QUICK-FIRE QUESTIONS - ROZ MORRIS

Roz Morris, bestselling ghostwriter whose titles are unfortunately a trade secret. First novel under her own name is My Memories of a Future Life, currently on submission with Jane Conway-Gordon. Blogs at www.nailyournovel.com , tweets far too much @dirtywhitecandy and is learning to waste even more time on Facebook.

What’s it like ghosting as another writer?
It’s like being an actor playing a real person; you have to understand what people find interesting about them. Then you develop a voice and perceptions that will please their readers.

Which writer would you be for a day?
I’d like to be two. One is Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes about rural farm life in upstate New York. He will start with a piece of baling twine in his pocket that becomes an ethereal adventure catching runaway horses in the middle of a foggy night. My other choice is Ian Fleming. I’d love to test-drive his panache for a day. All my favourite writers, fiction or non-fiction, have this sense of the extraordinary or flamboyant in everyday things. Their best writing makes me want to be them.

Where do you get your ideas?
I get them everywhere. In fact, I don’t think I have ideas; they have me.

My underlying themes are…
...odd relationships and haunted souls. Or they are at the moment. No doubt that will change.

I get most excited by..
...tension, longing and anything unconventional

Longhand first or straight to computer?
Computer. I make abbreviated notes for myself on whatever I can grab, particularly when I’m out shopping or at the gym. But often I find I can’t read them. My handwriting is my own worst enemy.

Email or phone?
Email. I am an introvert in real life; an extravert on the page. Most writers are.

First drafts are…
...much better when edited about 20 times, then buried in soft peat for three months and edited all over again. (Apologies to Douglas Adams.)

Hacker or adder?
Both. My WIPs are in a constant state of riotous flux. Eventually they are drilled into submission.

Character first or plot?
Not plot, but problem. What if a character was in such-and-such a situation? Then who might find that the most testing time of their life?

I know I have my story when…
Every song I hear on the radio seems to be about it, like when you fall in love.

Left on a cliffhanger or told all?
Whatever makes the book end properly. But I find cliffhangers a cheat if they’re done only to entice you to read the sequel. Part of the bargain with the reader is that you finish the story.

You really must read…
The Eclipse of the Century by Jan Mark. Although it takes a while to get going, it is such an original and strange story of a man who thinks he has foreseen the afterlife.

Which 3 writers, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?
Emily Bronte, because she’d be so wild. Gavin Maxwell, because he loves wild places and writes like an angel. And Jack Vance for his extraordinary imagination and wry humour. I’d have to have three dinners as I want to talk to them one to one, not watch how they mixed, rivaled or networked. That’s a thing about writers; in their books you have them to yourself, so that’s how I would most enjoy them.

The most important thing for a writer to have is…
A family who understands. And doesn’t mind that you’re not making much money. And doesn’t think you’ve failed if you keep having to rewrite, or if it takes you a long time to find an agent or publisher. You need that secure base so that you can venture forth and do battle.

I would advise an author to…
Find a critique partner whose judgement you trust and who likes the kind of novels you want to write.

An author should never…
...think they’ve finished when an editor has said ‘yes’. That’s just the beginning.

If I wasn’t a writer I’d be…
A composer. I want to make experiences that people love.

Which came first? Craft or creativity: guest blog by Michelle Hoover

I've been teaching fiction writing for fourteen years, moving from the short story to the novel as my own work meandered nervously from short to long. What I return to again and again, what I find most helpful to my students, is an exploration of the formal structures on which fiction relies.

These of course begin with Aristotle, his idea of 'one action,' and how this single action, introduced at the beginning of the play and carried through to the climax, like the far shore of home that Odyssues never takes his eyes from, conveys both physical action toward a tangible desire but also the interior (and conscious) motivation behind it. Aristotle himself argues that plot is more important than character, but I think his idea of plot, of one action, is so character-based as to make the two elements hopelessly intertwined. If we carry the idea forward, we find Henry James and his assertion that 'character determines incident, incident reveals character.'

