a bit of a makeover: it has its own meeting space, and the garden has been carefully tended into a little oasis. I’ve always wanted to teach a workshop in a garden: now my dream comes true. Perhaps, if it’s not raining on the 26th, we can even do some writing outdoors?
And of course the idea of a Phoenix fits perfectly with the theme of reawakening.
The formal description for the workshop is copied below, and here’s a booking link at Words Away.
Rise again! I hope to see some of you there.
REAWAKENINGS A Four Elements workshop 1.15-4.45pm, 26 November 2022 Phoenix Garden, 21 Stacey Street, London WC2H 8DG
What’s been sleeping, and what’s now stirring? And what can we spring into action in our writing?
The past few years have been marked by great changes for all of us: fears of plague and war and climate disaster, moral panics about woke culture, political upheaval, social isolation, personal loss. But there’s also the possibility for seeing and doing things anew.
Drawing on the powers of the four elements, in this workshop we’ll look for fresh inspirations for our writing in the ideas of sleeping and waking. As we come together again to write, let’s sharpen our awareness as we reawaken our imaginative purpose.
This workshop will include: * preparatory readings and writing exercises (optional, and to be circulated a couple of weeks before the class) * in-class discussion, meditations, and writing * teatime with the book doctor: opportunities to raise questions about writing and publishing over tea and cake * follow-up notes, including writing experiments, reading suggestions, and resources on writing and creativity
It’s that time of year again – autumn always seems to be the favourite season of writers. Our inner nerd must associate the cooler air and autumn leaves with the wide-open prairies of unused exercise books. And we’re off!
Not that there are as many leaves left to turn orange and fall round here after the summer that we’ve had. Summer: increasingly my least fave season, though this year I did enjoy an excellent Zen meditation course as well as a wonderful introduction to natural history with the Natural History Museum. It’s been a weird year – heat and drought and war and politics and divisions, plus loss and grief that never really seems to budge. Perhaps the cycle of the year puts us in a space to start again.
Autumn, though. It’s something about the light, I think – the slant of the light in September, a thinner yellow that catches something: what? It was there in Orleans House Gardens in Twickenham this morning (see above). It was there on the English Channel last week when I taught a Four Elements workshop at the Hastings Book Festival (thanks for having me!). Something that changes in the light makes me see or maybe just feel things differently: a certain lift happens.
Thinking about that: as a writing experiment, take an old piece of writing and rewrite all or some of it by telling it slant.
A different perspective, a new setting in time or place, a fresh register: bring the subject matter in another direction.
Perhaps think about the quality of light this work might sit within, and let that feel its way into the writing. And maybe you could prepare by doing a meditation or visualisation that draws on a particular quality of the light.
To illuminate (ha!) this writing experiment, try this ritual for the Equinox from Bhanu Kapil, first published in the Ignota Diary 2019:
23 September Ritual for Autumn Equinox Invert yourself at the edge of the water, so that the top of your skull or your hair makes contact with the current or wave. And if this is not possible, if your capacity to take this posture is restricted in any way, then feel it in your body first. And if that is not possible, or if feeling is not possible in this moment, then take a glass of water and add some pink Himalayan salt, fresh lemon juice and pepper. Drink this. And if this is not possible, then lift your face to the rain. And if it never rains, then wait until the water finds you. Wait for the unexpected emotion that changes or charges your very real heart. And then: step through the indigo door, as Rachel Pollack said, into another world.
All of that! Some Bhanu (and Rachel) magic to send you on your writing way. Let the light lead you into another world of your own creation.
And spookily (or maybe not), as I type this post Bhanu also informs me about this. If you’ve ever enjoyed the great wisdom of Rachel Pollack’s writings, you might want to show your assistance. (And if you are interested in tarot but have never read her Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: you must seek it out! It is widely regarded as the best book on the subject.)
***
While I’m here,coming soon:
* Reawakenings, a Four Elements workshop run with Words Away, at a central London location tbc, 26 November 2022. Thinking about the changes we’ve experienced in the last few years since we last came together in person, let’s explore together ways to reawaken our writing: reset or reboot it, rebirth it even!
* Masterclasses on craft and practice, structured around an updated syllabus for my DIY MA in Creative Writing, on Zoom, January 2023 onwards.
