Author Archives: Andrew

Books of 2020

by Andrew | 3 Comments

My stand-out read of 2020 was a brilliant work of nonfiction. If you have not read it, you have to:

  • Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is graceful, attentive, urgent, and supremely intelligent in her exploration of our relationships with the world of plants. The best sort of nature writing, and with messages we can’t ignore: about interdependence, consumption, reciprocity. I highly recommend the audiobook – the author is wise and good-humoured company, and her prose has a gorgeous tone. Also look out for podcasts with Robin Wall Kimmerer, such as this one from Emergence Magazine with Robert Macfarlane.

My other essential reads of 2020:

  • The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes fired me up! A book about land, and who owns it, and who gets to share in its riches. Another essential read, particularly as Brexit brings into question any number of power relationships for the English. Resist, my friends, resist!
  • Letters from Tove, by Tove Jansson. My hero! Edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson, and seamlessly translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. It consumed me, I consumed it, and I shall be rereading. (There’s no audiobook yet … that would be perfect.)
  • Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart. My novel of the year. I KNEW it would win the Booker Prize! There is outright literary justice.
  • Surrender, by Joanna Pocock. Again, nonfiction exploring our relationship with the land, though here we are in the American West. I loved her curious mind.
  • The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. I first read when I was thirteen, and it made a powerful impression on my emerging political consciousness. It came as a timely reread at the start of a year in which economic inequality and ecological degradation would be even more sharply obvious. CAN WE EVER LEARN?
  • The Beautiful Room Is Empty, by Edmund White. Why hadn’t I read this before? Because it was waiting for the hot summer of 2020, I guess.
  • Stasiland, by Anna Funder. Because East Germany. Very excited that we are getting Deutschland 89 in February.
  • Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up In America, by Natalie Goldberg. I took her online Writing Down the Bones course again this year. What a treat, what a grounding dose of sanity, what an honour to share the freshly composed writes of complete strangers. Natalie’s memoir is exceptional in showing how the practice of writing can wake us up to the unexceptional magic around us. I also read The Great Spring and The True Secret of Writing. More Natalie to come in 2021.
  • The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Because I love craft books, I love St Ursula, and I LOVE the essential idea here and how it challenges conflict-driven theories of the world.
  • The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo. This novella is a real feat of imagination.
  • My Cat Yugoslavia, by Pajtim Statovci, in a translation from the Finnish by David Hackston that really captures a gorgeous tone in the telling. Because I love love LOVE it when works of literary fiction introduce the magical in not so everyday ways too. I’m reading his Crossings at the moment, and LOVING it.

Other notable reads:

  • Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk. A different sort of book from Drive Your Plow, and perhaps not so obvious, and less accessible. But many of the best things require a little work, and this is one of them. I love her – love her intelligence and her spirit. St Olga joins my shrine.
  • Ash Before Oak, by Jeremy Cooper. I’ve yet to finish this – I’ve been reading a few entries of this long novel in diary form at bedtime. On the surface it’s about the aftermath of the renovation of an old house in the country, and has some exquisite nature writing. Below, there is another sort of renovation taking place.
  • How to Wash a Heart, by Bhanu Kapil. Yes, she is a friend! And that is why I am so thrilled this fierce long poem has been such a success.
  • A Bite of the Apple, by Lennie Goodings. Another friend! I’ve recommended it to many writers already for its generous insights into publishing and the book business.
  • Germany: Memories of a Nation, by Neil MacGregor. Lessons in a nation coming to terms with its history.
  • A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit.
  • Music and Silence, by Rose Tremain.
  • The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins – whose audio narration of her own book is superb.
  • The Natural Way of Things, by Charlotte Wood.
  • Fierce Attachments, by Vivian Gornick.
  • Supporting Cast, by Kit de Waal.
  • Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
  • Dune, by Frank Herbert. Another reread, and another incomplete – I was rushing before the new movie, which I am MOST EXCITED ABOUT. And now we have to wait. Disappointment 🙁 I paused at a suitable pause halfway, and I shall resume. Another of those classics that’s so timely.
  • Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann. Yet another reread, and yet another incomplete, but I am COMPELLED to list it here as Jackie and Neely and Anne and Lyon have been the BEST company as narrated by Laverne Cox while I’m planting tulip bulbs for next year (some daffs still to go). Also, this was the last book I published in-house. Just sayin’.
  • Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. BECAUSE FINALLY! Ably helped by the Ahoy Me Hearties narration of William Hootkins.
  • Cook, Eat, Repeat, by Nigella Lawson, not least because she is devoted to pleasure. I’ve never cooked so much from one book or tv series so quickly. That gingerbread! That red cabbage! THAT RICE PUDDING CAKE!

