Are You Made of the Write Stuff?

Or How to let people know you’re a real writer By Derek Duggan

While it’s obvious that a big part of being a writer is actually doing the writing, there are several other things that the modern day author needs to become. A salesman, for one. An entrepreneur, for another. And a lot has been written about these things. However, one thing that is often ignored is this simple question – How pretentious do you actually need to be?

It may seem abhorrent, but being pretentious is a vital part of being an author. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the preserve of the high end literary set. No – these days it is expected of even the most ordinary of writers. Even if you’ve just written a book about army people going around doing shooting and stuff, you will still be expected to be such a pretentious twat that you will do interviews on the telly wearing a balaclava. And that’s a fact.

But you don’t need to jump to this level of bellendedness straightaway. It’s very difficult to carry this kind of thing off from a standing start, so ease yourself into it. Start simply.

Step one is to listen exclusively to BBC Radio 4. Even Gardeners Question Time. This will teach you the vernacular. After a month or so of solid listening you’ll be ready to begin.

The first thing you can do is to stop calling yourself a writer. If you want to be taken seriously you must always refer to yourself as a wordsmith. If you introduce yourself to people thus you can rest assured that they will remember you.

Next, you’ll need to let people know how clever you are without actually saying anything. This seems tricky, but actually it’s very simple. Merely buy a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce and carry it around with you everywhere. Make sure you crease it up a bit and dog ear the pages so it looks like you’ve actually read it and then just leave it on the table when you go to meet friends for coffee. Don’t worry; you won’t have to actually read it. Nobody will ever question you about it or want to discuss it because despite selling millions of copies worldwide the only person who’s ever actually read it is Mrs Joyce and the chances of her showing up to have coffee with you is pretty slim. Once you’ve become comfortable with the book you can learn off a couple of random quotes from it and slip these into conversation. For example, if someone tells you they’re going on holiday to Ibiza or something, why not say – Won’t that be nice? Or, as Joyce might have said - The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. This will make your coffee partner realize that you are indeed a right wordsmith.

After this you might want to have a shot at doing some literary jokes. Perhaps take some friends to the Zoo. When you get to the bear enclosure indicate one of the animals with the corner of your copy of Ulysses and say – I think that one is a Samuel Beckett bear. Your friends may look at you quizzically. Then say – Yes, you can tell because of the big paws! Guaranteed hilarity will ensue and everyone will marvel at how bloody brainy you are.

The next thing you might think about is wearing a hat or some roundy glasses or if you want to go the whole hog, both. Nothing says I’m a brilliant writer like wearing a Panama hat while it’s pissing down in Croydon. And would anyone have gone to see Waiting for Godot if the author responsible hadn’t been an ardent roundy glasses wearer? I think not.

Next you’ll have to start producing something yourself. As a wordsmith you will be used to getting inside the heads of your characters, so use this skill to your advantage and think your way into the head of a teenage girl so you can write some horrendous poetry. Once you’ve done this you’ll be able to whip out your notebook at social gatherings and subject strangers and friends alike to an impromptu recital of your latest poem – Polite Smiles. You will be amazed at how well people will relate to your theme.

Once you’ve mastered this the sky’s the limit. You really can do what you want. George Orwell got so good at it that he pretended to be a tramp for a couple of years. Ernest Hemingway was such a master that he regularly got drunk, punched people in the face and joined in random wars. And John Irving talked about how important he was endlessly.

So what are you waiting for? Dress up like Doctor Who and get out there.

Glad I could help.

Things People Get Wrong Every Day

Number 12: The Book is always better than the film, by Derek Duggan

So, you know how it is – you’re at a party listening to someone who is justifying your misanthropy. Your fake smile is hurting your teeth. Your partner said she was just going to the bathroom for a moment, but that was half an hour ago. You haven’t said a single word in all that time, but your new best bud hasn’t noticed. You imagine being able to open your mouth wide enough to just lean forward and swallow them whole and the tremendous pleasure you’d take in shitting them out the following morning. Somewhere along the line they’ve gleaned you’re a writer and they’ve been telling you all about the sort of book you should be writing and how they only read quality stuff like Danielle Steel or Jackie Collins and then, out of the blue they’ll say – Books are always way better than films. They’ll back this up by telling you how the film of The DaVinci Code wasn’t a patch on the book without ever considering that while the film was so bad it could only have been made worse if Jeremy Clarkson had been in it, it was certainly no worse than the scuttering pile of arse gravy of a book it was based on. Eventually you just think Fuck this and kick them in the banjos/flange before making your excuses and leaving.

There are so many cases where the film is at worst on a par with the book it’s based on and in several cases vastly better. This year, for example, sees the big screen release of Noah. Seriously, Noah, for fuck sake. (The tag line is – I’m the father of a soaking son and the husband of a drenched wife and I will have my big boat full of animals in this life or the next!). Now, no matter how bad that film is - and I’d rather let Christopher Dean do a triple axle spin thing on my knackers than see it - it will still be better than the book it’s based on – Genesis (which is about how God made Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and stuff).

