By Any Name
Posted November 27, 2008
Titles are rarely a problem for me. Usually the perfect title for a book presents
itself just after I start writing it – I find a line of poetry and something just
leaps out at me and seems to fit the story and the theme, and that’s the end of it.
Mariana, for example, was an easy one. I’ve always loved Tennyson, and in his poem
“Mariana” I not only felt the longing of the woman who was waiting for her lover
to come back to her, but he had also penned those perfect lines about the house itself:
Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
There wasn’t any question in my mind what I should call that book. But now and then,
a title gives me trouble. The Winter Sea went through several names, none of them
right, before one of the characters in it (Colonel Graeme) made a comment to my heroine
about “the winter sea” and in a moment of epiphany I thought, ‘Aha! That’s what the
book’s about.’ But it did take awhile. And now I’m coming to the ending of my latest
book, and I’m still sifting titles in my head in search of one that fits. It started
as November Eve, which had a lovely sound and fit the story in a lot of ways, but
might be problematic for my publishers in Britain. And besides, it’s set in Cornwall,
where November Eve’s not called “November Eve” – they call it “Allantide”, which
doesn’t really have the same ring for me. So I’m sifting. Reading endless books of
poetry and song lyrics and plays, and hoping something will leap out at me so I won’t
have to call this book “The Cornish Book” forever...
-----------------------------
Time and Chance
Posted October 22, 2008
Here’s a little secret I can share about the writing business: Luck plays a much
greater role than a lot of us like to admit. Making a sale often comes down to finding
the right editor at the right moment of the right day - a task on a level with picking
which horses will win a trifecta. And it doesn’t always get easier. Editors come
and go, leaving your book at the mercy of others who don’t always share that initial
enthusiasm... someone’s bestseller blows your little book off the shelves and review
pages... lots of things happen that you can’t control. I, for one, had a book come
out just as the Net Book Agreement collapsed in the UK, sending shock waves through
British publishing and bookselling and making my then editor-in-chief proclaim aloud
(while standing right beside me, as it happened, at our Christmas party) that she
pitied any author who was being published just then, since their book would be doomed
to sell poorly... Still, luck swings both ways. Whenever a book does have good sales
or win an award, while I’d like to believe it’s because of the writing, it’s more
likely I’ve just had awfully good luck. I suspect that it’s always been thus. More
than 2,000 years ago the writer of Ecclesiastes must have suspected it, too, when
he sat down to comment that: “...the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to
the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding,
nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” True
words, in this business. The trick is to let it all go and not worry about all those
factors in publishing you can’t control; just get on with the next book and make
it the best that you can, and the next after that, and the next, and the next. That’s
what you can control. All the rest will just happeneth as it plays out.
-----------------------------
What Happened Next...
Posted September 19, 2008
I’ve always had mixed feelings when it comes to sequels. On the one hand, a lot of
my childhood favourites were stories that took more than one book to tell. Only the
most un-kindred of spirits could have left Anne and Gilbert where they were at the
end of Anne of Green Gables. It seemed natural to follow them on into middle age,
right through to Rilla of Ingleside, just as I followed the Ingalls and Wilder families
through all of the Little House books. Again, who could have left Laura driving away
from her house in the woods to the unknown wilds of the Prairies, and not want to
follow? From the back covers I already knew that the Little House books were more
memoir than fiction. I knew little Laura would grow up to marry Almanzo. I wanted
to read on to see how that happened, and the last page of These Happy Golden Years
was wholly satisfying for me. But I never read the book they tacked on afterwards,
The First Four Years. For one thing, Laura Ingalls Wilder hadn’t finished writing
it before she died, so there’s no way of knowing if the version as it’s published
is the one she would have wanted us to read. And for another thing, I didn’t need
to know what happened after Laura and Almanzo finally had their wedding and moved
into their new house. It was enough for me to know that they had overcome their obstacles
and found their happy ending, and the rest I could imagine for myself, thanks very
much. In one of my all-time favourite books by one of my favourite authors, Jan Cox
Speas, the heroine/narrator finishes telling her story to us with, “And need you
ask, now that the tale is done, what became of them, the two who loved so unwisely
and so well? Need you wonder, How did it go with them, how was it in the end?” I
always loved that ending, always loved the little quietly contented feeling that
I got from watching her two characters walk off into their life together, hand in
