The Best Advice for Writers

As well as a large vocabulary, novels give writers a sense of how it is done. They offer templates that can be borrowed and adapted; they teach a writer how to create narrative structures and characters, how to develop tension, write dialogue, and maintain a consistent tone and pitch. Novels also trigger memories from a reader's personal experience, and these give writers ideas for their own stories. Great writers can copy just about anything they read and make it look original: a scene from one book, the description of a room from another, a piece of dialogue, an item of clothing, all of these details can remind writers of events and experiences in their own life, they can trigger a writer's imagination in ways that are distinct from the original, if not unique in the world.

The best advice for writers restated nicely on The Guardian blog by Evan Maloney :  READ!

How Reading Shaped Aravind Adiga

How could we function without our only common language? Doing away with English seemed to me tantamount to doing away with India: We were the language's, before the language was ours.

Booker winner Aravind Adiga talks about his relationship with the English language and the literature that shaped him, in today's Independent.*

Adiga has a new collection of short fiction out : Between the Assassinations.

*(I have a subtext here for the wannabes - this is how hungry an author needs to be for words, this is how widely you have to read if you want to suceed. The writing of others has to form you, before you in turn have anything to give. *Steps off soapbox*)

The Young Ones

There's a nice piece in StarTwo's Youth 2 section today about young Malaysian authors. Sharmila Nair and Ian Yee interview Lim May Zhee, Ruzaina Fikri and Muhamad Syrafuddin ... valiant souls all. (And may they continue the good fight as they grow older.)

And in a side piece, MPH's Janet Tay talks about how to realise the dream of getting published, tempering encouragment with a dose of realism. And of course the most important piece of advice :

Read, read, read. I can’t emphasise that enough. I think we do encounter a fair bit of writers who want to write but don’t pick up books themselves “ it’s like a chef who doesn’t know how to eat or taste his food.

A Faulk-Full of Fancies

UK bookstore chain Waterstones is introducing a new campaign called Writer's Table as part of Waterstone's Writer's Year, which is designed to highlight the role of the author, The Bookseller reports. Top authors are given a freehand to select the 40 books which have most shaped their writing.

Critically acclaimed novelist Sebastian Faulks goes first, and you can read his hand-written review of each book here.

THE FULL LIST :

• Jake’s Thing by Kingsley Amis
• Success by Martin Amis
• Tim All Alone by Edward Ardizzone
• The Garden of the Finzi Continis by Giorgio Bassani
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess **
  
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens*
• The Waste Land by T S Eliot **
  
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald *
  
• Moonraker by Ian Fleming
• The Magus by John Fowles **
  
• Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser
• Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
• Loving. Living. Party-Going by Henry Green
• The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary
  
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst *
  
• The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne
• An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan
• The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera **
  
• The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin *
  
• The Rainbow by D H Lawrence **
  
• The Adventures of Dr Dolittle by Hugh Lofting *
  
• The Scent of Dried Roses by Tim Lott
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell *
  
• The First Day of the Somme by Martin Middlebrook
• Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
• The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov **
  
• The World is Not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg
• Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
• The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger *
  
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzehenitsyn **
  
• The Red and The Black by Stendhal
• A Cruel Madness by Colin Thubron
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
• A Fringe of Leaves by Patrick White
• Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge*
  
• Germinal by Emil Zola

Of course, as with all booklists, the tendency is to meme it. I've given one star to those I've read (15 in all) and two stars to those that would probably be one my own top forty of all time.

Reading McCullers

"... vain, querulous and a genius"

"She needed a certain amount of alcohol in her system to function creatively"

"we know from your first book that you're a nigger-lover, and we know from this one that you're queer. We don't like queers and nigger-lovers in this town."

What others have said about American author Carson McCullers who is profiled in this excellent piece by Ali Smith in the Guardian.

