Archive for the ‘zero moment’ Category

Posted on September 15, 2008 - by MG

Joshua 3 – Racing for the curtain

‘Racing for the curtain’ is how some screenwriters refer to the increased pace of Act III, when everything hots up as the character, story and plot all ‘race for the curtain’.

In some senses, even the writer experiences the race. As the plot speeds up, climax follows crisis, with last-minute challenges to the escape and everything heads for the denouement, so does the speed of writing. As my pal, author Susie Day put it to me the other day, “You want to be writing it as fast as your readers would be reading it.”

So it’s surprising and gratifying to find that even now, even with a planning freak like me, something can pop out of the subconscious, some last minute discovery of a detail that can be used to work a theme right through the book.

I’ve had it happen before, in every book I’ve written. It usually hits around Act II. This time I’m about just 12,000 words before the end of ZERO MOMENT (current working title for Joshua 3). And on Saturday night, it hit.

I was a little tipsy from my half of the M&S dine-in-for-2 wine. Suddenly I had an urge to write, and to jump ahead in the narrative and write the final scene of ZERO MOMENT. (I did this also for INVISIBLE CITY).

I was listening to some music to get myself in the right mood – the music that would be playing at that point of the story. I looked up the English lyrics for the tune that was playing – the version was instrumental-only. And I realised that they were perfect for the song which has a major role in the story. (Technically it acts as a synecdoche referring to Josh’s sister and father-via-sister). I had previously chosen a different song ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’. But in fact the title, the lyric and the composer of this other song made it much more appropriate.

The song is ‘Wave’ by Antonio Carlos (‘Tom’) Jobim, that master of bossa nova. (And if you remember INVISIBLE CITY, ‘Waters of March’ - Aguas de Marco by Jobim is Josh’s parents’ favourite tune) I count ‘Wave’ as perhaps my favourite jazz song (although ‘Stardust’ and ‘Me, Myself and I’ are also contenders). These are the translated lyrics:

So close your eyes
For thats a lovely way to be
Aware of things your heart alone was meant to see
The fundamental loneliness goes whenever two can dream a dream togetherYou can’t deny don’t try to fight the rising sea
Don’t fight the moon, the stars above and don’t fight me
The fundamental loneliness goes whenever two can dream a dream together

When I saw you first the time was halfpast three
When your eyes met mine it was eternity

By now we know the wave is on its way to be
Just catch that wave don’t be afraid of loving me
The fundamental loneliness goes whenever two can dream a dream together

When I saw you first the time was halfpast three
When your eyes met mine it was eternity

By now we know the wave is on its way to be
Just catch that wave don’t be afraid of loving me
The fundamental loneliness goes whenever two can dream a dream together

Dreams and jazz are elements which I find myself repeating in my stories. Partly because dreams and jazz mean such a lot to me, partly because Haruki does that also, to such wonderful effect that I can’t help but emulate and partly because I’m probably not imaginative enough to think of any other way to create the desired effect.

So in Joshua 3, as in INVISIBLE CITY and in ICE SHOCK I’m pulling out the same corny trick. (Yes, I have to face up to the fact that deep down I’m deeply sentimental. For goodness sakes don’t tell anyone.)

‘Wave’. How did it take me until almost the end to realise that this is the song? It even fits in with the Brazilian theme of the novel.

Wah. I am going to miss writing ZERO MOMENT. I can already feel the first pangs of loss (I always feel like this towards the ending.)

Oh – I’ve selected a choice Youtube clip of Jobim performing ‘Wave’ (instrumental version) with the legendary Herbie Hancock. If you like it, look at some others. It’s a real favourite with fans of bossa nova.

Now you only have to wait until March 2010 to understand the context of this post…

Posted on July 30, 2008 - by MG

Joshua 2 vs Joshua 3

All my online writing buddies are all talking about this post today. It’s about how an author falls in and then out of love with their manuscript.

Right now I’m madly in love with Joshua 3, convinced it’s the cleverest and prettiest book ever. Meanwhile I’m sullenly continuing to date Joshua 2 even though we both know it’ll soon be over. And Joshua 1 is my glamorous ex- who’s gone on to much better things than me. (In a sexy orange outfit, no less.)