hand. And no, I never needed to be told how things turned out for them. I knew. So
when I started writing books myself, I never thought of sequels. It seemed natural
that, at the end of every book, my characters would reach a place where all their
issues were resolved, and I could write “The End” and let them go. In fact I always
knew I’d reached the end when all my characters stopped talking, having settled all
their business with each other. But twice now – first with Every Secret Thing, and
now just lately with The Winter Sea, my characters have stubbornly refused to leave
the stage after I’ve brought the curtain down, and in both those cases it appears
I may have started stories that just can’t be told within a single book. It’s an
idea I find daunting and exciting at the same time, but the characters from both
books still have problems in their lives that haven’t been resolved completely yet,
and I find I am curious to know what happens next…
-----------------------------
What You Give Me
Posted August 20, 2008
Back when my daughter was in first grade, the teachers who led her school choir thought
it would be nice to have the students sing a tribute to their parents, so they taught
the kids to sing ‘You Raise Me Up’. And then they taught them how to do the lyrics
of the song in sign language, to make it extra special. Well, it’s a good thing that
the lights were turned down in the gym the night of that performance, let me tell
you. All those little earnest voices singing loud enough to lift the rafters, all
those little hands that touched their own hearts before pointing to the sky…it made
the toughest of the dads dissolve in tears, and even the teachers who’d organized
it weren’t prepared themselves for quite that level of emotion. But it was a lovely
tribute, and the words of that song came to mind when I sat down to write this.
I’ve often said my work is like the challenge that the miller’s daughter faces in
the story ‘Rumplestiltskin’. She has to spin a room full of straw into gold, I have
to turn a ream of blank paper into a book, and for the most part we both have to
do it alone. But while she only has that little annoying dwarf and her alpha-male
king to connect with, I have something infinitely better - all of you.
It’s the rare day now that doesn’t bring an email from somebody who has taken time
to write and wish me well and say they like my books. And on those days when I feel
tired or when the work’s not coming easily, those letters mean a lot. They send me
back into my writing-room with energy and new determination, and remind me that although
there’s only one chair at my desk, I’m never really on my own when I am sitting there.
And when the book is done I have the added joy of coming out to meet you at events
and signings, and to thank you face to face for all you do for me.
I know I’ll stumble on the words myself if I try to express them, so I’ll offer you
instead the same song that my daughter sang in choir, because the lyrics say it all
so simply and so beautifully. You truly raise me up.
-----------------------------
In My Own Words
Posted July 31, 2008
Something a little different for you this month... Front row seats to an interview
I gave last May at the Whitby Public Library, as part of the Canadian launch of The
Winter Sea, with my all-time favourite interviewer: Ted Barris, himself a multi-talented
writer and broadcaster whose questions are always both thoughtful and challenging,
and whose web site will give you an idea of the breadth of his accomplishments.
Just click on the image above for the first clip. I’ll post more as soon as I find
time to edit them.
-----------------------------
The Kindness of Strangers
Posted June 16, 2008
The run-up to a book’s publication is filled with many last-minute tasks and printers’
deadlines, and it wasn’t until the final printed copies of The Winter Sea had been
delivered that my U.K. publisher and I both realized that the “Note of Thanks” that
I had written to be put in at the end had been left out, somehow. I’m hoping it can
be squeezed in to the paperback edition later this year, but until then, here is
what ought to have been on the book’s final page:
When doing my research, like most writers, I must depend on the kindness of strangers,
and in Cruden Bay I was spoilt by kindness. So many people, from the shopkeepers
to people I passed on the street, gave me friendly advice and assistance, that even
if I'd learnt their names I doubt I'd have the space to list them here! I'm grateful
above all to Joyce , Stuart and Alison Warrander of the St Olaf Hotel (pictured above),
where I stayed, who made sure that my room (#4) had a view of both Slains and the
sea, so that I could imagine what Carrie was seeing. The Warranders and their staff
were incredibly helpful to me, as were their regulars in the hotel's public bar,
who cheerfully answered my questions and even suggested the perfect place for me
to put Carrie 's cottage. My thanks also to all the drivers of Elaine 's Taxis who
ferried me around, and to Elaine herself who took good care of me and even switched
the meter off one afternoon to help me hunt down some of my elusive settings. I'm
also grateful to the landlord and staff of the Kilmarnock Arms, and to local historian
and fellow author Mrs Margaret Aitken and her husband and daughter, who were kind
enough to have me in to tea and share their knowledge of the history of the area.