It’s the summer solstice, and it’s warm outside, and there’s a train strike, and even though I don’t commute it makes me feel very lazy. Which is ironic, as this post is all about the world of work.
I am inspired by one of the books I’ve enjoyed most so far this year: Marzahn, Mon Amour, by Katja Oskamp, expertly translated by Jo Heinrich and published by Peirene. It’s a memoir by a writer who during an ‘iffy’ patch in her career retrains as a chiropodist and finds a job in a salon in Marzahn, a neighbourhood of communist-era high-rises in East Berlin.
Her clients are older, and – among the ingrowing toenails and painful corns – have tales to tell: illness, bereavement, surviving the Nazis and the communists. Katja also makes new friends with her colleagues; one charming chapter describes an outing to a local spa. There are many quiet joys, and I relished the book’s celebration of working people. Its stories are poignant and often enjoy a certain deadpan humour.
The book was chosen for the Berlin Reads One Book citywide reading campaign. I think much of its success arises as the writing is unfussy – effortless, simply observed. It wasn’t trying too hard, as too much writing is. What could be more intimate than working on someone’s feet, I guess?!
And Katja became a writer again. Sometimes, the fix to an iffy patch is a change of scenery and some fresh company.
As a writing experiment: in ten-minute writes, describe some of the people you have worked with – colleagues, associates, clients, regulars. An unforgettable encounter at a sales conference, or that moment when someone cracked in the office, or that person whose presence in your life from 9 to 5 across a span of several years still haunts you to this day.
Give us a few details of appearance, describe tics and habits, and perhaps relate something of their histories and their lives outside work. Perhaps allow us a sense of what you gave to them, and they gave to you.
I still can’t get over the fact of a literary agency charging £649 for a daylong course called How To Get A Book Deal. We all have to earn a crust, but I thought literary agents did that by taking a commission for selling author’s books.
There are some very good courses run by agents and publishers (and writers and editors and writing teachers too …). And there are also plenty of festivals and writing conferences where writers can pay to hear the advice of industry professionals and sometimes even pitch to them – hey, we live under the system of global capital, right? And until the Revolution comes the exchange of money is often the foundation for the use of other people’s time and expertise, okay?!
But £649 is a lot of money to shell out for a day. I trust the pastries will be first-class!
So, for FREE, I’ll let you into a secret.
The way you get a book deal is to write a book someone else wants to read.
It’s as simple as that. And if lots of people want to read it, you could be very successful commercially.
I am not being facetious! I really do think there is great value in grasping the clarity of these facts. Too much can be overegged and overpromised in the world of creative writing, and promises made are rash ones. No one can really predict what a publisher will acquire, or whether a book will sell once it is published.
Stop grasping – just write a good book. If you want to be published, it really comes down to the simple matter of writing something that readers want to read. And it doesn’t even have to be a good book: look in a bookshop!
But, too, what is a good book? Taste matters as much as technique, and we know there’s no accounting for it.
However: it does help to develop your craft and technique, and also to gain inspiration in establishing an effective creative process. And though there are many excellent resources out there that you can pay for, there are also many that are FREE. Here are some of the ones I recommend most frequently.
On intention Carmen Maria Machado, On Writing and the Business of Writing: a powerful essay on the intersections of art and commerce, grounded in real-life examples. If you are serious about getting published, this is required reading.Alexander Chee, How To Unlearn Everything: written to address that contentious topic of writing ‘the other’, this essay in fact goes to the heart of three of the most important things in writing and publishing: your purpose in writing; your chosen narrative style; and understanding your readers. All writers should read it.
On creative practice Charlotte Wood and Alison Manning on the Writer’s Life: a series of podcast interviews, with plenty of practical guidance on matters ranging from finding focus and discipline to working with feedback. There are so many podcasts on writing and books, but I’d certainly make room for this one.
On the intersections of plot and character, and how they connect with readers Parul Seghal, The Case Against The Trauma Plot: lots of food for thought here for how stories are presented as tidy fictions – or messy ones. Valuable reading.
