Kathy Sharp's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

In my very first job, as a secretary and receptionist, I was told I had ‘no personality’. Obviously, that’s nonsense – everyone has a personality. What they meant was that I didn’t engage in continuous grinning chit-chat with everyone who walked in the door. I left the job, but that stinging summing-up stayed with me through the years. The phrase came back to me recently when I attended an online seminar on book promotion…

“If you want to sell books, put yourself out there!”
It’s a regular instruction to writers. And regularly ignored, too, by those of us who write precisely because we don’t naturally Put Ourselves Out There.
“You must create a persona for yourself, as a writer!”
Eh?
“You’re a writer, invent a character for yourself. You can do it!”
Oh, sure. I could do that. But anyone who knows me personally will know it’s rubbish. And what exactly happens when I make a personal appearance somewhere? I’m no actress – how could I hope to keep up this non-existent character I’m supposed to be?
“All right, pretend to be one of your own characters, then.”
You’re surely not suggesting I turn up in eighteenth century costume with a tricorne hat, are you? See above about not being an actress. I could get a hat like Terry Pratchett, I suppose. But it’s not me.
“What did I just say about creating a persona?”
Yeah. So you did. And yes, I know writers who do it beautifully – who have created an instantly recognisable style in the way they look online, the way they write blog posts. They’re not afraid to blurt their political beliefs, their thoughts on just about anything. They get taken to task for it, too, sometimes, but it all adds to the ‘persona’, I suppose. Larger than life, indeed. It seems to help sell their books. But me? Express a controversial opinion online? I’d sooner be boiled in oil. It’s not that I don’t have any opinions – it’s just that they’re private.
“You still need to put yourself out there, like it or not, if you want to sell your books.”
Sigh. Perhaps I can put myself ‘out there’ as someone who is essentially private, who may hold controversial opinions but doesn’t care to splatter them all over social media, who prefers to use her books to explore such matters. Mysterious, like. A sort of anti-persona. Would that do the trick, d’ye reckon?
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
Not really. Is there some way to make a virtue out of being backward in coming forward? Could shy be the new brash? Could quiet and reserved writers take over the best-seller lists – be the next big thing? Could – heaven forfend – books actually be allowed to speak for themselves? Don’t most readers just want good books, regardless of the writer’s ‘personality’? Oops – I think I very nearly said something controversial there…

My new short story collection, Mr Muggington’s Discovery and Other Stories is out now http://tinyurl.com/hec25gr. For further gentle humour: The Larus Trilogy – Isle of Larus myBook.to/MyAmazonLinks , Sea of Clouds myBook.to/MyAmazonBooks and All the Wild Weather (to be published later this year).

It always seems a romantic idea to be the kind of writer who sits in a café, writing materials spread across the table, watching the world go by, working through numerous cups of coffee as the masterpiece novel takes shape – you get the picture. Thus were the Harry Potter stories born to J K Rowling, so the story goes. There is much to be said for this approach, compared to, say, sitting alone at home writing.
Now, I am fortunate in having a perfectly nice little room at home to use as a study, and I’ve written three novels in it, too – but it’s very easy to be distracted from the writing process by household chores, the internet, the garden, the internet, phone calls, the internet, other people in the house, and, er, the internet. So having a place to visit where you can write, uninterrupted, in a stimulating setting, is a bonus, even if you only go occasionally. It’s even better, if, like me, you can combine the visit with a healthy walk in the fresh air. I say fresh air – but in my case this might be more of a driving gale, with or without horizontal rain, because my café is set right on the Chesil Beach. Still, I love it – light and airy atmosphere, great coffee and a very fine outlook down the length of the Fleet Lagoon. Busy, but not overcrowded – the perfect retreat for a writer, particularly one as fond of nature and landscape as I am. I take just a notebook and pen, and it’s perfect.
Do I really need a café to write in, though? No, not really. But it felt like an encouraging way to make some progress with my current book. And I do need to do that. Life sometimes delivers us a smart kick in the rear end – a reminder to stop making excuses and get on with the things we truly want to do. I received just such a reminder recently, and finding the café is my first step in responding to it. I’ll aim to get there two, maybe three times a week over the autumn and winter, and write a minimum of five hundred words per visit. 1500 words a week isn’t much, but it is progress.
Will it help me achieve J K Rowling-like success for this book? Probably not. But I’ll enjoy every visit to the ‘office’, and perhaps, at long last, I’ll feel like a proper writer.

