Legendary Authors

Love patterns

Did anyone read Jeffrey Eugenides’s article in the Saturday Guardian this weekend? (9-02-08) He’s just edited an anthology, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, published betimes for Valentine’s Day. (It’s a seducing-looking tome – hard cover, virgin-white, romantic black curliques š› and a silhouetted swain.

   I see that in the States, even paperbacks are appearing with cloth-like covers. They feel good to handle and the cover doesn’t crack if rolled up in a pocket.  Are any Legend covers in this textured card?)

   Where was I? Oh yes. There are superb stories in the anthology too – well, it is sub-titled: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro. The reason I mention the article is that Eugenides speaks of the “literary craft” in a Nabokov story which “mirrors the literary imagination”. He specifies this as, among other things, “the seeing of patterns”. Applied to writing I think that “seeing patterns” is perhaps one of the rewards of the process.

  Dunno about you, but I seldom deliberately insert a symbol into the story. Yet when rereading, it often reveals itself and I can trace its recurrence and development. A significant pattern may well appear; the fact that it seems to do so of its ‘own volition’, gives me a buzz.

Anyone else felt it?

  Today’s symbols, I guess, are gonna be Y and flowers. Wishing you Happy V-day.

Anorak kick-off

Silly excitement round my keyboard (it’s hard to type and skip simultaneously) when our nearly-departed (sob) Emma gave me the nod to kick-off what I suspect will be my favourite thing: talking writing stuff with other anoraks.

    So much about this addictive activity fascinates me, from every aspect of the process of writing, to the machinations of the industry itself. Witness the recent furore over cuts in funding for PLR payments. If you received a Feb. 08 Public Lending Rights Facts and Figures sheets, you too must have chuckled over the 17 923 authors out of 23 942 who get between £1 and £99.99 per annum. Are we, the lowly majority, really going to get exercised over a possible  reduction of a few pence when  “A recent survey of writers’ incomes showed that the median of all respondents was £4000”? ( The Times. Feb 12, ’08.) Nah- too busy doing the day job.

So, why do we do it? The saddo-writing thing, I mean? Because I Can’t Stop Myself is my excuse for secreting myself away from life, to write about it. (Does anyone else become deaf, dumb and paraplegic when writing? ‘Where are my socks?’ I do not hear; ‘That was a helluva storm’ I did not see. And as for that cup of tea- impossible to get up to make it.)

    I am not a Stephen King fiction fan, but I was struck by something he said in his quite good memoir/how-to book, “On Writing” about life being the main event, rather than writing. Writer’s health warning there. I’ll get the quote and post if up in full. (Or Josie will; she gets the Rapid Responder title, I reckon.)  Hey, should we have a section on this site where we share any good quotes we come across about the writing process/business?

What else might we blog about? I’d love to know what considerations you take into account when choosing the opening line of your chapters (I don’t mean the first one – that is a special case); which, for you, is the most rewarding part of the crafting process – the initial blurt onto the page/screen, the polishing, the planning; what’s the best thing someone said about your book/story and why do you treasure it?

    Let’s talk, Legends.