Endangered Species No. 1 - the semi-colon

I first noticed semi-colons in the novels of Melvyn Bragg. No doubt I'd been introduced to them at school, but I'd never used one. Having come across this tadpole of punctuation while trying to analyse the beauty of Bragg's style, I picked it up and took it home.

These days the fashion is for short sentences. We think they make our work pacey. In fact they make it monotonous. In the quest for variety, the semi-colon is a very useful tool. The rule is simple: it separates two related sentences. Either side of the semi-colon there will be a verb somewhere.

Example: Semi-colons are vital for good writing; they are, however, best used sparingly.

Another current virus, set fair to infect the future, is the new style of paragraphing. I'll save my spleen on that one for another day. Meanwhile, anyone know how to do the proper kind on a blog?

Finished - again

The proofs arrived in October. It's only when a book is on the page that you can begin to see it objectively. I found a few typos that two proof readers had missed, but I found a great deal more things simply requiring improvement. My typesetter is nice and sympathetic - I'm sure she won't mind that I've changed what seems to be every other word. And flipped two chapters (how did I miss that?). At least I haven't introduced any new characters at this stage.

I have a writer friend who agreed to read the book some time ago. He emailed a couple of comments as he read then went silent. I waited a year. Then I asked another writer friend, could he possibly? would he have the time? Amazingly he agreed, but after I sent the typescript I heard nothing more.

I chose to go the self publishing route after some bruising experiences with the big guys, and I love it. Apart from allowing you to do what you want with your book, it puts you in direct contact with the reader, and you don't have to go to any dreadful parties and pretend to be enjoying yourself amidst literary strangers. You can throw your own parties and invite your friends. But self publishing has one great drawback: just as there is nothing between you and the reader, so is there nothing between you and publication. No editor with a quick eye and sharp mind, someone who could point out to you what proof readers cannot - that you have two chapters in the wrong order. I could employ one, of course, but it would be a great expense. Perhaps I will in the future.

In conversation with the first friend (after I decided not to be frosty any more), it turned out that I'd told him to stop reading because I was making so many changes. When this was discovered, he began reading the proofs, starting about a week after me. Next thing his computer crashed big time and, after having had comments on the first 150 pages, I have heard no more. As to the second friend, I emailed him to say I was at proof stage and, hey, life's busy - no hard feelings. Just as well. We met today unexpectedly and both laughed out loud, realising that if we hadn't had that exchange in the last couple of days, we'd have both been scurrying in opposite directions. He's been working himself into a ghost this past year and hadn't even the time to frame a grovelling apology. No hard feelings.

So, I've gone to press without any help from my friends. Is this finally it? I will, of course, get the corrected proofs back to check. But I'm beginning to feel light and empty instead of down and depressed - and that's a very good sign that it's all over.

It's Gone!

One sign that you are coming to the end of a piece of work is when the idea 'I've finished!' begins to occur with ever-increasing frequency. How often I've said it these past few weeks! How often I've been told to go and celebrate, but I didn't feel like celebrating, not yet. I got up at 4am this morning to review the last-minute revisions of yesterday and then went for a long, hot soak in the bath. Suddenly, in the midst of steam and on the edge of sleep, I realised I had missed out a very key point. It happens so often, that one forgets to state the obvious, that I'm really surprised that I haven't learnt the lesson yet. Anyway, back to the draft which is the fifth of its kind titled 'Final Version'. I found the place where it should be and put it in. It did not cause seismic shifts in the rest of the text - a good sign. So then I sent it off to David, and sat for a couple of minutes watching the upload arrow on the envelope icon, feeling rather stupid and spent. David is now sending it to the typesetter.

That's it then. Thirty-three years of work ended at 11.30 am on Friday 14th September, 2007. I did promise I would sing, but I don't feel like it. Perhaps that will come later.

Counting words

When I started writing, we used to have count words ourselves, without the aid of a computer. For a short piece, where the count often had to be precise, you would count each word. For a longer piece, you went by averages. A general average was 300 words per page but you found your own average and stuck with that. If I’d had to count every word in A Tabernacle for the Sun, I’d probably still be on the task ten years later.

It is so easy to bemoan our computers and their tendency to spoil our days, so easy to forget the absolute boon of some of their features, word counting foremost among them, so far as I am concerned. It was a joy on my first Amstrad, but it still took a little time. Now it is instantaneous and I stare in wonder at how many words I’ve written, using how many characters, feeling a little cheated that the tool does not record the amount of words that I’ve deleted, because a word count is not a record of what is written, but of what has survived editing and revision. I’d like it to tell me that I did have five hundred thousand words, which went down to one hundred thousand words, and then up again to two thousand five hundred words. That would be interesting.

