Category Archives: Writing habits

Words will wait

Posted on by under Books, Malta, Writing, Writing habits

Writing hasn’t been easy lately.

That’s not to say I haven’t been able to jot things down. And neither am I “out of ideas” or bereft of the required energy or confidence to keep on ploughing through the sentences and drafts.

It’s just that my current project is at a point where the drafts, the ideas and the characters need some time to get to know each other better. They’re talking at cross-purposes and on a vague, sun-bleached plan, which was mapped out by a remote authority seated in a comfy office and simply left out to the elements and the drafts, the ideas and the characters are forced to squint to make out the shapes which were once words or diagrams meant to take them to the next stage of their journey.

This probably just means that I need to take a break.

Which is funny to consider, when my writing schedule is essentially “whatever you manage in the one hour before you have to head out to go to work”. But a mental break from a specific strand from writing doesn’t necessarily mean stopping to write altogether. Even switching projects works, though arguably swapping over an ingrained, long-term writing practice for some experimental noodling could have an even greater restive (or restorative) effect.

***

Freedom in writing is always a relative term, for me… I’m deeply sceptical of the idea that an artistic practice implies a sense of spontaneous, intuitive and even anarchic liberation away from the strictures of mainstream society. If anything, I find that it actually requires a deeper and more neurotic commitment to some of these tenets, with the anarchism only made evident in the obsessive streak with which you double-down on them.

You can zone out at work, and go for the umpteenth cigarette or coffee. Household chores have definitive parameters, and even the most byzantine of bureaucratic tasks have some kind of ceiling. Clients will have deadlines, and even lovers have their ultimatums. Lovers, partners and friends also have physical bodies that tick away to sometimes endless-seeming, but ultimately finite desires and frustrations. They may be erratic but they’re never truly, entirely unpredictable for those of us who know a thing or two about how humans operate in general. And while they may expect a certain degree of telepathy on your end — and as annoying as such an expectation may be — they will never ask you to create and recreate them anew.

But your characters will. And this is why I think that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will always remain a reference point. I’m sure there’s a flurry of doctoral theses and obscure articles out there to prove the following statement wrong, but I’m always surprised that so much of our processing of that pioneering piece of sci-fi gothic literature is focused on the ‘scientific hubris’ reading, and so little on how it’s also a commentary on the act of creation. Yes, I’m sure the theological implications have often been made as well, but I’m referring specifically to how Victor Frankenstein could also be seen as the neurotic and nervous artist trying to come to terms with the horror of a first draft. (And also, how that first draft threatens to morph into something unexpected, and demands that more of these mutations be facilitated by dint of a fertile co-partner).

(I’m not trying to claim this interpretation as original. Those of you have links and PDFs, please pass them on. They are more than welcome).

So yeah, for me, writing is never about freedom but about finding the right straitjacket for the right moment. Or rather, the correct protective suit for whichever uncharted territory you happen to be traversing at the time. Because the territory will always BE uncharted, and populated by monsters to whom you’d not only have to teach language, but whose independence you’d have to facilitate and reassure. Let Victor Frankenstein’s fate be a cautionary tale.

***

Apart from being literally one of two or three annual events I legitimately look forward to each year, the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, organised by Inizjamed, often offers me a chance to experience writing in a looser and more immediate way to my default mode. More poetry, less novels. More of experimental prose, and less of the three-act structure.

It often results in me buzzing with a renewed fervour for the written word, experiencing precisely the kind of ‘break-that-is-not-a-break’ that I’d mentioned earlier. You encounter new writers without the aid of an algorithm: better still, right in the flesh. This adds wrinkles to your programme; unexpected experiences that open new doorways.