The Larus Trilogy, inspired by the Jurassic Coast – Isle of Larus myBook.to/MyAmazonLinks, Sea of Clouds myBook.to/MyAmazonBooks and All the Wild Weather http://amzn.to/29QyIqJ

It comes as quite a shock to you, as a writer, when you have to get to know new characters. Having written a series of three books, with most of the characters unchanged, it’s taking a long time for me to define and balance a complete new set of people for my next book. The new story is family-based and the dynamics between the characters are different, especially between younger and older people. It takes time, I find, to work it out, and all of them go through a series of changes as they slowly come into focus. When I look back at sketches written during the early stages of ideas for the book, the characters seem undefined. But now, well, I’m getting to know them, and as time goes on they become both clearer and easier to write about. I’m still making changes, of course – but I think I know who they all are now. I’ve reached that stage, both comfortable and slightly creepy, where I feel my main characters and following me around, commenting on things, and leaning over my shoulder when I write.
It was quite a shock, then, the other day, when one of them actually tapped me on the shoulder. I was settled in at the café on the Chesil Beach, engrossed in my story and looking up occasionally to stare out of the window. There was a particularly high tide, and I half thought the water might be coming indoors if it got any higher. I was in that peculiar state between worlds – the real one with the water creeping up towards the building, and the imaginary one I was putting on paper, when my character Rosamund touched my shoulder.
It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you. It wasn’t Rosamund, of course, but a lady who had been sitting at another table in the busy café watching me write.
“You look like J K Rowling,” she said, “writing a novel in a café!”
I told her I was indeed working on a novel. Had I been a little more firmly attached to the real world at that moment I would have given her one of my cards and told her I had books available to read now, should she be interested. In future I’ll keep a couple of them pinned to the front of my notebook. Still, that comparison with the divine J K was clearly a sign that my plan to follow in her highly-successful footsteps is off to a good start. I like to think so, anyway.

Isle of Larus myBook.to/MyAmazonLinks, Sea of Clouds myBook.to/MyAmazonBooks and All the Wild Weather http://amzn.to/29QyIqJ

I deserted my beach café this week, having a highly-important appointment at the hair salon to attend. It didn’t reduce my productivity, however, as I dashed off a thousand-word contribution for my new book while I was there. It didn’t prevent me from writing on the beach, either, since the salon is located in an old stone cottage on Portland – built into the back of the Chesil at its eastern end. In this area, called Chiswell (not Chesil!), the houses nestle among fishermen’s stores, beached fishing boats and piles of lobster pots. It has an air of timelessness about it, even from the modern interior of the salon. Charles Dickens would have loved it here, and I do, too. I used to live close by, and in the early days would lie awake listening, as I thought, to the sounds of traffic swooping down the hill. It was a while before I realised it was the sounds of the waves washing onto the shingle of Chesil Cove I could hear. That was a key moment, indeed.
And I was working on a key scene for my book as I waited, draped in towels. Pretty good multi-tasking, don’t you think? Not a moment wasted. Soon I became engrossed, the chatter of the salon faded, and I was transported to a riverbank far away. I think for a little while I was truly there.
Let’s be clear – the chapters of a book are not always written in the same order you read them. Probably they are mostly written ‘out of order’. It’s helpful, sometimes, to settle a climactic scene fairly early in the writing process. It can clarify what needs to happen early in the story, so in a sense you begin at the end and fill in the vital precursors afterwards – with hindsight, you might say. It is, at least, nice to know where the tale is heading. It works for me, anyway; and as for writing in the hair salon, I enjoy the relaxing music and I’m provided with as much coffee as I can drink. One thousand words committed to paper and coiffed and manicured, too. Work and leisure happily combined. True multi-tasking, too, I think.

The Larus Trilogy: Isle of Larus myBook.to/MyAmazonLinks, Sea of Clouds myBook.to/MyAmazonBooks and All the Wild Weather http://amzn.to/29QyIqJ

Don't forget to pop over and catch up with my new blog series Writer on the Beach, where I not only tell you about the beautiful area where I live, but keep you up to date on progress with my new book, too. https://kathysharp2013.wordpress.com/...

“Water,” said my friend, Peter. “If it concerns water, you’ll write about it.”
The subject at the Off the Cuff writing group that day was ‘flooded fields’, and I had jumped straight in, so to speak. Peter’s quite right, of course; water, be it sea, river, stream or spring, features heavily in my books and in much of my shorter fiction, too. I could rhapsodise about a puddle.
This is probably because I was brought up by the sea and spent many happy hours messing about in boats on the river. And after many years high and dry inland, I found my way back to the sea; it’s my daily companion, soulmate and confidante. It’s no surprise to me that I feel so compelled to write about it. It’s also no surprise that one of the characters in my work-in-progress is a river. Although the setting is largely fictional, when I write about my river I have a real one in mind. I find it’s both the easiest and the hardest subject to write about: my standards become very high indeed when I write about water.
And so it’s particularly fitting that my regular walk to the café-on-the-beach takes me over a bridge. The Ferry Bridge spans the outlet of the Fleet Lagoon as it meets Portland Harbour. The water, flowing up or down with the tide is fast-moving, turbulent and capable of being all shades from pale aquamarine to dark steel blue. I love it, and pause half-way across the bridge to look down into its depths in all but the worst weather. Just watching the water for a few moments will help to order my thoughts and decide what to write next. It’s calming, therapeutic and inspirational; it knows just where it’s going. And when I walk on, so do I.

