Laurie Graham's Blog, page 34

A Writer’s Worst Fear

[image error]

Well, it’s happened. You write the  novel, you edit it, it goes to press and then before you can get it onto the bookstands one of your characters escapes. Or in my case, two characters.

A Humble Companion is due out on June 7th, an everyday story of 18th century London, Royals and mere humans. You may imagine my horror when I discovered that my protagonist and narrator, Nellie Buzzard, has slipped her chains and begun Tweeting @nelliebuzzard. And as if that isn’t headache enough she’s taken with her her coachman, Dick Morphew, a blowhard if ever I met one, and has set him up Tweeting @dickmorphew.

On my lawyer’s advice I’ve publicly distanced myself from their pronouncements. So far they appear to be confined to the year 1820 but with today’s technology who can predict what they might manage next?  The characters I created were harmless, certainly as long as they remained between the covers of the book. Now it’s a different story and I’m unable to vouch for them. Some of my readers have already been approached. I can only say, you Follow them at your own risk.

It’s… Punctuation Time!

[image error]

 

I realise this is a lost cause. We’re 7: nil down and into injury time but I feel I can’t give up until the ref blows the final whistle. Which in my case will be when a doctor signs my death certificate. I’m talking about apostrophes, not for the first time and probably not for the last.

I’m always on the lookout for punctuation abuse and I saw an interesting example the other day in this most literate of cities, Dublin. The shop was one of those places where you can rent a tuxedo or an evening gown, something to wear to what the English would call A Posh Do. The owner had had an elegant sign painted but landed herself with a punctuation puzzle.  What is the plural of the noun Do? Is it Dos? Is it Does? Neither looks right. So the sign read Posh Do’s, which I think is the greater of three evils. It would have been better to call the business Grand Occasions and steer well clear of the punctuation police.

Years ago Mr F recruited his own militia to deal with apostrophe abuse. Each volunteer was issued with a laminated ID card and a supply of vinyl peel-off stick-on apostrophes in various sizes. The kit even included white ones, for the obliteration of intrusive apostrophes. Ah, those were the days.

One of Mr F’s most enduring personal punctuating achievements can still be seen in the ancient university city of Cambridge. On the corner of Sussex and Hobson Streets is Tatties cafe where, one wet Sunday evening in 1997, we noticed its sign for Children’s Menu lacked an apostrophe. It was late, the cafe was closed and the sign was stuck to the inside of the window so my husband, never a man to let the grass grow, stuck the needed apostrophe onto the outside of the glass. And it’s there still, fifteen years on. Recently we happened to be in Cambridge and went to check up on it.

It was such an exciting moment I urged Mr F to go inside and introduce himself. The Polish waitress was hugely impressed. ‘Zadziwiadacy!’ she cried. Because Poles don’t use apostrophes at all. Heavens, they hardly even use vowels.  I suppose what she was actually thinking was, ‘Is crazy old person.’

There is going to come a time, and it will be quite soon, when the apostrophe is regarded as archaic as those funny old Ss that looked like Fs. It’s already official in certain parts of the UK where local councils have told their signage departments not to bother. Scholards (sic) Lane in Ramsbury, Wiltshire was an example of this until my husband whipped out his handy travel pack of apostrophes and corrected it.  

Does it matter? Well, in the league tables of battles worth fighting it’s obviously not up there with malaria and Islamification of the West, but I do think the apostrophe’s disappearance signals something about the impoverishment of language. Punctuation is the great clarifier. You’re nuts or your nuts? I rather think we need to know.

The March of the CyberGrans

[image error] Well, it finally happened.   Facebook. I knew I had to do it. I’d already managed Twitter, and as for Pinterest, I was addicted after five minutes. But Facebook is something else. I guessed it would be like being dropped from a remote Pacific island into Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and I was right.

After a couple of hours I had to call for oxygen and the assistance of someone at least thirty years my junior. So. I am there. Just not yet doing anything much.  

Word soon spread.

‘Laurie Graham’s on Facebook.’

‘Naah. Must be someone else.’

