Not a poet and I know it

I recently attended a couple of events at this year's Penzance Literary Festival. The first was a writing and mythology workshop, facilitated by poet and prose writer Angela Stoner. I mucked in as a steward for one event the following day and that turned out to be Angela's as well. I hope to interview her soon either on this blog or the sister blog www.strictlywriting.blogspot.co.uk

Like many writers I found expression through poetry in my teens, although no one dug my doggerel at the time. Maybe I was channelling my inner William McGonagall. 

The session Angela gave on myth took me in an unusual direction when I got home. I started to think about those elements of my storywriting that come from other people, often without their knowledge. Those precious slivers of overheard conversations that I skewered on my notebook pages, the borrowed memories, and the brutal cannibalisation of other people's experiences.

Graham Greene is said to have said: "There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer." Some say it's jagged glass, but I prefer the idea of ice as it suggests the possibiity of a thaw.

Anyway, taking all of the above as inspiration, here's a poem.

I Confess - More or Less

I stole your pet's name

And I took your cousin's too.

I ripped your life into ribboned strips

And sewed them up anew.

I altered crucial details

To hide my heinous crimes.

I changed the date you met your fate

I lied about those times.

I painted myself in the picture

When I wasn't even there.

I made a heroine out of you

And pretended that she cared.

I moved you to a country

Where I know you've never been.

I gave our lines to others

And reordered all the scenes.

I wrote you out of context

With a wild and wicked pen.

I plunged an ice shard in my heart

To serve the story's ends.

I'll never share the secrets

Of a thousand personal worlds.

But I'll scatter fragments liberally

To turn them into pearls.

Once upon a tome...

Hang out the flags, I've got an idea for a story.

We tend to see events and perspectives from the beginning of things, without always appreciating the beginning (or the ending) before the beginning.

Sometimes, it's the 'why'.

Why was the 'wicked fairy' in Sleeping Beauty wicked?

What drove Laurie Lee to start his journey in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning?

What made Craig Campbell choose his way of life in Sinclair Macleod's The Reluctant Detective series?

When it comes to novels, I think that authors juggle three distinct needs.

What does the reader actually need to know, what does you need them to know, and (still with me?) what do you need to know purely for yourself?

Initially, in my Brit thriller, Standpoint, I alluded to main character Thomas Bladen's difficult childhood. But the more I wrote, the more I wanted to know what actually went on. So I explored that and some of those formative events filtered through to the manuscript. That way the reader can trace a thread all the way from who my protagonist is all the way back to some of the experiences that moulded his behaviour.

Even if you're writing about a baby, its home environment and the attitude of its parents (which will contribute to its conditioning and the life awaiting it) owe a debt to the past.

I'm in the process of submitting two novels to agents / publishers (at time of writing, I haven't decided which road to take). To complicate things further, each book is a different genre. Standpoint is a thriller about a civilian who joins the UK's Surveillance Support Unit, while Scars and Stripes is a transatlantic comedy drama set in the 1980s. 

Being back on the submissions trail, it's easy to buy into the notion that I'm there at the beginning. Except that I'm not. My trusty spreadsheet reminds me that I've been contracted four times for other books, and offered a further three contracts (at different times) for a fantasy novel, Covenant, that I eventually chose to self-publish.

As writers we tend to see ourselves at the start of something, which can be energising or daunting depending on how you feel about that all-important next stage. But it's important to recognise the steps and individuals (seen and unseen) that brought us to this point. 

The journey of a thousand miles may well begin with the first step, but let's not forget all the other journeys that put us there, willing and able.