This Writing Life
This Writing Life
A Dialogue: Join us This post also appeared first under my section Write It!
Mary Tabor + Eleanor Anstruther have joined forces to create a collaborative and interactive resource on the craft of writing. We two invite you to send both of us, at the same time, your questions in Notes, tagging us both. Once a month, we—Mary and Eleanor—will choose a question, meet together on video to discuss it, a filmed dialogue between us that addresses your writing issue. We’ll then publish the video and a short, written answer on both our sites for free. Will wonders never cease! We'll also email that answer privately to you, so that you’ve time to digest, respond, and come back to us. You’ll need to subscribe to both of us if you want that little bit of extra. Now, you may be thinking for free? But here’s the thing: It’s beautiful to be valued for what you do, it’s beautiful to give things away, and these two aspects don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can still upgrade to paid on our sites; you can still send us the message that you value our work by taking out a paid subscription. You won’t get anything extra except that warm feeling of giving something back. And if you don’t, or can’t or just want to wait and see, that’s okay too. You won’t find yourself in a different room—you’ll still be welcome because everyone, whether you pay or not, has value to us.
Nothing makes us happier than talking about writing. Get in touch and we’ll put the kettle on, light the fire, and concentrate on you. Whether you’re facing the blank page for the first time or have fifteen novels and a memoir under your belt, whether you’re a script writer, novelist, playwright, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, we want to know what’s bothering you in this writing life, and we want to help you write it.
p.s. from Mary: I have a full course that I introduce here—the link is here for you to take a gander—it’s free….: The collaboration with me and Eleanor,
Link to: Our introduction to all this — in case you missed it.
They are separate sections, but we first linked to my course: https://marytabor.substack.com/p/write-it-how-to-get-started that is simply an additional option.
Love,
Mary and Eleanor
@Mary L Tabor @eleanor Anstruther
My experience might be of interest for a perspective on writing (novels, novellas, short stories, poems, memoir, non-fiction (actually, no, not non-fiction, or maybe yes actually, writing anything). I'm now 61. The first writing I did of a personal nature was largely stream of consciousness, with a huge debt to David Bowie's lyrics. It was dreadful. I didn't keep it. But I knew I wanted to be a writer. It went with my view of myself as highly intelligent, sensitive and creative, and was a good shield. Like many, my childhood left me deeply disturbed (childhood is disturbing anyway, with the heightened perceptual mechanism of a forming mind, without adding emotional or physical domestic abuse).
London in my twenties, drifting, taking drugs, living for sensation. The inevitable breakdown came, and when the voices in my head stopped, my writing began in earnest: monologues, plays, screenplays, absurd, cynical comedies. I somehow managed to get an agent for tv writing, but nothing came of it. I still have a few things I wrote in that period. I was 20 years ahead of the curve, but lacked discipline and story-telling.
I went to live an itinerant life in the highlands at 30, to become a writer of novels (v. serious and profound endeavour, taking Nietzsche (to this day I still get the z and the s the wrong way round), Heidegger, Beckett and Dante for company). I had fine and grand solitude for a year or 2, but when I stopped moving around I was struck down by the illness of loneliness. I wrote a diary all the way through, full of descriptions, ideas, feelings. I didn't realise it at the time, but I was developing the language I would use ever after. I left after 5 years, about 3 years later than I should, with a whisky habit that has been hard to shake off. The writing habit had taken hold though, so perhaps 5 years was the correct time to be lost and alone in the wilderness.
Then it was trying to make a living, and writing. I managed somehow. But for 10 years I never finished anything. Rather, I never revised it. I wrote like a train. I've never had a blank page problem. The opposite of that is still a problem. It took me a long time to realise this.
Everything I wrote was from my experience, the people I knew, the things I'd done, or been a part of, re-imagined with a strange distorted sensibility leading directly back to the troubled childhood. Naturally, memory seems of the utmost importance to the life of any of my characters. The central character is somehow always a version of me. I took an MLitt in creative writing the year after our first child arrived, didn't work, lived off a small inheritance and wrote and fathered. It was a great year. I don't recommend creative writing courses, apart from being forced to go public, take the cold shower of indifference and go on. After that, I spent 10 years on an epic heterotopia, working out an idea of tyranny and stasis, and escape from the same. I revised for 5 years, hard, but it was flawed in its conception and is now in the graveyard of my SSD external drive. The fact I refer to it as an epic heterotopia is a clue there. But, but-but-but, I finished it and began learning the craft.
I've never plotted a novel out. I find my way to the end. This is a little risky, but I need the stimulus. I used to go for long trips in the wilderness alone and without a map or compass.
What I've learnt from finishing and editing boils down to how hard you must revise. I mean really, really hard, with a slowly developing skill at getting my carcass out the way of the story.
I've just finished another novel, short (50,000 words), 2 years to write and 2 years to revise (full-time demanding job is my excuse), and I believe it to be engaging, to be enjoyed by the reader all the way through, and funny.
This has been my aim all along: to write a good comic novel. I believe a writer needs at least one idol. Mine was Samuel Beckett. It took me 20 years to stop trying to be him. This was time well-spent.
I've taken a month to write a 1 page synopsis. I've somehow managed to stop now. I've selected about 5 agents from the W&A yearbook and am about to launch it at them. Which is why I posted this, by way of thanks for the insights on submission. Many thanks. I'm new-ish to substack, but it's a great place.
Oh yes, and I write because it's where I've most of my wits, curated experience, arcane language, where I am most free of others. Also, I have to write or I get depressed...
Such a great idea and project. Wishing best of luck and success, @Mary L Tabor and @Eleanor Anstruther. Looking forward to the videos!