I began to receive messages. Notably from someone who actually did think I was someone else, then from a dearly beloved priest (who’d have thought it!) and towards the end of Day 1 wry comments from two of my children and from one of my loyal readers.

‘How modern are we old birds,’ wrote Loyal Reader. ‘Tweeting and FB-ing.’

‘We’ll have to be careful what we post in future,’ wrote my children.

Indeed. But of course it cuts both ways. I’m only thankful my mother didn’t live to see the day or read the blog. Though if she’s anything like she was in life she still has her beady eye on every move I make.

I suppose if you’re going to live in Salinger-style reclusion it’s a career decision you have to make right from the get-go. And not having done so I must therefore submit to self-promotion 21st century style. However if, due to some bureaucratic snafu, I’m ever reincarnated as a writer I shall live down a burrow and fire BB pellets at anyone who tries to interview me.  Okay?

Now, Where Was I?

[image error]

Five days away from my desk may not sound like a long time but I find it can take me another full day to get with the program. Do the laundry? No problem. Buy milk? Obviously. Remember where I was in the writing process? Erm….

So my first job is to re-read what I’ve written so far. All of it. Because for one thing I’ve changed the name of a certain character twice and I’m about to change it again. Character names torment me if they’re not quite right. You know how if you’ve got a bit of fluff on your eyelashes and you can sort of see it out of the corner of your eye and you try to get rid of it but there’s still a bit of it there? That’s how I am with names. And that’s why, on the back of my boarding pass for yesterday’s flight the following is written: PRUDENCE!!!!! MARY TOO POPISH.

Sometimes the notes I find in my bag are a mystery. Whatever it was that seemed such a brilliant thought I had to scribble it urgently on a supermarket receipt is now merely a mysterious cypher. GN PP Rev? We may never know.

Keeping track also gets harder as the backlist lengthens. Once, when I couldn’t sleep, I tried listing the names of each of the protagonists of my (so far) twelve novels and struggled somewhat. Then I really couldn’t sleep. I mean, what kind of author doesn’t keep her finger on the pulse of all of her characters? I could only calm myself by thinking that some of them, by the simple passing of time, no longer had a pulse and some of them should perhaps have been strangled at birth anyway.

Tuesday now lies before me like untrodden snow but my path is fairly clear. 

1. Get back into the driving seat.

2. See whether Prudence works better than Mary.

3. Drink tea. Strong, black, no sugar.

Diversion Ahead

[image error] Research is something I aim to have done before I ever start work on a book. After all, how can the flesh hang convincingly if the skeleton isn't firmly in place? I suppose it's just a reflection of my grasshopper mind that I never manage to stick to this plan.

I start the working day needing to verify something and before I know it it's lunchtime and I've wandered a long, long way from my intended path. Frinstance… this morning there were just two things I wanted to look up. The first was bricks. You want to know about bricks? Pull up a chair, cancel that trip to the landfill, join the British Brick Society. I mean, who knew?

London Yellows, Cambridge  Buffs, Hastings Reds, Wensums, Kimptons, Black Stocks. I'd be gazing at pictures of them yet, but I also needed to check on typhoid. And if you think bricks are a big subject, just wait till you look into infectious diseases. My mid-morning cup of tea arrived and I'd meandered as far as Windsor Castle where Prince Albert was about to expire, rather appropriately in the Blue Room. That room has a history of people expiring in it. Note to Royals: if you're at Windsor and feeling a bit under the weather DON'T GO INTO THE BLUE ROOM.

Well anyway, everyone knows Prince Albert died of typhoid, right? Or did he? There is apparently a growing body of opinion that he suffered for years from Crohn's disease and died after a severe attack brought on by the stress of having a wastrel son. Prince Bertie, 20 years old, was up at Cambridge studying Female Anatomy and the inside of brandy snifters and Papa Albert went there to remonstrate with him. You can imagine how that played.

'The sacrifices your mother and I have made.'

'Leave it off, Pops. It doesn't exactly matter if I don't get a chuffing degree. I'm going to be King.'

Poor Pops went home with a belly ache and a day or two later it was Blue Room Curtains. So perhaps not typhoid after all, which was fascinating but nothing to do with what I needed and somehow led me to carbolic soap.

