It is a long time since I studied English at GCSE – more than half my life ago, in fact. Since then, I’ve studied to degree level, worked in the NHS for thirteen years, been a stay at home Mum, travelled a little, gained a husband and two children and a whole menagerie of pets – not in that order, obviously. Though those things have been amazing, intriguing, challenging and all the other adjectives you can come up with, they have not taught me, per se, to be a writer. I hope they have, but there’s a good chance they haven’t.
What I mean to say is I am not schooled in writing beyond that very distant English GCSE. I haven’t been on a creative writing course, or done an MA. I haven’t so much as been to a workshop or dabbled in online learning. I am literarily uneducated. Clearly, I could just go and get educated, but part of me wants to know what can happen without that. How far can I get based on instinct (and hard work) alone? If writing is art – an outward expression of internal imagination, thought or ideas – why does it need to be taught? There are probably a whole load of people who will read this, roll their eyes and titter to themselves at my naivety. It isn’t that I’m cocky and assume my writing is naturally amazing – I can assure you I’m not and I don’t (the cocky amongst us don’t tend to need blogs to navel-gaze and vomit their anxieties). Neither is it that I don’t want to improve. I do. It’s just that there is a rebellious hippy part of me that doesn’t want to get hemmed in by writing rules. I didn’t come to this hobby to be caged or channelled or clipped. I use words to seek freedom. To let my mind run away with itself. To explore feelings or fears; to experiment. I want to be free to graffiti or swear or blur the edges of punctuation and grammar. I find it hard to believe there are rules, in any art form. I know there are people who will tell you there are, and that you could never succeed without adhering to them, but I can’t help thinking that if you asked a hundred people, each would give you a slightly different set of rules. Everything about writing is subjective. Only time is going to answer the wisdom of my theories. While I wait and see, writing and submitting with abandon, I am taking my own measures to improve as much as I can. My key plan is to read widely. It seems like the most logical thing to do. I have now got subscriptions to Mslexia magazine and the Lighthouse journal. I have a huge stack of novels and memoirs waiting for me, and try to have one on the go at all times. I read a lot of flash that appears in my twitter feed. I’m certainly reading differently now – I’m alert to how things are structured (this can unfortunately ruin a novel), the way imagery is built up, how characters are developed, the voice a story is told in. I’m intrigued by how likeable a character is or isn’t, especially if they’re the protagonist. I’m hoping that a lot of these thoughts and the things I notice percolate into my brain, improving the narrative I go on to type. If you submerge yourself in another language, you learn it more quickly, don’t you? I’m hoping that my literary submersion will pay similar dividends. The rest of it – the writing and editing parts – I am pretty much making up as I go along. I love flash because it’s a great playground for writing. I found it impossible to begin with – all my early attempts were just description. As I began being able to weave a story in so few words, I still struggled with my verboseness, almost always going over word limits and needing to cull significantly. Having to be conscious of every single word has certainly improved my ability to get straight to a point. Although I’m better at being frugal with words, I do still like to choose the good ones. My key approach to editing is first to make sure the story flows as a whole. Then I check for superfluous words – if it doesn’t add, it has to go. I have terrible habits of overusing ‘seemed’, ‘that’, ‘which’. I find coming back with fresh eyes helps me to spot them. Sometimes the imagery I’ve aimed for doesn’t come across as I want it to, so I play about with different sentences, different word orders or different vocabulary. I have absolutely no idea if this is how editing is supposed to work. Again, I’m following my instincts. My approach with my novel has been different again. I have done a lot of reading and re-reading, to the point of not being able to see the wood for the trees. I have read the whole thing from start to end to check for inconsistencies, unanswered questions, flow. I have re-written sections, deleted sections, fiddled with particular sentences. One thing I’m particularly unsure about is when to stop editing. How do you know if a story is cooked? Are you burning it by further fiddling? Or are you at risk of sending it out a bit raw? Once I feel quite satisfied with how a piece reads, I get impatient to get it out. I suspect I’m guilty of under-cooking most often. I also struggle when a piece gets rejected – is it because that journal is full/ it wasn’t their taste or because it requires improvement? There probably isn’t a clear answer but I do give every piece another tickle-round before it goes out again. I’ve recently assessed all my flash pieces with a critical eye, resulting in me parking several, for now. I can’t decide if they are incomplete or just lacking in concept. Either way, they are temporarily retired. The ones I think might be good enough (feeling the way in the dark) have all gone out, some as simultaneous submissions - only if it’s in the rules, of course. I guess I just wait and see what happens with them. I’m certain that the other way I could improve my writing would be to get more feedback. This is pretty scary. No one wants to pour out their deepest thought concoctions only for them to be ripped to shreds. I’m hoping that a kind reviewer would be more constructive than that, and, as hard as it’s going to be, I can see that it’s a necessary next step on the journey. Several friends and family have read my novel, which has been a wholly positive experience, but I have made myself get braver than asking those who are loyal and want to be kind to me. It’s weird to think my novel is currently with a professional editor – a stranger combing over something so intimately mine. I’m excited to receive their feedback whilst simultaneously terrified. What if they hate it? What if they just don’t get it? I hope they don’t say it is entirely unpublishable…. Ever. That I should just burn it and sell my laptop. One things is for sure - the feedback will certainly give me an insight into how far off the mark my unschooled approach is. I know there are more next steps, such as joining a writing group, but at the moment, the thought of sitting there while someone critiques something I’ve written feels so exquisitely uncomfortable, I just can’t make myself do it. Ditto open mic nights. For now, I’m happiest hiding behind my laptop, writing, writing; applying my own inimitable grammar rules. Editing in my own special way; sending my pieces to faceless readers. Ducking the inevitable rejections; cherishing the few that make it. Can instinct and hard work take my novel to an agent and a publisher and the window of my favourite Waterstones? It’s the twenty million dollar question. I have my doubts but I also have my dreams.
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AuthorNicola Ashbrook Archives
September 2023
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