I discovered McCullers in my teens when, miracle of miracles, I found that the English stockroom of my school was unlocked, and inside there were piles of novels! Better still, I found that some hardworking teacher had compiled and cyclostyled long-lists of "suggested reading" for other classes and I used them as my guide to the shelves. I hid in this little room from the prefects during lunch breaks (we were supposed to be outside getting "fresh air" in often sub-arctic conditions!), sneaking books out to read at home and replacing them as soon as I'd read them. Thanks my unseen mentor, this was the best introduction to "quality" fiction that I could have had. (I think this also explains my great enthusiasm for reading lists.)

I read first The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers novel about a deaf-mute who moves to a small southern mill town, and was totally blown away by it (so much that I can still pretty much remember it in detail x decades on!). Then in rapid succession I read The Member of the Wedding, and The Ballad of the the Sad Cafe. I have an urge now to reread them ... and I wonder how they will have changed half a lifetime on? (Because of course, books always change when we aren't looking.)

McCullers, of course, was an unredeemable bookaholic herself (as all authors must be) :

She was capable of reading so deeply that she wouldn't notice her own house go up in flames around her, as once happened when she was lost in Dostoevsky. Unable as a child to stop reading Katherine Mansfield's stories when she went to the store for groceries, she carried on as she asked for the goods at the counter, then under the street lamp outside. As a fledgling writer, she was sacked from her day job as a book-keeper for a New York company when the boss found her deep in Proust's Swann's Way under the big ledger.

By the way, I came across a post on a blog some time back in which a teenage writer was talking to her teacher about award winning books and was told that such titles were "too deep" for her. I really saw red when I read that! How does anyone have the right to tell you what you can and cannot cope with at what age?

The Wannabe Parent

When does an (outwardly) perfectly normal, peaceful-looking individual become a parent from hell?

Raman muses on the Silverfish website, before launching into yet another* wannabe horror story, this time about a parent who wants his daughter published ... even before she's written a word.

Then he said, "Unless you are deaf, dumb and blind, everyone knows how much money JK Rowling makes."

Oh God! Not another one!

"How many JK Rowlings, are there?"

"One." He looked puzzled.

"What is the population of the world?"

"I don't know ... several billions."

"So, the chances of your daughter becoming another JK Rowling is one in several billions. Now, if you go downstairs and buy a lottery, the chances of you winning the first prize is one in three million. Wouldn't that be much better?

Now I love it when people say they want to write and will do my best to encourage them, but expecting that you can become the next big thing without putting in the time and effort it takes to get there is totally unrealistic.

And it amazes me that many of the people I've met who say they want to write don't want to swallow the most basic piece of advice of all - if you want to write something worth publishing, you must read widely and hungrily. There is no shortcut. Sorry.

If you don't want to do this, take up quilting or grow bonsai trees or something like that. You'll probably be much happier.

(*A couple of my own are here and here.)

Finding Writers

How nice it was to see my good buddy and MPH senior editor Eric Forbes in Starmag talking about the often search for local writing talent. He gives sterling advice about the necessity for writers to make sure their work is carefully proofread before submission - an obvious fact that seems to elude many wannabes:

Not having to plough through bad grammar and poor punctuation helps tremendously. The fact is, the editing process can be very monotonous and people who submit manuscripts are often not open to criticism, no matter how constructive. ...

He adds:

Being good at language is not good enough. You have to stretch yourself further before your writing sings and shines. The great writers of the world struggle every day with what they produce. And they have doubts all the time.

And he once again hammers home that much-repeated piece of wisdom which too many wannabes close their ears to:

Read as widely, deeply and omnivorously as possible, both fiction and non-fiction.

Omnivorously. Got that?

From time to time I've linked to some of Eric's horror stories about wannabe writers. See here and here. I don't think he's got the end of his supply of horror stories yet!

Meanwhile, MPH are inviting submissions for two anthologies:

The first is a collection of short fiction and creative non-fiction tentatively entitled Urban Odysseys: KL Stories. Writers should focus on life in the city, specifically Kuala Lumpur, with works that show images of the new juxtaposed against the old, urban living with contrasting bright lights and shadowy realities and other short fiction or creative non-fiction that best encapsulate the spirit of the national capital.

