Awesome Gang Interview

An updated version of an interview that first appeared on Awesome Gang...

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a writer, composer and pianist, as well as being a father of five and grandfather of twelve (with a thirteenth due later this year). Though born in Melbourne, Australia, I’ve lived in Dunedin, New Zealand, most of my life.
I’ve written for as long as I can remember, but only really began to be serious about it in the early 90s, when I took a course that encouraged me to write articles for magazines and newspapers. As a result I had a number of articles published, went on to write a column for a local newspaper for five years, and have been blogging incessantly ever since.
I’ve written three children’s fantasies (for Middle Grade readers) and a nonfiction book based on blog posts I wrote when I was struggling with prostate issues back in 2009.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The latest book one to be published is The Disenchanted Wizard, and it was intended to be the third book in a series of children’s fantasies under the general title of Grimhilderness. In fact it's turned out to be a standalone, with little connection to the previous two books. I'm currently writing a fourth children's fantasy, which is actually going to be number three in the series.
In 2012 I co-wrote the script of a musical called Grimhilda!, and composed the music. Young audience members who attended the show asked: When is the sequel coming out?
So I turned Grimhilda! into a book, and then that was followed by another…and then another.
The original story of Grimhilda had begun way back in the 70s. So it was an idea with a long gestation!

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not a single one that I can think of!

What authors, or books have influenced you?
Among many other things, I’ve always been interested in fantasies. I read the Narnia stories way back, and Tolkien, of course (though I found when I read it again a few years ago that it was pretty hard going!) Diana Wynne-Jones’ stories intrigue me: her imagination is huge. I like stories that start out in the ordinary and take off into fantasy, and that’s what my books do. I’ve recently discovered Nate Wilson’s books. He has more imagination than he knows what to do with, I think!

What are you working on now?
As I mentioned above, I’m working on another book in the Grimhilderness series. It's taking some time to complete, as writing is only one of the things I do. I've spent a lot of time working out the plot, writing endless notes and early drafts. I have to get to know the characters and elements of the plot before I can sit down to produce a final draft. It involves a lot of writing, but it’s worth it. Even if I don’t think so at the time (!)

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
This has been a process of discovery; I’m finding there are all sorts of sites and options that weren’t available when I started writing.
Most successfully, over the last several months, I've been advertising on Amazon Marketing Services. This has produced more sales than I've had any other way. 

I also use Twitter a lot, am involved in a very helpful Facebook Indie publishers page and two groups run by Brian Meeks - who focuses on the AMS ads. 

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t be satisfied with the first thing you write. Be willing to be critiqued to within an inch of your life. You’ll hate it, but it’s good for you in the long run. I’ve read a number of books since the big ebook revolution and some of them are desperately in need of a firm hand, but plainly haven’t had it. Let someone else in on the book, otherwise – unless you’re a genius – you won’t be putting out your best work.
And keep on writing…

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
You can cut any piece of writing in half without losing what’s best about it. Most of us write too much.

What are you reading now?
Just finished reading The Experiment of Professor Polgas by Sarah Brownlee. Another very imaginative writer. She produces several big scenes in her book and has some strong characters.

What’s next for you as a writer?
Amongst all the other bits and pieces, I’m now close to writing a proper first draft of the new Grimhilderness book. But that will be fitted in with playing for the rehearsals of a production of The Mikado, and for young singers in Competitions next month...and so on.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Bible, because it’s a book that’s not only taught me about the Christian faith, but its words have got me through some dark nights. I’ve memorized a number of passages in it, so even if I lost it, I guess I’d still have some of it in my head. I’d take one of Dickens’ best books, such as Pickwick Papers, or Great Expectations. One of the books by Dale Ralph Davis. He’s one of the most accessible commentators on the Christian faith that I know. And perhaps The Last Battle by C S Lewis. Even though it takes a bit of time to get going, it has the greatest ending of any of the Narnia stories.

Author Websites and Profiles
Mike Crowl Website
Mike Crowl Amazon Profile
Mike Crowl Author Profile on Smashwords

Mike Crowl’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account

First drafts, notes, brick walls

I wrote around 2000 words on the new book yesterday, but twenty-four hours later think that some of that writing will have to be scrapped. 

That’s how it goes on the first draft.

I work best, it seems, writing something down – anything – rather than trying to think ahead without having already done that investigative writing, the writing that 'finds' the story, in a sense. The Disenchanted Wizard was done this way. It was written and rewritten; whole chunks and chapters were scrapped. While it often seemed a hard way to work, the book was eventually all the better for it. 

Not everything in the finished book appeared in the 'first draft.' Some things appeared in exploratory notes where I mulling over what might happen. Early in the process I wrote two chapters about the night the Dog (later to be the Wizard) was sent into the map. These never got into the book in any form. One of the characters present in those chapters vanished entirely from the story in due course, even though in the very first draft he’d been the catalyst for what happened to the heroine. However, the events from those two chapters, in a modified form, were scattered about in bits of exposition in the final book. The sense that they’d been ‘real’ at some point in the writing process helped to make the exposition clear and concise.

I recently read Andy Martin's book, Reacher Said Nothing, in which Martin sat in on Lee Child's writing process during the course of the writing of the book, Make Me. 

Child, to my surprise, writes with a real 'seat of the pants' approach. He starts writing with an idea in his head, and stops when he doesn't know what to do next. He never writes a second draft. The first draft is it. With Make Me he wrote 500 words and stopped for several days. But the thing was, within those first 500 words were the seeds of the rest of the book, only he didn't know at the beginning how all those seeds would come to fruition. He didn't even understand what his characters were actually doing, or who the person was that had just been killed.

