I am a New Zealander by birth; descended from a long line of Scots and Irish protestants as so many New Zealanders are, for all their stout colonial spirit and resistance to British membership of the European union. I tell you this, not in order to start some sort of vaguely political debate, but just to point up the peculiar degree of puritan conscience I have inherited from my pioneering ancestors. The sort of conscience that says work is an ethic, and a stern one at that; and that one should never fall into the trap of allowing oneself to enjoy it too much.
What has happened to me is that I have fallen into taking the line of least resistance when it comes to writing a novel. Finding myself stumbling hopelessly over writing the real thing ( and feeling my age creep up on me all the while, putting me pretty much beyond the pail when it comes to looking for an agent or a publisher) … I have resorted to putting it out in instalments as a blog. That it seemed a good idea at the time, is the best that I can say in my defence. It still seems a good idea, for all the pitfalls it presents – and I believe it’s the one that Dickens himself might have taken, had he the good fortune to have lived in a technological age….. (That he did so stupendously well without it is no part of my brief of course – though I do feel I must mention it just in passing, lest it be thought I seek to equate myself with him!)
The only thing that’s wrong with this new endeavour of mine is that I seem to be enjoying it too much. A state of affairs that doesn’t sit at all happily with that old, old puritan conscience of mine. I shouldn’t really be enjoying it at all, should I? I certainly shouldn’t have been allowed the luxury of immediate gratification by way of daily responses from readers! That sort of thing just isn’t permitted, when it comes to producing a work of fiction. I ought to have had to struggle more; suffer rejection and neglect. I ought to have had to run the gamut of reviewers’ vitriolic criticisms, at least – before I was allowed to sit back and enjoy the fruits,if any,of my labours.
I take some comfort (and I have to point out, here, that the puritan conscience finds its comfort in the oddest places) .. from the fact that I probably do have a positive army of detractors. The vitriolic critics must be out there somewhere: it’s just that, this being a blog and not a book, I am spared the horror of having to hear their voices. Still, they must be there: nobody can lead such a charmed life as to escape them altogether. So, I reassure my troubled conscience with the thought that, for every one reader of mine who writes in to say ‘well done, and please don’t stop’ - there must be fifty more at least who simply pass me by disdainfully each day; too bored even to take the trouble of entering the comment box.
If I didn’t think that, I should probably feel obliged to give up on the spot. I’d close down the blog and return at once to the old hard slog of the unprinted and probably unprintable. It’s the path I have followed for more than fifty years after all – why should I suppose that anything has really altered now? Meanwhile though, I bask a while in the unexpected warmth of reader involvement and approval. Only taking the precaution of reminding myself now and then that after all it’s not real, and cannot last! Sooner or later the bubble must burst; the blog will founder, the detractors emerge in force, and I’ll be on my own again. Trying to find the way of cobbling the thing back into something which resembles a book.
It’s as I said at the beginning therefore, isn’t it? Nothing in life is meant to be this easy. One is meant to labour and be heavy laden…. and a blog is when all is said and done, no proper way of writing a book!
(Or is it, who can say? Only time will tell.)
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25 comments:
Dear Beatrice,
Sorry to hear you're going through a dip/ a crisis - I do feel partly responsible for this, maybe I'll read silently for a while! A few thoughts:
Perhaps all creatives suffer crises of confidence and grey times, I know I do...
You are in a fairly unique position here with reader response, Dickens and Hardy didn't get this! It may be encouraging but, but, I can see how it might be daunting/stifling even...?
At your age ( whatever that might be and you certainly have a young and spritely mind I think!) you have, certainly, the right to please yourself and dictate your terms, without concerning yourself with how others perceive your endeavours. This is your place and its your time to sparkle or dim down.... your choice.
I do hope this helps - and I'll certainly stand back for a while :)
Take care, you're cool Beatrice xx
My dear merry weather, you do seem to understand perfectly, and please don't stay away! I enjoy your company too much to be able to do without you.
I think I just felt that I might be getting complacent about things - an idea which appalled me, since there is no sterner critic of my own stuff than myself!
Still, I'll be back again I know. But since I can write only from a spirit of gaiety, I must wait a while till it returns.
Darling Beatrice, whatever you are doing, keep doing it. It is working and it is wonderful. We all have dips and blips, but you won't be able to help yourself. You have to do this.