For James, 'motivation' is more closely (and helplessly) tied to the character's fundamental flaw, a flaw that leads the protagonist inevitably to an incident that will test this flaw, bring it more into the open, on stage if you will, than ever before. And of course, how the character reacts to this incident only complicates our understanding of the desperate hold the flaw has on this character, or which the character has on it.


For centuries, authors have repeated these ideas, attempting to pin down exactly what a plot is and how a fiction writer can invent one without feeling stupid or blandly commercial. John Barth's essay 'How To Know Whether You've Got a Plot or Not? is one of my favorites, as it stems from an author I consider a rebel. Even Barth doesn?t take his ideas so seriously that he can't mock them.

The essay's main title is 'Incremental Perturbations' - try to say that three times fast. Better yet, say it in front of a classroom, where for me the words morph absurdly into 'Ecumenical Protuberances' or even 'Imperturbable Excrements.' Barth describes plot as 'the incremental perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a complexified equilibrium.'

In all its ridiculousness, the definition still nails it. What better term than 'complexified equilibrium' for the necessity of a story to have reached a new (and often terrible) resting place after it's been jarred from its opening instability. You hear readers complain that 'nothing happens' or workshops moan that they detect little to no emotional 'shift.' The complaint is about a lack of budding complexity, in event, character, or theme, isn't it?


Like the looming self-help sections in bookstores, authors now fill walls with books on craft, whether they are successful fiction writers or not. The laugh is that craft books sell far better than any fiction, though one hears a painful hiccup as the author slips on the discarded peel of his soul before he deposits his cheque.

But beyond Barth's breakdown of plot and a handful of other 'practical' guides, I find most authors speak so abstractly about craft that few beginners have a clue what they're talking about. The author may list examples, claim that here is good dialog or, oh, look, what a nice gesture, but the examples are either so dull or uniquely brilliant that students will never want to, or never can, identify such elements in their own pages. They will never, like Barth puts it, understand if they've 'got it or not.' Knowing the difference may be the test of talent. It may also simply be luck.

Take for instance Steve Almond's wonderfully defiant collection This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey. His 'Quick Definition of Plot' claims 'Plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires.' Simple. Direct. Yet I've had any number of students try to apply this line to a published piece of fiction and fail. What does it mean, 'to force' a character against something so abstract? My students point at a story and say, there, the character is showing emotion, or there, he is revealing his desire. But Almond's idea is far more complex. Still, if a student can't identify such a plot in someone else's story, how will they ever be able to identify it in their own, where they forgive everything?

In truth, Almond's idea is only a more emotional extension of James' character determines incident. A character's desire or fear must be challenged. It must be brought out in a shameful, semi-public, and dramatic way, and the character must act to cover that fear or expose it further, to fess up or lie, to grab at his desire or let it go. As Aristotle might say, the character must do something, because the fear or desire is such an integral part of him, he can't do otherwise. Whether good or bad, it's all he's got in the world.

But what about stories that don?t work this way? Of course, the best are never obvious in their choices. And yet, I've found Barth's definition of plot at work in authors as diverse and astonishing as Borges and William Gass. The structure follows that of fairy tales, and the structure of fairy tales is what feels most natural to us. We have repeated these rhythms for centuries, independently, all over the world.

I tell my students to take such 'rules' with a grain of salt. Know them before you break them. And if you break them, if your story's inherent qualities 'as opposed to laziness' lead you in that direction, try to understand what you're giving your reader in return.

In my 'Plotting the Novel' seminars, I advise students to simplify. Once you know them well, employ such 'formulas' with as little consciousness as you structure a sentence: subject, verb, object. Plot is simple. In many ways, plot is boring. There's little use for fancy stuff. Why waste your energy? Use it as your story's invisible skeleton, and save the best of what you've got for the harder, more important stuff, for character or scene, passion or shame, happiness or ruin, the amazing complexity of it all.

