The Trapeze Swinger

Have you heard that song?  It is nine minutes of brutal, winding, haunting song.  I love things that fully inhabit themselves.  That is when writing, any writing, feels best.  Not easy to do.  It requires risk and courage and very good balance for the cliffs are steep out there.  But the rewards?  The rewards are huge.

I have been thinking about boldness.  It is not easy to write.  Boldness cannot fling itself onto the page, uncaring of the response.  That would not ring true.  Boldness must be conscious of the dangers and calculate how far the fall and then charge the field.  Without armour, without cavalry, without hope of rescue.

Akhmatova begins her poem "There will be thunder then.  Remember me."  Bold, dangerous.

Du Maurier begins her great novel with "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again."  Again?  But this is the first sentence.  She does it without a net.

Dr. Seuss fearlessly writes for children:

"I am the Lorax!  I speak for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please;
But I also speak for the brown Barbaloots,
Who frolicked and played in their barbaloot suits,
Happily eating Truffula fruits."  Of course.  A Lorax.  I know a Lorax.

That is when we admire the writing.  It cannot be faked.  We would smell artifice immediately.  Every wonder of the literary canon faced a terrifying field.  But even when they fall, an often they do, we admire the attempt.

I love the options my spell check gave me for 'Barbaloots"...



  

Letters and News

They are marvellous.  Personal and public and a thing meant to be shared.  You are a different you in a letter.  Quixotic and sharp edged, loving and light; letters froth with vigour.  To write is an active verb.  It is wonderful to be writing a book largely in letters.  I get to take up the personality of the character, live his or her day in my head and then write a letter that has nothing and everything to do with that day.  

They are of a moment: singular, finite, fleeting.  As soon as you seal the envelope you are in a different moment.  You would write a different letter if you had it to do again.  It is that strange alchemy of mind, heart, pen and paper.  You cannot step into the same river twice.

I have been reading letters recently.  The love lit letters of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the gossipy letters of Truman Capote, the stormy letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the chatty, catty letters of Somerset Maugham, the achingly unfinished letters of John Keats and Fanny Brawne.  They all tell small daily stories within larger tangled, messy lives.  They are not neat, tidy stories with clean, rounded arcs.  Pathos does not lead to resolution.  Eros is often a capricious little beastie.  Quite often, nothing is learned and mistakes are remade.  I love that.  I loved the human, flawed aspect to them.  They fascinate.  

Pages written: 6

Also, I was sent the marketing plan today....  It is really happening.

I do not usually go back and tamper with posts, actually that is wrong, quite often I do and I apologize, but I had to mention what lovely June at Writing is a Blessing wrote about Nell yesterday.  Go and see...

London

Back.  Done with flying, airports, passports, travel size, lost socks, long lines, immigration, contraband liquids, seat belt signs, x ray machines, static electricity, peanuts and things that go beep.

It is wonderful to know I am going to write, go to ballet, go to the library, go to dinner with friends, write, go to sleep and then wake up and do it again tomorrow.

Pages written this week: 0

Pages to write: 20

But on the upside, I did finally finish my albatross of an Author Portal Questionnaire for Simon and Schuster.  Surely I will get better at this...

New Year

This was the year when:

I saw lots of much missed beloved friends

I rediscovered Henry James

I learned how to stand up paddle board

My eldest student went off to college

My second eldest student went off to school on the mainland

My two third eldest students fell wildly in love with reading

I researched Second Book

I started writing Second Book

I took the scary ballet class

I moved to a new part of London

I met my new adorable god son

I re-fell in love with walking through London at night

I made it home for Christmas

And

Wonderful people offered to help launch Nell into the world on February 1.

Thank you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Packing--Now Unpacking

In fairness, the bag really does look like it holds more stuff than it actually does.  It is deceptively less roomy than one would imagine.  I live in the tinyest flat imaginable--lovely, homey, cosy, comfy, bright, but tiny--and one would not imagine that there would be so much stuff to pack.  Where does this stuff live when it is not marching into the suitcase?

Everything starts with books.  Christmas present books, reading books (I am reading Forster, Maugham's letters and West--it is like falling into a vat of emotionally charged, sun warmed, beautifully written, early 20th century honey), and research books.

I am a bit like Linus from Peanuts about my research books.  All my best beloved non research books live on the East Coast.  Hawaii is too wet and London is too small and they seem to like the East Coast.  My research books on the other hand are nomadic.  They go to the beach, the movies, the departure lounge, the bus, the ballet studio, the library (where they can commiserate with more well adjusted, grounded, non roving research books), the park, the pub, the subway, the playground and the museums.  They go out for dinner and wish I would use an umbrella.

They meet my friends.  They get scribbled in: "Dentist, 430, Tuesday".  They drive in the Honda.  They get dropped into the sea.  I love that they live big, varied lives.  But they are heavy.  I am only going for a few days.  Do they all need to come?  And then I look at their soft, broken in spines and crumply covers and illegible notes that track my life as I write this second book and I think, yes.  They need to come.