Stories must be original and between 3,000 and 5,000 words. The deadline for this anthology is Jan 31, 2008.

The second anthology is of short fiction that will be published under the tentatively title Chinese Stories. The theme is Chinese life in Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere, with writings that explore questions of fate and destiny, culture, spirituality, language, human longing and its consequences, ironies of life, identity and family. And love, of course. Stories could be sweet or sour. Or a combination of both. Or they could explore issues that have not been addressed before.

Stories must be original and between 3,000 and 7,000 words. The deadline for this anthology is March 31, 2008.

Guidelines for submission can be found here.

Elsewhere Great Online Things

I had no characters, no plot, but there were no other problems ...

says Alexander McCall-Smith, creator of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series and the most charming private-eye ever, Madam Ramotswe. Deepika Shetty blogs wonderfully about meeting the author in Singapore. And I am so jealous I could spit!

Meanwhile, online arts newspaper Kakiseni has a profile piece up on Malaysian short story writer Keris Mas. I remember reading translations of some of his stories some years back and liking them very much, and now wish I had a copies of his books. Has anyone seen them in the shops? Funny how - and once again I say this - there is so little available information on and promotion for local publications.

Meanwhile, Yang-May Ooi, currently packing her bags to fly back here for a visit, muses about how much an author should give away of the story they are writing. You can catch Yang-May at two events next Saturday (24th Feb), the Breakfast for Bloggers at the new MPH in Bangsar Village in the morning and in the afternoon at "Readings" at Seksan's. I'll be posting up more about these events shortly.

Meanwhile, Tungku Halim asks whether you write in silence, and if not, what's your soundtrack? (Me? I need silence.)

Meanwhile, Eric Forbes has a good go at local authors who don't read ... and if you make any claim to being a writer you should listen to what he's saying very carefully indeed. (And that's an order!)

And meanwhile, Ted finds hypermarkets a great place to shop for cheap books. Not only that but he has a lovely new teddy logo which really suits him, and who could resist pics of him a 5 year old complete with Beatles haircut! Cute! - both the teddy and Ted. But don't tell him I said that.

Prose ... On Prose to Emulate

Can creative writing be taught?

It's a reasonable question, but no matter how often I've been asked, I never know quite what to say. Because if what people mean is: Can the love of language be taught? Can a gift for storytelling be taught? then the answer is no. Which may be why the question is so often asked in a skeptical tone implying that, unlike the multiplication tables or the principles of auto mechanics, creativity can't be transmitted from teacher to student. Imagine Milton enrolling in a graduate program for help with Paradise Lost, or Kafka enduring the seminar in which his classmates inform him that, frankly, they just don't believe the part about the guy waking up one morning to find he's a giant bug.

Thus begins Francine Prose's new book, Reading like a Writer. So if Prose is cynical about the value of writing workshops, how are writers expected to learn their craft?

Prose believes that the best way to learn to write well is to read extensively, especially the good stuff.

Ah yes, that's what everyone tells you, isn't it? But how far is the advice heeded by most wannabe writers?

Not very far, declares novelist and creative writing teacher Emily Barton reviewing Prose's book in the New York Times. It's not just a lack of interest in reading that bothers her, but that:

those who do read often lack the training to observe subtle writerly clues ...

She praises Prose's Reading Like a Writer, and recommends it both for aspiring writers and for readers who’d like to increase their sensitivity to the elements of the writer’s craft.

Prose points out that writers were learning from the best their predecessors long before writing courses were dreamt up. She also recommends savouring books rather than racing through them, which I think many of us tend to do. (I'm guilty of this. Ah, the pressure of all the books on my to-be-read shelf, all screaming at me in unison every time I pass by.) And she emphasises the delight that reading brings us. (Probably the very reason why we want to write.)

Prose's book sounds like a very useful guide and I Amazon "one-clicked" it as soon as I'd read the review. Read more on the Harper Collins website.

A Writer's Reading List

I wrote an entry some time back about the need for writers to read.

