Off to the Shetlands

Just as the cabbages are pushing up, the onions shoots well above ground and only one more batch of potatoes to be planted, I'm off to the Shetlands.

I want to get as close to Viking life as I can, and I'm sure I can do it in the Shetlands. I want to come home with a fistful of finished poems and the beginnings of others. Most of these will, I hope, make their way into the book I'm making about women in the Viking age. One might even end up on these pages.

Even reading the placenames is like reading the characters in a story: Whales Wick, Point of Blo-geo, Easter Quarff, Lotra of Minn, Muckle Hell, West Burrafirth, Snevlabreck, Haaf Gruney. As well as exploring the numerous islands, I'm going to swim. Not in the sea, you understand, but in Shetland's indoor pools. Apparently there is a pool for every 2000 people, but surely this generous provision must be a service for visitors who might otherwise be facing lashing rain?

I'll also be visiting the Shetland Library's collection of local books in Lerwick, and I note that there is a Lerwick bookgroup which read Mister Pip recently, as did my group here in Suffolk. It's interesting to think of a discussion taking place in a very northerly island about a story set on an island in the South Pacific.

And this afternoon there's just time for me to get those potatoes in.

Submissions

Submitting manuscripts always takes longer than I expect. First, there's the question of deciding which agents/publishers to submit to, and then it's essential to check out precisely what each of them wants. Some want the whole ms, some the first three chapters or 10,000 words. Some insist on it being sent by e-mail while others prefer a hard copy. Most, but not all, want a synopsis and some info. about the writer. The websites of helpful agencies give details of how the submission will be processed and - importantly - a time framework.

Eighteen months ago when I was submitting the ms of my last novel several replies bounced back within two weeks. Others took months - sometimes many months - and there remains a couple which I have still had no reply from, despite having been assured over the phone that my ms is with them. "Sorry - but we'll get round to it." Really? On the other hand. one agency sent me four replies, all dated within a month - just to make sure there was no doubt over their refusal, I presume.

Having decided what I'm going to send to whom, the next job is to make sure that the right letter goes out with the right attachments, or, if it's by post, that the right stuff is put into the right package. And even though it's 2009, some companies still want an SAE.


If you've got a funny experience with submissions, I'd love to hear about it.


But, all bar one, a small batch of submissions is out there, winging my ms towards an in-box or a letter-box. And now I must forget them for a while and concentrate on other things.

It won't be hard because this weekend I'll be in London to hear the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra's Latino concert, see my family and babysit, and visit the re-furbished Whitechapel Gallery and its current show-piece: a replica tapestry of Picasso's Guernica.

Spring

On Saturday we went for our first canoe trip of 2009, along the River Stour from Sudbury to Henny. It was calm and warm, and a heron flew slowly up from the bank ahead and settled where we couldn't see it, but when we approached it a second time it took off again. Then in the car on the way home, we saw our first swallow of the year. Such sightings are like blessings.

And our pond must now contain a couple of firkins of frogspawn, and several dozen newts, some of which are easily caught by dipping one's hand under them. So it's spring - time to be on a bike or in a canoe or just having coffee in the garden.

This description of a very different spring comes from the book I'm reading set in 14th century Norway, Kristin Lavransdatter.

One evening in the early spring Rangfrid had to send down the valley to old Gunhild, the widow who sewed furs. The evening was so fair that Kristin asked if she might not go; at last they gave her leave because all the men were busy.

It was after sunset, and a fine white frost haze was rising toward the green-gold sky. Kristin heard at each hoof-stroke the brittle sound of the evening's ice as it broke and flew outwards in tinkling splinters. But from all the roadside brakes there was a happy noise of birds singing, softly but full-throated with spring, into the twilight.

When I checked the meaning of brake, I found that although it meant a thicket of bushes, it had quite a few other meanings: a cage, an instrument for peeling the bark from willows, a baker's kneading-machine, a nose-ring for a draught ox.

And here's part of John Milton's Song on May Morning, which I quote in my novel Companion to Owls

Now the bright morning star, Day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip , and the pale primrose.

Norse and Nordic

In the interests of research for a book I'm intending to write and make, (yes, really make - by hand), I've just spent a couple of days at a seminar organised by the Viking Identities Network at Nottingham University entitled Language, Texts and Gender in the Viking Diaspora. It may not sound exciting to you, but I really enjoyed it. Admittedly, there were papers which I could hardly understand let alone benefit from, but one called Text and Textiles summoned up wonderful connections between what was woven and what was spoken. And as for those Viking burials, I had never before recognised the huge amount of work involved: all that food to be assembled, all those horses to be killed and butchered. Indeed, it was being suggested that such occasions were indeed performances, a concept I found totally believable.



The seminar was held at Beaumont Hall at the University of Leciester, situated in the Botanic Gardens. Feeling Vikinged-out at one point, I escaped and made my way to a beacon of natural loveliness - a magnolia in full blossom.



Back in Suffolk I'm embarking on Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy first published in 1930. It's set in 14th century Norway, and though this is well past the Viking era, I reckon that the changes to peasant life in rural fjordland would not be pronounced.





The person who recommended this book to me was not a Viking scholar at the conference, but someone at Norwich University College of the Arts where we are both studying. Not only is Chris a textile artist but she is Norweigan. Over a cup of coffee we discovered that her father and my brother had both worked on a Norweigan whaling ship, the Balaena. My brother Gordon, when newly qualified as a marine zooologist, was the scientific officer, and Chris's father was a flenser - one of the men who slices the blubber off the whales with huge knives on poles, a bit like a scythe. Now this seems appalling, but fifty years ago there was a big market for whale oil.


So, my life feels a bit Norse and Nordic at present, and that pleases me.

Is it lonely being a writer?

