Last week, Scotland’s voters chose to keep the country as part of the United Kingdom. Rather than make a political post, I’ve decided to take advantage of this country’s moment in the world spotlight to present a few uniquely Scottish words to you. So unique, in fact, that there is no direct English equivalent.
I have a strange relationship with the Scots tongue. I don’t naturally speak the dialect, just standard English. Yet if I’m reading a poem written in Scots, I can understand it slowly, and if someone drops a word here or there in a conversation, I’ll be able to recognise it first time.
Of the three words below, the top two are in common usage, but I’ve yet to hear the third in the wild.
Dreich, adjective. A one-syllable word to describe damp and drizzlyweather. The first four letters are pronounced dree, while the last two take the slightly guttural sound found in the name Bach. The closest single-word English equivalents would be dull or miserable, but these could easily be applied to a person or an event, whereas dreich is exclusively for weather. The word sometimes makes it into local BBC weather reports.
Skite, verb. Related to skating but nothing to do with that online phone service. To skite is to skim or slide along a surface, usually by accident. It can be applied to a person or an object. In English, you could say slip, but that implies the person or object has fallen over, whereas someone who skites might remain standing.
Tartle, noun. This is where a person hesitates while introducing someone because they’ve forgotten the other party’s name. Most sources have this down as a verb, yet the example sentence usually given is, “Pardon my tartle.” In that context, it appears it be used as a noun, although I welcome any corrections.
I’m pleased to report that I’ve been given the role of Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in Dundee. As well as motivating members, I’m required to arrange meet-ups and participate in the contest. After sending my first bulletin on Friday, we’ve already attracted several new members, and there’s always room for more.
I’m equally pleased to brag that I’ve been accepted onto the MLitt Creating Writing module at the University of Dundee, where The Big Music author Prof. Kirsty Gunn and poet Dr. Jim Stewart will help me to improve my work. I matriculated on Friday and I wrote the first draft of this post on campus while showing off my new student card.
The two tasks together amount to an awful lot of writing work, but they also have a much less obvious connection.
The very first time I matriculated was in 2002 at the University of The West of Scotland, formerly the University of Paisley. During the few days I’d been in town, I quickly became aware of a phenomenon I’d never experienced at home. The people here thought nothing of striking up a conversation with strangers in bus stops, takeaways and even in the street.
That’s how I met Billy. I was leaning on the statue at the entrance sorting out the bundle of papers. He might have asked the time, he might have asked for directions, I really can’t remember. But after a little conversation, he suggested we visit the student union bar. I readily agreed.
As we made the short walk, I told him about my tiring morning. A member of staff had told me dismissively that the university possessed no record I was coming, so I’d wasted a lot of time making phone calls and tracking down documents and that I was indeed supposed to be there.
We passed my bank on the way. I then realised I’d forgotten to pick up my student loan cheque from the university. In the excitement of finding my documents, I’d walked straight out of the door past the finance table.
I stopped to mull over the choices: go back and collect it then, or leave it until the afternoon. This cheque would be the only money I would receive during the first term, so I elected to turn back, telling my new friend just to go on and I’d meet him at the bar. I don’t recall being away very long, but he wasn’t there by the time I arrived. In fact, I never saw him again.
I’d turned 18, completed my final year of school and moved away from home. Going to university marked the start of an independent life for me, so I sometimes wonder how differently it could have been if only I’d left the cheque until the afternoon. Would making the opposite decision have meant Billy and I becoming good friends? Might I have fallen in with a different crowd of people?
And it’s this type of question that I plan to explore in my NaNoWriMo novel, although on a larger scale. Namely, What if the petrol engine hadn’t been invented until 1999? The What if? device is a powerful one in fiction. What if the Germans had won World War 2? What if Charles Babbage had completed his Difference Engine? What if an asteroid hadn’t wiped out the dinosaurs?
I know where I’m going with the start of the book, and I’ve a clear idea how it finishes. It’s just the 49.000 words in between I need to find. To do this, I plan to adopt the same What if? device. I’ll write down the theme on an A1 sheet of paper, and all the words associated with it. For each one, I’ll then ask But what if? and combine it with a little historical research to fill the gaps.