There are plenty of seat of the pants writers around; most of them write a quick first draft and then go back and revise and revise, often producing several more drafts, usually with substantial changes in them. I've never heard of any other writers who work to Child's method - unless of course you count 19th writers like Dickens and Trollope, who seemed to start at the beginning and write until they were finished. (Trollope supposedly could write 'The End' to one book, and then go straight on into chapter one of the next.) But Child's refusal to rewrite anything is more unusual for modern writers, I suspect. 

The other difference in his approach is his refusal to hurry. If he doesn't know what happens next, he waits, waits until he can see how things will develop. So in a sense a lot of his writing obviously goes on inside his head while he's doing other things - and this book gives the impression that he does quite a lot of other things.

Unlike Child, I'm not good at 'writing' in my head. I need to put things down in order to be able to think. What I put down may seem dislocated and shapeless, especially when it's in note form. I don't regard these notes as planning the novel structurally, by the way, and anyway, they often arise after I've started to write the first draft, especially when I've got stuck. But those notes usually spark off the next stage of writing. 

Sometimes I just have to stop completely, because things are flabby, and the first attempt at writing a scene means I've come up with something less than interesting - to others. Or I've used the same escape technique one time too many - as I suspect I have in what I wrote yesterday. At that point it takes an outside eye to tell me I can do better. I don't enjoy being told I can do better, but the books are always better for it...!

Writing is tiring work

G K Chesterton writing to his friend, Bentley, not long after GK started his first job working for a publisher - Redway, mentioned in the letter. 

There is that confounded 'Picture of Tuesday' which I have been scribbling at the whole evening, and have at last got it presentable. This sounds like mere amusement, but, now that I have tried other kinds of hurry and bustle, I solemnly pledge myself to the opinion that there is no work so tiring as writing, that is, not for fun, but for publication. Other work has a repetition, a machinery, a reflex action about it somewhere, but to be on the stretch inventing things, making them out of nothing, making them as good as you can for a matter of four hours leaves me more inclined to lie down and read Dickens than I ever feel after nine hours' ramp at Redway's. The worst of it is that you always think the thing so bad, too, when you're in that state.

From Gilbert Keith Chesterton, by Maisie Ward, page 67. 

Spare me from 600-page books

I started off the year with a bit of a bang, aiming to read at least one classic this year. The Brothers Karamazov got the short straw, and while I found there some longish moments in it, when Dostoevsky seemed to go off on some tangent (and I don't mean the Father Zossima passages, which are excellent), I still finished it, because there are many wonderful stretches of writing in it. I don't know how many pages it is, because I read it on Kindle - the paperback version I'd had since I was a teenager was falling to bits, and I didn't think to check the number of pages before I threw it out. Anyway, the print was ridiculously small in that edition - for an older person.

I also read Dickens' Our Mutual Friend during the year. Another whopper, also with many byways included, a number of them tedious, and some of them downright silly. Of all the Dickens books I've read this has to be the one that balances some of his best writing with some of his worst. The satire is often superb (the nouveau riche people, for instance); on the other hand some of it hits you over the head with everything Dickens can find. The love story is all over the shop, as well. However, I still finished it, though there were some skimmed moments.

You can tolerate the length of classic novels because you know they were written for an age when reading was something that people did in the long evenings, an age when there was no TV, movies, radio, Internet. But when people produce 600 page novels these days, there had better be a darn good reason for it.

I do quite a bit of reviewing for our local paper, and I got not one but two 600-page novels to deal with recently. The first was The Nix by Nathan Hill. Honest reviewers have said that it's just too long in spite of its wit and satire. I understand it was originally over a 1000 pages. Thankfully that version wasn't published. But the version that was published tried my patience. I finished it, but only by skimming increasingly as I went along. Hill allows himself so many interruptions and authorial reflections and back stories and side stories and streams of consciousness and I don't know what, that the story, such as it is, almost gets swallowed up by all the malarky going on in the writing. There's no doubt the man can write, but perhaps next time he should commit to producing a couple of hundred pages that are really page-turning; just as a challenge, maybe,..

And then came Under a Pole Star, by Stef Penney, also at 600 pages. I got about 200 pages into this, a book that seemed to be about exploration in the Arctic, and seemed as though it was going to be interesting because of that. But for some reason Penney decided that we should have access to her main characters' sexual lives - at length. In the 200 pages I read, very little of this sexual information was relevant to the story; certainly not in the detail we were given. I'd no sooner skim a bit than they were at it again. The exploration seemed continually to be taking a back seat. I'm assuming her two main characters eventually got together at some point in the book. They didn't look as though they were going to remotely get there when I stopped reading, and handed the book back to the Book Editor.

I'm puzzled why publishers think that books have to be long these days. Even the lightweight romance I've just finished (again, for review) was heading up to 400 pages - at least there were fewer words on each page because there was a lot of dialogue. 300 to 350 pages is a good length for me, if the book isn't a classic that's been around since the 19th century. Obviously editors no longer do the job of cutting out swathes of unnecessary material.

I've just remembered that I also started to read, this year, the 571-page Here I am, by Jonathan Foer, and the 560-page Sport of Kings, by C E Morgan, and didn't finish either of them, for various reasons. How many trees are cut down to provide these tomes?