But there was a dash of welcome familiarity in this year’s edition of the festival. As an honorary member of the extender Inizjamed family, I’d assumed that I had some dibs on suggesting future festival guests. So a couple of years ago I started lobbying for the inclusion of Karin Tidbeck to the roster. Of course, as a subculture-rat since my early teens, my allegiance to specific groups will always trump pretty much all else: in this case, it’s the genre/speculative fiction community. I will always aim to advocate and represent of that literary class in my local stomping grounds, much in the same way I managed to do for Kali Wallace and Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

But I also felt Karin to be germane to Inizjamed’s festival in particular for more specific reasons related to their artistic practice and MO. A festival that comes with its own translation workshop attached, a multi-lingual, self-translating author is practically catnip. And a writer who so keenly identifies with liminal spaces can’t help but feel at home in any festival that deigns to include ‘Mediterranean’ in its title, and this particular one does so with a degree of conviction: operating with both intellectual rigour and humane generosity to create authentic spaces of encounter.

***

All of this largely a preamble to celebrate this year’s edition of the festival (as I did when I was lucky enough to participate back in 2018); to remind you that I got a chance to chat with Karin in print about their uncategorisable nature in the run up to the event; to brag about being allowed to ventriloquise for Karin in her absence from the grand finale due to a ridiculously early wake-up call the following morning; and to hopefully open this space back up for more regular, and looser, writings of this kind.

Especially now that I’m starting a new job in a field that’s relevant to my experience once again. Which is the perfect push and pull of the familiar and the new.

***

I mentioned the prolific (and gentlemanly) Jon Courtenay Grimwood above. During one of our in-person conversations (either during his Malta visit or a follow-up meeting in London, I can’t recall), I spoke admiringly of his substantial output, a lot of it filtered through different noms de plume.

He responded by stating simply, “Well, if I don’t write, I can’t think.”

Increasingly, I find this to be true in my case. It doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever I write will have any value at all; at least not in that early stage. And neither does it have to be some sort of revelatory, epiphanic distillation of the self at that given moment.

The mechanics of writing are their own reward. This is why every single shift away from the programme has value. Words remain words. They will serve you in different ways at different times, but they remain at your disposal.

Featured image: Authors performing at the final night of the 18th edition of the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, on 26 August 2023. From left: Tanja Bakic, Claudia Gauci, Karin Tidbeck, Simone Inguanez and Virginia Monteforte (photographer)

Coronawriters: When Considering Script Notes, Do Not Be Haphazard

Posted on by under Films, Life, Malta, Reading, Work, Writing, Writing habits

“Take no enterprise in hand at haphazard, or without regard to the principles governing its proper execution”

– Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, Book Four) 

Yes, I’ve been cracking open ye olde Meditations back up because some advice from the grandfather and grandmaster of Stoic philosophy would certainly not go amiss right now, when uncertainty is the order of the day and the mainstream world media — especially its malignant ‘social’ offshoot — is doing absolutely zero to counter the mood with some sense of sobriety or perspective.

But the above quote popped out for me, during my now once again regular re-read of the embattled Ancient Roman emperor’s diary to self, for reasons that have very little to do with the essential self-care we need all the more urgently at this moment in time.

No, the reminder to do nothing at ‘haphazard’ reached me on a more professional — or rather, vocational — level, as I felt it very much got to the heart of an important lesson I have learned about writing narrative stories — be they in prose or script format — over the past couple of years.

Screenshot 2020-03-26 at 15.18.56

Marcus Aurelius via Batman, or vice versa: Daily meditation with the Meditations, with journal entries jotted into the Bat-book

It’s not a glamorous fact of the writing life, and neither is it bound up to the ‘tortured artist’ archetype in any way. In fact, in a lot of ways what I’m about to talk about swerves directly into the opposite camp, and perhaps the times we are living in call for precisely the kind of habits that evoke a degree of control and agency over the traditionally — notoriously — chaotic process of making up stories from scratch.

I’m talking about finding the rationale that lies behind either your plot mechanism, or the choices your characters make, in the interest of improving them for the benefit of subsequent drafts.

Now ‘character’ and ‘plot’ are almost always inextricably bound together, or at least they should be. What should we call this? I’m struggling to think of a more bite-sized term for it right now. Is it as broad as ‘rewriting’ or ‘editing’? Is it just ‘tweaking’, or does that teensy word not quite do it? Maybe I’ll arrive to the correct term or neulogism, maybe not. The point is that the process I’m describing often takes on a similar trajectory: that of working away at issues, problems and unwanted lacunae through the process of writing itself.