Anyone over the age of fifty can probably remember that pungent, hard, red soap used in schools and hospitals. Its powerful ingredient was phenol and if you really want a sniff down memory lane you can still obtain it from the Carbolic Soap Company, also purveyors of Pond's Cold Cream and, (and this is truly bizarre) two styles of washboard, one suitable for musicians and one for historic laundry re-enactors.

So that was my morning.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and, sorry I could not travel both and be one traveller, long I stood… 

Awaiting the Verdict

[image error]

My husband is currently reading my new book. In the past he would have read it at manuscript stage but lately he's not been well enough to shuffle four hundred loose sheets of paper. I waited until I had a bound proof to offer him.

This is always a tense time for me. Naturally I want him to like it, just as I hope he'll like my haircut or the dinner I put before him but when all's said and done, it is what it is. A failed recipe can be scraped into the bin but a year's writing cannot. One thing I have learned though – not to judge anything by his behaviour as he reads.

I used to listen, desperate to hear a chuckle. There'd be nothing but silence punctuated by the turning of a page. Then he'd finish, come and find me where I was hiding, whimpering in a broom cupboard, and say, 'You're a very funny woman.'

So lack of chuckles doesn't signify and neither does sighing or throwing the finished book onto the floor. If I threw a book it would be the most fatal condemnation of its merit, but with Mr F is simply means, 'That was a good read. And now I'm ready for a cup of tea.'

He's about two thirds through A Humble Companion but today will be too busy for any reading. I figured the verdict wasn't likely to be returned before Monday morning. But he just walked into the kitchen, his voice thick with emotion, and said, 'It's very touching, and the humour's much gentler than usual.'

Than which I could ask for no higher praise. Reader? I married him.

Dickens Made Easy

[image error]   Here's that Daniel Maclise portrait of young Dickens I mentioned yesterday. He didn't improve with age, but which of us does? 

Choosing a new Dickens to read proved to be fairly easy this morning. The bookshop had a long position on Nicholas Nickleby but no Barnaby Rudge or Dombey and Son. They did have Our Mutual Friend, which even in paperback edition turned out to be a potential toe-breaker.

Then my eye was caught by a lovely little Collector's Library edition of Hard Times. When it first came out Macaulay apparently savaged it for its 'sullen socialism' and it became popular with left-leaners like George Bernard Shaw. So there I stood in a quandary. To buy Our Mutual Friend in spite of its weight or Hard Times in spite of its reputation.

I bought Hard Times. Know what swung it? The fact that it will fit easily into my pocket and it has a ribbon bookmark. I don't know about you but I'll put up with an awful lot for a ribbon bookmark.

What the Dickens?

[image error]

I'd kind of been ignoring the Dickens bicentenary fest. Somehow the press these days doesn't know when enough is enough and if I read one more Charles Dickens may have blown his nose here in 1835 type article I shall surely scream.

But then last Thursday Mr F and I went to an excellent lecture on the artist Daniel Maclise and that got me thinking.  Maclise painted a famous portrait of a rather pretty young Dickens and the pair had a long, if somewhat abrasive, friendship. It appears they were both given to huffy silences followed by needy whining.  How easy Maclise was to get along with I have no idea but I've noticed a lot of people commenting on Dickens's personality flaws.

'He wasn't very nice to his wife,' they say.

Well heavens to Betsy, what's that to do with his writing? Tolstoy can't have been a lot of fun to be married to. And Dostoevsky must have been an absolute nightmare. My husband says he has no comment to make until he's seen his lawyer.

So anyway, what to do to commemorate Dickens? As I recently reported, I've stumbled on the Ackroyd biography and will certainly read that. In addition I've decided to read two Dickens novels, one well-loved one and one that I've never managed before. The question is, what?

'Well-loved' is easy. A Tale of Two Cities. 'Never managed' is tougher. Bleak House sits on the shelf, an eternal 800 page reproach to me. I rather think it'll have to go to Mrs Quin's Charity Shop. The short list: Barnaby Rudge; Our Mutual Friend; Dombey and Son. I've given myself till tomorrow morning to decide. Then, as I have to go right by the door of Hodges Figgis bookshop, I shall put my money where my mouth is.