When I was doing a writing course back in the 80s I was asked to write a short story for an assignment (and it was a short one). And then, in the next assignment, was asked to cut it in half. I thought: impossible! But no, it's never impossible. You just have to be willing to let go of a lot of 'stuff' that really isn't as relevant as you first thought. And it teaches you to be concise as well.

I'm not saying that writers must reduce their novels down to the bare bones, Readers Digest-wise, but surely their editors could persuade them that maybe a 100-150 pages of their 600-page book might be cleared out of the way, so that real story could find its feet?

A (long) personal overview of A Christmas Carol

Young Jesse Hanan, who plays Scrooge as a boy, gets one of the few real solo pieces, a beautiful song about loneliness. It’s not long, but it’s very effective. Equally moving is Tiny Tim’s solo, a ‘thanksgiving’ for all the family’s blessings. This same song becomes his funeral dirge a few scenes later, and is even more moving at that point.

I've mentioned A Christmas Carol here once or twice before, but not much, even though it's taken up a great deal of my life over the last three months. 

It’s a somewhat curious opera in that almost all the chorus have specific roles, big or small, on top of their chorus work, so that there’s a requirement for the chorus members to be good singers as well as the principals. James Adams, playing Scrooge, the lead, has no aria to speak of ˗ when he’s onstage by himself he mostly sings a kind of recitative; the only ‘song’ he has is right towards the end, and it lasts less than a minute. Otherwise he sings in duets, mostly, and briefly in a quartet. But even most of these sections are not big sings; for a great deal of the opera he’s on the sidelines looking on, and commenting, or emoting with his mouth closed. Which makes it a difficult role. 

His opening piece, which is shared with Fred and his wife, Bob Cratchit and the chorus, is a tongue-twisting thing. Even though its tempo is a slow 12/8, Scrooge often sings long runs of semiquavers within it.

The rest of the principals are also mostly involved in ensemble music of some kind or other. Ben Madden plays Cratchit, and appears only during three consecutive numbers early in the first half, with only a small amount to sing; then he vanishes until halfway through the second, when he’s part of the Cratchit family ensembles. Marley’s ghost, played by Alex Lee, only appears in one scene, where he’s involved in two ensemble pieces, and curiously, is the only person listed with an ‘aria’. And a jazz one, at that. Alex spends his time in the chorus in the second half. He and Nathaniel Otley were present at all the chorus rehearsals and learned most of the chorus music. 

Nathaniel is probably one of the busiest performers in the show, mainly because of what he’s been cast as. He starts off as one of the three drunks, so is involved in both the chorus work at the beginning as well as the drunks’ trio. Then he appears as the solo fiddler at the Fezziwigs’ party, and plays two dances (from memory). Finally, in Act Two, he becomes the Ghost of Christmas Present and spends the rest of the opera in that role (in a wonderful green cloak, with a huge Christmas wreath on his head). He has a great bass voice ˗ still young (he’s not yet twenty) ˗ and holds his own well with the two female ghosts. 

The first of these, Ingrid Fomison-Nurse as the Ghost of Christmas Past, has some very high lines, often with words that are difficult to get across easily. The same applies to the Ghost of Christmas Future, played by Lois Johnston. Much of her music is slow, though often over fast-moving orchestral stuff, and isn’t easy to communicate. Composers have to tread a fine line between setting words too fast or too slowly. Philip Norman, the composer of the opera, has chosen to go to both extremes at times, making it quite difficult for some of the cast. Both the ghost ladies do an admirable job, however.
Another singer who has to contend with a lot of words in a short space of time is Nicola Steel as the Charity Collector. Her music is lovely, but it moves swiftly, and Nicola does very well to get the words across in the short space of time they're allotted (!) Nicola introduces the children onto the stage, with their plaintive Alms for the poor number. The children later have a scene entirely to themselves, and it's organised chaos, with games of tag and such going on. In spite of that, in a moment, it seems, the kids can be all in back in place and marching together - and singing together, which is even more important!

Fred, played by Matariki Inwood, is initially part of the chorus, then transforms in the blink of an eye. In the process he suddenly acquires Mrs Fred ˗ played by Caroline Burchall. (Caroline stepped into the role late in the proceedings after another performer had to pull out.) Caroline began the rehearsals as one of the eight dancers, and still appears as a dancer in other scenes. Matariki has a great voice with great potential, but has no solo to speak of. However he particularly comes into his own in the second half at ‘Fred’s party’, when he spoofs Scrooge’s behaviour.

The other two drunks (besides Nathaniel) are Geoff Swift and Sarah Oliver. Geoff also plays Mr Fezziwig, and acquired a new ‘wife’ the night of the last dress rehearsal. Brenda Jones had  been playing her, but became very ill with the ‘flu, and hasn’t been able to perform since. Kathryn Constable took over the role, but couldn’t cover Brenda’s other ‘role’ as one of the quartet in the ‘poorly dressed townspeople’ piece because she was already singing in it! So, Sarah Oliver sings it. And all three still sing in the chorus numbers.

Lilian Gibbs plays Belle ˗ Scrooge’s young love ˗ and Keiran Kelly is young Scrooge. They have a lovely duet as well as being part of Fezziwigs’ party, and being involved in most of the chorus numbers. Many of the chorus sing more than the principals. The chorus tells the story, really, and have several chunks of big stuff. There are also two quintets, an octet and a nonet that the chorus cover. A great deal of good singing is required by the chorus, and they’ve come to the party with enthusiasm.