On developing a narrative style Tell Me A Story and A Book Is Not A Film: blog posts of my own about narration, showing and telling, and knowing who or what is telling your story. Emma Darwin, Psychic Distance: What It Is And How To Use It: I tend to use the term narrative distance, which I feel is more accurate for relating both interior and exterior modes of storytelling; whatever the language, understanding this concept can really empower your storytelling. And there is a whole textbook’s worth of writing advice in Emma’s excellent Tool-Kit.
On story types Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots: a checklist for the 20 types of story is made available for free by the publisher – really handy for marshalling your narrative content and shaping it into a story. The book it’s based on is a good investment for writers too.
On story structure Michael Hauge, The 5 Key Turning Points Of All Successful Screenplays: okay, a book is not a film (see above), but it helps to develop an understanding of ways to pace and plot your action. I often suggest that writers watch a favourite movie and look for those key developments in the story such as the Point of No Return and the Major Setback.
On prose style and voice Chuck Palahniuk, Thought Verbs: a niche matter, but choosing the best verbs to power your sentences is imperative. Lots of other useful craft essays on the LitReactor site too. Constance Hale, Sorting Out Grammar, Syntax, Usage & Style: there are lots of other resources on Constance Hale’s site too, and her book Sin and Syntax is *the* book on style, grammar and usage I always recommend: practical, witty, and breezy.
On making yourself comfortable with uncertainty Masterclass, John Keats’ Theory of Negative Capability in Writing: or cultivating the habit of being ‘in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’. Masterclass has a lot of free articles on other topics too.
If I were doing this next week, I might have different suggestions. And ideas for podcasts and YouTubes could form entire other posts. Lots out there! Feel free to suggest in comments below.
And if you are really keen, and don’t mind shelling out on a few textbooks or going to the library: here is my DIY MA in Creative Writing. FREE. But you might want to find classmates or writing partners for that.
I’m right now not blogging as frequently; call this a special edition for the spring equinox, and maybe I’ll try to do something quarterly. But you can also find me on Twitter, and especially on Instagram.
NB: Revised 28 July to include Carmen Maria Machado’s essential essay.
But the titles in the list above are the ones that really cast the greatest spell over me: drew my curiosity, got under my skin, fired me up, touched my heart, or equipped me with strength during what turned out to be a difficult year.
My standout read of 2021 is probably The Sentence. Before I read that, it would have been The Night Watchman. Clearly the year of Louise Erdrich. I love her. I just love her. Funny. I love that she is so funny. I love her characters: Tookie, Patrice. I love her political engagement. A couple of readers thought parts felt rushed, but to me that very rush of energy – the anticipation of what was coming – provided much of the pleasure of this book about books and book people set in a bookshop.
Enjoy this YouTube of Louise Erdrich’s launch interview held at Birchbark Books, which also provides the setting for The Sentence. ‘Sentences that bring people solace and comfort’ – just heard her utter those words again. And the thing about books is that you ‘can be alone but in the most splendid company’: another gem. UK readers: The Sentence comes in January.
If I had to ration myself, the other books I’d press on readers would be The Power of the Dog (clever western! fantastic prose! such pacing! such detours! see the movie too!), The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again (its mood! its mystery! its sense of place!) and Luster (the voice! the sheer bravura! the sheer lustrousness!). And Small Things Like These for an exquisite quickie, and Empire of Pain to fill you with fury and make you want to change the world.
There were a number of books I was looking forward to but their moment hasn’t come yet. The TBR piles teeter and totter.
And, as usual, hype (publisher/reviewer/social media) mars the experience of reading. Each to their own, etc., but! You *really* didn’t mind all those plot holes? You really fell for all that high-concept gush? I got the appeal of The Appeal – its format and its humorously observed characters were fun to start. But the closer you look, the less it makes sense. Surely those characters would be sending texts rather than emails, wouldn’t they? And don’t those insertions of additional evidence to the case seem a bit convenient? And those law students really hadn’t encountered this unusual legal case in the press: come on!? The foundation of the story’s drive starts to wobble, and isn’t this all getting a bit grating and silly now … But what do I know? It was book of the year here, a chain selection there, some notable blurbs. Are we really so easily pleased? Though I might not have cared so much if I’d not been led to expect something better. The hype: it was a problem.