For me, it’s important that this does not happen before a complete draft is well and truly finished. An imperfect draft, sure. But a complete one. That allows me to see the big picture — such as it is — and make a clear and rational assessment of what needs to be fixed.

That’s why the Marcus Aurelius quote resonated with me. Sending off that draft without having polished it up, or even stopping half-way through to tweak at something that I nervously, pre-emptively assume is gonna be a problem later on, would indeed by a haphazard way of going about it. A script, novel or short story often has a lot of stuff going on inside it. Even the most minimalist of stories and narrative situations need to be informed by subtext, by nested considerations that move things forward, that plant seeds in the reader/viewer’s mind before hopefully being taken to full term in the most felicitous way possible.

But beyond the disciplinarian ‘good sense’ of not rushing things and giving them their due before assuming they’re ready so that you can focus and/or indulge in something else, the Meditations quote also got at something I legitimately find pleasurable about this stage of the writing process.

Just like certain filmmakers live by the dictum that ‘directing is the price you pay for going into the editing room later’, I find the greatest pleasure in cutting underneath the draft I’ve just written (over and above the more obvious, superficial ‘cuts’ that are also inevitably made) and figuring out why something doesn’t work, and how it could work better.

I think the ‘fun’ of this process has a lot to do with a sense of regaining control over the work. Now that the draft’s done, there’s far less of that Dark Night of the Soul feeling descending, and the associated ‘staring at the blank page’ jitters that either accompany it or are triggered by it. I can finally bring the full extent of my rational and analytical mind to bear: the same mind that I’ve chiseled into a decent-enough shape through my academic training and working as a film reviewer for over 15 years.

So finally, a touch of the familiar, the graspable and the tangible appears through the haze of uncertainty that otherwise characterises the writing process. It’s an uncertainty that is conducive to both chaos and play, to be sure, so that it can be fun in its own way. But regaining a sense of control is also affirming and energising.

This brings me to the latter part of the Aurelius aphorism, the bit about ‘the principles governing its proper execution’. Because the process of making something better through this kind of reworking would be hollowed out if it didn’t consider the in-depth internal logic of whatever problem you’re facing.

My most immediate experience of this process had to do with responding to a script note that called for a pivotal event in the story to occur much, much earlier than it does in the script as-is. My producer and I both agreed that we should think of a way to take this criticism on board and implement it productively, without compromising the integrity of the script as a whole.

So I got to thinking about how this action would alter some of the characters’ actions throughout the script as-is. I went back to the quasi-literal drawing board, writing out the logical trajectory of these change in long-hand. The end goal of this was to have a clear, bullet-pointed battle plan for what needs to be done. The changes that need to be implemented so as to make this note work. And it did happen, eventually.

But before I could get there, I spent a few pages writing out the characters’ motivations for taking this particular action, in this particular order, to accommodate the changes in line with a new chronology. This also led me to reconsider some taken-for-granted aspects of the characters in question. I thought I knew them. Turns out I didn’t get a chance to know them all that well, before.

In working out a logic that would justify the alterations suggested by the note, new things clicked into place. No, that one character doesn’t have to be as passive as they appear. They do have a desire, it’s just submerged so deeply it’s barley visible. And we need to think of ways to make that pop out. And so on.

In short, the process got me thinking about the ‘principles governing the proper execution’ of this character, and a couple of others who orbit around them and are influenced by their actions. It felt both rational, and organic. Like a clear understanding of something that lives and breathes, and which may yet surprise you in positive ways if you lay down a good environment in which it can thrive.

Chaos is often the order of the day because we aren’t born with a map at birth and cannot see into the future, which is why good stories are built in a way that respects certain internal harmonies that promote coherence. Focusing on the elements of the craft in this way has helped me find a ballast in these times. There’s a baseline for who we are no matter what happens around us, and that internal coherence is crucial to maintain because of what’s coming at us all the time, pandemic or not.

