Learning to read

Last night was the second of our 2 launch events for the Crime Express books. I arrived at Waterstones in Nottingham half an hour before the event was due to kick off. "I'm here for the book launch," I told the man at the desk. He pointed to the ceiling. "It's right up at the top," he said. So I started climbing. Floor after floor. Certainly the tallest Waterstones I've ever visited. And right up under the roof - I love attics - a delightful meeting room.

It takes time, I find, to learn how to read a piece of writing out loud to an audience. Writing that works off the page is not necessarily the same as writing that works when read out, in performance, as it were. First I choose the passage - something that takes no explanation and leaves the reader wanting more. Then I edit with a highlighting pen, choosing which sentences to read and which can be left out. Then I wait till the house is empty and I practice. Reading it aloud. Trying to find the pace and pauses that I think will make it work. That might get me close. But it is only when you read it in front of an audience that you find out.

Last night was my third time reading the opening of The Mentalist. I think I am starting to get it right. Hugely enjoyable.

All of which seems particularly ironic. One of my greatest nightmares as a child was being asked to read in front of the class at school.

The Mentalist

I have a new book coming out this month. Fiction. But not a novel. Too short for that. It is published as part of a new series of one-sitting crime reads by Five Leaves Press, along with books by John Harvey and Stephen Booth.

My story is about a struggling stage psychic called Harry Gysel. Things aren't going well for Harry. His career as a performer may be about to founder before ever really getting going. Then one night he appears to predict the death of a member of one of his audiences. When she is found murdered the next day, he achieves instant celebrity status, but his troubles are just about to begin.

If you are near Leicester on the 18th October 07, do come along to the Adult Education College on Wellington Street and join John Harvey, Stephen Booth and myself for the launch of our books. The event starts at 7.00pm. There will be a second launch event the following Tuesday evening at Waterstones in Nottingham.

(And if you are in Derby on October 20th, do come along to my writing workshop at the museum).

Yarns

If you've followed this blog over the last couple of years, you'll probably have figured by now that I am fascinated by stories and what they mean to people. I've long wanted to spend some time on a creative project to do with narrative itself - as a subject.

The question people often ask when they have just been told a story is - 'is it true?'. Important though that question is, a simple answer, yes or no could well be misleading. Made up stories can contain truths. Apparently true stories often contain fiction - 'errors' we might call them. Especially the stories we tell about our own lives, which are hugely subjective. But these subjective stories still feel true. They are part of our identity, telling us who we are and where we came from.

Where am I going with this? To cut a long story short (so to speak) I am about to start on a journey around the East Midlands, speaking to people in libraries and other places, trying to find out about the stories they love and why they love them. As a record of my journey, I've started up another blog here

More of this in future postings.

Constitutionally Incapable of Tidiness

I seem to be constitutionally incapable of tidiness. I get papers out, focus on them for a time and then, perhaps distracted by some other more interesting task, I move on. The little detail of putting them away gets forgotten.

This need not be a problem because, like many dyslexics, I have a well developed spatial memory. Six months later when I realise I need those papers again, I can usually go back to the spot where I left them and pull them right out of the pile.

All is well, you might think. The problem comes when someone else tidies up. Six minutes, six days or six months later, I go back to look for my papers on that corner of the desk where I left them. But they are not there. They are there in my memory, but my hand finds only an empty space. I walk away to look somewhere else. But the memory of putting them on that corner of the desk is so tangible that I find myself going back to look in the same spot again. And, although I know it is illogical, again and again.

I have heard that many dyslexics tend towards untidiness. Whether this comes from being easily distracted, or from trusting our spatial memories, or from some other facet of the condition, I do not know.

Speech recognition and creative writing

Having a bad back (temporarily, I hope) that won't let me sit down for long periods, I have been unable to type as much on my computer as I would normally like. This has driven me to try out the speech recognition software built in to Windows Vista.

My first impression was amazement. I spoke, it wrote. The tutorial system had me reading out a text which said how great speech recognition was - how it is the future of computing. Perhaps I was being brainwashed. But it seemed to work. Anything I said on the subject of speech recognition software it had a good go at transcribing. At the end of day one I was hugely impressed.

Day two wasn't so good. By this time I was starting to stray off the subject of speech recognition software and it was having a hard time interpreting my words. The system needed training. That was what the tutorial system told me. I must persevere.

But the things I wanted it to type, it decided to interpret as commands. And my commands, it decided to type. I tried to go back and edit my mistakes - as this should train the system better to understand me. But my attempts to edit were also misinterpreted. Perhaps it was the edge of stress in my voice, but eventually it stopped understanding me at all. Even when I shouted at it - which I am ashamed to say I did.

Persevere. Yes. That is what I will do. Tomorrow perhaps. Or the day after. As for this blog entry - I'm going about it in the old fashioned way. Keyboard.

But if you are a writers with experience of using speech recognition software in creative work, I'd be glad to hear of your experiences. Should I press on?