And what about The Hunger Games? The films manage to skirt over some of the frankly staggeringly awful plot holes in the book (although not the biggest one about the selection process – please see prior rant in a previous issue) and it had that fantastic laugh out loud moment when all those people watching the screens did the really corny salute thing. Add this to the fact that despite the film being a whopping 142 minutes long, it’s still a lot quicker than having to sit down and actually wade through the books.

Next year we are to be treated to the big screen version of Fifty Shades of Grey. I struggle to imagine a way in which the film could be any worse than the book. Again, possibly if Jeremy Clarkson was cast as Grey - Do it to me, do it to me like you’re shooting a badger while setting fire to a gypsy camp.

Sometimes you can see a film that is so tremendously bad and yet inexplicably popular that you think the book must have been very good and they’ve just made an orangutan’s anus of the film. But don’t be tricked. This sort of thinking can lead you to do terrible things like reading Twilight, or Eragon. These are perfect examples of instances where the reader’s imagination is so strong that they actually imagine the book they’re reading isn’t cock cheese.

There are times where, although the book and the film are different in many ways, the director has managed to capture the atmosphere of the book so successfully that you don’t notice the changes. Lasse Halstrom did a superb job of making his 2000 film Chocolat exactly as boring as the book it was based on by Joanne Harris.

Of course, there are many books where both the book and the movie are good, even if in some cases they’re quite different. A case in point is Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was filmed as Bladerunner. One of the main reasons I wanted to mention this particular writer here is so I could tell you that in all truthfulness I am a massive Dick fan. The movie doesn’t stick strictly to the book, but it’s equally successful. And this is also the case with Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes. I’m also quite a big Boulles fan. Between Dick and Boulle my weekends are always exciting and I can often be seen with a Dick in one hand and, well, you get the idea with that one.

So, to sum up, what are the main ways in which many films are better than books?

1. They cut out all the shit bits (although sometimes leave lots of shit bits in – all camping stuff in Harry Potter for example).

2. They’re not as long – all descriptions of each individual fucking rock that Frodo and the gang passed on the way to Mordor have been thankfully left out of the 150 hour movie, for instance.

3. Some films of books have Liv Tyler in them whereas no books actually feature her.

I hope that clears up any misunderstandings.

Glad I could help.

Bill Bryson and Ben Hatch: Bringing Down the Curtain on the 8th Chorleywood Lit Fest

by Catriona Troth

There were so many events I would have liked to have attended at this year’s Chorleywood Lit Fest.  Ranulph Fiennes, David Suchet, Anne de Courcy... I was particularly disappointed to miss Kate Adie talking about her new books, Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War I.  But that night I was having dinner with my Triskele colleagues, on the eve of our own appearance on the Festival’s Fringe – and hey, an author’s got to do what an author’s got to do.

Once our own event was safely behind us, though, I was delighted to be able to snag tickets for the last two events of the Festival – Ben Hatch talking about his travelogue, The Road to Rouen and Bill Bryson talking about his latest book, One Summer: America 1927.

BEN HATCH

By coincidence, Ben Hatch had just completed JJ Marsh’s 60 Second Interview for Words with Jam (the second fastest ever respondent!). So I’ll confine myself to saying that he is every bit as funny in person as his books would suggest, and to sharing a handful of Ben’s best travel tips:

The secret of packing a car:

“You have to have all your suitcases identical sizes so they are interchangeable. They have to be squishy – and different colours so you can tell which one is which so you don’t end up inside the hotel with no toothbrush and no pants.”

The definitive argument against bringing too many shoes:

“Because my wife brought so many pairs of shoes, the children couldn’t bring many toys, and that meant they made toys out of ‘found objects’. At one point my daughter started treated her cardigan as a doll.  The cardigan was called Ella and she had to sit in the high chair and ride in the push chair, even if it meant our youngest had to walk.  The low point was at the Wedgewood Visitors’ Centre, when we had a fork out £5 for some clay so Ella could press a shape into it.  It’s one thing to be bossed  around by a four year old, but being bossed around by a four year old’s cardigan was too much. And all because my wife brought too many shoes.”

France or Italy?

“Italy, definitely, because of the way they deal with children.  In France, children are expected to behave like small adults.  We were shushed everywhere.  We were shushed in a museum where the only other person in the whole building was the security guard.  We were shushed by a homeless person on the street! But in Italy they let children be children. They can’t do enough for them.”

So what next for the Hatch family?  Ben is hoping to get a book deal so he can write up this summer’s trip to Italy, and he is in talks with a film company about a film of his first book, Are We Nearly There Yet?

And what about future trips? “I’d like to drive coast to coast across America.  Or maybe the trans-Canada Highway.  Or South Africa. But I guess that will have to wait until the children are a little older.”