Do ideas about craft deaden creativity? I wonder at times. Look at Paul Yoon's immaculate story collection, 'Once the Shore', and we immediately know that the stories do not follow Barth at all. But Yoon has his own kind of recipe, one based on the quiet assuredness of the narrator's voice, on the single setting around which his characters live and yearn, and yes, there's the trick on one character matched with another, a constant coupling of foreign and familiar personalities, both of whom suffer from losses so enduring and serious that they're transformed into physical scars, a broken ankle, a lost limb, a weak heart. This very coupling brings complication. But formula? I wince at using such a term. Yoon's stories are far too haunted and mysterious. Their power is innate to the author's vision, his sense of consequence and pain. Yet in the end, isn't consequence as a result of action what Aristotle was writing about? The desire, the instability, the flaw - these things launch characters forward into the incident that will mark them for the rest of their lives. A story captures the moment in which a character fully reveals himself, in all his human ugliness and charm. And sometimes it's simply plot that forces us writers to put our characters in the terrible situations this revelation requires, the situations we would otherwise attempt to save them from.

Podcast pleasures

Ah, the joys of a good podcast...
There’s nothing I like better when doing mindless tasks, like cleaning the kitchen or walking the dog, than listening to something absorbing on my iPod. If you only use your MP3 or iPod for music, I’m going to go all evangelical now and tell you that discovering podcasts is positively life changing. It is. Honestly.
Being of a nerdish disposition, I’ve been hunting around for a while now for podcasts that relate to books and writing and am starting to build up a nice little collection. I thought I’d share my top five with you, lovely Strictly readers.


My favourite of the moment is a US cast called Books on the Nightstand which I’ve recently discovered. Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman are two publishing insiders who love to read and whose enthusiastic recommendations are so infectious, I frequently find myself on Amazon after I’ve heard the show. [As a side note, I was recently stranded with family and friends in Turkey, thanks to the Icelandic volcano dust and desperate to have a solitary moment of headspace, I listened to an episode while I did some chores. It really felt like time out and helped with the stress of the whole experience. I’ll always be grateful to the programme.]

Next on the list is Radio Four’s Open Book , in which the silky-toned Mariella Frostrupp interviews authors and chats about the latest book news. Once a month this turns over to Book Club, in which James Naughtie interviews a big name author in front of a studio audience.

I’m also a big fan of the Guardian’s books editor Claire Armistead’s weekly cast. This is a more in-depth look at new titles and publishing news.

I should be writing is a podcast and blog by sci fi writer Mur Lafferty aimed ‘at wannabee fiction writers by one who is still learning.’ She has various guests on the show but also talks about her own writing and how it’s going, both good and bad. I’ve been listening since before she got published and it’s been a real privilege to share her journey.

The World Book Club comes from the BBC World Service and authors from all over the world are interviewed in front of an invited studio audience. I’ve heard Sue Grafton, Andrea Levy, Jodi Picoult, Kaled Hosseini and Lionel Shriver in recent months and all were fascinating in their different ways.

Here are some others that deserve a notable mention...

Writers on writing


Holly Lisle on writing


The Writing Show


iTunes Meet the Author


If you know of any good writing/books podcasts that I haven’t mentioned, do share them. I’d love to add to my collection.

Is anybody there...

I don't expect anyone to read this.
Seriously.
This morning, you'll be far too busy finding out who is running the country. Some of you will have stayed up all night waiting for the Portillo moment. Many of you will be nursing hangovers. Others will be staring in despair into your hemlock porridge.

What you're most unlikely to do is log on and read a writing blog. I don't mind. I can blabber on anyway, without the need to be remotely entertaining or informative.

Obviously I'm writing this yesterday. Though I'm well known for leaving things til the last minute, I'm not blogging live...yet. So while you know who is our new leader ( well done to Dave or Gordon or Nick, though not Griffin natch ), I don't. And at time of going to press I'm still undecided.

I know, I know. It's pahtetic but I'm one of those floating voters. Contrary to a few, some might say, unkind comments, this is not an exercise in attention seeking. Okay, my agreeing to give interviews on LBC radio about my political dithering could be construed as look-at-me city, but when I was offered the gig I just couldn't refuse.

