A couple of days ago I went to Carnoustie to interview historical crime novelist David Wishart. What a lovely man! He made me fish soup and pizza for lunch and spent a couple of hours talking to me about his series of Marcus Corvinus books, murder mysteries set in ancient Rome. I typed up my notes from the interview on the train on the way home and I have 3000 words! There’s a lot of great material there and I’m looking forward to writing the article.
For me, writing an interview is akin to tidying the kitchen. There are five stages:
1. Get a clear view of the contents. This is like emptying the kichen cupboards and spreading everything out on the floor. Type up your notes from the interview and any background research you have done into one document.
2. Group items that belong together. Forks with knives, pots with pans, salt with pepper. At this stage of the interview write up I put headings above different quotes to identify those that are about the writing process, characters, plot etc. Then I cut and paste so that all the quotes in each category are together.
3. Identify superfluous material. Do I really need two sets of salad tongs? I don’t even eat salad. One set can go in the bin. I never ever discard interview material, though. I paste it into another document, just in case. The plot of David Wishart’s first, unpublished novel is highly entertaining but as an off-beat sci-fi adventure, is it relevant to his Roman mystery novels? Cut. Paste.
4. Put everything in its place. This is the most difficult bit, involving lots of trial and error. This is where you find that there is no space in the cutlery drawer for wooden spoons and that you have left a whole cupboard for chocolate but all you have is one measly KitKat. You have to rethink how things connect to each other. Maybe chocolate goes with biscuits, and therefore with tea and coffee. Cupboard filled. Wooden spoons do not really belong with dessert spoons and tea spoons anyway. They deserve their own drawer. To fit my interview together I first decide what my opening and closing lines will be. If possible I try to open with a quote that gives an idea of the author’s personality and close with a quote that sums up how they see themself as a writer. I also look for quotes that will link up the content of the article. I rearrange the paragraphs until they click into place, one topic leading on to the next.
5. Close the damn cupboard doors before everything falls out again. There are only so many times you can read and reread that interview. When it gets to the point that with each new read all you are changing is the postition of a comma, print it out and send it off.
During February there will be poetry events happening all over Edinburgh as part of the City of Literature’s Carry a Poem campaign. There will be opportunities to share your favourite poems with others, to attend poetry writing workshops and to take part in a treasure hunt. I see that Mark Thomson will be performing his poetry in Leith Library next Wednesday. I had an amazing time at a workshop with him last April and I strongly recommend that you go along if you can.
From Monday 1000s of Carry a Poem Books will be given away for free in Edinburgh City Libraries. The book contains a selection of poems, each one accompanied by a story from the person who chose it to explain why that poem is significant to them. I’m desperate for a copy and am already planning the fastest route from work to the library on Monday afternoon.
I’m sure the campaign will not only encourage people to read poems but also to treasure them. Already it’s got me thinking about poems that have meant a lot to me. I’ve never been a good one for memorising lines (I have friends who can carry on whole conversations quoting only from The Simpsons while the best I can manage is “Doh!”) and I’m not the sort of person who learns poems off by heart. I can’t claim to carry any one particular poem in my head, but there are some that still make me smile long after my memory of the words has faded.
One of these is Fleur Adcock’s Illiterate, which I recently came across in a journal at the Scottish Poetry Library. The poem describes that confusing time in childhood before you can read or write. Without letters to pin down the words it’s so easy to get them wrong. Adcock recalls her mother offering her crayons and thinking she had said “crowns”. Learning to read brought her clarity but also sadness; all those words that had to be unlearned!
It reminded me that when I was a child I thought that my mum carried a ham-bag and my grandpa was in the Gravy. I spent about a year playing “shoders” at nursery until “shoulder” and “soldier” resolved into two distinct words. Although it’s been a long time since I made those mistakes, my mum still clings onto my childhood words, offering me “noccit” when I visit home.
Last night I went to a screening of God on Trial to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. The film is set in Auschwitz during World War II and is about a group of prisoners who decide to hold a trial against God for breaking his covenant with the Jewish people by allowing the genocide to take place.
The screenwriter, Frank Cottrell Boyce, was present at the event and answered questions from the audience about his inspiration for the film.
He had heard the story of the trial as a young man and it stuck with him. “I was just a bit daft about it really,” he said, explaining that he was moved by the fact that the story ended on a note of hope. His own faith, however, made him doubt if he was qualified write the screenplay. “I’m a Catholic. Should I be writing about a Jewish subject? It seemed quite blasphemous to have a trial of God.” He spoke to a Rabbi about it who told him that in Judaism there is a “very strong tradition of wrangling with God.” This convinced Cottrell Boyce to go ahead with the project.
