...love what you write, write what you love.

"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.    ~ Ray Bradbury

Recently, at a literary night in Bar Luna, in Ubud, Bali, I was the guest speaker. The 

 This is the hardest lesson --to love what I write. To love what I do is easy. But that voice of self- doubt, or the voice of John Knox or whatever deity bewitches or curses us Celts, is loud and clear.

My school reports - all those "could do better" remarks --how do the teachers decide you could do better when you wrote your heart out,  thinking your 'composition' (the word for essay in my day) was pretty good. Over imaginative perhaps, but that was what writing was about, so I thought, making up stories  that were weird and wonderful and nothing like ordinary life. 

So there was seldom a - well done, seldom a nice wee tick, or a gold star as later became the fashion, for my stories. A miserly 'B or 'A-'  was the best I could hope for in English composition.


Maybe it was a nineteen-fifties thing; an 'A' would swell a child's brain. To give praise  was probably an infringement of some educational theory taught in pre WW11 teacher training colleges. 
To punish, to instil fear, through liberal use of the belt - a length of extremely hard leather - that was thought to be the way to educate children aged five and upwards.

I remember clearly being taken from my classroom - I must have been about 8 - to help calm down my sister who would have been 6. She had to be punished, I was told, and she wouldn't hold out her hand to be hit with this medieval instrument of pain.  I was supposed to tell her "it was for her own good." All I can remember is being equally terrified and saying, "You'll have to ask my Mum."
What happened after that I don't recall but if it didn't scar my sister for life, it certainly scarred me.  

interlocutor, a wonderful writer and woman, Cat Wheeler, asked why my books are based in the nineteen fifties. I can't recall exactly what I said. It was a light, fun evening. I certainly didn't relate the story of my sister.
Maybe I should have, because a partial answer is, "Nothing since has been as cruel as some of the events of my childhood." 

The 1950s: the crucible of us baby-boomers; corporal punishment, polio, rationing, the fear of nuclear war. And as the decade ran out towards the sixties, television, and telephones in the home - if you could afford them - Elvis on the wireless, occasionally clothes bought in shops and not made by your mother or granny, holidays further than Nairn 17 miles away, all signs of changing times. 

And a never to be forgotten change in my worldview was a book,  borrowed from the library inadvertently, and probably because it had a lurid cover, the "The Martian Chronicles". 

Ray Bradbury changed my life; he showed me that in your imagination, anything is possible. Even other worlds. Worlds outside of the Highlands of Scotland. 

And that led me to Iain M Banks. A worthwhile man is ever there was one. And sorely missed.

Aa' the best.

A writer writes - no matter what.

I came to Ubud in Bali to write - that and escape the heat of my hometown.

And write I did--storming my way into the manuscript, in the zone, pleased with what was coming out through my fingertips. Then the house I was renting was burgled; computer, iPad, camera, all gone.
Sure I'd backed up --bless you iCloud. Sure, I'm insured. But that was not what made me pause (word used advisedly - stop more appropriate but I'm Scottish, so superstitious); it was the sense of violation.

Now Ubud is a good place to confront your fears so, off I went and did Qi Gong, Healing Sound Meditation, Poetry Night at Bar Luna, hung out in coffeshops and bars and went shopping -- there are more distractions here than you can poke a stick at. But I avoided anything with the word Tantric in the title --you'll never get me bending over backwards to please anyone, especially in Ubud where bending over backwards is the done thing. Literally.

All the posters for workshops with beautiful people in preposterous poses reminds me of a Glaswegian friend I had in the sixties, Sadie was her name. She was describing one man who thought himself a particularly cool dude. He taught spiritual tantric sex. He was trying to recruit her. She turned her back on him and said loud enough for him to hear...cue in a stunning blonde with a strong Glasgow accent ... "See him? He's so laid back he can lick his ain arse."

Right, the manuscript.  I tried writing by hand - you know, pen, pencil, paper --remember? But something odd happened. Firstly I couldn't always read my own writing it has been so long since I've done a sustained piece of writing by hand.
But that was not the real revelation; in writing by hand the work changed. Majorly changed. Became more literary. Good writing, pleasing writing, just not what I'm being paid to do. Not what my contract says. Not what my readers expect from me. Not me at all at all. Or is it?

Deep within ourselves we wish to be better writers or else we'd never do it again. After the first book, we know what it takes. We know the hours of staring at a blank screen at the wall, we know the loneliness the fear, the back pain the stress.
For a woman it can be like giving birth in that the resulting child makes you forget the childbirth experience. Or is it some cunning evolutionary process that temporarily wipes out the memory of the pain?
And you do it again. Then again. Each time hoping that it will be better than the last --a better book, not a better child -- although that thought too can occasionally surface.