Drawing charts or creating physical artefacts are not my usual method of planning, although for my 2012 piece, I built a model of one of the settings to keep its description consistent. I’m itching to start, but the rules don’t allow you to write the actual story until 1 November, so it’s one of the few things I can do right now.
Many authors find it difficult to name characters. It’s not just a case of finding a name you haven’t used before; it has to be consistent with the person’s age, region, class, &c.
My names normally come very quickly, but in my novel The Government Artist, it took weeks to find the right moniker. The main character is a man born in 1943 who could potentially have gone to Oxford University. His name became Malcolm St Clement, which has a certain easy rhythm and suggests he’s from a fairly well-off family. But what about the names given by peers rather than parents?
In the TV series NCIS, Dr Donald Mallard is universally known as Ducky, an affectionate term that plays on his first and last names. By contrast, Agent Gibbs is the boss, and addressed only by his last name as a mark of respect. The only exception is Ducky, who is allowed to say Jethro. It implies the two have a relationship that predates Gibbs’s appointment, and perhaps his tolerance of being addressed so informally is a mark of his own respect to Ducky.
It can also speak volumes about a character whose nickname is not used, at least not to his or her face. In another of my books, Fifty Million Nicker, Josh “Speedy” Rush works in an office where affectionate titles are given to everyone. However, his colleague calls himself Pressure Pete as he’s proud of his harsh sales tactics. Nobody else calls him this, preferring to use names that range from Pete the Pain to Pete the Prick. One of their bosses is also unkindly known as Tart, taken from her first name Flanella.
In a few cases, the nickname can say more about the person who bestowed it than the recipient. I have a real-life example from people I knew a few years ago, so I’ll have to change the actual names used. Person 1 was called Callum, but Person 2 had only just met him and struggled to remember his name. One day, P2 accidentally called him Logan. Even though this was an isolated mistake and he finally learnt Callum’s correct name, P2 continued to nickname him Logan, trying to make it catch on. He persisted for three years, and nobody else ever used it.
If there is one name I should use more often, it’s Jeffrey Archer. I don’t know exactly why, but last week’s post gained twice as many views as normal. Do keep it up.
Firstly, let’s move some issues out of the way. There are many people who don’t like Jeffrey Archer, either as a person or as a novelist. But he is a very popular author, with at least 250 million books sold worldwide, and his advice regarding editing is faultless.
He’s stated in the past that he likes to redraft his work up to 14 times, and he usually does so in longhand. I wondered what would happen if I subjected my own words to the Archer treatment. To do this, I needed a passage that had never been edited, and I found one in notes from an old writing class. I’ll label that passage Revision Zero. The prompt was a photograph of a baby in a sidecar.
I wanted that bike, that particular one, the shiny black Yamaha, with the sidecar. You rarely see sidecars these days, so there was only one place that could help me with that, but it was worth the trip. Six months ago, I was driving in the countryside and I had my son with me. As we were finally picking up speed, I swerved to avoid a pothole and the nearside wheel hit a deep ditch. We both went flying into a field and only missed the fence by a few inches. We were lucky we didn’t suffer bad injuries, but it was the first accident I’d had in thirty years of driving. So with this new bike, the identical one, I go up and down that road with him again as often as I can, being careful at that part. I’m trying my hardest to block it out. The more I do it, the more I drive that route, the more it never happened.
For each redraft, I copied out the passage from start to finish into my notebook (pictured), making corrections as I went along.
My handwritten drafts
This was an unusual and quite time-consuming method for me, as I generally make only first drafts in the notepad then copy my work into a computer. Often I simply type the first draft. Let’s see how this passage has changed by Revision 3.
You rarely see motorcycles with sidecars these days, so when I needed a new machine, only one place could help me out. I ordered a model as close as possible to my old one: a black two-litre Yamaha. 3 months previously, I’d been riding in the countryside with my son beside me. When we reached the speed limit, we hit a pothole. It sent us flying into a field, & we came away with a few injuries. The worst part was having the first blot on a 20-year record of safe driving. No matter how much I explain this to my wife, she won’t let my son near the new bike. Instead, I pack the sidecar with the equivalent of his weight & travel along that same road as often as possible. Every time I do, I make sure I’m travelling at the same speed but swerve to avoid the pothole just as I should’ve done on the day of the accident. I’m trying my hardest to reduce its impact statistically & mentally. If I make this journey safely another 99 times, it means I’ve only had an accident on 1% of them; 999 journeys & that decreases to 0.1% & so on. Eventually, I want to be able to ride up that road without thinking of the accident. The more I do this, the more it never happened.
