Take a breath and jump

My two big goals for my time in Paris are to reach fluency in French and to hold an exhibition in Paris. I’m happy to say I’m achieving one of them at least. After nearly four years living here, I’m finally showing some of my paintings and sculptures, even if what I’m holding is an exposition instead of an exhibition. Those French mess around with perfectly good words all the time.

It’s easy to talk about wanting to have an exhibition; I’ve been doing that almost since we arrived. The trouble is finding the combination of space to display work and a way of reaching enough people to make the whole thing buzz. Just before we left Australia I had an exhibition in Melbourne which was very successful, but that was supported by legions of generous friends still in Australia, and Paris is a bit far to come.

I’m usually a charge in kind of guy but I got nowhere with the holding an expo ambition until a couple of people suggested I approach the wine store Apogé, which has a lounge area with picture hanging space. Apogé is in the office district of Paris, and is unique in Paris in allowing the tasting of almost all of the wines they sell, using a clever argon gas system to prevent wine spoilage. I found the cave just after it was opened four years ago by its two friendly proprietors Sylvain and Christophe, and have been a faithful customer ever since. Once I approached them about hosting a little expo of my work, they were immediately supportive, and I ran out of excuses for not having one.

The first issue was choosing which work to exhibit. There’s room for four of my sculptures, seven paintings and two drawings, and I could have an expo of four times that quantity. So I looked for uniformity of framing and subject matter of the paintings. The sculptures are easy – they’re all naked people. The next problem, though, is deciding whether to show recent work or older stuff. My work has moved over the four years, towards a looser style that allows the paint to talk more. That sounds really wanky, doesn’t it? Good, I’m becoming an artist at last.

Having chosen the work to display, my next mystery was what to charge for it. For my Australian expo I was advised by my good friend and teacher Geoff Dupree, and his advice was spot-on. But that’s Melbourne, not Paris. Happily, a few months ago I started going to a life drawing class run by Maud du Jeu, a lovely lady who has been a professional sculptor and life drawing artist for many years. She came around and looked at my work, and recommended prices for it I think exactly as Geoff would specify if I was exhibiting in Melbourne. It remains to be seen if I sell anything, but the prices feel right.

Selling some work and freeing up some wall space chez Gawler would be most welcome, but for me the big thing is getting people to help me feel like a real artist by liking and maybe buying my stuff. That’s the hard bit, exposing your private work to an indifferent world with completely unknown consequences. I don’t paint and sculpt to please others; it’s all about what pleases me, and that never-achieved goal is what I’m chasing every moment I’m holding a brush or dragging my fingers through the clay. But the strange hypocrisy is that like every artist, I want other people to tell me my work is good. Having someone buy your work for a fair price is sure sign you’ve succeeded.

When I left Australia I was told by several people who knew what they were talking about that professional artists often sold only one or two pieces at an exhibition. Pretty depressing when that’s your life’s passion and your hoped-for source of income. I was thrilled to sell a bit more than half the pieces I offered at my Melbourne exhibition, but as I said, it was well supported by my friends. What will happen here in Paris?

I set the work up at Apogé and was very pleased to see it assembled and in public, instead of dotted around our house. All good so far, but next is the getting people to attend bit. Like every expo, we’re having a vernissage (an opening event) on Tuesday 8th December at 5.30pm and it would be great if we could get forty or fifty people to come.

How to do this is a mystery to me, but luckily I have friends in Paris and a very talented daughter who put together a ripper little video of the expo which is now up on my website. She produced the website as well, and has also produced the poster, the flyer and a clever email invitation to which the recipients can rsvp. When the flyer is printed, I’ll distribute it to our local patisserie, local bistro, and everyone else I can think off. The email invite is already flying around Paris, and I’ve been told I need to look at my facebook page often to follow up reaction to it.

So, with lots of help and encouragement, one of the big ambitions is under way. Now if I can sell something in Paris, I’ll feel like a real artist! 