But this? These sentences, these paragraphs, flowing out in lovely ink on a French notebook? This stuff is more poetry than genre fiction. And poetry doesn't sell. And I need to earn my living. And the style, so different, doesn't fit the previous computer written part of the manuscript.
But it's writing. Perhaps it will become my secret writing. My personal literary porn. Whatever it is, it is writing. It leads to the Zen like thought that if I stop writing am I am no longer a writer? I like being a writer. I like being able to say I am a writer. A published author.

So I'm packing up the new computer and heading for the hills where hopefully there is no yoga, no Qi Gong, no Sound medicine other than birds and running water and no, no, no, tantric anything.

Aa' the best.

Here we go again...

Happy as can be...well, not quite.

A new book is in the making. Plot plotted -- as far as that goes as I tend to let the story run its own course, much like highland burn in spate.
Not doing so, not sticking to the plot, sometimes results in a wonderful run of words where you feel the ideas and pictures flowing from the fingertips. Sometimes not; sometimes you are so engrossed in the free flow that you literally lose the plot. And weep.

Embarking on a new novel is exciting, yes. Scary too. And writing this book in a new country (Bali, Indonesia) in a new temporary home (my friend Oksana's house) I have everything I need - except for THE chair.

There is a beautiful chair, a large recycled wooden chair, a Daddy Bear chair, but it is NOT MY CHAIR. My chair at home in Viet Nam is a cheap, bought from a supermarket, nasty fabric, office chair, tastefully hidden under a Cambodian Buddha-orange silk blanket and it works just fine, supports the back, doesn't give me varicose veins, and cost about twenty dollars new.

Here in Ubud do you think I can find a chair? Not a hope! I can find endless tourist tat, endless yoga schools, more organic spas and cafes and groceries that even Julia Roberts would ever need. I can find centres for Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and more isms than I know how to spell, but an office centre, forgedaboutid.

But the writing will happen. It must. Guilt about not writing now outweighs excuses. And too much thinking -- aka procrastination, makes for sleepless nights.
Now it is time and the ripening rice surrounding the house, growing higher than the bedroom windowsills, the late afternoon swallows, followed by early evening bats, followed by early darkness fireflies, followed by diamond studded skies and a moon filling to full, is sheer magic.
Just the place to sooth the savage whatsit. Yeah yeah yeah, eat pray love.

How about write write write? I will, I promise. But first a chair.

Aa the best.

Now is the hour

Now is the hour that longing turns around
For sailors towards what they left behind...
                                        Dante Alighieri.
                                       Translator, Clive James

I have left my home in Viet Nam, temporarily, to try a new setting, with yet to meet new friends, in Ubud, Bali.

Here to regain my health and equanimity, here to write the first draft of a new book, after only four days, the longing for what Ive left behind hit me.
The change of place started in joy soon morphing into, the chair is not right, the desk too high, the insects are different, the sounds unfamiliar.
But now I know that none of this means a thing; it is only that this is not my desk, my chair, my sounds.
and the compensations are too tremendous to complain: fireflies in the early evening dark darting across the rice fields outside the bedroom window; the four hour cremation ceremony yesterday starring a casts of hundreds, a dragon with a twenty metre tail, a giant bull with huge carved horns, a tower creation three stories high with atop the construction, presumably, the bones of the 4 years dead prince; the yoga barn; the massages; the yummy organic food ...Stop. Wait. The Writing? Not yet.

Now is the time to remember what I have left behind. And who.
Now is the time to remember that no matter the environment, the task is the same --to write the best book I possibly can.
Now it is time to lose myself in that world, the Highlands, 1958, the Highland Gazette, to re-join the cast and crew of my invented world, invented yet based on what I know, who I knew, and most of all those remembered hills and mountain, glens and burns, the wind, the air, the rain, and the constant sound of trees moving, water running, and my mother singing. Once upon a time, before she succumbed to the bullying, she sang often.
So now I embark on another novel, I will keep that sound of her singing with me.

And once again, before I start, I have the pivotal scene that leads me into the work. Last time it was nits (head lice).
This time, it is Sunday morning, beach-side mission, Salvation Army tambourine beating the rhythm and we children singing "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" whilst all around us the ungodly are trying to catch the rays to turn Scots-white-blue skin a deeper shade of red to prove they have indeed been on holiday if only "doon the water" to the islands in the Firth of Clyde.
Happy Days.

I hope I can pull it off. But then again, that is why I, we, write.

Aa' the best.

PS yet to find a working title ---'Doon the Water' doesn't work in English.

Ha, at long last I have discovered how to post a blog -- indeed how to open the whole blooming site, bypassing the Comrades who block Facebook and bloggers.
However, I am a guest in this country and accept what is.

So where was I? A new book? Yep, Beneath the Abbey Wall was duly published in November '12 and, I'm pleased to say, has done well in a modest way.

Next up, North Sea Requiem is now being proof-editd and will be out on September the 3rd this year.