PS: Keeping me sane and out of the maddening rigmarole of the frenzied news cycle are great reads such as this, and this, as well as the ‘Coronavirus Newsroom’ set up in the Members’ Area of the Rune Soup portal. 

Two deadlines before lunch

Posted on by under Work, Writing, Writing habits

With two deadlines before lunch, I shouldn’t be writing this. Instead, I should be tending to those deadlines — methodically scratching away at the tasks in a way that guarantees both efficiency and quality. I should be working at them — letting my fresh second coffee animate the things I not-so-emphatically call ‘work-work’ instead of this work — the work of expression, the work of release.

But what I’ve learned over these past few weeks — in which ‘busy’ has been the watchword in a way that I’m not at all happy about — is that carving out the time for that ‘extra’ task is what will, in the end, make you think and work better in the long run.

I do journalism and copy writing to earn a living now, and I’m coming on to nearly a year of freelancing with that particular set of skills handy. Other opportunities may be in the offing once the summer is through — and there are some potentially life-changing events set to happen along the way — and of course, the ‘passion projects‘ will always be there; beacons of hope and motivation, of more expression, and more release.

But what this work means above all is that the effort often ends up feeling ephemeral. The work is not solid in any way — it fades away as the article makes its point and does its rounds, or the piece of copy writing is absorbed by the client and put to its work of passing on business information or getting those clicks in. It would be silly to invoke the Marxist idea of feeling alienated from the means of production (it probably borders on offensive for those charged with necessary but underpaid and demeaning manual labour) but there is at least a smidgen of psychological truth to the comparison, I think.

Which is why doing this is important, in this moment, right now. Just like it’s important to read every day no matter how overwhelming things get, or to try and write — not out of some point-scoring principle, but to help tamp down those deadline-shot nerves and fractured perceptions.

Because that’s what the internet — that other crucial tool for my freelance arsenal — has done for us. It has energised, but it’s also fractured and fragmented us. So that the more we’re lost in its morass, the harder it is to get out. You end up working in nervous-mode the whole time, and every day starts to feel like one of Hercules’ labours (yes, the one involving snake heads).

So instead of slicing off snake heads in a futile and frustrating sport, I try to carve out this time instead. In the hopes that it will provide the necessary breathing room to focus my remaining energy in a way that’s free of distraction and despair.

Now, back to those deadlines.

“When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune for longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six

 

By all means, paint yourself into that corner

Posted on by under Books, Comics, MIBDUL, Writing, Writing habits

‘Don’t paint yourself into a corner’ doesn’t make for great writing advice.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, painting oneself into a corner and then struggling to get out of it is often what keeps the piece from sliding into complacency.

If you paint yourself into a corner, it means you’ve taken a decision and committed to it. It also means that to get out of that corner will require you to execute a seemingly impossible feat of mental dexterity.

And don’t lucky escapes feature in countless of our favourite stories from antiquity to now?

Of course, one never aims to paint oneself into a corner. Corners are not fun places to be, generally. After all, they are a staple of stereotypical classroom punishment for a reason.

If you paint yourself into a corner, it means you’ve taken a decision and committed to it

But the work of writing is fluid and conducive to change. And sometimes, that change is a matter of necessity, not choice. But maybe, that change — maddening and plan-shattering as it may be at the start — could turn out to be the spark that you needed to get your story going in the first place.

It could be that the corner was inevitable. That you thought you were heading out into a green valley of plenty but that in reality, you were stuck in a one-bedroom apartment and bumping your head in the corner of the room made you realise the reality of your predicament and now, how will you solve it?

In the end, neither structure nor inspiration will save your piece. You can believe that inspiration will see you through, but ultimately all flashes of inspiration are just that: flashes. And you can map out your story based on the most rigorously researched schema this side of Joseph Campbell or Robert McKee, but rely too much on the mold and the creases will begin to show.

Some of the scariest and most satisfying moments in my own writing process for MIBDUL came when I realised I’ve locked down some narrative choices early on that will severely limit me later.