I'm indebted to both Brenda Murray and Rhoda Buchan of the Cruden Bay Library, who
searched out articles and books for me and found me details I could not have found
without their help. I've tried to repay all this kindness by getting my facts right.
I hope I've succeeded, and that you'll forgive me if I've slipped up anywhere. Finally
I owe thanks to Jane, for her years of encouragement, and to her family, for welcoming
me to Glendoick.
-----------------------------
A Mother’s Touch
Posted May 06, 2008
With Mother’s Day approaching, I’ve decided that it’s high time I paid tribute –
proper tribute – to the role my mother plays behind the scenes in all my books. I
have a private theory that most writers have one person, a “first reader” whom they
show unfinished work to, whose opinion means the most to them, and who can both inspire
and advise them to produce the best work possible. And when a writer whose books
I have always loved begins to lose their magic touch, I wonder if perhaps they haven’t
lost their own first reader, that rare person who won’t let us get away with being
mediocre. I didn’t start letting my mother read my work until I’d begun Mariana,
and I still remember her first comment. After reading through the section where my
heroine had bought a house and moved into the countryside from London, my mother
put the pages to one side and asked, ‘Why isn’t her mother calling her?’ And she
was right! There’d be no chance that I could buy a house and blithely pull up stakes
and move without my parents at least pitching in to help me pack. I’d forgotten that
my characters had families, and that had to be accounted for. Since then, my mother
reads all of my books as they are written, and whenever I get lazy with the plot
she points it out, and when I try to make a character do something out of character
she calls me on it. When I’m stuck it’s often something she says on the phone that
starts me off again, and her notes and careful editing suggestions help me make each
book the best that it can be. My mother’s touch may be invisible to those of you
who read my books, but not to me. And when I get it right – when I can write something
my mother loves, no other critic matters. So this Mother’s Day, I’d like to say a
very public ‘Thank You’ for the work my mother does, and the support and love she
gives me every day that makes it possible for me to tell my stories. She is truly
my “first reader”, and I’m fortunate to have her.
(The photo above shows my mother enduring the hardship of being my research assistant
in Greece...)
-----------------------------
Jitters
Posted March 31, 2008
‘This is a moment of suspense...’ So wrote George Eliot a century and a half ago
when her novel Adam Bede first hit the bookstores. A few weeks later she was still
pacing the floors, awaiting the reaction of the critics and wondering, ‘...Can anything
be done in America for “Adam Bede?” I suppose not - as my name is not known there.’
I find it comforting to read those letters, since they reassure me that I’m not the
only writer who has ever felt this way on publication day. Someone once told me they
supposed it must feel much like sending out a child into the world and hoping they’ll
do well, but to be honest, that’s not how it feels to me. My children are my children.
My books are...well, they’re parts of me. So this month, with The Winter Sea on shelves
at last in Germany and Britain, I feel more like I’m arriving at a party, like I’m
standing in the doorway of a room that’s filled with people. Some are friends and
some are strangers and I’m wavering between my wanting everyone to notice me, to
like me, and my hoping I won’t fall flat on my face in my new shoes. I know not everyone
will be impressed, and some won’t likely notice that I’m even at the party, but I’m
always hopeful that I’ll make new friends, and get to spend some time with old ones.
‘I perceive that I have not the characteristics of the “popular author,”’ George
Eliot wrote shortly after Adam Bede was published, ‘and yet I am much in need of
the warmly expressed sympathy which only popularity can win.’ I understand exactly
how she felt.