Revision Zero was written in May, and all subsequent revisions were made in August, during which time I hadn’t thought about the piece.
Already there are improvements. I’ve expanded on his inner conflict between his want to be a perfect driver and the accident that overshadows this.
The introduction of his wife creates a second conflict, this time over whether his son is allowed to ride with him. That conflict isn’t explored quite so much, but its outcome is clear. Perhaps the character is too caught up in his inner conflict to care much about the external one? He might even be in denial about it, which seems consistent with his mindset.
Now let’s explore Revision 6.
You rarely see motorcycles with sidecars these days, but I wanted exactly the same model as my wrecked one. Only one company could help me out, and even then, I had to make do with an approximate match. Three months previously, I’d been riding in the countryside with my son beside me. When we reached the speed limit, we hit a pothole. It sent us flying into a field. We were lucky to escape with few injuries, but the bike was a write-off. What hurts more was the stain on my clean 20-year driving record, which meant my wife wouldn’t let my son near the new machine. Instead, I pack the sidecar with the equivalent of his weight & travel that same road as often as possible. Every time I do, I make sure I’m going exactly the same speed, but I swerve to avoid the pothole just as I should’ve done on the day of the accident. I’m trying my hardest to reduce its impact by statistically & mentally. When I make this journey 99 times, it means I’ll only have crashed on 1% of these trips. When I make 999, that reduces to 0.1%, & so forth. Eventually, I want to be able to ride up that road without thinking about the accident whatsoever. The more I do this, the more it never happened.
I was initially aiming for 14 revisions. By the time I reached that point, however, I began to feel I would be revising for its own sake when the point of the exercise was to make only necessary improvements.
I finished Revision 6 a few days ago. Plot-wise, it doesn’t differ terribly from Revision 3, but the sentence structures do. Looking at it today, I would only change the ampersands into proper words and make minor alterations to some of the sentences.
And that’s one of the key techniques for revision: leave it a few days. Many writers are keen to submit their work as soon as it’s rewritten, but it’s a good idea to leave it for a day or two and revisit it. Archer might revise his work 14 times, but not at one sitting.
The rewriting process will help to tighten up any first draft, and you’ll probably find errors you didn’t realise were there. A good way of checking the punctuation and grammar is to read the paragraphs in reverse order so you don’t follow the story. The very best way of picking up all kinds of mistakes is to ask someone else to read it. A professional proofreader is best, but even a friend’s insight can be invaluable, and less expensive.
After all, a publisher or an agent needs to be hooked from page 1, and if the first thing they notice is careless writing, that piece will go straight to the rejection pile. On the other hand, a little revision now might set you on the road to selling 250 million of your own books.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to see a special screening of Local Hero. It’s an excellent film, and if you have the opportunity, you should see it.
The director Bill Forsyth was brought in at the end to hold a question-and-answer session with the audience. He mentioned at the beginning that he hadn’t seen the film in years, and an audience member asked why this was. He answered that he wasn’t ashamed of his work, simply that he wasn’t interested in looking back, and questioned whether – for example – a writer would be interested in rereading their old stories.
Contrary to the director’s opinion, my answer is a definite yes. I openly admit that being a writer wasn’t a childhood dream, and I therefore don’t have notepad upon notepad of embarrassing teenage musings. Rather, I wrote my first fiction in late 2010, just before I turned 27, and looking back enables me to keep a weather eye on how I’ve improved.
Even if I come across an old piece that I find jarring, I know I only need to rewrite it, or in extreme cases, deconstruct it, to bring it up to my current standards.
A prime example of such a jarring piece is one of the first poems I wrote, called The Cooler, a short verse about a character’s self-imprisonment. Looking at it now, it needs to be longer to fully convey the situation, as it’s currently unclear, and the clumsy language needs to be trimmed, eg, “It stays cold all night like a fridge.” Now I’ve looked back at it, I can think about these issues and improve the work.