So, how many words have I written in The Botticelli Trilogy? A Tabernacle for the Sun comes out at a beastly number of 166,660. Pallas and the Centaur is 174,219. The Rebirth of Venus – 184,146. Grand total: 525,025. Half a million words. Funny – it felt like a million.

In the spirit of an old Cabalist, I’ve added those numbers up. Tabernacle = 7, Pallas = 6 and Rebirth = 6. Which all adds up to 1. The grand total also adds up to 1. Now, that is pleasing.

Another wonderful thing of the modern world is Google. It can answer just about anything: the symptoms and treatment of concussion; how to make apple chutney; where Steeple Barton is; the right spelling of Zenobio, to name a few of the problems I’ve solved this week. In less than five seconds I’ve discovered that Tolstoy’s War and Peace has a word count of 553,890. Funny – I thought it was a million. Of course there is no comparison between the books, not least because Leo wrote his story in five years, whereas I took thirty-three.

The End?

After months of wondering, here is the answer. You have reached the end when you look at your work and think, 'There's nothing more to do.' So off with it to the typesetter at the end of the week then, and start worrying about covers.

It being such a lovely day, with sunshine and a cool breeze from the north, we spent nearly the whole day on the allotment and had a picnic lunch entirely organic and much of it fresh-picked. Never tasted anything so good. 'This is better than a holiday,' said David, staring out at Wytham Hill. We had company: Cowboy Catherine on the next plot, and Robin on the one after that. We were all happy, digging, hoeing and raking. This is the good life.

Having just followed an American recipe for 'apple jam', I'm wondering if the Americans use the term 'chutney' - for chutney is what it looks like to me. Too hot to taste right now, but I'll try it in the morning and on toast.

The Art of Reading

A friend of mine, Debbie Sandler (also my boss as director of the Sarah Lawrence programme at Wadham), has been a long time in coming to Pallas and the Centaur. ‘I’m not going to start it while I’m busy,’ she said, apologetically. ‘I want at least a couple of days free.’
I reflected on this after spending two hours with Barbara Reynold’s magnificent book on Dante this morning. It is my aim to spend this bank holiday weekend with it, with occasional breaks to do other things like feed the family and keep the wash cycle going. Let everyone else rush off to swelter on motorways: I’m taking the journey that requires only that you put your feet up, let the mind relax, and the imagination drift back to 1300. . .
The common practice of reading these days, at least in this household, is in bed before going to sleep. This is bad practice. For one thing, you only get about fifteen to twenty minutes reading; for another, it associates reading with falling asleep. This reading in dribs and drabs leads to a dribbling drab, at least so far as comprehension goes.
What does it tell us? That reading is an activity which must always be displaced during busy days by other, more useful things. I am a writer; I have written all my life; I’ve read more books than most – and I have this ingrained guilt about reading as strong as anyone.
My other summer book has been Tom Hodgkinson’s wise, profound and seditious How to be Idle. After the first few pages, I nearly tossed it aside as demonic. Happily, I read on. And now the obsessive, guilt-ridden puritan within is asleep, with a funny little smile on her face.
And I have my feet up on a Saturday morning and am reading.

End Games

Many people have been asking recently when the third part of The Botticelli Trilogy will appear. Not just those friends I meet in passing, but readers of the other two volumes who bother to phone. There seems to be a bit of heckling going on from the Universe – a cosmic chorus of ‘Why are we waiting?’ There are two answers to the question of when: ‘by Christmas’ and ‘I haven’t finished yet’. It’s quite difficult to know exactly when you have finished a novel. It’s not just a matter of reaching the end: one does that many times over. It’s more a matter of determining which is the final ‘layer’. I think I’m there, but I’ve thought that at least three times this year. Satisfied with my latest version, however, I sent it off to our proof reader, Arthur Farndell, but before David had finished reading it. I also sent it to my agent in California. Now I’m having to contact both, saying, ‘Ooops, sorry, new ending.’ For David didn’t like this ending as much as the previous version, so I’ve spent the last week or so frantically reworking it to include the best of both versions.

So, no bells and whistles, no fireworks, not so much as a thunderstorm to mark this momentous occasion. I do have a bottle of riserva bought at Montepulciano, awaiting a propitious moment. May be we’ll be opening it soon. Meanwhile there is still much to do. It’s an unwieldy narrative that has taken literally years to knock into shape, but David and Arthur both found it difficult to follow, not where we are at any time, but when we are (at any place). So I’ve devised a new kind of chapter heading, and David suggested a contents list, so that will keep me busy for a while. Then there is the cover to design, the essay at the end to finalise, the blurb to write, etc. etc. etc. When is a novel finished? When this fat lady sings. . .