I did other things in 2020. In addition to Natalie Goldberg’s class from Shambhala, I took another excellent online course – a training in Mindful Compassion – and I’ve just started a fascinating series of online classes on Buddhist history, philosophy, and practice; both come from my beloved alma mater Naropa University.

I watched lots of enjoyable tv. Highlights: Watchmen, Eastsiders, The Mandalorian, Unorthodox, Drag Race Canada, Mrs America, Disclosure, and Bridgerton. Schitts Creek was a particular treat; we watched four specially selected episodes on Christmas Day.

I cooked a lot, and baked, and gardened, and rediscovered Paper Mate pens. Way back in February I led workshops – in person! In London! In Cambridge! Closer to home, I tended to my friendships with tulips. I Zoomed, and FaceTimed with my mom as we walked the dog. We stayed close to home. I wore a mask, and so should you.

And I read a lot. Those above were the good books! The ones I enjoyed most. I do note that many of the books that left the strongest impression on me this year were works of nonfiction. Just as the first lockdown began, I started to read a novel I’d been waiting for, but somehow the mating habits of Manhattanites felt trivial. A lot of fiction felt trivial this year!

I know we can separate writing from writer, but I also fell a little out of love with a once favourite children’s book series for its author’s muddled yet insistent failings of imagination and empathy. It’s disappointing. The world changes, and so can we. This episode left me questioning the healthiness of feeding kids simplistic tales of good vs evil.

I craved nonfiction this year: the complexity, the rawness, the lack of sheen and artifice. The luminous truth of Tove Jansson as it shone through the voice in her letters. I did read some very good fiction, but even then Shuggie Bain and The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Grapes of Wrath are rooted in autobiographical and documentary realities. A lot (A LOT) of other novels that I am not mentioning here felt overwritten, half-finished, and overhyped by their publishers or oversqueed on social media.

Of course, even nonfiction has blurrings, and so much of the reality we are fed is made up. The culture secretary wanted Netflix to issue a health warning that one of its tv shows is fiction, but as The Economist noted: ‘Does it matter if The Crown fictionalises reality? It is more truthful than the story the royals sold.’

And how about the lies and delusions sold to us by politicians who’d be in prison for fraud if they were in business? I type this as the UK finally tonight leaves the EU. I feel this is heart-breaking, not least as it was achieved so duplicitously; it feels as if people who don’t read are burning down the library. Part of me feels we’ll be back, but another part of me feels that the English with their entitlement don’t deserve it (and I say that as someone who’s 100% English). So instead, let’s hold them to their promise of a Global Britain.

Some of the most engaging writing I have read this year came in unfinished manuscripts, and I sincerely hope that this work makes progress to finding a publisher. A lot of the writing really does show a lot of promise. Though, too, I always say that publishing is not the most important thing about writing. There is a special spark that comes in reading works-in-progress and talking about writing with writers.

During the dark moments of this year it’s been important to shine a light when we can. Something else I often say, quoting a line from the musical Rent: the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.

Thank goodness for dogs and dog walks and gardens and plants and cooking and books – and a big thank you to all the doctors and nurses and teachers and drivers and other essential workers who’ve kept the world running this year.

Create! Resist! Create! Wear a mask! And shine a light when you can.

Clear Thinking

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To round out this short series of posts about the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s look at the fourth and final element: Air.

Air is associated with the mind: thinking, mental states, logic. At its best, it’s associated with clarity: strong ideas clearly expressed in conjunction with the other elements, e.g., conjuring up the senses (earth) in ways that prompt action (fire) and evoke feeling (water). In tarot, the element of Air is represented by the suit of Swords, and it’s useful to think of the image of a sharp blade ready to slice through the air with precision and power – imagine, in the photo above, a giant sword cutting through the clouds towards clear blue sky.