Actually, I've really, really enjoyed it. I mean who wouldn't? That nice Nick Ferrari asking me questions about what I think of the election and which way I'm leaning. It was a gift for someone like me who loves to talk. Thousands of listeners hanging on my every word. Well maybe not hanging, but you know....paying attention. And if Gordon Brown has a great face for radio, then I have the perfect arse.

As an aside, I've often thought my need to blether is why I started to write. I could, you see, talk for ten hours a day, but people just won't listen. Husband-who-lives-in-hope is good for an hour tops. And the kids are useless. They keep wanting to tell me stuff. So I worked out that if you just write down what you have to say, you can go on and on. No one will stop you for pages and pages and pages. Genius.

In many ways it's like radio too, in that your audience is invisible. You can't see them rolling their eyes and stage whispering, 'will someone just tell her to shut the fuck up.' See, genius.

Each week I've looked forward to giving Nick my update. Except the weeks I went missing. Due to a volcanic ash cloud and an incompetent travel company I got stuck in Bangkok. They were having the hottest weather on record. Oh, and there is a mini revolution going on. Apart from that it was great.

I'm pretty sure my absence was noted during that gap. The LBC voters missed me and my thoughts. Which party, for example would best represent writers? Well, we're self employed so maybe the tories? Then again most of us earn bugger all, so maybe Labour? I'll admit my musings were hardly ground breaking.

Anyhow, as of this moment, I can confirm that it wasn't all a ploy. I'm still undecided. But here's the best part - it doesn't even matter, because in real time the whole shebang is sorted. Or am I in real time as I write?

Who cares? There's no one reading this. I can bang on all day. Mwha ha ha...

Quickfire Questions with...Keris Stainton

3 authors, dead or alive, you would invite to dinner.
Marian Keyes, Meg Cabot and Martha Beck. I wouldn't get a word in edgewise, but it would be fascinating and hilarious.

Email or phone?
Email, definitely. I hardly ever make an arse of myself over email like I do on the phone.

Favourite desktop snack?
I'll eat anything (so far today, I've had a fairy cake and a slice of pizza and it's only 10.15), but my favourite is wasabi peanuts. They're hard to get hold of, but that's probably for the best.

My journey to publication was...
Quite slow. I think. I signed with my agent in August 2006 and then a two book deal with Orchard in 2008 based on a book called FORGET ME NOT. After I'd signed, I went to lunch with my editor and she said she thought Forget Me Not would be better as a second book and so could I write another by Christmas. It was March and I was pregnant! It worked out quite well because I wrote DELLA SAYS: OMG! while I was on maternity leave and delivered the book a couple of weeks before the baby.

Age-banding is...
Harmless. I know that's not a popular opinion, but unless I'm misunderstanding something, it's just a guideline, no-one's going to prevent children from reading outside the suggested age, so I don't quite see what the problem is.

As a child, I read...
Constantly. I was obsessed with Enid Blyton, of course. The Faraway Tree and Malory Towers series.

An aspiring author must never...
... be discouraged by the success of other authors. I used to be in a writers' group in which a lot of people were threatened whenever anyone signed a big deal. As if there's a finite amount of book deals, which is not the case at all.

Literary prize or Hollywood deal?
Oh god, Hollywood deal, no question. Wouldn't most people rather go to the Oscars than the Booker Prize presentation evening? You're much less likely to meet George Clooney at the Booker.

The worst thing about writing is...
The self-doubt. It's so hard to know if what you're writing is any good at all. And then, of course, even if you think it's great, there's a chance no-one will agree. It's all so subjective.

Hacker or Adder, on the edit?
Ha. Well, I used to be neither. I used to be frightened of touching anything at all in the edit. I'd just move the odd word around. It was only when I was doing a second draft of DELLA that I realised if something wasn't working - and it wasn't essential for the plot - I could just cut it out instead of faffing about trying to make it work. And then I got a bit giddy with the hacking. I actually chopped the last 5000 words off the adult novel I'm working on and then realised I had to put most of them back in again.

You really must read...
Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird. Doesn't everyone say that? It's such a brilliantly inspiring book about writing and about life. And it's very funny too.

A word from Keris to end...