Remember Mary Wesley started writing at 70 and had a number of wonderful eccentric novels published. I see you as the next Mary Wesley. Just go with it and yes, do enjoy it. Why shouldn't you?
Many thanks Marianne - you and merry weather between you have gone a long way to restoring the missing joie de vivre already!
As for enjoying it all though .... well, try telling that to a protestant, convent girl!
I didn't think that the Protestant work ethic precluded enjoyment entirely, Beatrice! It didn't, did it, involve the wearing of hair shirts and a knotted whip to sustain self-belief?
Life indeed is not meant to be easy, I think, and we are not on this earth 'to be happy'. When it shows its face though, as a little opening of blue in a sky of grey, then it's time to let it in, I feel.
We need to be kind to ourselves, not just others. Be a little kinder to yourself perhaps and less harsh. You're doing fine. Really.
Lizzie x
Thank you Lizzie,and you're right of course - hair shirt shall be removed forthwith!
It's as i said to mw and marianne though - I feared I was growing complacent, and needed to give myself a shake!
Am pretty resilient really though, so shall be back. Tomorrow probably - as I'm being grandmama today.
In Blogland we're all lacking an editor to keep us on the straight and narrow.
Mind you if you were published in magazine-form like Dickens, I'm sure the responses would be equally positive...
i beatrice
I fear you are more English than you know. Perhaps from rubbing up against the culture these many years?
Enjoy it. Revel in it. Light a bloody bonfire and dance around it singing 'people come from all around the world to read what I have written and it is spectacular!' Keep repeating that until you believe it. You may need extra fuel for the bonfire...
Lady M , I do believe your ebullience is real - I wish I possessed even a quarter of it!
It's true I'm very English. I think I always was, even while still a New Zealander. It's the reason why London felt so instantly my home, and has done so ever since.
Someone once said though (I think it was my beloved Henry James), that there's "nothing so quiet as a deeply held conviction" - and I seem to have been shouting too much about mine lately!
Once I start up again I'll be OK though (I think)...
Today I have simply been grandma, to the light of my life, Marina, aged 6.
Which was lovely.
But thank you again for calling, and for your support.
Happiness is our natural state. Just look at a young child. S/he just enjoys life as s/he finds it. It's us adults who let fear/anxiety get in the way of our joy.
No one ever asks what we need to do to see. We know that, if we remove all obstacles to our eyes, the result is sight. Similarly, we don't need to DO anything to be happy. Simply, when we remove the obstacles of fear/anxiety to our hearts, the result is joy.
So revel in the fact that your writing reduces your anxieties and so makes your joy manifest. Enjoy it as much as you can. "Let not your heart be troubled..."
BTW, your recent post to WITN brought me here , and I find myself enjoying your posts immensely.
Thank you for coming here Jeff. It's always so nice to welcome someone new.
And you're right you know! My writing does bring me joy. Perhaps even the greatest joy I know - so I ought to treasure it.
I'm better again today though, and ready to start up again - but thanks for wise words just the same.
i beatrice
I fear that your are more embedded in the Scottish Protestant Work Ethic even than I, and I have lived in Scotlnd all my life. I know where you are coming from. If something really good happens you immediately think "I didn't deserve that - now something truly awful must happen to regain the balance". I think the fact that you enjoy writing is just incredible and you should continue at all costs. I have heard stories of people being published as a result of their blogs. You must always persevere. There are some blogs out there where the comments are truly nasty but there is really no need to put yourself throught that.
The blog is something new, not yet accepted in literary circles, simply because anyone can do it not because its not literary. I wrote a book tried to get an agent, publisher. . . blah blah. The industry does not want it or I just don't sell it well enough. I turned to the blog, somewhere i could create and share. I love your writing, for your personal blog and your literary blog, you explain what you paint well- i'm not sure what that means- the pictures you paint in my mind are vivid, clear- maybe that's a bit mroe uderstandable.
Never be disheartened, Beatrice,. You write well, both in novel and Blogland and lots of folk are enjoying/appreciating your lovely use of language..
I've joined your well subscribed fan club!
Darling friend Beatrice,
Blog is the perfect way to be disciplined enough to write every day, and the perfect way to write a book. I intend to prove that point! I am not concerned by sales, I just think it is a wonderful creative and satisfying hobby. You are a wonderful writer, keep it coming.
Dear Dulwich Mum, It's so lovely to have you back on these pages again, especially when you have so many more thrilling and important things of your own going on!