Edit Edit Edit

They say that a novel is never finished, only abandon. There are always more improvements that can be made by editing. Always more mistakes to be found. At last you reach the point where you don’t have enough emotional energy to continue and anyway you’ve reached your deadline, so you send the damn thing off. The same it seems it’s true for films.

Having written a short comedy screenplay entitled Pixicillus, gone through pre-production then actually filmed the thing this summer, it was time to start sticking it together. My good friend Gav Irons of BRAG Films set about editing it into shape.
The first edit was a rough cut. He called us together to see the result. We sat around the television watching, thinking ‘that’s not too bad’ and chuckling from time to time. Of course there were things to change. By the end of the session we’d given Gav a list of corrections about a mile long.

When we came together to see the result of the second edit, we found ourselves laughing at most of the jokes. Cutting a quarter of a second here. Adding half a second there. It had made all the difference. But by the end of the evening we’d found half a page of new edits – things we hadn’t spotted the first time.
The long suffering Gav worked away on our list so that when we came together the third time and watched our short film we found ourselves laughing out loud all the way through. But would other people find it funny?

The deadline was upon us. The last couple of edits - they had to be the last as we’d run out of time - were done. The film was sent in. And on Monday we went down to the Firebug bar in Leicester and saw, for the first time, our film projected on a big screen in front of the real audience.

The film began. I held my breath. Would they get jokes?

Then they started laughing and they didn't stop till the end. At moments like that, writing gives you its rewards – when you see people enjoying your work. Perhaps the editing is worth it after all.

Making a Short Movie

In a summer of almost constant rain, there have been just a couple of dry, bright spots.

First, a family trip to Waterford, Ireland, to attend the Baha'i Summer School there. How come Ireland has a reputation for rain? I almost got sunstroke.

I can't speak about that trip without mentioning the attitude of the people there towards the arts. It seemed as if everyone I spoke to could play an instrument, paint, write poetry, or engage in some other form of creative expression. I find it hugely inspiring that people aren't prepared to leave creativity to an elite class of professional artists. Long may it continue.

The second dry and bright spot was the weekend when director Gav Irons set out to turn one of my short screenplays into a movie. It had been raining more-or-less solidly for months. But on the first day of the shoot the sun came out and shone down on us with such intensity that we had to apply plenty of the factor twenty to stay the same colour through the shoot.

Due to a last-minute cancellation by one of the actors, I had to step in and play the part of a somewhat unpleasant news reporter. Thus, suited and sweating, I found myself saying lines I'd written months before and imagined coming out of another person's mouth. It felt very strange.

The best thing about the weekend was working with such an excellent group of people. There were fourteen of us all-told. Behind the camera and in front of it, everyone did their bit with great skill and good humour. The contrast between novel writing and movie making seems sharpest in this - that novel writing is solitary whilst movie making is superbly collaborative.

The movie is called PIXECILLUS. When there is more news in that, I'll post it here.

Delusion or self-belief?

At what point does self-belief become self-delusion? The simple answer is, when the vision comes to nothing. For example, Columbus sails west, trying to find a way around the world. A difficult and perilous journey - even if the world is round. If it turns out the Americas don't exist and there is just one huge ocean, he runs out of food and fresh water before getting anywhere near landfall. Everyone dies. He was deluded. He was like the man who made a pair of wings and jumped off the battlements of a castle and fell to his death. But if the Americas do exist and he makes it - he's a visionary, full of drive and self-belief.

What about writing a novel? Is anyone out there writing a novel right now without a contract? It could take you a year or two and at the end of it you might not get it published. Anyone out there writing their second after failing to publish the first? Third? Fourth? I had five shots at it before getting my publishing deal with Simon & Schuster. Deluded? Visionary? Probably best not answer that. But it felt the right thing to do at the time.

I'm sure of one thing. I REALLY admire people who decide for themselves the right way to go, and then work towards it, in spite of the fact that other people are walking in the opposite direction, and then achieve what other people would have thought impossible.

Such a person is Chris Jones of Living Spirit Pictures. If you want to know something of his inspirational story, get a copy of the excellent Guerrilla Film Makers Guide. Suffice it to say, he quit from the third year of a film making degree because he felt it wasn't teaching him to make the kind of movie he wanted to make. Then he went out and made one. When that wasn't a commercial success, he made another. Then another, each time to increasing critical acclaim.

Chris is now on the verge of another project, even more exciting than his previous ones. It is all described on his website. And he is looking for people to get involved. I've jumped at the chance.

Memory Tricks and Dyslexia

This is a short post, particularly for anyone who came to my presentation on Dyslexia today. In my talk I mentioned a memory system that has been helpful to me. Several people came up and asked me about it afterwards. For those of you who are interested, it is a version of the loci system. The basic idea and its history is described in an article here

If you'd like more information on the way I use it, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below.

Filmic Writing

That was the strangest thing - when someone told me that my writing was filmic. "I can see it all in my head."