My life right now:

In the mornings I go straight to the desk and fiff and faff for a bit. Then I read through yesterday’s new words once again and tweak. Then I look at my plan for Joshua 3 and see where I’m up to. And then, just as I’m thinking that I really don’t feel in the mood, I start writing.

Somehow, I get words out. This is where a writer reaps the benefit of having established a work habit. If I only wrote when I felt in the mood, these days, I would hardly ever write. After the first 200 words it gets easier. Sometimes I’m done in two hours – the whole 1000 word quota. Very, very rarely I write more. This only happens when I have a particularly emotional scene to write – I can get just in the right mood and have to write that.

Writing action is both the worst bit and the best. When you write action, paradoxically everything slows down. Action eats words. A chapter might take 1500 words if it’s just dialogue and revelation. But when there’s action you can chew through 4000 words during which only minutes have passed. So you write and you come back the next day and for Josh…maybe only minutes – or seconds - have gone by. As the writer you dwell in those moments for a long time. Those action sequences become the focus of your thoughts, sometimes for days at a time.

(My as-yet-unsold manuscript ‘Jaguar’s Realm’ is largely one long chase – writing that was really tiring! The poor hero, Leo, hardly ever had a chance to sit down. I really felt for him  as I had to invent scrape after scrape.)

So…in the morning, 1000 words of Joshua 3. Working title is TIGER KIDNAP, but today I thought of another: ZERO MOMENT. Any preferences?

And in the afternoon it’s down to Starbucks with my laptop and fifty pages of the ms for Joshua 2 (most likely ICE SHOCK or DARK ICE), plus my editor’s notes. I grab an iced mocha and a panini and chug through the revisions.

My pal Susie Day usually turns up with her manuscript for her own second novel, also to be published by Scholastic. It’s going to be called GIRL MEETS CAKE. Cool title huh?

We work and then we talk. About writing, editing, Doctor Who and TV and books and movies. We sob to each other about the few difficulties of writing. It’s okay, it’s lovely being a writer, but turns out that it drives you quite, quite mad to make up stories for a living. So we are crazy together.

Thank goodness for Susie, I’d probably crack up without her to talk to. I don’t even know why, but I’m definitely not as sane as I was when I was a scientist. I think I have the sort of mind that needs to do dull things repetitively, like make up test-tubes of chemical reactions and repeat experiments, for at least a small part of the day. Having to be creative all day long is unleashing some scary part of my psyche that I’m not sure was supposed to operate at more than 5%. I’m still struggling to adapt, to be honest.

It’s important to point out that if we lived in Jamaica, we’d make the effort to do as Ian Fleming did in his afternoons, and go snorkeling. But we don’t, so we write.

Today I reached 35,000 words. I’m close to writing the midpoint of the novel – I always try to make this super-dramatic. From the midpoint on, I try to pick up the pace so that a fast-paced story becomes roller-coasterish. (That’s why all the facts and knowledge have to come in the first half. Later I don’t want readers to have to pause to learn.)

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA how hard it is to do this? If you write thrillers for a living then you do. Otherwise, well it’s surprising just how hard it is. I’m not going to tell how either, so thurp.

35,000 words. And still at least that much more to go…

Posted on July 5, 2008 - by MG

Jam (and writing, but mostly jam)

I woke up this morning thinking that I really wanted some homemade apple-and-raspberry pie, a sure indication that pie season has begun. However, a simple idea of pie became a trip to the pick-your-own followed by a big jam-making session. It’s been ages since I made jam, and never from your fancy farm fruits like strawberries and raspberries. Before it’s always been jam from the wild blackberries that grow on a mass of brambles on Sunnymead meadow. But last week a friend from Manchester dropped by with a pot of homemade strawberry jam from his own family’s trip to the PYO. It was so delicious – and nearly all gone by now.

So now I have 5 jars of strawberry jam, 2 pots of raspberry and since I had 500g of jam sugar left over, thought I might thaw the left-over blackberry pulp and jam that too.

That’s a year’s supply of jam, in one evening. More, to be honest. We’re not big jam eaters. Now I have to make scones to go with that jam. Jeez. I’m going to wind up a blimp.

This has to be my most boring blog post ever…apologies. I WAS going to write some thoughts about how important it is to develop a writing method and how listening to a Radio 4 programme this morning about Method acting made me realise that there might well be some parallels with writing. Then I remembered that my agent has firmly instructed me Never To Tell Anyone How I Write. Not for fear of being copied – for goodness sake! But for fear of casting light on some mysterious process, exposing it for it’s quotidian normalcy.