The Cratchit family is a delight. This is the only time Göeknil Meryem Biner (to give her her full name as listed in the programme ˗ she’s Tom McGrath's wife) appears apart from the Finale. She leads the Cratchit family’s first ensemble number (sung without Bob, who arrives for the next ensemble), and her terrific family, who all have individual bits to sing, and are very busy at the same time with the preparation of the Christmas meal, are terrific. The children are sung by Madi Dow and Sarah Hubbard, two teenagers, along with four younger children: Samuel Kelly (as Peter Cratchit) and Massimo Pezzuto and Ayla Biner-McGrath as the unnamed pair of children. Tiny Tim (Joseph Kelly) completes the family, arriving with Bob for the second number. The music for this group is a delight, being amongst the best in the show.

There are two ‘waifs’ ˗ Sam Meikle, who looks well-fed enough, really (!) and Ozan Biner-McGrath, who happens to look skinny! Their brief cry of ‘Feed me’ is only just audible under a fairly noisy orchestral section as well as the singing of Nathaniel. However, they mostly have to look as though they’re at death’s door, and they do that well.

Finally there’s Grace Hill. She’s part of the children’s chorus (some thirty of them) but she also plays the fiddler in a couple of the early scenes, accompanying the carollers. Confusingly, there are two sets of carollers in our production. Not quite sure why, except that one group in the score is listed as a quartet and the other as a quintet. In fact both of them are quintets in this production for various reasons!

There’s a minimalist set: two windows and a door with a profile of 19th century London across the back reaching to about chest height. Everything else is achieved by lighting (which is very good, as far as I can see from the pit). I was a bit dubious about the lack of scenery at first, but my daughter, after seeing the show, said it looks very effective. Above the door is a clock, which at other times shows the sign, Scrooge and Marley, and also at least one of the ghost’s face ˗ Marley’s, I think, though I haven’t actually been able to see that as yet. I’m not even sure how this is done: it’s obviously some sort of electronic device, but I don’t know what. I’ll have to ask.

Scrooge’s bed is, for some reason, enormous. When it first appeared late in the rehearsals it looked as though it was going to take over the proceedings, but the director worked around it without too much concern. Other than that there’s little else in the way of furniture: a park bench for the drunks, a chaise longue at Fred’s party, and a table and some chairs for the Cratchits.

Christine Douglas has done a great job with the directing. The chorus was worked with extensively to bring out character and detail, so that things are kept alive and lively every time they’re on. They never just ‘stand and sing.’ And in other scenes, such as the two parties, and the Cratchit family meal preparation, there’s a heap of things going on. I’d like to be able to see it all, but unfortunately have only my memories of what I saw during rehearsal to go on. I don’t play during every piece in the show, so I can watch some of it, but there are great chunks that I never see now.

The costumes are wonderful. Considering that there were around eighty people to dress (including the dancers) Brenda Rendall has done an extraordinary job. There’s an authenticity about all the costumes; they fit, they’re colourful, and there’s a lot of detail. Both men and women have wonderful hats: not just top hats, but bowlers and even a pork pie for one of the men. The women have all manner of caps and bonnets. Plus cravats, shawls, aprons: you name it. What a job it must have been pulling all these items together. On top of this there’s a make-up artist who does most of the performers each night, and a hairdresser, who does most of the women’s hairstyles. So it’s a busy, busy production.

The music is played by four keyboardists, rather than an orchestra. We don’t each stick to any one group of instruments all the way through, but get to share things. Two of us play a triangle, for instance (a real one, not an electronic one), and most of us swap wind instruments and strings around. I don’t get to play piano, and I seem to have a lot of oboe, but I share the xylophone and celesta. At one point Sandra Christie is providing thunder while I’m adding in a rowdy wind sound. I’m fortunate that I have a keyboard that can be set up in advance so that it’s literally a press of the button to change a sound, but two of the others have a different model that requires the pressing of three buttons in sequence to get the next sound ˗ similar to what my own electronic piano at home requires. I think it’s probable that they could also have been set up in an easier way, but they’ve chosen to go this route, and it’s working. The third keyboardist, Moriah Osborne, has the same model as me, but she’s using it differently: turning one wheel to get the class of instrument and then another wheel to find the specific one she wants. Apparently she has time to do this. I only have to do it once, when I play one note on timpani (!). I find it a bit of a rush, personally. Ihlara McIndoe is the fourth instrumentalist. 

What of the music itself? It’s quite varied, from near-musical comedy to full-on operatic, and there are some quirky moments that could come from anywhere. A lot of it is very catchy, with syncopated rhythms, and much of it gets used at least more than once, so that the audience isn’t hit with an endless stream of new musical ideas to grasp. It certainly requires a lot of good singers; none of the small roles can easily be taken by people who aren’t up to the mark. We’ve been very fortunate in the cast we’ve got, I think. And our young conductor, Tim Carpenter, has all the energy required to keep the thing moving at a good pace.