My recent activities have been particularly diverse: lunch at the River Cafe, cycling, a Britten, Elgar and Sibelius concert at the Festival Hall, a memorial service, writing, more cycling, supper with long-standing friends, lunch with new friends, and more writing. Tomorrow I'm going, for the second time, to the excellent, disturbing and thought-provoking Medicine and War exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation.

Since writing that paragraph I've had the close-to-final conversation I needed to have in respect of the first draft of the novel I'm working on. It's provided me with essential facts which confirm my initial information to be correct. Checking facts is an important part of writing and I often find myself googling anything from recipes to the use of cycles in wartime to bird migration. And of course maps; my motto could be Any excuse for a map. But sometimes what I need can't be found on-line or in a book, and I end up searching for people who know what I need to know. Happily, they usually tell me other things too which can enrich my work or send it in new directions.

Amongst other Google result this week I found a conference entitled, Hair today, gone tomorrow: hair loss, the tonsure and masculinity in medieval Icelend. It's not actually relevant to my work, but I thought I'd tell you about it because it may have immediate appeal to some of you.

So, to those who ask Is it lonely being a writer? my answer is a clear No. Other people are essential to the process and my experience is that they are pleased to be involved.

Getting towards the end

I'm further ahead with the novel I'm working on than I expected to be at this stage. Somehow, in the last couple of weeks I've been on a roll with it and the end is falling into place. There's more to be written and all will need to be edited. And edited again. And again. I'm reaching the point where I'll be doing more reading than writing, and I learned long ago that the best way to read is to read aloud. That way it's easier to pick up typos, infelicities of language, over-used words, errors in the order of events in the plot and things I haven't noticed like names which sound like each other and could confuse the reader.





And more importantly, the other thing which happens at this stage is that the book's themes become clearer. I was once told that when a writer knows what their book's about, then they know they've reached the end, and it's certainly true for me. I find that as those themes present themselves, I can capitalise on them and develop them even at this late hour. In fact, it's precisely because it's a late hour that they emerge from the text and link up with what's happening in my head with more clarity than they have done up till now. I find this a very exciting and creative part of the process. Today, for example, important ideas have occurred to me out of the blue. Well, perhaps not quite out of the blue. They jumped up, variously, while I was buying a loaf of bread, dialling to make a hair appointment and feeding Tabitha, my cat.

King's Lynn Fiction Festival

Oyez! Oyez!

I'd just like to draw your attention to this year's King's Lynn Fiction Festival to be held on March 13-15th.

There are a variety of events and readings or talks from Beryl Bainbridge, D J Taylor, Penelope Lively, Christopher Bigsby, Anthony Grey, Rachel Hore, Sophie Hannah, Mark Illis, Jill Paton-Walsh and me.

Tickets for individual events are £8.50, but you can buy a pass for the whole weekend for £37.50. You'll find details on www.lynnlitfests/com

The next two months will pass in a flash, so you should book asap. If you attend and come across me, please come and introduce yourself, because this writing business sometimes feels all one-way.


Currently I'm trying to arrange a meeting with a professional whose expertise I need for the final part of my novel. I find that interviewing people is one of the most enjoyable parts of research because usually interviewees like to talk about their field and I often get not only more detail than I need, but things I haven't thought of. Let's hope this happens when I meet the man I have in mind.

Title?

Now, more than a week since my last post, my next novel continues to run along in the right direction. I'm over 75,000 words in and the end is in sight. I'm not a writer who ties things up neatly at the end, but I clearly have to find a way to conclude my work. Doing that well, it seems to me, is one of the hallmarks of good writers. To hold together the various threads of the plot, the characters and the themes, and to work out how to develop them so they reach a place where they can be let go of in a way which satisfies most readers isn't easy. And then it all has to be written down.

At this stage of a book I'm always conscious of the debt I owe to technology. How did Austen and Tolstoy and Dickens and the rest of them get on without cut and paste, find and replace, wordcount and so on? The very thought is extraordinary.

Anyway, I'm plotting and manoeuvring my way towards the conclusion, and, though difficult, I'm enjoying the challenge. And while I've been doing this I've made an important decision about the novel's title which I'm going to change from Simon Says, the working title I've used up to now. But you'll have to wait for a while before I announce the new one. I'm going to let it slosh around in my head for the time being, but I'm fairly confident I'll stay with it.

Back to the Book

For the last six months of 2008 I was busy with two tasks: getting my novel Companion to Owls from page to print to the public, and working on the project I'll be submitting for my MA this summer. We also went on holiday. All these took all my time and energy and caused me to abandon the novel I was half way through.



But I returned to it three days ago with warm interest. The first thing I did was to read it from a hard copy. If I have access to the screen I stop reading and begin to edit, which is no good if I want an overview. So, I came at it with new eyes and read it straight through, making only small notes in the margin.



Overall, I was quietly satisfied with it and I'm now on a second re-read, but this time I'm working on the screen and, using my notes, making small changes as I go along.



To my delight, the book is already running around in my head as busily as it was six months ago. I've thought of how to develop parts of the plot and several of the characters, how to move towards the end, how to shift the mood in certain places. I've decided to make some cuts and changes, to give a character a different name, to get to grips with the chronology of it, to list various technical details I need to check on, and so on. This is a familiar process to me by now and it's reassuring that it's proceeding as I hoped it would.



Right now I feel I could work on it for a solid fortnight, but I can't do this not only because there are other things to be done but also because I know the text is better if it's written a bit at a time. I've learned that gaps like this six months - though six days or even six hours would help - make a very positive difference. In those gaps the book simmers away in my head with or without me consciously thinking about it, and something good comes out of it. Usually this means the quality of the writing is better, but sometimes I realise what doesn't work so I end up deleting.



So, right now I'm around 67,000 words in. I'll keep you posted.