In other contexts, though, an ineffective presence of Air lies at the heart of some of the most frequently encountered weaknesses in undeveloped manuscripts: cluttered writing that’s trying too hard, or stodgy prose that’s hard to follow or care about.

Air can also mess with our process, allowing our monkey minds to, say, worry neurotically about finding an agent while we are still only on page ten of a first draft.

With the craft of writing, I particularly associate Air with ORGANISATION and STRUCTURE and FOCUS. With the bigger picture of a piece of writing, this could mean a well-plotted storyline, or the architecture of a book: how events and revelations are paced and presented through time to create suspense or simply keep the reader reading on.

At a more detailed level, Air can be found in the structure of sentences and paragraphs: effectively rendered SYNTAX that achieves a certain speed or mood, and is clearly understood. Mindful choices of words and verb forms and punctuation will make all the difference to a text.

And Air isn’t just found on the open surface of writing. I also think about the THEMES and IDEAS that work with the intellect, as well as FIGURES OF SPEECH that operate on subconscious levels: symbols, metaphors, similes. Bits of cleverness that engage active minds – though not, it’s hoped, in the process overegging things.

As with the exploration of the other elements, it is going to make sense if Air is balanced with Fire, Water, and Earth – grounded with earthly details, for example, to prevent the writing getting aethereal in a dry and inaccessible way.

As a writing experiment: looking back at previous writing exercises that tasked you on writing letters between characters (Compassionately Yours and Earthly Exchanges), plan a series of letters or exchanges that maps out a larger story. The letter is a form that instantly creates connections and draws us into some sort of agreement – or disagreement. Letters offer gifts, extend invitations, send refusals, or deliver news good or bad.

For example, consider how specific letters can be placed within a story as:

  • triggers or inciting incidents
  • causes or effects in a chain of consequences
  • moments of rising tension, or reversals: do we teeter from moments of hope to moments of despair before hope rises again? Or does fortune rise and rise before a deep dive – or fall and fall before an improvement in circumstances? See Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories
  • obligatory scenes
  • a midpoint or point of no return, after which there is no going back
  • a climax
  • a resolution

To help with this, you might want to think about various theories of on plotting. Which are exhaustive – and can be exhausting! This is one of those points where overthinking can be a problem, and the clarity of Air can be achieved by committing to a simple known form. A few ideas about structure to help:

  • Map out your letters according to how they might fall with an established story structure. I often recommend Michael Hauge’s Five Key Turning Points and Six Stages of a screenplay (which can be adapted for prose too).
  • Or consider the twelve steps of Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey.
  • Or perhaps place a letter in every gap for a version of the Pixar Story Spine: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. And ever since that day ___.

Further posts on plotting: Plotting; Only Connect.

Make yourself a plan. List all of the letters or alternative forms of exchange. Note who they are sent between, and what is exchanged, and what might change in the world of those characters as a result: how do they end up feeling (water) each time? Also note how these letters might be grounded in the world of the senses (earth) with, e.g., settings or objects of desire.

Don’t worry too much (yet!) about gaps, or places where the story feels thin. You can flesh things out in the writing, feeling your way through characters’ intentions and yearnings. What goes on in these letters can’t always be planned, and sometimes you do have to keep on writing to see what emerges instinctively from your characters and settings as you spend time with them.

Eventually it’s likely you will have to put your thinking gear back on to decide how to arrange your material, deciding where to cut or expand – that’s drafting. But too sometimes a good exercise in thinking about our stories lies in actively not overthinking them during the early stages of writing: a balanced sense of Air.

You can take your plan further by committing to a calendar for writing these letters: one a week, or if you have time one a day across the course of a week or so. See where you end up. This might be the whole or part of an epistolary work, or these letters might serve as anchors in the scheme of a larger story to be fleshed out with other scenes. Or they might simply serve as an outline of sorts for a longer work.

Also take a look at the overall energy (fire) charted between the letters: can you identify a clear, focused line (air) that summarises the story they tell in a sentence or two?