Update: I only realised I'd missed out Shona Bennett's name when she made a comment on Facebook about this post. Shona is the choreographer for the show, and had already choreographed the dance pieces that were set in the score when we began production rehearsals. But then Christine George, the director, wanted the dancers included in other scenes, and Shona quietly slotted them in, gave them additional steps where necessary, trained chorus members - on the spot - how to dance in one or two scenes, and in general was an enormous asset to the production. This is apart from her being warm and friendly, full of smiles, and plainly having bundles of energy - and being shorter than I am. I only mention that because not everyone is....and she made the dancers' costumes. Does the woman sleep?
I should also add that Judy Bellingham took the chorus and small role music rehearsals with flair, enthusiasm (I'd come home absolutely whacked from playing for her rehearsals!), and in spite of claiming not to be a conductor, did an admirable job of pretending to be one. John Drummond also had a considerable part to play, early on. (He's the father of the young man, Jonathan, who conducted my own production, Grimhilda! back in 2012.) John took the original score and set it out so that it was playable by the four keyboardists. There are a couple of moments in my part that I wish he'd given to one of other keyboardists (and the same probably applies to the other players), but in general I enjoy what's been allotted to me.
Every time I add something here, you can see just how much additional work has gone into this show, work you're not aware of.

Procrastinating....

Philip Norman

Work on the neverending book, The Disenchanted Wizard, has sludged to a halt again, though we're only inches (yards, metres?) from the finish line. I've been so busy with working on Opera Otago's production of Philip Norman's A Christmas Carol, that my brain is struggling to think about the book. Rehearsals every evening, and afternoons on the weekend as well, plus keyboard rehearsals - three so far, and two more to come - plus practice at home for the bits I can't play properly, plus being at home alone because my wife is in the UK attending to an unwell sister, and I'm having to do all the housework and feed myself. (No biggie, really. I do both of these regularly anyway! Just thought I'd throw that in.)

A note comes up on Gmail notifications regularly, telling me not to procrastinate on the book. But procrastinating is what I'm doing. Of course there's time to work on it; I'm just using all the above as excuses, because even though we're close to the finish line, there are some difficulties I have to deal with, and I'm not a person who's enthusiastic about difficulties.

There's only one way to overcome difficulties in writing, and that's to write. Deb Vanesse says, in her book, What Every Author Should Know: I hate saying this, out of fear of jinxing myself, but I’ve never suffered from writer’s block, which is in part a writer’s term for procrastination, often connected to your fears of vulnerability and failure. Once you call those fears out for what they are, you can write your way through pretty much any stuck point, and the bigger problem may become forging ahead with a project when you should have stopped to assess whether it was heading in the best possible direction.

And in a similar vein, Steven Pressfield, in his book, The War of Art, writes: Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it's the easiest to rationalize. We don't tell ourselves "I'm never going to write my symphony." Instead we say "I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow." [He uses the word 'resistance' to signify all those things that appear to stand in the way of our producing good creative work.]

So there you go. Having been told off by Gmail, by Vanesse and Pressfield, I'll go off and....walk the dog.

Update, later the same day: After going on about procrastinating on the book earlier today, I must have prodded myself into gear, and by late afternoon, I'd done the revision work that was needed. And of course it wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd thought it would be. So Progress!

Somewhat quiet on this particular front

Things have been very quiet on here of late, for a number of reasons. We were away on holiday for a week, and the weekend before that, my daughter and her son moved out of our house - after eight years occupancy of the first floor. Sad to see them go, since my grandson has pretty much grown up here, but they're not far away, and we'll see them fairly regularly, I guess.

In the weeks before that, and again this week, I've been repetiteuring for Opera Otago's production of The Christmas Carol, an operatic version by New Zealand composer, Philip Norman. This has been full-on, with rehearsals every day of the week. I'm also going to be one of four keyboard players during the performances (the original orchestral score has been rearranged for the four of us), so that's another thing that's had to be worked on. Good for my brain and for the fingers, which need to keep working otherwise they stiffen up, but tiring nevertheless.

Just today the Production Manager was looking for a person to work on the sound for the show. I suggested the guy who did the sound for Grimhilda! back in 2012. He was very good, and very helpful. I'd like to say he'd be able to use a Behringer x32 to do the work, but I doubt if that's going to be likely. It'll be some old machine that's been around the theatre scene for a few years, I suspect. The Behringer is a super-modern digital affair and has all the bells and whistles. The photograph below probably doesn't do it justice:

So who was Behringer, you ask? (As I did myself.) His full name was Uli Behringer and he founded his audio equipment company in 1989. Not that long ago in historic terms, but probably centuries in audio terms. His original company has now become of the leaders in the field, marketing in a wide variety of countries. Here's another interesting bit of information (since I know you're keen to learn everything you can from this post). Behringer has perfect pitch; hence the 'ear' on his company's logo. 

There you go!

Where writers go wrong

Last year I read most of a book by Sol Stein, called Solutions for Novelists. I read it rather randomly, skipping back and forth between the chapters, but one chapter in particular struck me enough to make quite a few notes, and so I'm including and edited version of these here, since they're helpful for many writers, I think. They relate mostly to a chapter entitled, Where writers go wrong. I've laid them out here as bullet points, just to keep them a bit more readable.

• Try summarizing the book in one page [that's easier, I'd say, that Blake Snyder's one-sentence approach - Blake Snyder of Save the Cat fame]
• Break the draft down into scenes [Stein recommends doing this before the draft is written, unlike some of the others I've read recently who opt for just writing and then pulling it together. Both methods work. However he also quotes both Malamud and Fowles on page 142/3 who talk about writing the first draft to find out what the novel is about. See comments from them at the end of this post.]
• Then check if the order of the scenes is right for full emotional experience for the reader.
• Stick with one protagonist - two or more means the writer hasn't worked out whose story it is. [Although, that said, there are some books with more than one protagonist that work perfectly well.]