In my next entry, I intend to cover the issue of rewriting in a more in-depth fashion.
I mentioned I’ve been writing fiction for less than four years, but I was a blogger long before that, discussing the issues on my mind at that moment, much as I do here. That writing is a little embarrassing, but it’s only by looking back that I can see how much I’ve moved on. Here’s a typical entry from almost exactly ten years ago.
There are many writers who started later in life, and I found out recently that John Grisham is one of them. He didn’t write his first novel until he was in his 30s, and didn’t give up his work as a lawyer until his second was published.
Last year, I joined a Life Writing class at the University of Dundee. One week, the tutor asked us to make mood boards to represent the themes of our writing. I didn’t look forward to this at all. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, I’m not naturally gifted in visual expression.
But having consulted an artist for advice, I acquired materials from a nearby recycling plant, and pieces gradually fell into place. This task led to a short exhibition at the University where most of the class displayed their boards, with explanatory text and a personal story alongside each one.
In the mood
My mood board came to be titled Bubble Memory, constructed of a 35mm slide holder with buttons and other found materials in each pocket. The photograph shows how it was displayed in the exhibition, which closed on Friday of last week, although we are in talks to extend it. Despite my initial dread, I was pleased with the all-round results.
This is not the first time I’ve experimented with alternative formats. Text-based artist Gerry O’Brien was also a member of the Life Writing class, and submitted a piece of homework on a thumb drive. It contained a PowerPoint presentation that told the story of meeting a man from Honduras in text, interspersed with photographs. The presentation runs automatically at a slow savoury pace, allowing the viewer to absorb every detail.
Inspired by this, another class member created a similar project, speaking about the dolls she makes and collects. And inspired by both their achievements, I converted an existing poem of mine into the format, but with no pictures and no audio. The text is displayed to the reader at approximately the speed I would speak it, but there is freedom on their part to imagine the emphasis and inflections.
I started experimenting with formats a couple of years ago when I took part in the Sketchbook Project at Brooklyn Art Library. I broke down one of my short stories into fragments of one or two sentences, then converted each fragment to a QR code. This is a square barcode that can be read by many mobile devices. When it’s scanned, the device shows the fragment of text.
I then glued each of these codes into the sketchbook in the right order to tell the story, and sent it back to the Library. It was then scanned and placed online, while the original sketchbook was taken on a tour around America. This is the finished sketchbook. The following year, I submitted an apology for the artwork in that first book.
I don’t think I will ever move completely away from text on paper, but the occasional piece in another format or another medium can engage the reader in a different way. I’ll leave you with the story of the world’s first hypertext novels, a form that would be challenging to reproduce on paper.
At the end of June, I ordered a set of 500 business cards. I realised I needed a quick way of letting people know how they could reach me if the situation arose. I could write down my details but it’s less memorable, and often less readable, than a proper card.
The card in question
It contains my phone number, e-mail address, Web address, and Twitter handle; the former is censored in the photograph as it’s a personal number. I chose not to include a, “job title,” such as writer, poet, blogger, &c, as I didn’t want to make people feel as though they could only contact me in connection with these skills. Instead, the general sense of what I do is conveyed by the books in the background.
I bought the cards from Vistaprint, who threw in a metal holder free of charge, although there are more expensive services such as Moo.com. Just a couple of weeks later, I did indeed need one to tell a fellow blogger about this page. I currently earn very little money from writing, but I felt like a professional as I handed it over.
Over the last three weeks, I’ve received two similar e-mails from two completely different publishers. They were both rejections, but each invited me to submit another piece for their respective next issues.
The first of these was a bulk message, but sent only to selected writers. This group invite experimental and unclassifiable work, so while I’m particularly pleased they liked what they saw, I’m unsure if I’ll have anything else quite so nonconformist. The other place sent a personal thanks, and as it’s more mainstream, it shouldn’t be too difficult to resubmit.
I’m reminded of when I submitted one of my novels to a publisher. They liked the first three chapters enough to ask for the rest of it. They ultimately turned me down as they felt the plot didn’t place the character in enough peril. But they did it in such a constructive manner that I felt I could raise my game and resubmit it, even when I thought it couldn’t be improved upon.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of waiting before a second chance comes along, although James Jones didn’t live to see his reprieve. In 1951, he fought to keep the swearing and gay content in his novel From Here to Eternity, but his publishers wouldn’t allow it. By 2011, times and attitudes had changed, and the uncensored book was finally made available.