Additional elemental activity: set a timer for five minutes and meditate at your desk or wherever you write before you embark on this activity. Keep it simple: each time a thought arises, note it as a thought and then let it pass, and then return your attention to your breath – connect with the air you take in, and the air you send out into the world.

And a date for your diary in the new year: on Monday 11 January at 6pm I am the guest at the next Words Away Zalon, where I shall be talking to Kellie Jackson about the Airy topic of mindfulness in writing and publishing: Words In Action.

Earthly Exchanges

by Andrew | 1 Comment

Continuing our closer look at my Four Elements practice in writing, let’s think about Earth.

Earth is about the embodiment of the material world in writing: how we bring to life sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures or touch – the slant of sunlight in November, the song of a robin, the anticipation of eating those fat beans stewing with bayleaf and onions in the pressure cooker back home. The smell of onions that will linger in every corner of the house for a few days!* The crispy – and soggy – leaves that your boots sink into.

Material objects often lie at the heart of a story too: a magic ring, or an inherited house, or a painting in the attic, or a gun over the mantelpiece. Objects can create a focus that serves up purpose and tension, and they can ground the writing in a concrete and specific reality.

These are earthly considerations in the FORM of our writing at a MICRO level: which tangible images and sense perceptions do we select for the characters and settings and objects that populate our stories, and which words do we choose to describe them and make them feel real?

The FORM that writing takes is also a consideration at a MACRO level. I recently blogged about Ursula Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory – what is the larger shape that contains the writing? And at a more detailed level, how might, for example, your book be organised into the narrative units of chapters? Or think about other forms, conceptual or more tangible: the Russian doll format of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, or the separate strands of a braided narrative, or the exchange of letters that makes up an epistolary novel.

Earth is also associated with ACTION: some physical gesture or action set in motion when we add the energy and purpose of Fire. Think about the acts of sex and violence that feature in so many stories, or more subtly the earthly gestures of a kiss or the signing of a contract.

As a writing experiment: bring some of these aspects of Earth together by writing a letter in response to the compassionate letter from the Water exercise Yours Compassionately.

Make this letter contain a material action as well as a material object that somehow serves as a focus to ground the writing: a thank you for a tangible gift, notification of an inheritance, the finding of a body, a ladder someone’s walked under or fallen off, a wrong envelope.

Importantly, think about the exchange created between these letters: what is sent and what is received? What is given, and what is taken?

 

*Update from tomorrow: the smell of onions lingering on the seal of the pressure cooker, and the tang of vinegar and the drying effect of bicarbonate of soda you’re using to try to remove said smell …

Yours Compassionately

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Looking at further examples from the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s consider Water, which is associated with emotion.

There are plenty of ways to think about evoking feeling in writing: shifts in tone can work, for example, through pacing, word choice, sentence length, and plenty of other techniques. Perspective and point of view can also make a difference in establishing an intimacy or detachment or a particular angle on events. These are tweaks or more radical changes we can experiment with during revising and self-editing: which way of telling the story creates a stronger emotional bond with the reader?

But too I am always looking for the intuitive approaches – the things that work their magic naturally, that unspool feeling without effort. When I taught the Water Ways workshop with Words Away back in February, we looked specifically at letter-writing as an instinctive act of embodying feeling in writing.

Firstly, we read some of the real-life letters of Tove Jansson. Depending on who she is addressing – family, lovers, old friends – her tone can be gossipy, passionate, newsy, sincere. The writing is also very efficient – often lyrical in its description of life in her island summerhouse, often brisk, more than a bit scary in describing air raids during the war, grateful in saying thank you for gifts sent from a friend in America, no-nonsense but revealing in relating business matters about her beloved creations the Moomins. Letter-writing doesn’t usually give you time for fussing about language; you have a message and you have to get it across. There is a direct quality of exchange and communication.

We also read selections from Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a beautiful novel that takes the form of a letter to his mother – you can listen to the author read an extract at that link from his publisher. Again: a remarkable intimacy works through this direct quality of addressing someone – in this case a mother who has shared those experiences of being a first-generation migrant.  Also, in this instance, the writing has a real charge from knowing that the mother in the novel can’t read. There have been struggles, there have been difficulties in their relationship – but there is also great love.

