So… what do you do when you realise you’ve accidentally named a supporting character after a crazy lady in a horror book/film but feel too attached to change it?
This Annie won’t be cutting off anybody’s feet and cauterising the stumps with a blowtorch, I promise.
After all that flapping around and deleting half the book, I’m finally nearing the end of a Captured Shadows draft I’m happy(ish) with – five outlined chapters left to write, but I think it’s going to end up more. Then I’m going to close the file and leave it alone for a month. I’m at the point now where I’ve worked so much on it in such a short space of time to make up everything I scrapped that I’m dreaming about it and everything. I feel too close to it to do a decent job of editing, like I’ve lost all concept of what’s good drama and what’s the awful daytime soap sort of drama. I have this horrible feeling I’ll come back to it after that month off, re-read the first paragraph, and quietly decide to disappear and never write again.
Also not really sure how to warn people that if they’re after something clean and pleasant, this is not the book to read…! There’s blood and shit and bad Victorian teeth and nobody bathes that often. I say bum quite a lot (very underused in rudey books since the 19th century if you ask me). Girls with furry legs and corset scars. Disgusting old quasi-incestuous pederasts. There’s romance too, of course, and if people are half as into Jim and Archie as they have been with Lindsay and Pip then I’ll be happy. It’s just a verrry different setting to Stockholm Syndrome, and even after glossing over a lot of the grimness it’s still pretty grim at times. I don’t want people coming into this expecting some kind of flawless swoony Mills & Boon historical romance starring identikit Hollywood hunks, because it’s not happening :P
I’ll never be able to finish this thing (over a million words, most of it repetitive and boring and quite grim), but it’s always fun to look at every now and then. As a social document it’s amazing – read a bit of this and then try and tell me all Victorians were prudes! It’s representative of so much Victorian porn, I think; obviously it’s salacious and so shockingly rude sometimes, and there’s a lot of horrible misogyny to wade through, but there’s also this jolly sort of Carry On feeling to it all, like the old dirty photos you see of men with excellent moustaches going at middle-aged women with big bums and everybody looks so cheerful and British. Victorian porn really makes me laugh, I love it. It’s weird trying to write my own version though. I like the stuff I do because it’s become so funny and almost twee over time, like it barely even feels sexual any more, but it’s not easy to take something I find so entertaining and twist the conventions so it’s still entertaining in a more 21st century kind of way, despite being set in the 1880s.
Anyway, rambling now. Just linking this here because I’ve been talking about it with someone over email recently:
My Secret Life by “Walter”
One of my favourite parts:
[My godfather] stared hard at me. “You look ill.” “No, I am not.” “Yes, you are, look me full in the face, you’ve been frigging yourself,” said he just in so many words. He had never used an improper word to me before. I denied it. He raved out “No denial, sir, no lies, you have, sir; don’t add lying to your bestiality, you’ve been at that filthy trick, I can see it in your face, you’ll die in a mad-house, or of consumption, you shall never had a farthing more pocket-money from me, and I won’t buy your commission, nor leave you any money at my death.” I kept denying it, brazening it out. “Hold your tongue, you young beast, or I’ll write to your mother.” That reduced me to a sullen state, only at times jerking out: “I haven’t!” He put on his hat angrily, and left me in a very uncomfortable state of mind.
Hahaha IT IS A DELIGHT. Stop wanking or you’ll die of consumption!
Not everything you puke out in Word is worth keeping, even if you like it. You can write pages and pages of stuff you’re in love with, but still know it’s never going to fit in your story unless you change everything around it to make it work, which is only ever going to make the whole thing sound contrived and clumsy.
NO SHIT, right? Obviously I knew this anyway, everybody knows this, but it’s different when you’re mid-flow and the thought’s there in your head and you don’t want to pay attention to it, especially if you’re like me. I’m not ~a writer~ at all, I never have been and doubt I ever will be. I go through these sporadic bursts of inspiration, but the in between times are months or years of pulling teeth trying to make words work. This is the reason I’m such a terrible editor. When my brain decides to cooperate and give me words, I hoard them like a dragon sitting on a heap of gold – but in this analogy the dragon is a stupid dimwit with cataracts who doesn’t realise half of the heap is made up of useless old Quality Street wrappers. Do I know the Stockholm Syndrome books would be massively improved if whole chapters were removed? Absolutely yes, especially the first one. Am I going to do that? FUCK NO! Objectively I know it would be better, but I write so little that every single bit of it starts to feel more valuable than it should.
So this is what I’m trying to get over with this new thing I’m writing (Captured Shadows – might post an extract soon to get opinions). I started off so well: the story was flying out and filling pages and post-its and the back of envelopes and the margins of my textbooks when I was supposed to be studying, and it was good. I was too afraid to stop in case my scumbag brain decided it was time for another hibernation – so what I ended up with before I decided to have a word with myself was 47K+ of stuff that was great, that I loved, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I don’t think I’d made even a 10% dent in the actual story I’m trying to tell, and this time around I want to do things properly.
Deep breath, and DELETE.
Do it quickly like ripping off a sticky plaster, it hurts less.
Now I’ve got about 24K words. They’re good words. I’m afraid to talk about them too much in case I jinx myself and shut down, but actually I feel less and less like that’s going to happen now. It’s like pruning the shit out of your roses so the new bits come out better and more beautiful than they would have if they’d been all snarled up with too much unnecessary growth.
Optimism is a new one for me, I’m not sure I feel entirely comfortable with this ;)
And this is the first time I’ve not felt like going into Victorian mourning after deleting a chunk of writing, so I’m going to celebrate with a cup of tea.
Richard Rider 