Just before I begin, a couple of an announcements for people in and around Dundee. Hotchpotch, the writers’ open-mike, is next Monday, 4 August between 7pm and 9pm at The Burgh in Commercial Street. I’m afraid I can’t make that meeting, but there’s a similar event for poets between 12pm and 4pm in Baxter Park on Sunday 10 August, to which I plan to go.
In an interview with the BBC, literary agent Johnny Geller stated that in a survey of self-published authors, 75% of those asked said it was a hobby and that he was interested in the other 25%. I think that’s a fair comment from an agent, as he needs his authors to make a full-time commitment. But I wonder how many of the other 75% would be willing to turn that hobby into a career if they were offered the right publishing deal? It can be a big step to give up the fabled day-job.
For me, it’s a trade-off between a permanent office job with a regular income versus handing in my notice and freeing up those 37 hours per week to write. There would need to be a compelling offer to give it up because if a book deal didn’t materialise, the organisation isn’t replacing lost workers so I would need to look elsewhere for another regular income.
The other consideration is how long to continue trying before finding another regular income. Six months? Two years? Until I feel as though I’m suffering for my art?
It is possible to combine the two. Oscar Wilde and Philip Larkin both worked other jobs throughout their writing careers, and I know an author who is currently employed by a major bookstore chain. The next time I have the opportunity, I’ll ask him whether he considers it a help or hindrance.
Hey hey, I wanna be a rock, er, film star
Finally, I took part in a low-budget film on Saturday as an extra. It’s called Shooting Clerks, about the making of the 1994 Kevin Smith movie Clerks. We were asked to dress in fashions of the period, so I wore a T-shirt, jeans, and a backwards baseball cap. By good fortune, I was meant to attend an open-air Grease singalong later that day. It was cancelled due to the weather, but I could have become John Travolta simply by removing my headgear.
There was no script available to have a nosy through so I don’t know too many specifics. We were simply given instructions when to laugh and applaud as if we were at a film premiere. But keep an eye out around its scheduled release date of 13 April 2015.
I don’t think Rebecca Woodhead reads this blog, but in August’s Writing Magazine, she covers the subject of extroverts and introverts, as I did in a previous entry. But she takes it one step further, adding a middle category of ambivert.
My research shows this is not a horrendous neologism – in fact the term was invented in the 1920s – but I still hadn’t hitherto heard about this third way. It also turned up a wonderful WordPress post that goes into more depth about the subject than I will.
In the article, Woodhead argues that writers should aspire to be ambiverted and that few fall into the extrovert category. Yet in my experience, I’ve found that many already are extroverts; indeed I can think of a number who actively invite audience questions, or can’t wait to offer their views on a hot topic.
I can identify with the needs of an ambivert or introvert, as I’m quite fond of solitude. This is generally because I’m tackling a task that requires it, such as typing, editing, or reading – the very activities that make me a writer. But often, I’d much rather be reading my work out on stage, or answering audience questions, or negotiating with publishers.
Quite independently of the -vert spectrum, but not unrelated to it, I’ve been mulling over the notion of right- and left-brained people. It seems this theory is now outdated, as research shows that both halves of the brain generally work in tandem. Yet I still think my ‘dominant side’ has shifted at some point over the four years I’ve been writing fiction.
I have a BSc Music Technology degree because when I left school, I wanted to be in the music business or the radio industry. I used to delight in recording the perfect sound level, learning MIDI Commands, or editing video footage. In other words: what used to be termed left-brained activities. These days, I’m more inclined towards my fiction, speech-based radio stations and podcasts, and appreciating others’ artistic expressions. These were considered right-brained activities.
Perhaps I’ve always been at least partly right-brained but I hadn’t unlocked it until I discovered fiction. Alternatively, it’s maybe because I’ve had more success with writing, or at least more external validation, that I’m now subconsciously inclined towards chasing these rewards.
That external validation is a classic extrovert trait, and why I still place myself in that camp.
Gavin Cameron 