 

Over-Egged

[image error]

       Self-promotion is a horrible, fascinating thing. You kind of wish the person who's doing it would stop but you kind of can't stop watching them.

'Dennis Arblaster,' he says, shaking you limply by the hand whilst scanning the room for more profitable pastures. 'Best-selling author of  The Shape-Shifters Conspiracy Enigma Papers.'

I mean, where do you go from there?

'Anything new in the pipeline, Dennis?'

Too late. He's spotted the editor of Where It's At  magazine. Well, enough about him. Let's talk about me.

Taking to heart the advice of my kind friends who tell me I'm a shade-seeking idiot who needs to start putting herself Out There,  that's what I've been doing, although I'm a bit hazy about where Out There is exactly. I'm still a tentative Tweeter but yesterday I used my first hashtag  – what is the correct verb, I wonder? To hashtag?  – and I'm feeling good. Yeah, I can handle it. I haven't yet Retweeted, nor have I been Retweeted. I realise that must be way down the line of celebrity and influence. That must be a very big moment. But a girl can dream.

Anyway, there were two things I wanted to share with you. First, the topic of my inaugural hashtag; the Russian Grannies who are singing in the Eurovision Song Contest. Several of my dear supportive readers have pointed out that life is imitating art, or at least imitating Life According to Lubka. Thank you. I alerted Hollywood and their swift reply was, 'Zzzzzzzz….' 

The other thing is about Twitter. I'm delighted when people Follow me, after all, that's what it's all about, but I find it very hard to return the compliment when all I can see is a hard-boiled egg. Put your picture up there, or if you don't want to do that, put up a picture of your gerbil. Or someone else's gerbil. And say a few words about yourself. How else am I to know whether you're a genuine person or a creepy chancer? See what I mean? But above all, no more hard-boiled eggs.

That's all. At ease.

 

 

 

 

 

Wotcher Reading?

 [image error]

My daughters are not great readers, though one of them looks like she might turn out to be a late-onset writer. But most of the grandchildren are avid for books, which gives me every excuse for loitering in the Dr Seuss end of book shops, and my son, an English major, usually has something interesting to suggest. Which is how I came to borrow his copy of Paul Theroux's The Kingdom by the Sea.

I'm only telling you this because yesterday I had the rare pleasure of needing to choose not one, but two new books. I always have (at least) two books on the go. There's my bedside reading for which the criteria are a) that it must not disturb Mr F's sleep by causing yelps of laughter or the angry gnashing of teeth and b) that it weigh no more than 2lbs. In the unlikely event that I decide to work on my pecs I'll join a gym. Then I have a pot-stirrer. The book I keep on the kitchen table to read between culinary procedures. A pot-stirrer is not the same as a pot-boiler. But it could be.

So at night I've been tramping along the British coast with Paul Theroux. It's been a good, if dated choice. It kind of made me want to lace up my boots and grab my Senior Rail Card, but he was writing about Eighties Britain. Gone, gone. My pot-stirrer has been Florence King's Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, a book so funny it disqualified itself as bedtime reading within its first three pages.

So what next? I'll level with you. The books in this house are in a mess, thrown on to any old shelf while Mr F languished in a hospital bed and I tried to unpack the Mother of all House Moves. I used the 'Feck the Dewey System' system. The aim was simply to empty boxes. Two years on the librarian still hasn't showed up.

'Yeah, yeah,' he says. 'Tomorrow.'

The consequence is that to find one book one is forced to trawl through the full collection. It can be very annoying. But trawling does sometimes land an unexpected pleasure and yesterday, searching for Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor which I though I might reread, I found a yellowing Florence King Reader. Also Ackroyd's Dickens which I don't remember having read, so better late than never. I'm taking him to bed tonight.

For the kitchen I have, shiny and new, The World Turned Upside Down by the excellent Melanie Phillips, and, and, at the click of a mouse, Gogol's Dead Souls just appeared on my Kindle. How does it do that?

So I'm covered, even for long waits in hospital corridors. Still no sign of Hawksmoor, however.