Almost finished

When people ask me, ‘What are you doing with yourself at the moment?’ I tell them I’m writing a novel. Some of those that don’t immediately assume I’m a pretentious twat might think ‘He’s certain to get published and will probably be famous.’ The reality is that the proportion of wannabe writers to published authors is so disparate that several decimal places are needed to accurately describe the tiny part of one percent of us who will eventually get published.

Now I’m almost done writing, the time for my ego to meet reality draws nigh. While you’re still writing, the day of reckoning is far away, but it looms large as the end approaches. Everything I’ve read and heard so far makes clear the difficulty of getting a literary agent to even look at your work. You can send submissions to publishers without going through a literary agent, and one might accept your book. Some oysters have pearls too. Same odds. But even literary agents, who live by taking a commission on authors’ earnings from the deals they negotiate, are besieged by unsolicited work. Having your submission read by anyone more senior than a work experience kid is a real challenge.

A positive attitude and confidence in the quality of your work is essential, but you can take that confidence too far. This is a letter written to British literary agent Simon Trewin:

Dear Mr Terwin (sic), I am currently one of the best writers working in the English language and, frankly, you are lucky to be seeing this picaresque novel which my tutor at Oxford has already described as ‘heart-stoppingly wonderful.’ Personally I don’t think I need an agent, but someone mentioned your name as being one of the less bad ones so I am giving you the opportunity to persuade me otherwise. If you would like to visit me in Oxford next Wednesday lunchtime, that would be convenient.

Everyone who’s been to school knows how to teach, everyone who can read harbours a secret knowledge that they can write well too. How often have we heard others confess with varying degrees of smug certainty that they think they’ve got a book or two in them? They might very well think that, but getting the damn thing out is the hard part.

It seems accepted wisdom that you have to spend ten thousand hours working at something before you can call yourself an expert. I want to be expert more quickly please. Maybe I’ve spent two thousand hours trying to write so far, I have learned a great deal, and I’m sure my novel now is much better than its first draft. But should I wait the other eight thousand hours before considering it done? Harper Lee spent forty-three years writing To Kill A Mockingbird, but I don’t have that many years left available.

Honest criticism by industry professionals is invaluable if you can get it, but often confronting. The first step in learning to benefit from criticism is to learn to accept it. The inclination to argue is powerful, but you have to learn to listen. The gap between what you want to convey and your actual words can be surprising. If your critics can’t see your message, the sad truth is that it isn’t there yet. Back to the keyboard, and try again. Criticism from people you’d invite to Christmas dinner is less useful. How often has a friend told a new mother that her baby is really ugly?

I read more critically now, and don’t bother to finish reading books not up to my new standards. Why this rubbish has been published is a mystery, but it is, despite my view. So what am I missing, and is my work better enough to get published too? Occasional first time authors say in acknowledgements ‘it was so easy!’ but Stephen King got his third novel published, not his first or second, and J.K. Rowling was rejected by numerous literary agents and publishers before the first Harry Potter book made it into print. Of course, I have every reason to think my talent is greater and I’ll do better. They may have sold millions and millions of books over decades, but they were probably just consistently lucky.

Should I kill the children?

There are writers who answer questions about what happens in their book by saying they don’t know, because it hasn’t happened yet, so they haven’t found out. Such authors would probably say that ingenuously, because they don’t know to avoid using adverbs. Maybe they’d bleat that answer, because you’d have to be as dumb as a sheep to write that way. You’d have the same chance of getting a good book out of that sort of continuous car crash as the thousand monkeys with typewriters scenario.

I’m sure there are other writers who have their entire book all set out on a detailed step sheet, and who adhere to their plan with the zeal of monks chanting morning prayers in a freezing cell. I have a composite approach that avoids all freezing and still keeps much more focus than floating about with the butterflies, wondering what might happen next. Start with an idea, develop it, talk to patient supporters, discard the bits that are boring and stupid, then do a step sheet to write to. Then realize the step sheet is a starting point, and off you go into the forest, but with the rudiments of a plan to provide some guidance.