But then we might only be going as far as Heathrow.  My flight was cancelled yesterday and today and there is a good chance that the plane might not take off tomorrow...

Lovely Review from Rick Friedman at Goodreads

"Exit the Actress: A Novel by Priya Parmar is quite simply one of the most original, engaging and well written novels I have come across in many a year. Written through diary entries, Letters, Official Announcements, invitations ect- the reader is immersed into 17th Century London, through the eyes of Nell, a poor "Oyster Girl" who grows up to be a stage star and Mistress of Royalty. That Ms. Parmar can create such a real and human character is nothing short of breathtaking. This book is, without doubt,the first book of a MAJOR new talent in historical fiction."

I just read that review out loud to my mother.  It is the kind of moment you daydream about when you are in the thicket of a book that is not yet a book and you cannot see your way forward or back.  It is the kind of daydream that kickstarts you back into writing when you splutter to a stop.  It is the kind of daydream that you never imagine will happen.  

And then one day, it does.  How magical.

Rick Friedman is a wonderful man who has a wonderful  bookclub.  It is a vast, energetic book club and he leads it with verve, skill and devotion.  He makes it a lovely place to be.  

My publicity team adore Rick.  He and my publicist Jessica are organizing a Goodreads Giveaway.  It takes time, effort, thought and kindness.  I am so very, very lucky.  Thank you, Rick.

Ps: It looks like I am snowed into London for Christmas and not going to the States...

Book Signing

So, are you free on February 8, 2011?  Want to meet me on the corner of 57th St. and Park Avenue at the Borders Books in Manhattan?

It is one of my favourites.  Enormous.  Big armchairs, four floors, great poetry section, yummy hot chocolate, center of town... so you'll come?

I'll carry a copy of Wuthering Heights and a white winter rose so you will know it is me.

My first book signing and of course I am wondering... what do authors wear to their first book signing...

PS: my brother receives this blog by email and just told me the format has changed?  It now looks as though it comes from a random stranger instead of just a normal plum bean email.  Not sure what is happening.  Will investigate...

Mechanic vs Alchemic

I have been thinking about frameworks.  I was talking to a writer friend yesterday about deadlines.  He is a prolific journalist and absolutely, non negotiably, needs the eleventh hour rush of adrenaline to get it done.  His process--what a horridly artsy yet weirdly sausage factoryish sort of word--requires a superimposed structure.  His 1200 word article will happen as soon as it has to happen--has to happen because of an external rather than internal mechanism.

Lots of writers work this way. It takes huge amounts of confidence.  To know that at any point you can flick a switch, turn the cranks and there will be work you are willing to show someone--amazing.

I am not like that.

"I don't need deadlines," I told him, sounding provincial and self contained.

"Sure you do," he said.  "You just get in there first.  A deadline is just a way of making yourself write when worry you can't.  You have that."

And he was right.  I have a strict, self sustaining, near ritualistic process of writing.  I have a mechanical system of getting the words onto the page:

I:
-Turn on the computer before I do anything else.
-Write four pages.
-Stop after four pages.
-Write even if I have nothing to write.
-Take one day off a week.

And creatively, I am equally and bizarrely strict but there is only one rule:

A storytelling bumble bee of random, elusive, hazy, unformed thought will go flying over the even squares of my brain.  Follow it.  Do not worry about the destination, the end of the story, the end of the sentence.  Follow it.  It is going somewhere fun.

My journalist friend was right.

And... terrific news!  Sharon Kay Penman just wrote to me and wants to do an interview before Exit the Actress comes out in February.  I am over the moon!

Translation

Richard Pevear and Larisa Volokhonsky.  Their translations of War and Peace and Anna Karenina are sumptuous, fluid and lyric.  The heavy prose is wrought light and clear and the emotional currents of the language sail under an unfaltering breeze.  Their translations are magnificent.

I bought it.  I have been circling it somewhat wolfishly and today, feeling warm and Christmassy after lunch and a long walk with old friends, I bought it.  You can only read Dr. Zhivago at Christmas.  Not in the sun, nor on a beach, nor on the run, nor with a peach.  It must be cold, dark, wintry and snug.  Yuri and Lara go with gingerbread and woolly socks.

I have read this book at least seven or eight times and I never learn.  I will hope he is telling the truth.  I will hope he finds her.  I will hope she finds him.  I love this story.


Nell news: the second printing numbers are up and the total in print is now above 33,000...

Writing news: closing in on a title...

May

May.  Thanks to wonderful Mari (who has the wonderful blog Bookworm with a View),  The Manic Mommies Book Club is going to read Exit the Actress in May.  They are a marvellous reading group.  The conversations with the authors are generous but incisive leaving a wide, clean arena for discussion.  The readers are engaged and vibrant and the other books that have been chosen look fantastic.  Nell and I are delighted and are going ice skating to celebrate...