“This Charming Man” by Marian Keyes
I may have said this before – okay, so you’d have to be entirely new to my blogs not to know – that I really love Marian Keyes’ books. It’s the same with any author we love: we read their books to shreds, and each time, uncover new wisdoms and ideas that strengthen our own lives. Why else would we read them?
I first read “This Charming Man” soon after it was first published in 2008 – I was in the early stages of serial reading: find the latest, read it, and wait impatiently for the next book to be written and published. I’ve done that with all the authors I love. Elizabeth George, Dick Francis, James Herriot, Peanuts, Tintin…
There is a seam of real-life tragedy running through Marian’s books, often to do with alcoholism and co-dependency, and this book pulls no punches. Telling the stories of four women, Lola, Grace, Marnie and Alicia – and assorted friends, lovers and colleagues – and their entanglements with a certain Paddy de Courcy – if you google him, he will come up, though he doesn’t yet have his own Wiki entry – it’s a gripping and intricately woven story about abuse between couples and how to survive it.
Though the overall narrative has domestic abuse as its main focus, it is also, and very tellingly, about the lies that vulnerable people indulge in to keep themselves trapped: hiding from the truth by being stuck in the past, constantly rehearsing old wrongs, blaming others and refusing to see what might have changed, fielding the fear of change by swamping oneself in self-pity.
I’ve been there and done all that and more. Self-harm comes in many guises, not just the obvious physical signs but also in the shying away from life, the refusal to engage with real people, in keeping oneself isolated and alone so that “I can never be hurt again”, and in refusing to acknowledge that our refusal to engage with the world – and with all the wonderful people in it – is what hurts us most.
So read this book, please, if you want to learn from the example of a master story-teller. But once we have read the book and digested some of the lessons – it’s a big book and might take a while – we owe it to ourselves to go out and live. Not to just get by in life, by reading books.
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December 12, 2018
Being scared of writing
Fran Macilvey Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing, Women's fiction and chic lit 0 Comments
Being scared of writing
I suspect that one reason why we writers shy away from writing is that we are scared of it. I know I am – I have been – but I suspect that this fear, which can be paralysing and lead to all kinds of delaying tactics, is based around a fundamental misconception about how writing works.
Writing is basically about having fun with words. And worrying about writing is obviously not fun. But why do we worry?
I suspect that one reason we delay, fret and make endless excuses not to write is because we fear we have to ‘get it right’. Since we are frightened that our text is never going to be the best it could be – and it should be easy, FGS, we are writers after all – we shy away from it.
But if we are holding ourselves back from doing what we can enjoy – having fun with our writing – through any belief that we ‘have’ to get it perfect, we have forgotten that every single piece of work evolves over time by a slow process of idea, expression, editing and refinement, often in ways that are highly personal.
Nonetheless, the key realisation that breaks through personal dread, is that all writing has to evolve; and each writer works in a different ways and at a different speeds to reach an end point which may be months or years ahead. Evolution is a process, implying that every story, every item of literary expression has to be worked at, refined and perfected.
By definition, our first, often most creative writing phases – the ones we are scared to attempt – and not going to be perfectly polished, and are never intended to be. The best they can hope to be is to be perfect material for the next stage in the process.
Once we realise that our writing is not expected to be totally perfect the first time we put it down, we are suddenly much freer to simply relax and allow ideas their expression. Expressing ideas and giving characters and events form in words is, almost by definition, a hard thing to do, so it is rare that an idea announces itself fully formed.
There are times when I have been able to put down a chapter without making many changes, but, simply considering the law of probability, this is bound to happen to all of us occasionally and does not disprove the general rule, that most writing is a labour of love, crafted in different ways and stages over a period of time.
Recognising that our version of perfection may take a while to turn up, suddenly we feel much freer to write whatever we feel like writing, as a first draft. And, paradoxically, admitting that writing is a many-stage process, frees us up to be more confident and to take that leap, to fly by the seat of our pants.
They say the trick is to make it look easy. But writing a smooth finished product rarely is. But that’s okay, as long as we realise that every good thing takes time to get right, and that our time is well invested.
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