For decades as a commercial lawyer, I wrote strictly to plans, but a story isn’t susceptible to that logic. Like a painting, it is animate and involved in its own development. As a little daughter tells her daddy trying to dress her no, I don’t want the red one, I want my daisies dress! the story wants to go its own way. Damn my lovely plan. In the book I’m writing, several of the principal characters have turned out to be completely different people from my original conception.

That’s quite exciting for an author, because if the story sits where it was first conceived, writing it might be pretty boring. But having characters telling you what they’re thinking and surprising you with what they intend is worrying. In the early stages of this evolutionary process, the new life appearing on your screen without invitation is thrilling and full of promise. Sadly, that doesn’t last. Like charming children reach adolescence and spend their time sulking in bear pits called bedrooms, your wonderful new characters turn into stubborn rebels who demand behavior that threatens what you thought were immutable fundamentals of plot and structure. Isn’t that a great word? How are you today? Immutable, thanks.

Of course I could always abandon any pretense at sticking with logic and rational behavior, as do many successful thriller and fantasy authors. In The Knife of Never Letting Go, we’re told the nearest river crossing is two days ride away, so it will be four days before the bad guys can attack our hero, who has just destroyed the bridge he crossed. Patrick Roth, though, manages to get the bad guys over the river by the next morning. Good work, Pat! If you like saying what the hell? that one’s a real page turner. The central plot idea is the bad guys decide to kill all the women. Why is never explained. Now there’s a plan that will set them up for generations to come. Oh, wait, no it won’t.

Unlike Pat’s legion of fans, I demand stories that stick to the rules of their world, human nature and common sense. There might be dragons and magic, but they have to behave according to the rules established. If the dragon suddenly can’t burn up the good guys like it’s been doing for hundreds of years, there better be a good explanation. So there’s the difficult and sometimes boring part of crafting a convincing, consistent story. Good start to it, characters coming along nicely, but how do I explain events and people so they all make sense? Currently I have a plot problem concerning the reactions of two teenage children to the disappearance of their father and their relationship with their mother. I could just write them out of the story, or I could have them both killed in a tragic accident. Authors have enormous power. George Martin has murdered numbers of the obvious heroes in his saga. I’m more humane, though, and am trying to find a way to save the children.

One author on the craft of writing sais characters come alive partly through contradiction and uncertainty. It might have been the same guy who said that writing is to live with doubt – to be ignorant and inelegant until the characters can get up and walk around. What I’ve found after more than a year of working on my current novel is they don’t just get up and walk around, they move in. I find myself adding Steven, Penny and Alistair to the list of people whose reactions to real life questions should be considered. They’ve shouldered their way in beside relatives and friends, and now I know what their views are on almost everything. Having redeveloped them time and again, and seeing their steady improvement, I’m starting to wonder if I can rewrite sections of some of our friends and relatives as well.

Please let me sleep

I’m convinced creativity has a tenuous relationship with my conscious mind. When I’m painting, I do best in the zone where if you asked me my name I’d have to stop and think for a minute. When I’m life drawing, my best work is quick, when I’m under such time pressure my conscious mind is not allowed to interfere. Writing works better too when I get into the story and just let myself go into a dream-like state.

Dreaming won’t get the cake baked, though. Logic and rules must have their turn. Often I can’t see what the painting needs next until I’ve done the bit before. In the same way, I write a scene, then have to solve the problem of how I move from it to the next plot development. But I can’t even see the problem until I’ve written that new scene. Happily, working these problems through often leads to more new ideas.

But new ideas and good lines often pop into my head at night. I come awake to hear Steven talking to the Prof, or Penny talking to her daughter. I just listen and they have the conversation I’d not been able to hear while I was sitting in front of the keyboard. Or, as my father-in-law used to say, out of a sudden, I know how some plot problem will be resolved.

