Nowhere To Go

Before I started my Swenglish project and hit the road, I had a massive clear out, getting rid of clothes, books and CDs, but I just couldn't give away books that were signed by the author. One of those books were Ben Graham's Nowhere To Go.

When I unpacked my few belongings in my new home in Gothenburg, the title Nowhere To Go leapt out at me, making me a bit sad. For the first time in my life I live on my own, but am far from settled. Instead of dealing with stuff like a blocked drain and a dead basil plant, I'm escaping into the world of fiction. Nowhere To Go is fiction but I suspect it is close to the author's own experience of being a bit of a drop-out from society.

Reading Nowhere to Go made me think of Kerouac's On the Road with the romantic notion of travelling and taking drugs and just hanging around, trying to get by. But this book feels closer to home. The road trip takes place in Eastern Europe and all the characters are English working class with fantastic Yorkshire accents. Vic, the narrator, is more of an observer than a participant and I especially love his walk through Prague one hung-over morning.

It's a short book, more of a novella but I think that's a strength. Instead of focusing on life back in "boring Britain" the story is basically the trip to Prague and back. Vic's reflections are thoughtful and poetic, showing the gap between the beatniks and "the neatniks". The book is worth reading alone for the brilliant description of a night out playing with national stereotypes  "France glowers over, sipping a cognac at the bar, an elegant femme on his arm, while Britain sulks on the sidelines."

I can't get enough of road trip romanticising, but perhaps it isn't the kind of book I should be reading right now. I should appreciate that I'm in a clean, comfortable and warm flat instead of "being transported in a metal ice box through a bleak inhospitable landscape on a road trip to nowhere". However I will finish with another quote from the book that kind of describe my life in general: "this temporary resting place on the outskirts of adventure". To read more about what I'm up to check out my Swenglish blog.

Nowhere To Go was originally written in 1998, but published in 2010. To read more about the book and the author visit his blog: http://bleedingcheek.wordpress.com/

A Risk Worth Taking

Five minutes before boarding the plane to Sweden I opened my Christmas present (see previous post) There was no return, no more book shops, no more magazines even. Luckily, I immeditately took a liking to Sarah Salway's novel Something beginning with ...

I love so-called concept novels. This one is based on the alphabet. Every chapter has a few paragraphs on a letter in the alphabet, e.g. L is for Lesbians, Letters, Liqueur Chocolates, Love Calculators and Lust. At first it seemed pretty much like a stream of concsiousness on different topics, but Sarah Salway actuallly manages to tell a whole story with beginning, middle and end between A and Z.

My Novel in November

No, I'm not taking part in NaNoWriMo. But I do have about 50 000 words on my new novel project. If you've read my previous posts here and here you know that each month I'm aiming for 10 000 words that move the story forward and aren't just general rambling.

In December I'm going to take a break from the novel though and focus on poetry and performing. Mainly because the words need to rest. I have written the beginning and the middle, but I kind of wrote the middle first and am not sure how to link the beginning and the middle, if I should actually start with the middle or not. I do have an end in mind, but it's very sketchy and there are several ways to write the story.

I haven't yet decided how much back-story/back-flashes I'm going to use and if there's going to be more than one narrative. It could be quite a straightforward or quite an experimental story depending on which route I take, and I suspect that like my previous two novels this one will also fall somewhere between the Adult and Young Adult genre.

The voice is also something I need to think about. I know whose story it is, but am not sure to whom she's telling it and why.

A Season For Short Stories

There's a season for eveything. A season for Dr Martens and a season for Birkenstocks. A season for novels. A season for short stories.

The weather has made me change my working habits. I find it impossible to work inside on my laptop when the sun is shining, and taking the laptop out is not a good option as the light is not good for the screen and the battery runs out quite quickly. So this is my new method.

1. The evenings are used for brainstorming and writing up rough first draft of short stories that I print.
2. In the morning I read through the print out over breakfast in the garden and make notes.
3. I carry on in the garden or move to the beach where I go through the story more thoroughly, adding and taking away things. Writing new paragraphs in my note book, answering questions about plot and character etc.
4. Sun fun sun fun. (unfortunately quite often interrupted by my day job)
5. When the sun goes down I type up my changes and print it again.
6. When the sun goes up I do another read through, aloud this time in the garden after breakfast. (Not being half as embarrassing as my neighbour on the other side of the fence who talks to her dog!)
7. Using up the battery power and abusing my laptop screen with sunshine I do some final editing in the garden and then I send it off to someone for feedback or if I feel super confident I send it off to a competition or a magazine. If I decide to go for feedback I'll repeat some of the above points ...

I can already feel that I'm becoming a better novelist by writing short stories. If I worked as hard on every chapter as I do on every short story I'd be a bestseller :). Short stories take so much concentration and focus. You can't get away with any waffling! I've decided to dedicate a year (started in late February) to the art of the short story before I start another novel.