In the rewrite of your draft keep an eye out for: 

• Sentences that are out of order [this also applies to phrases within sentences]
• Authorial asides [I noted one of these in the chapter I was writing at the time in The Mumbersons. Grimhilda! had a number of them because it's part of the style.]
• Adjectives that aren't necessary. [And of course adverbs, which, by the way, are still essential in their place.]
• Things that only the author can know...these have to go if you're focused on your protagonist's story.
• Unimportant. or too early, appearances by minor characters. [Just finished reading UnderMajorDomo Minor, by Patrick de Witt. He ignores this advice by interrupting the main story to write about minor characters in a way that's irrelevant to the main events.]
• Descriptions of the way a piece of dialogue is said [he whispered] are often better before the dialogue.
• Be clear to the reader as to who the protagonist is.
• Didactic stuff that isn't part of the actual story [don't think The Mumbersons or Grimhilda! are guilty of this.]
• Delete words that soften the pace. And cliches - find fresh ways of saying things.
• Too many antagonists? [Note how I originally had trouble with dwarves as well as witches as antagonists in The Mumbersons, until finally one of the two had to go.]
• 'Beats' - those little bits of 'business' that characters do within a dialogue scene. They need to be relevant, and give the scene actual action not just pretend action. [I remember the awful 'business' in the popular Christian apologetics book The Case for Christ where Lee Strobel broke up long conversations with real people, by always having them crossing their legs, or standing up to make coffee.]
• Don't bring in backstory late in the book [Amazingly that's exactly what a novelist who was also supposed to be an editor did - terrible muddle of a book - the book is The Accident, by Chris Pavone.]
• 'Point of view of the person is most affected by what is happening.' In other words it's not necessarily always the POV of the protagonist, though it helps to keep them in focus. In The Mumbersons, Olivia gets some POV too, because she's an identifying character. POV doesn't mean seeing it from their perspective necessarily, but focusing on what's happening to them without interrupting it with another character's POV.
• Avoid cartoonish cliche characters; the sort that often appear in TV series, especially US ones. {Note how there's often the 'funny' character, the geek, the wacky secretary and so on in crime series: they're always unbelievable to me.]
• An antagonist can be given his or her due by the writer seeing both the protagonist and the antagonist as equal antagonists. Interesting thought.
• Pets can humanize a character. [Snyder is strong on this idea: the title of the book Save the Cat applies to the hero doing something that puts him onside with the audience - rescuing a cat, for instance. Even the most unpleasant ‘heroes’ need this kind of moment to make the audience have some empathy with them, and of course antagonists often have animals accompanying them.]
• Be careful with names that have similarities, or use the same initial letter, or even how you feel about a character...though perhaps this isn't so applicable in a kid's book where fun names are more usable. J K Rowling is as good as Dickens when it comes to naming her characters.
• Phone conversations shouldn't be used often.
• Trim down any fat in a tense scene - in terms of detail that's not relevant enough.
• 'We know' - means the reader already knows this and doesn't have to be told again - or rather doesn't want to be told again. This is different to a stage play where audiences have to listen and can miss things, and may need them repeated.
• Be particular about details - the three-wheeled car [in The Mumbersons] can actually have its brand name, for instance. [Not being good with cars, this was something I had to research for that book!]
• Omens are good...
• Characters do the same things too often: he smiled, she shook her head, etc. [In one book I read in the last couple of years, characters kept showing their 'incisors'. Really? This seems to me a difficult thing for them to do.]
• Don't throwaway an important event, such as the finding of a body.
• Confrontations, not discussions.
• If action seems confusing then work out things in sequence - like those picture boards they use in making action movies.
• Make sure the action word is doable...you can't sprint across the average office.
• In a realistic novel don't do melodrama. Keep it sensible to real life. 
• Make sure the readers know who is who...name the characters as you go. Too many books leave the reader in the dark as to who is talking.     

Bernard Malamud notes: First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. D H Lawrence did seven or eight drafts of The Rainbow. The first draft of a book is the most uncertain - where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better. Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.

John Fowles (who wrote The Collector in a month) says: During the revision period I try to keep a sort of discipline. I make myself revise whether I feel like it or not; in some ways, the more disinclined and dyspeptic one feels, the better - one is harsher with oneself. All the best cutting is done when one is sick of writing.  

     

     

Death and Mr Pickwick

I’ve started reading Death and Mr Pickwick, which I’d heard about from the author himself (Stephen Jarvis) some months ago. It’s 800 pages long or so, and it’s proving to be an absorbing but odd novel; novel may not be its best description. It’s like a bunch of stories, handfuls of them, many of them based on fact and then dramatised. It also delves into the underbelly of the Victorian world, where there are many things that Dickens never wrote about ˗ thankfully ˗ or wasn’t able to be because of the climate of the time. Homosexuality seems to be a bit of a theme, though it’s hard to know quite why this is so important; so far, at least. 

Jarvis has a great skill in being able to evoke the world of the people involved, but by ranging so far and wide it becomes harder to keep track of everyone. It helps if you know more about Dickens than the average person, perhaps, and some of the names are familiar, but quite what their connection is to the main story, and to Dickens and Pickwick, is a bit vague. Grimaldi, the great clown, gets a lot of space early in the book, as does his equally famous but very short-lived son, who, according to this book, never got over having to live in his father’s shadow.

There is a story lurking around in the middle of all the stuff, but at the moment it’s like dozens of strands are being drawn together very slowly; you can see why one critic wasn't sure of it as a novel. It’s more like an immense collage, with a kind of overarching theme (who really created Pickwick?, I suppose). 