And then Crawdads: insert horror emoji. It just didn’t add up for me – not least, one narrative prop is a poetry anthology that contains poems written maybe thirty years later than that book would have been published. A small detail – it’s not so much that it’s factually incorrect (I’m not that much of a purist), but it’s tonally off, and felt sloppy. At that point I started looking for flaws, and found many in the plot and the characterisation. I was no longer suspending disbelief that that child could have raised herself like that.
And then there was Kate Clanchy’s memoir, which in some ways is the book of the year in terms of how it generated, for me, so much thought about what constitutes good writing and good publishing. We can do better.
I sometimes feel bad about expressing criticisms of books. I mean, someone went to all that trouble, and authors can be sensitive souls (don’t tag them!). But I am a booklover, goddesssdammit, and making books better is part of my job. I task the writers I work with on ways to improve their manuscripts, but certain published books – and sometimes, it seems, whole genres – seem so mediocre that I wonder why I bother. Just rustle up a high concept that will satisfy the marketing department, then flesh out a synopsis (how I’ve come to dislike that word ‘twisty’), and hone a first page that will grab the attention of an agent or a judge. That sounds cynical, but so is publishing.
I really enjoyed Parul Seghal’s The Case Against The Trauma Plot in the New Yorker this week (27 December), not least as she seems to share my taste: Reservation Dogs was one of my favourite shows of the year. I like how this article identifies how trauma can provide too easy or tidy an explanation within stories:
The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority. The solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost. It disregards what we know and asks that we forget it, too—forget about the pleasures of not knowing, about the unscripted dimensions of suffering, about the odd angularities of personality.
Hanging on ‘twisty’ reveals that milked shocked responses to characters’ suffering, the trauma plot was what spoiled It’s A Sin for me on tv too (I’m clearly going against some grains of popular taste this year). Ooo, and trauma porn reminds me that the follow-up to A Little Life is out soon. I promise to read with an open mind, honest! But I retain the right to judge harshly.
Many of my favourite books this year did in some way or other go to the heart of suffering and injustice, but they did so without implausible contrivances and mawkish stitching. They worked their magic with humour, with affection, with complexity, with an awareness of mystery, with a sense of negative capability. They usually had well-crafted sentences and paragraphs, and a voice. A personality.
Though I carefully observe professional boundaries, I am giving a special mention to Jo McMillan’s The Happiness Factory, coming in January 2022. I read earlier drafts, and perhaps am biased, but it gives me great joy to see this very funny and bittersweet novel make its way to publication, and from the esteemed indie Bluemoose too. The premise is fantastic: an estranged daughter uses an inheritance to buy a sex-aid factory in China just as the country is opening up to the global economy. And the concept is matched with a real voice and plenty of heart.
I vowed to blog every month this year – and I did that, and even managed the first of the month most of the time. This one: the end of the month, an hour to go. Because. Sometimes these things become chores, and sometimes we need to move along a bit. I am going to blog this coming year only if/when I have something that requires the longer form.
Blogging, is it over?! Should I be doing a Substack? Newsletters are an exciting format, though I find I don’t actually have the time to read various of the ones I’ve subscribed to, and some are quite mansplainy. Austin Kleon’s is one I always find time for.
But what do I have to add? And everyone’s a teacher now, everyone has an offering. Masterclass does it so well. I loved the David Sedaris one recently, and we’re working through Shonda Rhimes currently – both are funny, both are practical.
One thing I’ve noticed during the pandemic is that there are lots of people with lots of things to say, but sometimes there’s a value in quiet. I’ve muted and unfollowed a lot of people this year. Maybe I’m just a bit jaded at the end of 2021. ‘Just sitting: what a relief in this busy world’ – something Natalie Goldberg said as she led us in meditation during a virtual retreat earlier this month.
The solace of sitting and sentences. Maybe that’s something to aim for in 2022. And tulips! And crocuses, and daffodils. More to plant this weekend while I continue listening to English Pastoral. Priorities.
You can also find me at my new Andrew Wille Writing Studio account on Instagram, which seems an easier place for engaged interactions. More there, and Happy New Year! I’ll leave you with this beautiful poem from Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave: Eagle Poem.