Well, the last time I was dusting my books, I came across a slim paperback I had completely forgotten about and - to my shame - not got round to reading. (Such pleasant surprises can happen when books take over a large part of your house! The downside is the cleaning doesn't get finished.)

Education of a Wandering Man is the autobigraphy of Louis L'Amour - a prolific writer of westerns. This is a genre that I have never developed a taste for (really we're talking books for the boys here) and have never read a single one apart from Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove - and that under protest.

But I'm always fascinated by what makes a writer - any writer tick, so dipped into it. It's a rather rambling read, documenting L'Amour's many adventures - his travels in the US and Far East, his time as a seaman, cattle skinner, mine guard, hobo. All material that found it's way into the stories he wrote. (If you want to be a writer, live a life, hey?) He wrote mainly (out of economic necessity) what is termed "pulp fiction" for the entertainment of the masses but is still regarded as the best writer of "frontier fiction".

But what fascinated me most is L'Amour's account of his other journey - through books. His reading lists from 1930 onwards are included in an appendix at the back of the book. And I just marvel at how voraciously and widely L'Amour read. Here's his list for 1930:

1. Three Philosophical Poets by Santayana
2. Winds of Doctrine by George Santayana
3. Reason in Society by George Santayana
4. Selected Stories by Joseph Conrad
5. Schleimacher's Soliloquies by Frederick Schleimacher
6. Tales, Volume II by Edgar Allan Poe
7. Romances, Volume II by Voltaire
8. Romances, Volume I by Voltaire
9. The Hermit of Carmel by George Santayana
10. Thus Sparta Zarathustra by Nietzsche
11. Black Sparta by Naomi Mitchison
12. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
13. Dynamo by Eugene O'Neill
14. Fruit Gathering by Rabindranath Tagore
15. Circus Parade by Jim Tully
16. The Gardener by Rabindranath Tagore
17. Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill
18. Moon of Madness by Sax Rohmer
19. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
20. The Wisdom of the East, Vol I
21. In Search of a Villain by Robert Gose-Brown
22. Master Mind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
23. Poems by Henry Van Dyke
24. The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill
25. Mountain City by Upton Sinclair
26. The Dreamy Kid by Eugene O'Neill
27. Terror Keep by Edgar Wallace
28. The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill
29. The Author's Mind by Lawrence Conrad
30. Marco Millions by Eugene O'Neill
31. Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill
32. The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig
33. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
34. The Long Voyage Home by Eugene O'Neill
35. The Moon of the Caribbean by Eugene O'Neill
36. Bound East For Cardiff by Eugene O'Neill
37. In the Zone by Eugene O'Neill
38. The Great God Brown by Eugene O'Neill
39. The Crime in the Crypt by Carolyn Wells
40. The Fountain by Eugene O'Neill
41. Bird in Hand by John Drinkwater
42. The Science of Hypnotism by Dr. L.E. Young
43. Fu Manchu's Daughter by Sax Rohmer
44. Jew Suss by Ashley Dukes
45. Memories and Studies by William James
46. Jorgenson by Tristan Tupper
47. Lazarus Laughed by Eugene O'Neill
48. The Dance of the Machines by Edward J. O'Brien
49. The War In the Air by H.G. Wells
50. Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O'Neill
51. Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer
52. Why We Behave Like Human Beings by George Dorsey
53. Bitter Biance by C. Hartley Grattan
54. The Rope by Eugene O'Neill
55. Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad
56. Four Faces of Siva by Robert J. Carey
57. See Naples and Die by Elmer Rice
58. The Fifteen Cells by Stuart Martin
59. Gold by Eugene O'Neill
60. Men and Machines by Stuart Chase
61. Odyssey by Homer
62. The Man of Destiny by G. Bernard Shaw
63. The Journey's End by R.C. Shariff
64. Erewhon by Samuel Butler
65. Ecce Homo by Friedrick Nietzsche
66. Ghosts by Hendrick Ibsen
67. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
68. The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrick Nietzsche
69. Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell
70. Liberty Under the Soviets by Roger N. Baldwin
71. All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Remarque
72. Cheri by Colette 73. Condemned by Blair Niles
74. Mystery of Lynden Sands by J. J. Connington
75. Mirope by Voltaire 76. Bajaget by Jean Racine
77. Don Juan by Moliere
78. The World Set Free by H.G. Wells
79. Criminology by Wellington Scott
80. The Art of Life by Havelock Ellis
81. Athahie by Jean Racine
82. All God's Children Got Wings by Eugene O'Neill
83. Stendahl by Paul Hazard
84. Poems and Prose Poems by Charles Baudelaine
85. The Winds of the World by Talbot Mundy
86. Plays by Anton Tchekoff
87. Lilian by Franz Molnar
88. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
89. Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime by Edward D. Sullivan
90. A Woman Of No Importance by Oscar Wilde
91. The Mystic Will by Charles G. Leland
92. Trader Horn by A. A. Horn and E. Levine
93. The Fan by Carlo Goldoni
94. The World of William Chissold by H.G. Wells
95. Mandragola by Niccolo Machiavelli
96. Criminology by Horace Wyndham
97. Many Lands of the South Seas by Nordhoff and Hall
98. Man and Superman by G. Bernard Shaw
99. An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
100. Egotisms in German Philosophy by George Santayana
101. Laws of Mental Medicine by Thomas J. Hadson
102. Mental Fascination by William W. Atkinson
103. Mind Energy by Henri Bergson
104 Repressed Emotions by Isador M. Coriat, M.D.
105. The Horla and Other Stories by Guy DeMaupassant
106 What Is Civilization? by Maurice Masterlinck and others
107. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
108. Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
109. The Power Within Us by Charles Baudouin
110. The Will to Power by Friedrick Nietzsche
111. Tantalous by H.C.S. Schiller, M.A.D. Sc.
112. The Psychology of Insanity by Bernard Hart, M.D.
113. The Meaning of Dreams by Isador Coriat, M.D.
114. The New Arabian Nights by Robert L. Stevenson
115. The Mind at Mischief by William S. Sadler, M.D.