However, it has the admirable quality of being very readable. So onward and onward. I'm only 17% of the way through so far, according to Kindle, so I have a ways to go, as they say. (I'm also wading slowly through Christina Lamb's Farewell Kabul - which runs to 600 pages or so. Must be the year for long books.)

Carrying on listening

I've had some unexpected opportunities to sit and listen to other people's ongoing stories in the last couple of days, so it's been helpful to be reminded by Lynne Baab's latest book, The Power of Listening, that good listening can be affected by our own anxieties, or our desires to 'solve' problems, or our need to keep moving forward because we're busy - and much more.

One of the advantages of being retired is that time isn't quite so pressured. Whereas lunch times always used to be affected by the need to get back to work, that's no longer the case for me. And evenings aren't such an issue either, because I can work in the daytime and get want I want done then (such as walking the dog, or writing the sequel to my children's book, which is well on its way).

But being under time pressure isn't the only thing that gets in the way of good listening: our anxiety that we can't solve the problem(s) is another issue. And trying to solve the problem may be the last thing we need to be doing. The person may first and foremost just need to be heard. One of the things we learned when doing a course in pastoral supervision is that that someone with a problem may need most of all to talk out their issues. It's the fact of talking, and being heard, that's important, rather than your attempts at problem-solving. And frequently, in the talking out, the problems clarify for the person and some options to dealing with them arise.

Uriah Heep.
Artist: Fred Bernard

Lynne points out in one of her last chapters in the book that we require humility when listening to others. This can be difficult for people who live in an age when self-esteem, and self in general, are the 'important' things. Humility isn't something we moderns are very good at. That sense of putting ourselves aside in order to give someone else room - and doing it without making it a false action (like Uriah Heep at his worst) - isn't always easy for us.

I still haven't read the first half of Lynne's book, but the second half has been more than helpful!

The Bletchley Circle

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog scene in general of late because I've been focusing on writing the first draft of the sequel to Grimhilda! This has been completed (insofar as you can ever say that a first draft is 'completed') and I've now scribbled all over the printed-out version of it, making notes galore, amending, re-writing, fiddling, reconsidering, and generally hacking it to pieces. As you should with a first draft. The beginning and the ending both need thorough rewriting and expanding (now that I have a better idea of how things fit together) but there are some sections between them that are pretty satisfactory. Two lines in the entire draft actually made me laugh out loud when I came back to reading them again. Two lines! That's promising.

So the next job is to get on and do the rewrite. Should be fun.

We watched all three episodes of the series The Bletchley Circle last night because I had to stay up till one am to ring the US about something that couldn't be done any earlier. A very-well crafted series, with meticulous attention to detail of costume and design, and excellent photography.

Anna Maxwell Martin plays the main character, one of four women who'd worked at Bletchley during the war and were now effectively twiddling their thumbs nine years later, not using the gifts that had made them so valuable a decade earlier. I don't find Martin my favourite actress, perhaps because when I saw her in Bleak House as Esther Summerson, she seemed not to have got hold of the character: too lacking in the almost irritating modesty that Esther exhibits, and too little warmth.

Here she's given strong support by Rachael Stirling, Sophie Rundle and Julie Graham. The four re-unite, after a bit of dubiousness, in order to solve a series of murders that have obviously been done by the same man.The police are at a loss, but Martin's character sees links in the locations of the murders, and believes she can predict where the next abduction, murder and rape will take place - at least as near as anyone can - and will hopefully prevent another death.The police pooh-pooh her rather, and her husband thinks she's acting oddly. Certainly she's suddenly out and about a lot more than she's been in a long time.

The plot has a few holes - you want to know who's suddenly looking after the kids when Martin is gallivanting around, and also why she goes hiving off on her own, at night, to a place that's obviously closed down and inhabited by one person. Who she realises is the murderer she's looking for. That peculiarity apart (although it's common enough in suspense stories for the woman to do that daft thing of putting herself in considerable danger in a dark house with a stranger) this was well-worth watching. The other three women are great, and though the men mostly come off looking a bit like twats, the story is absorbing enough to keep us involved throughout.

The series was originally a one-off piece, but there's been a sequel. This was done a couple of years later, and should be worth looking out for. Hopefully it lives up to the standards of the first series.

Consumption

Remember back in the dim, distant past when consumption almost always meant someone had tuberculosis?  If you were in a novel, or a stage play, and were dying of consumption, you were automatically offered an extra dose of romance, because for some reason there was something peculiarly romantic about consumptives: think of Mimi, in La Boheme, or Violetta in La Traviata.  Dostoevsky has several consumptive character in his novels, but Dickens managed to limit himself to just one: Smike, in Nicholas Nickleby.  Thomas Mann goes to opposite extreme, and in The Magic Mountain includes an entire cast of consumptives - admittedly the book is set in a sanatorium.  One of Anne of Green Gables' friends dies of 'the galloping consumption' (as opposed, I suppose, to the dawdling version).

Consumption/tuberculosis continues to fascinate more recent writers and creators: Ingrid Bergman died of consumption in The Bells of St Mary's (isn't that an unnecessary apostrophe there? - shouldn't the title have been the less alliterative, The Bells of St Mary?) as did Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge - at the end of her biggest performance. Fictional consumptives achieve all sorts of last minute heroics.  Even in anime and manga, you'll find a variety of consumptive characters.  Plainly Japan has a bit of a thing about the disease.