(The quotes above are taken from George Eliot’s Life as related in her Letters and
Journals, Arranged and edited by her husband, J.W. Cross, 1885)
-----------------------------
Up With Romance
Posted February 13, 2008
In honour of tomorrow, I’ve been thinking of the power of romance. Forget the people
who claim they don’t read “those kind of books”- there are few books in any genre,
from the latest graphic novel to the most experimental work of literature, that don’t
include at least a subplot thread of romance somewhere. With good reason. There is
nothing that gives meaning to the human life like love. It seems we’re born to seek
it, find it, share it, lose it, and remember it until the day we die. The classic
tales of romance that were told five hundred years ago still resonate today, and
any writer who sets out to tell a story of the lives of men and women has to deal
with love at some point. There’s no way to get around it, and no reason why we’d
want to. I’m not arrogant enough to think that humans are the only creatures capable
of feeling love...I only know that we’re not fully human till we feel it. So whatever
way you like it best - with happy endings or with tears and tragedy - let’s raise
a glass to romance, and remember why we need it in our lives.
-----------------------------
Beginnings
Posted January 13, 2008
I’m sitting in my writing-room and looking out my window at a world of newly fallen
snow, unmarked and perfect and as blankly white as all the yet unwritten pages of
the new book I’ve just started. There’s no way, looking at the snow, of telling what
lies underneath it - where the rosebushes begin, or where the rocks lie. Just as
I’ve no way of knowing what will happen in my book. I always start this way, with
an idea and a group of characters, some notion of the challenges they’ll face, and
of the ending. But I never really know what they’ll get up to once they start to
come alive; what I’ll discover when I step into that garden full of snow. It’s an
adventure, and like all adventures carries both excitement and a bit of trepidation,
since I also never know how long the journey’s going to take. I like to think I know.
It ought to be an easy calculation - so many pages per day, for so many days, equals
the right length of manuscript - and as an engineer’s daughter I have an inherited
liking for schedules and lists...but the truth is, each book takes the time that
it takes, so I really don’t know. Still, I’m putting my boots on, and stepping out
into the snow, and we’ll see what I find.
-----------------------------
Old Friends
Posted December 22, 2007
Having just finished reading the proofs of The Winter Sea, with all the words I’ve
written set in proper type and looking for the first time like a real book, I’ve
been thinking on and off about the process of re-reading what I’ve written. There
are writers who hate doing it, who purposely avoid their books once published. I
can sympathize. Apart from finding all the minor errors that slipped past my blurring
vision on the proof-read, I inevitably find a phrase I think I should have written
better, or a bit of dialogue that ought to be reworked. I’m not alone, I know. No
less a writer than the great Leo Tolstoy said that, if by chance he ever came across
a page of his own writing, ‘it always strikes me: all this must be rewritten, this
is how I should have written it.’ But for the most part, I confess that I enjoy the
act of reading my own books. For one thing, by the time a book is set in print, it’s
often been some months since I last spent time with those characters - I’m hard at
work on something else by then, and there’s a certain pleasure setting that new work
aside for a few hours, as though old friends I haven’t seen awhile have just dropped
by to visit. And for every line I read that I would like to have rewritten, there’s
another that reads better than I’d ever hoped it would. So there’s a balance. And
in this last reading of The Winter Sea, there was an unexpected outcome: Several
characters I thought I’d put to rest began to stir again, and speak to one another,
and to me, so that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they, in time, demand
a sequel...
-----------------------------
Hollywood Dreams
Posted October 30, 2007
I love movies. I come by it honestly - my grandfather was a projectionist, one of
those unseen magicians who used to sit up in that little booth over the audience,
changing the reels at the right moment, bringing the movies to life on the screen.
Little wonder my mother developed a passion for Hollywood magazines when she was
young, or that I, in my turn, spent my childhood soaking up Saturday matinees at
our town’s theatre, or that even now I still go to the movies each week with my friends,
every Friday night after my kids are in bed. I love movies. So few things in this
business can excite me like the news that a producer wants an option on a book I’ve
written. I know this doesn’t mean that there will ever be a movie; that in fact the
work involved in bringing everything together at the same time - actors, script,
financing, distribution, and the hundred other things it takes to make a film these
days - would make the art of juggling knives look easy by comparison. Most projects
that get optioned never make it to the screen, and those that do have usually arrived
there after years of tortured travelling. But still, it’s nice to dream. And nice
to know that there are people like the ones I’ve just met in Vancouver, who in spite
of all the odds believe that they can bring my books to film. I wish them luck.