Your comment is curiously timely too, because I am currently going through another crisis associated with the blog, and don't quite see my way out.
The thing about the blog method of writing a novel, is that the words are more or less set in stone the moment after you have posted them - so that ideas and insights that come later (such as the ones I am having now in connection with some of my characters) can't easily be written into the script.
If one were writing it as a novel in the old way, it would be able to grow and develop as one went along - and one could always go back to add, and amend...
This is the situation I find myself in at the moment. I've been writing the thing more or less 'on the hoof' - and only now, when it's too late, do I see where I've gone wrong and how I might put it right - if only there were an opportunity!
I hope you don't mind if I post your comment and my reply on my other page too - because it will perhaps explain certain little discrepancies which may now creep into the story. I had been wondering how I might explain - and then along you came, as if heaven-sent!
Please keep in touch! I shall be so fascinated to hear about your experiences as you go along.
Dear i beatrice,
I understand exactly the situation that you are describing, your work in progress is posted and then you further develop a character in a particular way, you wonder how you could possibly back date your ideas.
What I have done of late, and what I would suggest to you, is that you cut and paste your posts off the blog onto a word document, and this is your book manuscript - in reality this is what you would give to a publisher anyway. In your manuscript, you can back date an idea or alteration to a character change. What you have on your blog is not necessarily what you would publish in your book. Continue on with your next blog post as though the alteration has been included from the beginning.
I have spent weeks taking out duplications of details necessary to a blog - for example; Whenever I mention a character - like my au pair, I say "my Lithuanian au pair Ana" because I assume people are coming to the blog with fresh eyes, perhaps for the first time, at most for the first time in 24 hours. This would not be appropriate in a book, so I have had to revisit all of my posts and take that kind of excessive detail out for the publisher.
Naturally as characters develop and I get to know them better, they use phrases that I want to back date right to their introduction. You can do this with your manuscript. Your blogging friends will understand, this is a work in progress. We are lucky to have watched it grow and develop.
With regard to comments, I love reading your blog, I often read it at lunch time in work, but I cannot comment because as a blogger with a job to keep - I do not want my employer to think I spend my days on line (I don't) and I have to be careful where I leave my name. I don't feel articulate or bright enough to say anything at the end of your posts apart from "Wow - that is one skilled articulate lady," and I will say it here now. After a while you may see that kind of comment and think "Oh dear my stalker is back!"
Perhaps I should just sign my name and say I have been here, because I have. Please email me if I can be of any assistance at all - but I am not the girl to advise anyone on writing - you are super beatrice. You don't have to be feeling in funny humour to leave a comment, just to know my friend has visited is enough for me. I have had enough nasty comments on the blog to last a life time!
I am still reading you know!
Hello I Beatrice,
I think you show the pioneer spirit by putting out your novel into blogland. We're all conditioned to think that the ultimate aim of writing is to see ourselves in print but apart from anything else this is more environmentally friendly. One of the advantages of blogging is that you do get an idea of how your readers are responding and you seem to have quite a number of those.
Criticism seems to be what you feel you lack. If this really is a problem, the Arts Council have a site where you can submit work online for criticism and the best ones end up being published. I will try to find the website and return with it.
Don't feel guilty about enjoying it. Just think of it as a job well done. You are, after all, entertaining your readers.
Carole, thank you for your visit and your comment. And for the info about the Arts Council. I'll be interested to see that - though am not sure I'll be brave enough to submit anything!
I seem to be getting quite enough adverse feedback from other bloggers at present. Some of them dislike the intrusion of the real world into my story - which saddens me, as I so much want it to be rooted in the present moment.
It seems as if they think I have created an ideal world, in which nothing unpleasant should be allowed to intrude - but unfortunately, that's not the way I see it myself!
Sometimes I'm not sure I want to continue - but I have made a commitment to the British Library now, who are to include my blog in their new web-based archive.... so I guess I must press on for their sake, if for no other!
So nice to hear from you @the mill - and perhaps you will be interested in the above comments made to Carol? I guess it was always going to be a risk, publishing a novel this way...
I seem to have become sidetracked from reading your online novel. i want to start at the beginning. And I will. I picked up in the middle and knew I must read it from beginning. I will. thanks oyu for checking out my writing exercises. I should be more active on the blog over next few weeks and will begin reading your novel from the start, so expect a few comments here and there. We have a new baby boy! He is just as cute as his brother.
SpKJqF Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!
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