A writer and actor I greatly admire, Victoria Wood, recently said - I think on Desert Island Discs – that she learned how to write jokes. And that she wouldn’t tell her method – for the same reason.

Anyway. I hope readers have as much fun reading Joshua book 3 as I’m having writing it. Yesterday I wrote the first scene of High Drama, which occurs around 55 pages into the book. Very exciting, set in the giant sand dunes of Genipabu, Brazil… (well I found it exciting to write. Only time will tell if it actually makes for an exciting read…years in fact! March 2010…?)

Posted on June 19, 2008 - by MG

Editing ICE SHOCK, getting deeper into Joshua book 3

Editor and I have almost finished working on the manuscript for ICE SHOCK.

We lost a couple of chapters but gained a new opening – a scene I’ve been wanting to write for ages. Benicio visits Josh in Oxford and takes him for an early morning spin in a Muwan, over the dreaming spires of Oxford and out to Josh’s school…yes you’ll finally find out which school Josh attends.

Meanwhile I’m getting deeper into book 3. When I visit kids in schools and libraries, I’m often asked about working titles so I might as well own up that the working title of book 3 is TIGER KIDNAP. I hope it sounds cool, action packed and intrigiung… But it also means something.

Go ahead…Google it…

Today I wrote one of the most difficult scenes I’ve ever written. It wasn’t an action scene – they aren’t particularly easy but that’s about being focused, visualising the action and expressing it in some non-tedious, non-repetitive, ideally thrilling sort of way. No; I was writing a scene where Josh experiences some new and rather teenage emotions. One emotion piles on top of another, sometimes conflicting with each other. Getting that across without wallowing, whilst showing not telling, staying in character as Josh, I find pretty hard.

In terms of what was happening, it was sort of a childish (and for that read very non-adult) version of the brilliant scene of the newlywed’s devastating row at the end of Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach”. In McEwan’s story, two newlyweds have a row which effectively ends their marriage on the night of their wedding. McEwan’s male protagonist has been – although unintentionally – badly hurt by his wife. In revenge, he lashes out in an orgy of of self-stoked, self-justifying anger. Even as he says the words which he knows will end things, he simultaneously enjoys whilst also horrified by his own actions.

I thought McEwan did an amazing job of conveying how lovers can simultaneously enjoy and suffer the process of hurting and tearing down what was between them. Not a nice fact of life but very true.

On a small scale that’s what Josh does in the scene I wrote today, which also takes place on a beach. Josh is unintentionally emotionally wounded by someone…and so he hurts them in return. He’d rather be angry than sad. So he stokes his own anger.

But what I learned from McEwan is that it’s at this point that you lose sympathy for the male character. Self-pitying, self-justifying rage – not too attractive as it turns out!

So I didn’t let Josh enjoy it. Instead, he is shocked to the point of numbness about making this person cry.

 Ah but who…?

That would be telling.

Posted on April 28, 2008 - by MG

Late night blogging session

An explosion of tulips in a neighbour’s garden, snapped by Blackberry.

While I was sick in bed, all the leaf buds on trees decided to unfurl, the apple and cherry blossoms bloomed and the tulips popped open like goblets. Walking on my usual route to Summertown for coffee one sunny morning, I suddenly noticed…

It’s good. Spring and summer in southern England are definitely something to get excited about. Winter, on the other hand…gah. I swear if it wasn’t for the kids schools I’d consider spending winters in Australia…

I’m almost 4500 words into Joshua book 3 and I’m already a little overwhelmed by the grip Josh’s psyche has on me. If Josh begins book 2 with a big emotional load, it’s even more intense with book 3. Now that I know the age of some of the readers -including my six-year old daughter – I wonder what they will make of these complex emotions.

Don’t read book 3 until you are at least 10, kids!

Josh has choices and problems that would flumox an adult, but has to deal with them with the experience of a teenage boy. In this one he’s so far above his head that he’s ill-equipped to even debate the issue. Actually that makes it easier. There’s almost no dialectic going on; Josh knows exactly what he wants – from his gut.

Ah but cruel author. Josh can never have what he wants. Or can he…?