But once the initial panic wore off, possibilities cropped up. And the best thing about these new possibilities — which I won’t reveal for spoilery reasons, obviously — is that they did not crop up out of thin air, as new images and ideas rearing for a stillbirth and countless rehashing before being beaten into story-appropriate shape. They were reactions to already-existing plot points and character arcs, and so they came into a world with a shape and texture ready to receive them.

In the end, neither structure nor inspiration will save your piece

Instead of a domestic corner that you’re ‘painting’ yourself into, perhaps another variant of the metaphor would be more useful.

I prefer to think of it as the corner of a boxing ring. A place to regroup after being beaten down, and from where you can plan a fresh attack based on knowledge you’ve just gleaned about an opponent whose strength you may have underestimated…

Please support MIBDUL on Patreon

Loneliness relief: collaboration & writing

Posted on by under Books, Comics, Films, Two, Writing habits

Having slogged three years to write a debut novel – that’s really a novella – I’m finding myself more and more drawn to collaboration as a default mode of planning for and engaging in future projects.

It’s partly to do with wanting a fresh start – Two was revelatory and educational to write, but also a fearful trudge with no apparent end in sight (personal matters which coloured the narrative itself, and others that didn’t, further cast a shadow on the experience).

But it’s also simply down to that alchemy of opportunity and the desire to experiment with different forms. As is the same with most of my generational colleagues – I suppose – experiencing fiction was always a multi-media experience for me: what with cartoons, comics, video games, cinema and literature usually existing side-by-side, and even more so now that ‘media convergence’ is such a blatant aspect of everyday life that even the term itself sounds redundant.

TWO_TeodorReljic

A comic book project of mine is currently on the rocks, but some TV/film based stuff might just take off. Either way, the process of creation for each of these things was markedly different to what I experienced with the novel.

Brewing largely in my head throughout its three-year conception period, Two was as obstinate and unwieldy a draft of novel that you can imagine – perhaps more true than ever in this case, with a parallel narrative structure defining its contours.

The new projects, on the other hand, are being put together in an atmosphere of constant dialogue – quite literally,  plot points and character beats are drafted in conversation (with a whiteboard and marker never too far behind).

I’m finding it to be a great way of busting out of the warrens of endless possibility on the one hand, crippling self-doubt on the other, which tend to characterise the pitfalls of writing prose fiction from scratch. Collaboration both gets you out of your own head to enjoy some fresh air, and forces you to ‘make your case’ to another person at every turn.

Discovering the joys of structure mechanisms for storytelling is also something of a revolution for me. Again, like most people I know – or know of – I was initially sceptical of applying any form of overt structure to any piece of fiction I write a priori. For the usual reasons, of course: takes the fun out of it, ruins spontaneity, etc. Breaking out of that prejudice and exploring these options is proving to be far more liberating that I’d previously thought. But that’s something I’d like to talk about further in a future blog.

Here’s hoping that you’ll also hear more about the aforementioned projects here soon. Meanwhile, click here for all you need to know about Two, including where to order it from.

When it’s late

Posted on by under Writing habits

Cisk at the Newsroom

Working 12-hour shifts at the newspaper gives the night a particular edge, after it’s all over and you slump back home.

The exhaustion is expected, implicit even. But your sleep can’t be blissful: you’re too tired to shower, your brain is stuffed with news stories, with reams of digital copy the likes of which you’ve seen over and over again, week in and week out.

But there’s something democratising about this feeling. All glamour is stripped away after the 11pm mark hits, and you still find yourself at the office. At your desk, midway through a story, or waiting for a report to come in.

When you’re that tired, you should be sleeping. But if you’re deprived of sleep at that juncture, the dream world will seep through regardless. The belt that holds sleeping and waking is unbuckled, and just like that – while still firmly seated at your desk – you’re floating.

That same strange concentration, that same pinching together of thoughts and feelings happens, sometimes, when I write. My novel was probably borne out of just such a moment, and for all the necessary slogging, such moments are what I keep coming back for. What you keep coming back for.

But what you keep coming back to work for is something else entirely.

Which is to say, I need to make more of a habit of jotting things down. Lord knows how many of these fugue states have gone to waste clicking away on Facebook while waiting for a story to be wired in.

We should do our dreams justice.