Baker Street

A good book title is like a seductive glance from a stranger. That moment where you lock eyes in a public space and both feel the pull of attraction. For me, an outstanding book title is just about as good.

Well, okay.

Not quite.

But it’s certainly up there in the list of top literary experiences one can have.

Although I’ve lived in France for three years now, I still find reading a novel in French a challenge; something to be borne, rather than enjoyed. Sadly, the story in my second language never seems quite as ‘real’ as in English, my mother tongue.

Which doesn’t explain why in my free time, I wander the bookstores here, touching the covers, spines of books I can’t fully access; fascinated by these stories and the way the words fall onto the page. The music of the French sentences.

And of course, their titles.

For some unknown reason, book titles in French seem effortlessly graceful.

Here are just a few of many I’ve encountered, that just sing out…

J’étais derrière toi (I was behind you)

Dans le café du jeunesse perdu (In the café of lost youth)

La vie devant soi (The life before them)

La méchanique du cœur (The mechanics of the heart)

Le voyage en hiver (The Winter trip)

Le chagrin d’école (The grief of school)

Zazie dans le métro (Zazie in the metro)

We might even take, for example, Evelyn Waugh’s famous Oxford novel, Brideshead Revisited. As titles go, it’s reasonably plain; self explanatory even. In French: Retour à Brideshead (Return to Brideshead).

The translation feels clumsy and basic – yet in French, the simplicity works. It  feels just that touch more musical and perhaps I dare say, more profound, than its English counterpart.

Even: La chaussure sur le toit (The shoe on the roof) seems an acceptable title for a piece of adult fiction in French. In the English world, it only makes me think of Spot’s first Christmas.

It made me wonder about popular titles in English fiction. Are there (if any) any noticeable differences between the two lit traditions?

The online Abbeville Manual of Style provided a starting point with a list of their English faves, including:

Atlas Shrugged

Flow my Tears the policeman said

What we talk about when we talk about love

and Complete nonsense.

On first glance, all that English just seems more involved somehow, if you get what I mean.

But then remember that Anglophones have also unleashed: The Firm, The Road, The Stand etc, on the literary world…

It feels like it should be simple. But why, god help us, does The Shoe on the Roof work so beautifully in French, yet fail so miserably en Anglais? How is it possible that L’ignorance wins heads and shoulders over plain, Ignorance?

Is it just that je ne sais quoi most Francophiles obsess over – or something more?

While I’d like to dedicate another post to this topic of titles, I’d been keen to hear your thoughts on the issue of translation. Does there indeed exist a true difference between the nature of French and English titles, and if so, is it representative of a larger difference in literary tradition between the two countries?

In the meantime, however, Marvin Cloud throws out some general tips in his post entitled A strategy for coming up with a great book title.

As for me, I’m no closer to finding the answer. I do love the English language, but I just can’t help it…

La Route by Cormac McCarthy is just always going to sound better than: The Road.

Sometimes, I wonder how good a tool the internet really is for a writer.

Sure you have connection, virtual writing buddies to discuss all your writing woes, a sense of community perhaps (confirmation of other weirdos who also live in their own imaginary worlds)… but apart from that, I can’t help thinking that it is just another moyen to waste time. Another way to NOT write because the blog needs to get done, that supportive email needs to be written on a writing forum, that essential piece of writerly self help must be found somewhere in the labyrinth of literary tips…

My worry isn’t a new one, but was much reinforced when I read Tania Herhman’s (The White Road) interview with Branta on her writing day. Not to toot my own horn – the eternal procrastinator & non-writing writer – but I was somewhat shocked to find that before she even gets down to doing the dirty deed, apparently all this must come first:

• email
• The Amazon UK ranking of my book
• The Amazon US ranking of my book
• The sitemeter stats page for my book, my personal website and my blog
• My book’s page on Gardners, the UK book distributors, to see if the number has gone down
• Facebook Inbox
• My Facebook Wordscraper;  Lexulous and Scrabble games (more on that later)
• My Zoetrope online writing groups
• The WriteWords calls for submissions and jobs page
• email (again, it’s been a while)
• The Bookarazzi “bloggers with book deals” forum
• My blog, to look at the Blog Roll of blogs I follow and see if anyone’s posted a new blog post
• Duotrope’s What’s New page, just to check that the submissions I have sent out are still in the “haven’t been rejected yet even though they are sending out rejections” state.

Source: Branta, My Daily Writing Routine 2

Scrabble games, Amazon rating pages?

Ahem.

Even if this was my working routine, I’d frankly be too ashamed to admit it. [Correction: it's not far off and I'm frankly too ashamed to admit it...]

(Incidentally, I was also struck by the most horrible image of all my favourite authors logging on to book sites each morning, just to check their ‘rating’ & sales… Such a far cry from the humble pencil, paper & wooden desk… nevertheless, I digress… But can you just imagine JK sitting down with her morning coffee to peruse Harry’s success figures?? Sickening. Just sickening).

I’ve never been published, so I don’t perhaps understand the obligations (and thrill) of having a literary ‘child’ in the world to keep track of, but correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems like an awful lot to have to wade through before you sit down to lunch (or probably dinner, by the time you’ve pissed away enough time on email, book sales blah blah) with your muse…

And, I ask, how helpful can it possibly be to review your current book sales (apart from inflating your alter ego a notch) & to be constantly monitoring every long moment of your own progress? Surely there must exist some form of self protection against overly narcissistic tendencies – especially in a profession such as this… (then again, perhaps it’s an essential part of the process, otherwise we’d never write anything. This more than anything, made me afraid. What sort of person might I become if a published book befalls me?)