Other times, a new story idea or piece of dialogue not apparently related to anything I’m working on appears from nowhere I can figure out. Maybe I had some of the material from which it is made sitting in my head, but like the cobbler’s elves made his leather into fine boots while he slept, so there’s a crew of creatives beavering away in a part of my brain locked off from conscious scrutiny, making stuff up. When I go to bed, I lock the doors and turn the lights and the television off. How come part of my brain stays switched on? Who’s in charge of these people?

The frustrating aspect of these creative gifts from the unknown recesses of my brain is answering the eternal question, should I get up and write this stuff down? It’s warm in bed, and I’m sleepy. I have to put on my robe, turn on the study light, put my glasses on and then write. Originally I tried thinking I’d just remember the idea and write it in the morning. Sadly, I’ve learned I might recollect in the morning that I had a great idea during the night, but that’s all. I’ve tried shorthand notes, but Steven dazzle trip isn’t much help the next morning either. No choice, really. Get up, wake up just enough to write sensible notes, but don’t wake right up or the dream fades away leaving me holding a pen and wondering what I’m doing at my desk in the middle of the night.

Learning to Write

After reading a multitude of books on how to write a novel, and more on how to write a mystery, I can give other aspiring authors a heads up that might save them some time and irritation. Here are a few of my learned rules:

1.    Never use numbers in your writing; separating ideas is all about paragraphs

2.    The poor industry professionals who may one day be forced to read your work might be impressed by variety in your use of adjectives, but are certain to be irritated by the same approach to punctuation. Consistently wrong is better than half right.

3.    Ignore all the instructions from authors who have sold millions of books, except one. It doesn’t matter which instruction, but pick one and then review your writing against it. If you try to bear in mind all the new wisdom sucked out of a how to write book, you will fail.

4.    Be patient with yourself. Yes, your writing does suck, and all the poor friends and relatives you coerce into reading it think so. It will only improve, though, if you keep working at it and you keep forcing them to read new drafts.

5.    Accept that your first draft is full of lazy linguistic crap, and that your twelfth draft will still harbour examples of all the learner writer’s sins. After about a thousand drafts of the book I’m working on, I searched the word ‘big’ and subsequently eliminated more than a hundred occurrences where it added exactly nothing to what I was describing. We use words like big, nice, and good often without thought, and usually because we couldn’t be stuffed thinking of a better word. Is a big handful more than a handful, and does it have a quality that makes it lesser than a good handful? Could you have a bad handful? No, please stop thinking that thought, this is a family blog.

6.    Make a point once, preferably by showing what your characters are doing. Don’t make the point again by telling your readers what those characters are thinking while they’re doing those things, and when you’ve made the point, stop making it See how irritating it is when some other fool does it? Delete everything except the first sentence of this rule and everyone will be happier.

7.    Pay attention to what Word is telling you about green underlined grammar novelties and red underlined spelling queries, but don’t always accept its corrections. The American dolts who bring Word to us allow us to set UK or American English as the language for our computers, but that makes no difference to the always American spelling recommended. Americans were frightened in infancy by the letter ‘u’ and many wear chains of u-shaped macarroni around their necks to ward off sudden attacks of correct English spelling. So your computer will always tell you that armour is not what a knight wears, he wears armor. Idiots.

8.    All adverbs are bad. Anything ending in the letters ‘ly’ is lazily thought out. Search your work for those letters followed by a space. Then go have a cup of tea and calm down. Yes, it will be a …large job, but your writing will be the better for it

9.    More adjectives are not necessarily better, unless you’re channeling Thomas Hardy, in which case off you go into the wind-stirred, fragrant, sun-drenched, daisy-strewn meadow with the rest of your lost Hippie friends. Think of Hemingway. He wrote a famous book that goes:

    An old man wanted to show his village he was still useful so he went out and caught a big fish. A shark ate it           and he went home.

Now that’s writing! And he even got away with using ‘big!’