BILL BRYSON

I have been a fan of Bill Bryson’s ever since I read the opening chapter of Notes from a Small Island.  As it happens, he came to England from Iowa the same year as I returned from Canada – and his description of the culture shock of arriving in Britain from North America in the 70s brought back floods of memories. (No central heating, pervasive damp, one bar electric fires that smelled of dust and burnt your calves while leaving the rest of you freezing, candlewick bedspreads and half-day closing...) Clearly he was a kindred spirit.

The other reason I was looking forward to the evening was that – as she reminded me – 1927 was the year my mother was born.  “He’s billed it as the year of crooks, murderers and heroes. I want to know which one I am,” she told me.

With characteristic self-deprecation, Bill begins by telling us the story of the only time he has been recognised in the street his own country – only to find it was not a fan, but one of his son’s room-mates.

He then shared some of his favourites from his lifelong collection of unfortunate headlines and bizarre typos that began when, as a baffled American trying to get to grips with the vagaries of British English, he was faced with an article about declining seafood stocks in Cornwall in which every instance of the word ‘crustascean’ had been replaced with the words Crewe Station. This could probably only be topped by the over-zealous political correctness that changed as sentence about ‘Massachusetts accounts back in the black’ to ‘Massachusetts accounts back in the African American.’

Eventually, he is induced, somewhat reluctantly, to talk about his new book. (“When I read a new book, I don’t want to be told about all the best bits beforehand,” he protests.)

He began the book with the coincidence of two events – Charles Lindbergh flying the Atlantic and Babe Ruth, right at the end of his career, hitting 60 home runs in one season for the New York Yankees. He planned to write two parallel biographies that would intersect in the summer of 1927.  But when he began to research the book, he discovered an extraordinary confluence of event in that one summer.  It was the year that the Jazz Singer came out, the year of Al Capone’s downfall and the end of prohibition. The year of the Mississippi Flood and of a now-forgotten school massacre that eclipses Columbine or Sandy Hook.  And so the book changed.

True to his promise not to give too much away, he reads only one extract from the book, about Lindbergh’s landing in Paris at the end of his trans-Atlantic flight. If we think the cult of celebrity began with Beatles-mania in the 1960s, we need to think again. As Bryson vividly demonstrates, when Lindbergh left the coast of Newfoundland and disappeared from contact, the whole world held its breath.  When he reappeared over Ireland and it became clear that he would make it to Paris, crowds began to gather at Le Bourget airport. They stopped the traffic.  They swamped the runway.  They damaged Lindbergh’s plane with the sheer pressure of their bodies and in their enthusiasm, violently assaulted an innocent American bystander who was mistaken for their hero. In comparison, Beliebers are models of decorum and restraint.

But Bryson will not be pinned down.  For the rest of his talk, he tells stories that are drawn from across his range of books – from exactly why the only way he will now be killed by a light aircraft is if one falls on him from the sky, to the best advice on how to avoid bear attacks.

Bryson has now lived in Britain for most of the last forty years.  What, he is asked, does he like best about the British?

“Your humour,” he answers, without hesitation. “When we moved back to the States for a few years, this was what we missed most.  Just the little jokes you make out of everyday life. I found myself making those kind of jokes myself and they would fall completely flat. There was this one time when a neighbour’s tree came down in the night.  I got up to find him sawing it up and loading the pieces onto his car.  It was kind of a bushy tree and bits were hanging down. ‘I see you’re camouflaging your car,’ I said.  He looked really worried. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘The tree fell down.’”

And what does he like least? He hesitates – clearly reluctant to offend.  Our tendency to complain and the lack of can-do attitude in officialdom, he says at last. His years as Chairman of the Campaign for Rural England have left a few scars.

His favourite place to walk in the UK?  The Yorkshire Dales.  But the British countryside overall is something he is passionate about.  “The most intensively used land imaginable.  You’ve farmed it, mined it, built on it, driven over it.  And yet so much of it is still spectacularly beautiful. That’s an extraordinary achievement and something you should be really proud of.”

The Chorleywood Literary Festival is indeed ‘The Greatest Little Lit Fest You’ve Never Heard Of – Till Now.’ Over the sixteen days from 6th November to 21st November, a total of 2700 people attended the 19 events put on at the 8th Chorleywood Literary Festival.

Chorleywood is only half an hour out of central London. So sign up here to get notice of next year’s Festival. And you needn’t wait another year. Sheryl Shurville and Morag Watkins – the indefatigable owners of Chorleywood Bookshop, put on fabulous author events throughout the year. Join their mailing list to hear all the latest news.

Catriona Troth is the author of the novella, Gift of the Raven and the novel Ghost Town. She is a former researcher turned freelance writer and a proud member of the Triskele Books author collective. Find her on Twitter as @L1bCat and on her blog/webpage at CatrionaTroth.com, or on Facebook at Books by Catriona Troth.