As a writing experiment: write a letter from one character to another with a particular purpose. In this instance, give it focus by making it a letter that is compassionate in its intent.

I’m currently taking an online class in Mindful Compassion with my alma mater Naropa University. (More info on a self-paced version here.) It’s fascinating! Not least as I’ve only dipped my toe into the disciplines of religious studies and psychology before. The science underlying various studies on mindfulness training is compelling.

I’ve been particularly interested in various thoughtfully curated readings on altruism and lovingkindness, especially as they tease out the distinctions between empathy (sharing feeling for others) and compassion (extending feeling towards others in ways that alleviate suffering).

It’s also made me question the idea of self-esteem, which can place a premium on pumped-up or unrealistic senses of the self and others. ‘Esteem’ – respect and admiration. Are we doing good things to be respected and admired, or are we doing good things for the sake – and the need – of doing good things?

Lots to think about – and too lots for writers to consider in how they contain feeling in the words they choose.

So, put this into practice: write a letter between two characters in which one of them is doing good things by reaching out to alleviate someone else’s suffering. Consider the nature of that character’s suffering, and then consider its cause and what another character can do to make that suffering more tolerable – and then let that character reach out.

Additional elemental activity: Before you write your character’s letter, try thinking – or feeling – your way into both characters as you take a shower or have a bath. (Note: there might be a difference between the experience of running water in a shower, and the relatively still water of a bath.)

Alternative Water-based writing experiment: I Remember, because so much about memories taps into emotion.

Writing Utopia

by Andrew | Leave a comment

Continuing to explore the Four Elements practice in writing, I want to think about Fire in a particular way.

Among other things, I relate Fire to intention in writing – what purpose fires you up and inspires you in a positive way and helps create a focus in your work? Sometimes writing is about tearing things down, but sometimes writing is about creating things fresh and new in ways that represent your ideal vision of the world. And this is where we can add a little Earth to create a particular setting and populate it with preferred characters for whom we makes stories with desired outcomes: utopias.

The dystopian novel is a well-established trend right now, and it’s not even funny to joke that we are living through dystopian times. So that is a good enough reason to make space for something a little less gloomy in our writing, perhaps?

I think, for example, about queer utopias. When I first came out, one of my favourite novels was Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, whose rainbow vision I ended up living when I moved to a Big Gay Flatshare in central London. I’ve kept on seeking out these idealised literary spaces in both books and the real world. Just last year I very much enjoyed the fluid forms of the novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, whose author, Andrea Lawlor, led me to the classic The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell.

It’s easy for me to make a leap from that book to Salmon Creek Farm, a queer commune in northern California that I stumbled across on Instagram. And then I am led back to Naropa University, where I studied and taught, which was most definitely born of a utopian impulse to bring mindfulness and contemplative education to the West.

And let’s not forget too that utopias also have their dystopian moments; in an odd quirk of serendipity, I received Lit Hub Daily as I typed the previous sentence, and that email led with a story about a shocking little incident in Naropa’s history when poet WS Merwin and his girlfriend were forced to strip naked at a party. Which reminded me of a Naropa Summer Writing Program panel devoted to utopias, where it was proposed that everyone has their own personal utopia, and one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

And maybe that is something to work out in the writing – teasing out tensions and conflicts is the stuff of good drama.

I also think the idea of community is important to utopias, and at this moment, when meeting up in person is less than straightforward, I think about gatherings such as Words Away – Kellie Jackson’s monthly salons and zalons devoted to books and the craft of writing.

The great thing about utopias is that they stimulate the imagination – not just for adventures in writing and reading, but for good ways to be together in the world.

 

As a writing experiment: Create a utopia.

First: draw a map of it.

Then: create a constitution or a manifesto for its guiding principles and inspirations.

Next: write a scene where a newcomer experiences the promise of this utopian space for the first time.

Then: write a subsequent scene where the complications or compromises of utopias are revealed …

Throughout, make space for your wildest desires and intentions – your preferred ways of being in the world.