He knew that for the story to work, God had to be found guilty. Cottrell Boyce asked the Rabbi for a list of arguments that might be used to make a case against God, then he sat down and read the Old Testament. “It’s a tough read. It’s a remnant of a brutal age. It’s hard to reconcile that with anything you want to believe, really.”
This research, as well interviews he had done with Holocaust survivors, provided Cottrell Boyce with the material he needed to write the screenplay. “It troubled me a lot writing this film. One of the things that held me together was talking to the people who had been there and still had their faith intact.”
When it came to rehearsing the script, Cottrell Boyce realised that his first draft focused too much on intellectual arguments. “I had to give the actors something to hold on to. The answer is not intellectual. It’s about your relationship with God.” He introduced a more human element to the story, allowing the characters to talk about their experiences at the hands of the Nazis.
One of the questions raised in the film is about the nature of goodness. Why do good people suffer? What makes a person ‘good’?
“We do get very hung up on the question of evil. I get evil. It’s just part of the evolutionary process really. Goodness is inexplicable. There should be more questions about goodness.”
Cottrell Boyce believes that the film is relevant even now, 65 years after the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, because “the Holocaust is not unprecedented and it is not alone.” He cited conflicts in Northern Ireland and Iraq as examples of atrocities happening in our own lifetime. When asked what had changed for him personally as a result of writing the film, Cottrell Boyce said that praying for him is no longer about saying please and thank you. Now he is asking ‘why?’ and “that is a fantastic gift.”
Today is Robert Burns Day so I’ll be having haggis for dinner, courtesy of my friend Lucy. The last time I had a Burns supper must have been about five years ago when I was still a student. My college held one every year. The haggis would be led into the hall by a bagpiper in full kilt and carried up to the high table where one of the fellows would recite Burns’ Address to a Haggis, slicing the thing open with a wicked gleam in her eye at the line:
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
After that disgusting piece of imagery the haggis would be taken away again to be dished onto plates and we would be left picking at the prunes in our cock-a-leekie soup, feeling slightly squeamish.
If you weren’t lucky enough to have been invited for a Burns supper this evening (and I bet you wish you were now. Gushing entrails? Yum!) but still want to enjoy a little bit of Scottish Bard related fun, why don’t you try this puzzle? Even if you don’t learn anything new, you can still have a laugh at the anagram clues. Danny Seagull? Hah!
Studies show that increasing the blood flow to the brain through physical exercise can help to improve your concentration and memory. Both of these are obviously very important for writers. How the heck am I supposed to get out 1000 words a day if I keep turning to look out the window and where did I leave my pen anyway?
I’m ashamed to admit that it’s been about two years since I had any regular exercise. That is until yesterday evening when I started a beginners’ trapeze course at the Big Red Door. This is my favourite venue in Edinburgh during the festival. You can sit down with a beer, enjoy some performance art and possibly get dragged onto the stage for some improvised acting out of a fairy story if you don’t manage to duck under a table quick enough when the cry comes out for “volunteers”.
In our first lesson yesterday we learned how to balance on the trapeze leaning both backwards and forwards into the rope. The important thing here, we were told, is to wedge the rope firmly between the buttocks or breasts if you have them, then you won’t fall off. We also tried hanging upside down with our knees folded over the bar.
Apparently hanging upside down is another way to get the blood flowing to your brain. That’s not why I’m doing trapeze lessons though. I just thought they sounded wicked cool.
…but only if you are Scottish or live in Scotland, sorry!
Scotland: Write Here Write Now is looking for the opening 10-15 pages of a contemporary comedy drama or sitcom. Deadline is 26th March.
…is now taking applications. If you are thinking about a career in screenwriting then this is the course for you. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Here are my notes from Screen Lab 2009: Day 1, Day2, Day3.
This year there will be a whole day on adaptations. I have a note scribbled in the margin of one of my notebooks saying that 80% of last year’s films were adaptations so it should be a very useful and informative course.
What better way to spend an afternoon than sitting around reading magazines? And when you can call it “market research” and count it as work then it’s all the more satisfying. I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours in the Scottish Poetry Library today combing through their large selection of journals, trying to find markets for an interview I’m working on but also reading short stories and poems when the mood grabbed me. The library is completely free to use so if you are in Edinburgh and poetry floats your boat I would definitely recommend a visit. I’m going to keep going back to browse through some jourals that I like (Ambit, The Edinburgh Review, Gutter…) and to be inspired by the library’s huge collection of poems.
It’s a new year and this is my 100th post so I thought it was time to change the design of my blog. Hope you like it!