For people that supposedly love writing, we spend an awful lot of time avoiding it.

I ask, what is the solution here? Get rid of blogs, book sites and amazon? We are perhaps the first generation of writers to be afflicted with such a problem – for never before in society has technology been so rampant or invasive. As if we need more reasons not to write.

Perhaps the best answer I’ve found so far, is that of Iain Banks, who cleverly installed not one, but two computers in his office: one for email & the other strictly for word processing.

‘…so I don’t get distracted when I’m actually writing a book,’ he explains.

Then again, perhaps the solution could be saving ourselves some dosh and writing a list just like Ms Hershman’s – in the hope that pure shame and guilt will make us see the ugly bullet point error of our ways…

For all my brave words however, I’m quite sure that in a month’s time, when I start my CW Masters, I’ll be exactly the same: hopelessly addicted to the many traps of the internet (although luckily not a published book on amazon to have to contend with. Small mercies, small mercies).

Speaking of which. My facebook, email & blog stats haven’t been checked for at least 30 minutes – the time that it’s taken to write this.

Excuse me – gotta tend to my priorities.

Trawling the net when I stumbled across some interesting Saturday listening: the New Yorker magazine on why we ’study’ creative writing; the differences between workshops and working with an editor.

New Yorker Outloud: podcast, Creative Writing

For more on the ‘traps’ of the Creative Writing ’system’ (ie. MAs etc), podcaster, Louis Menand also gives us some more food for thought on the worth of teaching such a practice in a US context.

Critic at Large: Show or Tell?

I’m a sucker for trivia.

Movie trivia, book trivia: any quirky detail that tells me more about the ‘behind the scenes’ part of the creation process.

One of my favourite trivias concerning writers (and probably one of the most commonly asked questions) is of course: where do you write?

Disappointingly for me, most authors work sitting at an ordinary old desk (which is such a bore, if you are still attempting to hang on to the romantic notion of novelist life). So I’m always interested when I discover writers that break away from the norm and succeed in getting down their daily word count in unusual places – choices perhaps dictated by life circumstances/financial means more than anything else.

Out of curiosity, I started compiling this list of places writers work – by no means exhaustive – that I hope to add to over the coming weeks. Contributions welcome…

-         Cafés (JK Rowling & Hemingway have singlehandedly made famous the cafés that they used to frequent… Both were both stony broke at the time)

-          In bed (Marian Keyes is the only one that I know of that writes from her boudoir – her book ‘Under the Duvet’ a testament to this. I have to admit, I’m also a guilty culprit… there’s just something about the bed…)

-          Basements (Matt Drudge, John Cheever)

-          Motels/Hotels (JK Rowling, Truman Capote)

-          Garden Sheds (Roald Dahl, Louis de Bernières)

Sadly, while I love the idea of working somewhere unique, I’m the kind of writer that can’t get down to work proper unless I am alone and free of distraction.

Having spent a long time thinking about why this is, I have come to the conclusion, it’s because writing is such an intensely personal activity. I can’t truly give myself over to my imaginary worlds (without embarrassment) in a public place. So I usually end up holed in my room, at my desk or on my bed, with the door firmly shut.

Something Stephen King recommends in his book, On Writing:

“The space can be humble (probably should be, as I think I have already suggested), and it really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.”

So much for scrawling in tatty notebooks à côté de la Seine…

That said, writer’s offices can still be pretty cool – as I recently discovered in The Guardian’s ongoing look at Writer’s Rooms.

All of course, gorgeous treasure troves, crammed with books, writing paraphernalia, lots of anonymous junk… The ultimate treat!

Another trivia gem is The Book Show’s slot, The Write Place: personal office tours, given by authors themselves.

One of my favourite all time writing spaces is one belonging to children’s author, Anthony Horowitz – seen in the clip below – a light loft in central London complete with spiders, skulls and all kinds!

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However, not getting too hung up on always working in a particular spot might just get you out of a rut, suggests author, Nicola Morgan.

“People ask writers things like “Where do you write?” or “When do you write?” and we have answers. We shouldn’t have answers. Whatever your answer is now, why not change it?”

Having spent the last 24 hours firmly glued to my 15′ screen, wrestling with my petits yeux that have gone permanently bogg-ey, I’m experiencing one of the lesser publicised parts of the creative process: Finishing.

You should feel relief, but I tend to always just feel empty and somewhat depressed. It’s rare that I finish something and feel like it has lived up to expectations. Often the (unwritten) version, still safe in my grey matter, feels like the best version, the highest version – and I can’t help feeling that I still haven’t managed to grab hold of it…

The upside is, much of what feels like rubbish now, will, in a month’s time, look much better (or at least this is the hope) and strangely enough, I’ll probably come to hate what on first writing felt like genius on tap…

The Commonwealth Short Story Comp has however been an interesting experience.

Not only do competitions force you to finish things – oh the ingenuity of having a deadline – but in this case, word economy is paramount. The trick? A story in under 600 words.

As I found, there’s not enough time to tell a real story, yet just enough to get across sense of place, time, drama…

Honestly, it’s a pretty good exercise and I one I should probably do more often. I like the challenge of grasping for every word – good training for longer pieces where it’s tempting to fluff up your word count like big squashy cushions on a sofa. It’s not unlike script writing, in that everything feels pared down, peeled back – just the bare essentials of story laid out.

It undoubtedly reinforces the classic question anyone who writes should keep in mind: how does this (event/character etc) advance the story?

I guess there’s a reason they call this business the art of ‘killing your darlings’.

Well, I’m off to rest my eyes and brave the post office… Meanwhile, feel free to add details about upcoming competitions here…