I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember, but I didn't manage to write a novel until 2004 when I took part in National Novel Writing Month. I haven't quite finished that one yet, but I have finished a few others (Della Says: OMG! is the first to be published). I live in Lancashire with my husband and two young sons, who make me laugh every day (sometimes intentionally).

My website is http://www.keris-stainton.com and I'm @keris on Twitter.

Buy the book on Amazon

There's no place like home

A book which has burrowed its way into my innermost thoughts recently is The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, an intelligent tale set in the former Czechoslovakia focusing on the themes of art, loss, love, fear and betrayal.

And architecture too! Yes, that particular theme is one of the most prevalent running through this novel, and an unusual one too. In the book, wealthy Jew Viktor Landauer and his wife Liesel have been given a gift of land by Liesel's parents to build their own home. Not wanting something traditional, Viktor seeks out the modern and goes ahead with plans to build a glass room - Der Glasraum. The architect employed by Viktor is Rainer von Abt, a man whom the couple met on their honeymoon and one who is deeply moved by innovation and progress.

The Glass Room is not merely a room per se in the novel: it forms the structure of the book – think of a roof under which all the characters interact. The storylines develop under this roof and the glass room becomes the focal point of all manner of activity.

However, as the story progresses, the Glass Room is removed from the Landauers and taken over by the Nazis for scientific experiments, and then claimed by the communists, before becoming a museum, and the site for a final scene of redemption.

The fact that it's made of glass allows the reader to see into the lives with ease, the character are exposed, laid out before us...naked. It's voyeuristic and the many encounters between different couples threaten to throw the plot off course. The historical events too are drawn to the house, taking place within its walls, rather than in the great wide open.

A surprisingly easy read, I was engaged from start to finish. The fluency of the language, the ideas and Mawer's characters all combine to make a flawless novel.

This is Simon Mawer's eighth novel and he's an author I want to know more about. I've got my hands on a copy of The Gospel of Judas and I'm reading it once I finish We Need To Talk About Kevin. I remember reading a review of this book shortly after it was released and the reviewer said that once a film is made of this book, the story will be completely spoiled. It was shortlisted for last year's Booker Prize and quite rightly so. I want to know why it didn't win.

Quick Fire Questions with Katie Fforde

We are thrilled to welcome best selling romantic novelist Katie Fforde to Strictly Writing. Thanks so much Katie, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us.

The first story I remember reading was...

The first book I read on my own was ‘Snowball the Pony’ by Enid Blyton. I was a slow reader. The fiction I really loved- a couple of years before I could read myself- were the Arthurian Legends. I used to make the children I played with take the parts. I was always the noblest knight.

Which writer would you be for a day?

The writer I would be for a day would be one who can write 3000 words. Don't care which!

Amazon or independent bookshop?

Independent bookshop every time. I'm now Twitter mates with someone at my local Indy, and she'll order things for me. Bliss!

You really must read...

An awful lot of books! I think a lot of Jenny Rooney, whose first book, 'Inside the Whale' was short listed for the Costa. I've just read her second.


I know I have my story when...

I know where to start and how it will end. Fortunately I can start before I know the end. I just get half the story at a time.

If I wasn't a writer I'd be...

A therapist. I love listening to people's stories. Maybe there's a way I could do it without getting too distressed?

Favourite writing snack?

Carrots. Crunching down on a raw one helps with scenes requiring confrontation.

Longhand or computer?

Computer, every time. My hand writing is terrible. Fortunately I can type.

My biggest tip for a Women's Fiction writer is...

To read a lot - you learn so much. And keep at it! (Second tip slipped in there as I couldn't quite decide.)

My proudest writing moment so far has been...

When I heard from a female vicar who said she'd borrowed a bit of ‘Thyme Out’ as a basis for a sermon. (It was the bit about bereavement.)

Three authors dead or alive I’d like to invite to dinner are:

Well, Georgette Heyer. She might be a bit spiky but I bet she'd be fun. Mark Twain, ditto and probably Shakespeare. I've chosen dead ones because I might yet get to invite the living ones to dinner...

Katie has published fifteen novels and her latest, 'A Perfect Proposal' is due out on June 10th.