Curious, because I can't see any of it.

I'm not sure what the reason is - perhaps it is an aspect of my dyslexia - but I don't see much in my head at all. When I am describing a scene in a novel, I am certainly in that scene. I know exactly where everything is. I could reach out and touch it. I could feel its texture, feel the heat and the cold. I can't see it though.

Here is the alchemy, then. The descriptions someone uses in writing a scene can act on the mind of the reader to produce a visual impression. With each descriptive detail, the mind of the reader is dipping into memories of similar things and assembling an image. Since people's memories are different, it seems reasonable to suppose that each person is "seeing" in their mind's eye a different picture.

Which is why adaptations of books sometimes upset readers. The image projected onto the theatre screen won't be the same as the image they projected in their heads when they first read it.

Maybe that's why they say the pictures are better on radio.

Inside and outside a scene

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the evening with the Grace Dieu Writers’ Circle in Coalville. They are enthusiastic, well organised and a joy to be with. I was supposed to be there as a tutor, leading a writing workshop, but as is usual with these events, I ended up learning a load of stuff myself.

When I am writing, I try to put myself into the scene. In other words, I imagine I am there, standing in the place the protagonist is standing, feeling what they are feeling. When the protagonist moves, I sometimes find myself acting out the movement – perhaps reaching my hand as if I was going to pick something up. When in this state – really in the scene – I find the words come naturally and the writing tends to be more vivid. If I feel the things the protagonist is feeling, hopefully my readers will too.

The thought that came to me yesterday, when preparing the workshop, was that perhaps I am doing this because I don’t have a very visual mind. I do find it difficult to picture scenes in my head. Therefore I place myself inside the scene, relying more on tactile and emotional senses than visual ones. Could it be that other writers are so visually able that they are seeing the scenes they describe from the outside – watching it on the cinema screen of their minds?

And then comes the follow-up question. It is a thought experiment. If two writers, similar in most respects, were to describe the same scene, but one imagined herself in it and the other imagined viewing it from outside, would the two descriptions feel different? Or perhaps it would be more helpful to ask whether the writing of people who habitually place themselves inside scenes will have noticeable differences from the writing of people who habitually look in on scenes from outside.

Any thoughts on this would be warmly welcomed.

Pirates of the Caribbean - at world's end

If someone tells me there’s going to be a firework display just down the road and that the organisers have blown $200 million on the thing, I’m definitely going to go along and have a look. With that philosophy in mind I went with the family to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie – At World’s End.

We sat there dazed by moments of brilliance from the legions special effects teams, stunt performers, martial arts choreographers, set designers, and actors. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the little bits that made up the film. But saying that is as meaningless as admiring all the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The question is, did it work as a whole?

When I walked out of the cinema some three hours later, I found myself relieved that it was over.

‘That was kind of fun,’ someone said, ‘but there wasn’t really a story.’

I begged to differ. There was too much story – none of which I found myself caring about. Every character was double-crossing everyone else. No one said or showed what they really felt. None of the many heroes of the film had a discernable inner journey. Sure they were in danger. But did I or any of the other members of the audience really give a damn? We were just waiting for more explosions and cameo performances.

The next day, my daughter, as keen a Pirates of the Caribbean fan as ever you are likely to meet, confessed to me that she couldn’t really remember any of the scenes. But it was fun, she said. And that about sums it up for me. If movies were only measured by the weight of gunpowder ignited, this would be a classic.

The Dyslexia Debate Rumbles on

When a story leaps into the news without any obvious event to kick it off, one has to ask the question - who has been working so very hard behind the scenes to put it there? So it is with the recent dyslexia debate. The shocking story has slammed into the news, again, that some people believe dyslexia is a myth.

I'm sorry? Did I miss something? How did this story get taken up? I know it came just after a bank holiday, but was it really THAT quiet a news day? Someone must have been sending out reams of press releases and talking to influential friends in the media.

Taking a wild guess, I'd say that the way the Special Educational Needs budget is divided up could a motivating factor. Not that I'm any fan of conspiracy theories.

On the other hand, how to teach children to read and write is a good question for debate. How the resources are divided up is important. For myself, I am sceptical of one-size-fits-all teaching methods. But that's just me. I'd only point out that the history of educational theory is littered with discarded methods that were once going to banish illiteracy forever.

I'm more concerned that in this narrow debate, the general public might become confused about the obvious and undeniable truth - there were dyslexics around long before writing was invented. And dyslexia isn't 'cured' once a student has achieved a 'C' grade or above in their GCSE English exam. It is a life-long condition, a difference in the hard wiring of the brain that conveys some advantages as well as disadvantages.

Please, let's not lose sight of that.

Not Blogging but Teaching

Instead of writing a blog entry this time, I thought I'd try a video podcast. This was supposed to save time. Ha! It took me far longer - and now I am writing a blog entry as well to explain myself.



If you are having trouble viewing the above video, you could try watching it at YouTube