For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l

I thought it might be interesting, this week, to explain a little more about the method of creating characters by giving ‘voices’ to inanimate objects, particularly buildings. I first learned to do this in an exercise at my local writers’ group, Weymouth Writing Matters. You simply choose your object, and imagine what type of character it might have. I say ‘simply’ – but it does take a bit of effort.
Bear in mind that any object, just like a person, has both an appearance and a history, both in its current form and in terms of the materials it’s made from. This is particularly true of buildings, which also have a shared history with human beings – they are made by them and for them, so it’s no great surprise that they resemble them in some ways.
An imposing building, or one that has had a long life works best, of course. For instance, I developed my character Rissa the Ship Warden from the lighthouse at Portland Bill. Now this is nothing if not imposing – tall, flamboyantly dressed in red and white, and with a voice like a foghorn. Well, it is a foghorn. But the lighthouse also has a job to do in warning ships off a dangerous rocky coast and a tide-race. It is a competent and reliable worker with the good of the community at heart. You can see where I’m going with this, I hope. I assigned these qualities to Rissa (named after the kittiwakes that nest nearby, Rissa tridactyla). She is tall, striking, dressed in red, and loud. She is also a competent and reliable worker with the good of the community at heart… You get the picture. From this starting point it was easy to add more: people who give themselves wholeheartedly to their work are often temperamental when they’re off duty, so I gave Rissa a fearsome temper. She also becomes a mother and finds it difficult to give enough of herself to both work and family. Soon I had a full-blown person dealing with the ups and downs and trials of life. She was immensely enjoyable to write about.
I revisit this exercise regularly when I’m creating new characters. It’s a great way to concentrate the mind in collecting together the features of an invented person without being too random. The characteristics of a building have to hold together, or the building wouldn’t. The same goes for people, I’d say!

For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l

The magic cabbage and other adventures: Writer on the Beach https://kathysharp2013.wordpress.com/...

This week I wrote a significant phrase. Two words, one syllable apiece. ‘The End’. After many months of thinking, trying and testing out, I settled down to write my novel last September. On the last day of February, I finally wrote those two words.
Nobody will be more relieved to hear this than the other members of my writing groups here in Weymouth. ‘Long-suffering’ is an expression created especially for them, I think. For the past six months, instead of presenting them with a series of nicely-crafted short stories, as I’m supposed to, I’ve fobbed them off with what has come to be known as ‘a bit of book’. It’s a bad habit, and I shouldn’t do it. But it’s intensely soothing to share fragments of the story that’s trying to beat its way out of your head. It also helps to establish that I’m not writing complete gibberish – it provides a firm foundation through the common sense of others. So I’m afraid I’m more than likely to re-offend.
Still, I can now give them a bit of a break while I edit Whales and Strange Stars, and perhaps even a properly-written story or two – at least until the compulsion to write another novel overcomes the resistance to putting myself through any such thing. Before that I have plenty of reading and research to do. So chin up, folks, and relax. You won’t be hearing the dread phrase ‘a bit of book’ again from me any time soon. Er, probably.


The Larus series are now all available in paperback. For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l

Here I am, this week, in the strange no-man’s-land between the completion of one book, and giving serious attention to its sequel. The completed book is still being edited, of course, and the story is still very much on my mind.
This particular book has been written in ‘real-time’: the story begins in September, which is when I began writing; it finishes in February, and so did I.
The seasons have changed as I was working, and I let those seasonal changes creep into the story. It’s a very natural and organic way to write. I used the things I saw on my twice-weekly visits to the Café on the beach, too. The turnstones picking their way among the shingle named a boat in the story – the Turnstone of Sheppey; the stone fish carved into the wall of the Chesil Beach Centre named an inn – the Fish in the Wall; the very skylarks singing over the Causeway as I passed found their way into the tale. When the real skylarks sang above my head, they sang in the story, too. Natural and organic, as I said.
The real-time writing has been an adventure in itself in many ways, and made me feel a special sympathy for the characters when they suffered in the cold easterly winds. They and I have weathered the winter together, and all lived to tell the tale.
The result is Whales and Strange Stars, a very special book for me, and I’m very proud of it.

The Larus series are now all available in paperback. For full details of all my books, see my Amazon page: tinyurl.com/mygx77l