But tuberculosis, as it's more generally known these days, is barely visible in the Western world.  Large sanatoriums have been turned into all sorts of non-medical establishments. And those awful outside verandahs have been closed in, hopefully.  It was normal to put TB patients out in the fresh air for their health - even letting them sleep out in the open air (though under the verandah roof).  I suspect more than a few TB patients died of pneumonia rather than TB.

Lungs

While looking through Evernote for references to the word lungs, I came across a couple of quotes from Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens. It's not his best-known novel, and some critics disregard it entirely.  However, the great section in the second half in which the Gordon riots take place is phenomenal reporting.  How Dickens got his facts, and how he built on those, is irrelevant;  this section is amongst the most vivid and violent in the Dickens canon, matching the similar horrors that are written about in A Tale of Two Cities.  

The quote that includes the word lungs is this: Many of those who were banded together to support the religion of their country, even unto death, had never heard a hymn or psalm in all their lives. But these fellows having for the most part strong lungs, and being naturally fond of singing, chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that occurred to them, feeling pretty certain that it would not be detected in the general chorus, and not caring much if it were.

And the next paragraph that I noted when I was reading this has a kind of delightful charm, although it has only a small connection with lungs: It is a familiar expression in describing a great crowd, that a person might have walked upon the people's heads. In this case it was actually done; for a boy who had by some means got among the concourse, and was in imminent danger of suffocation, climbed to the shoulders of a man beside him and walked upon the people's hats and heads into the open street; traversing in his passage the whole length of two staircases and a long gallery.


And having got those out my hair I can focus a little better on the reason I was looking up lungs. I wanted to check what a spirometer was, since they were discussing spirometers at medicaldevicedepot.com.
According to Wikipedia, a spirometer is an apparatus for measuring the volume of air inspired and expired by the lungs. It is a precision differential pressure transducer for the measurements of respiration flow rates. The spirometer records the amount of air and the rate of air that is breathed in and out over a specified period.  

I think those three sentences pretty much say the same thing, but sometimes that's useful if you don't get the hang of it the first time.  I always find it intriguing that, medically, 'inspire' and 'inspired' are used of breathing in, whereas the common use of the words is somewhat different.  We don't think of breathing in when we say we're inspired; at the very least we might think of taking something into ourselves, but it isn't usually breath.  

Ah, the joys of language!

Court scene

Last year I read The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, for the second time.  I'd first read it many years ago, I think when my kids were small, but maybe it was even before they were born.  I remembered finding the last hundred pages terrifically exciting and suspenseful, and though I didn't have quite that rush this time around, there's no doubt that apart from a few passages, this book whips along at a fair pace.  This time around I found the villainous Madame Defarge almost too bad to be true - her motivation for being such a stinker wasn't quite clear to me (though maybe I missed that in my reading).  However, she certainly hovers over the book like a malevolent presence, and it's a great relief when she finally gets her comeuppance.  The book has fewer characters than many of Dickens' books; there aren't those bodies who turn up seemingly irrelevantly in most of his stories.  Here everyone has a job to do, even the minor characters like Roger Cly.  Here's an extract I made note of when I was reading the book (the joys of being able to do this on Kindle!).  It shows the Prosecutor querying Cly in court, and Dickens whizzes through the question and answers at a great rate by leaving out everything extraneous.  Nevertheless we still learn a great deal from what is written:
 
Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn't precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody's. Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors' prison? Didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prison?--Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked downstairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No. Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular government pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism? None whatever. The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of charity--never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner's pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn't bear it, and had given information. He had never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was _his_ only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him.

The drawing above, from an early edition of Tale of Two Cities, shows Roger Cly's funeral.  The crowd is accompanied by the body snatcher, Jerry Cruncher.   

The books I didn't finish in 2012

I discovered this morning that I'd read - and finished - 57 books in 2012.  That was a surprise...I thought it was only around forty.  But on top of this were the books I started and didn't finish.  There were probably a lot of these, but the ones I made quite a deal of headway with before abandoning them are the following:

Moby Dick again.  Enjoyed a good deal of what I read, but got bogged down when Melville started using the pseudo-Shakespearian style, and then listing all the information about whales that he could find.  Ahab seemed a false character too, which didn't help.  (I actually got further with this book the first time I tried to read it.)

Started Lilith (by George MacDonald) but didn't get far into it: very obscure as to what it’s saying amidst the fantasy.

Read about half of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino.  Interesting, but it seems almost like a collection of short stories strung together with a separate narrative, and not really going anywhere much.  It was one of those books someone raved over somewhere. 

Read a chunk of a biography called Kiri (te Kanawa) – only read the bits that related to London Opera Centre, and some of what followed. 

Began Little Dorrit and got quite a way through, but bogged down a bit; it’s very slow, and the characters aren’t as great as in many of Dickens’ other books.  Thought I might finish it, but it's not calling out very loudly to me. 

Read around half of Frank Baum, Creator of Oz by Katherine M Rogers.  Interesting and detailed, but for some reason it didn't grab me enough to finish it.

Read about half of Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton.  Good, but it all seemed a bit dated, somehow, and not enticing enough to keep on reading when I’ve got plenty of other books on my plate.

Read about half of  The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare by Robert Winder.  An attempt to write about Shakespeare and his crew coming together to write the last, missing, historical play, but the writing isn’t strong enough, and it’s all a bit overdone, and longwinded. Sorry, Mr Winder.