Much more importantly for me, is the new book, the one yet to be written, the one where I know what I want to say and am not sure I can pull it off.

Yeah yeah, always with the doubt. Can't help it. Every time I embark on a new book I am terrified. Once writing that evaporates. Once finished, the doubts creep in again. Then you just have to write another to see if you can improve on the previous. Sounds like one of Dante's circles of hell and it is. But not.

Count you blessings, name them one by one, that was one of the songs we sang in Sunday School. That was the song that stayed with me, shaped me.
So I count my blessings:

I am alive. Never complain about getting old because at least you are alive.
I am healthy(ish) Healthy enough to work, swim, drive a motorbike, travel, dance, behave disgracefully in a bar on the beach (even though I hardly ever drink, I do get drunk on joy)
I earn a living through my writing. Modest living, yes, I'd be poor if I lived in the west but wealthy in the little fisherman's cottage in Viet Nam in the village with no name.
I have friends. Wonderful loving supportive friends.
I have family. Ditto above.
I am off to Bali for 3 months. Off to write. To hide. To write. To retreat. To write. To eat well. To write. To exercise. And write write write.

 So there we have it, this random pick of the many blessings in my life --Wonderful huh?

Aa' the best.

Recovery

As in - 'I'm in recovery' --  AKA Help me Rhonda.

I couldn't understand why I am so tired. Jet-lag? No, should be over that. The horrid cold I picked up in New York? Ditto. So what, why, where does the tiredness stem from? Oh yes, the writing.

Deadlines work. But finishing brings loss -- loss of routine, the loss of that creative bubble where loneliness vanishes so all consumed are you by the company of fictional friends --and enemies, where the world you have created has become more real than reality.

When you hit the send key and the work wings off through the ether, there is a sense of loss so profound, I have complete sympathy with Virginia Wolf and her choice of the river. I have to be vigilant; tell myself to drive slowly, stop at red lights, avoid the rip, avoid quarrelling, avoid despair.

I am recovering from writing the bulk of a book in ten weeks. I'm recovering from finishing the last pages on the morning of the day I set off on a 27 hour journey, via Seoul, to the United States (not including a very long journey from JFK airport including a shuttle bus stopping at six destinations befoe mine to the hotel in Manhattan, only to find the place I booked on the Internet had a shared bathroom on a different floor down a steep, and badly lit, and cold staircase) I had to find another hotel so it was 7 hours after landing before I lay down and couldn't sleep.

Then came the thrill of meeting readers and the team at the publishers and seeing the books in shops. Then the joy of New York, of San Diego, of Redondo Beach, of Pasadena. Then San Francisco, and MELTDOWN.

Knowing I must wait out the despair, I tell myself to find joy in the achievement--you finished, on time, you delivered a book you thought impossible to complete. You tell yourself that despair will pass. Doesn't work.
But this time the consolation of strangers who encourage and praise and engage with me about previous novels that I dimly remember is wonderful and makes me want to continue. And I have the joy of holding the new work in my hands.

I was kidding myself when I though the let-down, the stepping off of the cloud that sustained me through the story would not happen. It did. It has. It has happened in San Francisco and has been made more bearable by the city, the diners, the life of the streets and the wonderful apartment I've been lent by generous strangers.

Three days sleeping eating walking.
Now the sun is shining.
Now an idea for a new book is emerging.
Now it is time to begin again.
Gently.

Aa' the best.

Kiss me once...

...it's been a long long time...

I have an excuse, many excuses, but the main one is I finished the major draft of book 4 -
North Sea Requiem, only twelve days ago and the very idea of opening a computer made me exhausted.

Plus the very same day the manuscript was sent off, I boarded a plane to New York and stepped out into air so cold, I caught a cold - a horrid sniffing sneezing snivelling cold. Haven't had one of those since Scotland.

So there I was, doing the rounds of bookshops, signing books, meeting fabulous people, having the thrill of seeing my books on shelves in shops for the very first time, then retreating, miserable to overpriced and underwhelming hotel rooms in New York, feeling crap.

But nothing could ever take away from the thrill, the unbelievable high of seeing those book up there with other authors, especially authors I adore, and thinking, it was all worth it; the backache, the loneliness, the isolation, the insomnia, the rift with friends and family as you immerse yourself in writing, it was worth it.

Back it the real world, travelling, exploring parts of the United States is exciting, and stimulating, and most of all, hearing from readers how they engage with the novels had given new impetus to continuing with the series.

After delivering the manuscript I was thinking, this is it, I'll never write another of these again, I want to write anything other than this series.
Then a lovely woman at Atria my publisher said, the only problem with your books is I have to wait a whole year for the next one. Awwwwe. How can I resist comments like that?

                 
                           Me, the author (it now seems real - I now believe I really am an author)
                                               Mysterious Books, TriBeCa, New York.