Fiction. Non-fiction. Novels. Plays. Poems. Classic. Popular. Ancient. Modern. Philosophy. Psychology. American. International.

A serendipitous mix.

You look at someone's life-reading and you look at the furniture of their minds.

I took the list from the Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures website which has plans to put up his lists for all 30 years for subscribers. This project really looks like a labour of love.

You Are What You Read

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers, but it's also full of fourth-rate readers. — Stan Barstow

You say that you want to write? Good, I'm glad to hear it. Welcome to the club.

But before you start to send out work thinking it is the best in the world and going to sell a zillion copies and going to net you a fortune as big as that Rowling woman, there's one thing you must do.

You must read.

You must read.

Not just the occasional book, but as many books and as hungrily as you can.

Good books. Bad books.

Books in any genre. But most especially books in the genre you want to write.

"Go away and read a thousand books," Raman tells wanna-be writer who wander into his shop to seek advice.

And I'd say, yes, more or less, that's exactly it.

Because if you don't read, how will you enrich your store of words?

Because if you don't read, how will you know what's possible?

Because if you don't read, how do you develop that inner critical voice that tells you whether your work is any good or not?

The answer is, quite simply, that you won't.

And I don't think you will will be able to write anything that will interest me.

If your time-impoverished-pragmatic-self baulks at the idea of carving out some reading time in a busy day, and you feel guilty because you see reading as an indulgence, remember: reading time is really writing time, and it is the most effective, least painful way to improve your craft.

Convinced?

If I haven't made my case persuasively enough, please go and read this essay by writer Patricia Ann Jones.

...give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed. -Anne Rice

Good writing comes from good reading. You have to do as much as possible and read as widely as possible. Only by reading can you understand your own work. - Tash Aw

A good style simply doesn't form unless you absorb a dozen topflight authors every year. - F. Scott Fitzgerald