-----------------------------
Creating Our Characters
Posted September 24, 2007
One of my favourite films this summer has been Becoming Jane, which was inspired
by the biography Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence, who appears to have triggered
a bit of a backlash from Jane Austen scholars disputing his opinion of Jane’s feelings
for Tom Lefroy. As a writer myself, I have my own opinion, but I realize it’s pointless
to argue with those historians who have decided they know better. Let’s just say
I believe, having read the evidence, that Pride and Prejudice would not have been
the same book if Jane hadn’t ever met Mr Lefroy. Search through any writer’s life,
and you will find a host of people who have turned up later on in stories. One of
the joys of reading Agatha Christie’s autobiography is meeting all the people who
inspired some of her most interesting minor characters. And I’m sure if I ever sat
down to write an autobiography myself, the same sort of connections between people
in my life and in my books would be as obvious. Certainly there are at least two
characters in The Winter Sea who wouldn’t have existed if I’d never crossed paths
with their real-world counterparts. A handful of people who know me will spot the
first, but I’ll lay odds almost no one, including the person in question, will notice
the second. A thought, perhaps, for those Jane Austen scholars who seem so convinced
that they can know the true intentions of a writer’s private mind...
-----------------------------
On the Shore
Posted August 30, 2007
I ended last month with a week in a cottage just steps from the beach on the shore
of Lake Huron, where I grew up. I have a little ritual about the beach: The minute
that I step on sand, my shoes come off and stay off, like they did when I was five
years old. There’s nothing that relaxes me as much as walking on the shore at sunrise,
or at sunset, with the waves around my ankles and the seagulls overhead and almost
no one else around to break the solitude. It was a sunrise walk this time that set
me thinking of how many times I’ve set my books along a shore. It wasn’t a thing
that I consciously did, but the pattern was there all the same, when I looked for
it. Only The Gemini Game, which was set in the western horse country of South Carolina,
had no water anywhere. Undertow was all about the shore, and even Mariana had a river
running through it for my heroine to wade in. The Splendour Falls had the River Vienne,
The Shadowy Horses was set on the Scottish east coast, Named of the Dragon took place
on the Angle peninsula all but surrounded by sea, and Season of Storms moved from
Venice’s ancient canals to the shores of Lake Garda. The harbours of New York and
Lisbon may not play a leading role in Every Secret Thing, but they’re still there,
and in my coming book The Winter Sea...well, you can probably guess that my characters
spend a fair bit of time walking near water, in this case a beach not unlike the
one I walked in childhood. The countries may change, but the pull of the shoreline
is always the same for me, as is my need to return now and then to walk barefoot
on sand with the waves round my ankles and no one but seagulls for company.
-----------------------------
No Ivory Tower
Posted July 12, 2007
The first time I read Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel (the daily notes he wrote to
his editor while he worked on his classic East of Eden) I remember envying his solitude
- he always seemed to be sharpening pencils (he really liked sharpening pencils)
alone in his room while his wife kept the world from his door. But on re-reading
the book several years later, now that I have children of my own, I can’t help noticing
the little things I missed the first time round, and seeing just how much of that
apparent solitude was an illusion. Sure, Steinbeck’s two boys lived most of the time
with his second wife, their mother. And his third wife did do a masterful job of
ensuring his writing-time wasn’t disturbed. But even when his sons were not physically
there, he still thought of them; worried about them. And when they were there, they
were...well, they were kids. ‘The children are unusually noisy today,’ reads one
of his entries, ‘but I haven’t the heart to make them stop.’ I know exactly how he
felt, just as I understand his constant efforts to squeeze his writing-time into
a schedule of birthdays and holidays, his step-daughter’s school plays, and doctors’
appointments. Like him, I have no ivory tower to write in, just a completely unfortified
corner that’s breached on a regular basis...and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Among the many gems in Stephen King’s amazing book On Writing is the tale of his
‘T.rex desk’. I won’t spoil it for you, because you ought to read it for yourself,
but here’s the moral: ‘Put your desk in the corner,’ King advises, ‘and every time
you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.
Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.’ Amen.
-----------------------------
Out of Fashion
Posted June 24, 2007
This month I decided it was time to update my ‘Authors I Love’ corner on this site’s
Hodge-Podge page (and my Emma Cole site’s Notebook page). Easy enough, I thought.
I picked the next two names from my list, pulled the pictures from my file, and started
searching on the Internet for links to their biographies. An hour or so went by.
No luck. All right, I thought, and chose two more writers. Nothing for them, either.
While I came across their names and books in other people’s lists of favourites,
nowhere could I find even the briefest of biographies, an interview, obituary, anything.
Which baffled me at first, then made me sad. These are my favourites, after all -
authors whose books I have read and re-read. All wrote several books, all were well-known,
well-reviewed, some were major best-sellers. All of them deserve better than to be
forgotten. Fashions in this business come and go, I know - new genres evolve and
develop while others fall from favour, but good writing - and good writers - should
endure. If you agree, then for my sake seek out the authors that I’ve featured. Hunt
their books down in your library, or in used bookstores. If you like them, pass them
on to your family and friends. They were famous for a reason in their day, these
writers. Read them, and you’ll understand.
(I’m happy to report that since I wrote this entry, a listing for ‘Greg Clark, journalist’,
pictured above, has appeared on Wikipedia.)
-----------------------------
The Dogs of Zeus
Posted May 21, 2007
I love animals - not a surprise to my readers, I’m sure, since it’s a rare book of
mine that doesn’t have a dog or cat (or two) prowling through the pages. So when
I knew that the plot of my next Emma Cole book was going to take me to Greece, a
place I’ve always longed to visit, I braced myself for the inevitable and heart-wrenching
appearance of stray dogs. I’d been warned already by friends who went often to Greece,
and I’d had a small taste of it already in Portugal, where I’d wanted to bring every
skinny, unloved, shaggy mutt home to Canada with me. And when I walked through the
gates of the Temple of Zeus, an ancient ruin at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens,
and saw several dogs lounging around the entrance, I felt sad at first...till I noticed
that these dogs, though collarless, seemed to be well-fed and happy. A few of them
fearlessly played in the grass at the feet of the towering columns, and as I walked
round I discovered the un-ancient ruins of a tennis ball, chewed beyond use. Suspicions
growing, I approached one of the young uniformed guards, who stood off to one side
in the shade with another dog sleeping not far from his feet. The dogs? Yes, he said,
smiling, the guards had adopted them. ‘We give them food,’ he explained, ‘and they
give us their company.’ He told me a few of their names, and he pointed out Paris,
‘the ancient one’, who was approaching the equivalent of 100 in human years. And
though I saw many wonderful things on my visit to Greece, nothing touched me as deeply
as that small time spent at the Temple of Zeus, in this place where one feels that
the gods might still walk in their varied disguises among us, and where it seems
fitting that old dogs should play in the care of young men, and find peace.
-----------------------------
The Mysteries of Memory
Posted April 09, 2007
I’m fascinated by genetics - not just in the tangible sense, like the fact I’m a
dead ringer for my grandmother, but the little things that get passed on, like how
my son can have the same small mannerisms as my dad. My research for The Winter Sea,
a story that is built around the concept of ancestral memory, introduced me to a
world of academic studies and genetic theories that suggest we might all have the
memories of our ancestors encoded in our genes. It’s quite a thought. And it just
might explain that small, strange incident in 1994 when I was hurrying to make it
to my Mariana launch party in London, at a restaurant in a section of the city where
I’d never been. My cab driver got lost, and by some miracle I managed to direct him
through the maze of streets - turn right, turn left, go straight down there. The
words just came. It wasn’t till I’d got us on the proper street at last that it occurred
to me: I had just brought us through the heart of Kensington - the very part of London
where my mother’s family’s ancestors had lived and walked 200 years before. So yes,
I think about genetic memory sometimes. And I wonder...
(The miniature portrait above is of my ancestor Thomas Peter Marter, who lived in
London before emigrating to New Brunswick, Canada.)
