End of one story…and a new beginning

Inbali’s blog for Mslexia has come to an end, but you can visit our new blog at www.mslexia.co.uk/blog

Thanks for joining us,
The Mslexia team

Finishing what you Started

My first book was published a year and a half ago and since that time, I’ve often been asked how I finish my stories. It seems that many of us throw ourselves into ideas, gallop through several chapters and flounder, at a loss. How can a writer pull it together, resolving the various sub-plots and offering closure? How can we finally let go? Now, as I consider my last column for Mslexia‘s blog, I forget. Where do the words come from? How do they settle in order, cover a page – ultimately come to an end?

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’
- Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu, (604 BC – 531 BC)

Large chunks are hard to swallow – even my cat Wilma could tell you that. I suspect that many writers would say something about planning. Break your overall story into a short synopsis; further divide it with chapter summaries. Add clarity with research. Identify the appearance of your characters, their longings and motivations. Armed with this structure and detail, you should have a clear sense of where you’re going. You will know how the book will end even before you draft the first line and you will develop the narrative accordingly. Take it one manageable step at a time. All this is sensible advice for writers of fantasy adventure, which demands similar attention to an unravelling plot as crime fiction and thrillers. At my editor’s suggestion I prepared a detailed chapter breakdown for my second book, The Bloodstone Bird. The story is complex, including two interwoven locations and time-altering judders, and precision in structure was vital.

The edge of chaos: the boundaries of complexity

Perhaps it goes deeper than planning alone. I suspect that there is a rhythm to these things, and that words, like other cultural concepts or ‘memes’, tend towards patterns just as much as a spider’s web or pebbles on the beach. Bear with me a moment while I sound you out. Proponents of complexity theory see emergence and self-organisation occurring through the natural world. With only a modicum of extrapolation and an apology to my father, who is a maths professor, and his colleagues across the sciences, it is easy to see how a story takes on a shape and energy of its own, almost independently of the author. The secret is in flowing with the patterns, gently steering them while allowing them to take their course. In that, the writer is benevolent ring-master, guiding the circus but never oppressing the performers. That, at least, is how I hope to write – a loose framework, a deep understanding of my characters and a gentle brush-stroke. The trouble is that we become lost in the minutiae, and that’s to be expected – writers care about the subtlest idiom, the slightest glance of sunlight; a rouge-flecked crescent on a blade of grass. This bent towards detail can be an encumbrance – eighteen chapters into a book and you can’t see the wood for the trees or, in the case of The Tygrine Cat: On the Run, the feline for the whiskers. Time to back away for a few days, take a deep breath and look again.

She who laughs last laughs loudest

While I might not find the end of a book the easiest section to write, it is almost invariably the most exciting. In a highly ‘narrative’ genre, such as children’s fantasy, the story drives towards the climax and those last concluding chapters, almost from the first page. Here’s the bit where the writer really gets to express herself, where the characters are pushed to their limits, confront their enemies, vanquish their demons. What could be more thrilling? Yet the burden of getting it right can be weighty. The tenor and tone of final encounters may ultimately define the whole book. They may even define the author. Among South Africa’s stray dogs, what does the last line of Disgrace mean for the protagonist, the country or J. M. Coetzee himself? What does the last line of The Night Watch reveal about Sarah Waters?

And finally: an admission

I often tell people, rather glibly, that the publishing process has been good for me – it has forced me to confront my pride and dispense with some previous vestiges of ego. I say this with a glint, of course, and a life-long tendency towards hyperbole. But it’s true. Like any creative endeavour, a book pushes the writer into the path of criticism and self-doubt. It is intensely exposing. At its highs, it is also deliriously rewarding. A dizzying, mind-blowing, wondrous broth – long may it continue.

And so a confession in this seventh and final instalment of my blog: I have not quite completed the sequel to The Tygrine Cat. Despite feeling like an errant school child, I thought it only fair to tell you that I shall miss my publishing deadline. I have broken the news to my editor; I shall deliver late, but not too late. I am almost finished – I really am – but some things can’t be rushed. Amid life’s various pressures and a punishing Book Week schedule, the cats ran away from me. Coaxing them back onto the page is my greatest priority.

With any luck, The Tygrine Cat: On the Run will be out in 2010. I shall look forward to your comments – whatever they may be…

With every success, for letters and life,
Inbali

Celebrating the good times – launching The Bloodstone Bird

Nubian Jaunts and Sailors’ Haunts: All in a Day’s Research

Discovering the ship's control room with Captain Hainaru Mircza

Verisimilitude. It’s one of my favourite words. I actually remember when I first encountered it: Mr Patterson’s class, Long Road Sixth Form College, during a discussion on Hollywood films. He explained that it means the appearance of reality, and it’s a fundamental component of all but the most surreal or postmodern fiction.

Children’s fantasy asks a lot of the reader. Come with me, it beckons, to a world of magical portals, sword-fighting knights and feline warlords. I have always maintained that the best fantasy is firmly rooted in reality. This may seem like a paradox. Fantasy is, after all, the very opposite of reality, exploding the grubby day-to-day in favour of flights of fancy. But to be persuasive – to be convincing – fantasy must be anchored in the familiar. Vitally, there are rules.

I am fascinated by the gateway between our own experiences and the magical space where the impossible is realised. In The Tygrine Cat, the fantasy comes from seeing our world from a new perspective, by entering the secret lives of ferals and following them into Fiåney, the feline ‘dream-wake.’ The ferals live on a market-place, loosely based on Camden Lock in north London, where I spent time wandering around the stalls and snapping photographs when planning the story. You can read an account of my market walkabout for a Write Away! Story Starter here.

In The Bloodstone Bird, an ordinary boy called Sash – the son of a Russian immigrant – discovers a portal to a mysterious paradise beneath an unassuming London street. Gully Lane is a far cry from Hobbiton or Narnia, housing a string of small shops with flats hidden behind them or above them off street level, including ‘a rug shop, a pawnbroker’s, a charity shop’ and ‘the place on the corner that sold fried chicken.’

Sash lives behind Stuff the World, a taxidermy shop where his father, Max, practises his mysterious trade. The geographical co-ordinates are vital to the veracity of the story because of a true feature of London that Sash discovers. While researching the book I spent time studying maps of London and trotting around key streets with a camera and notepad.

As Hampstead turned to Gospel Oak, detached Victorian houses gave way to terraces and council developments. Sash made his way down Highgate Road into Kentish Town. At the junction of Highgate Road and Fortess Road, four lanes of traffic funnelled into two. Armies of cyclists wove between grumbling cars. Gridlocked and impatient, the cars inched forward, their fumes lapping at Sash’s feet in murky gusts.

[from The Bloodstone Bird]

Max takes his craft seriously, believing that it’s possible to preserve life through taxidermy. In order to obtain a clearer idea of what was involved, I read manuals, signed up to various taxidermy chat rooms (trust me, they exist!) and attended the Guild of Taxidermists‘ annual conference. The conference was held in the heart of the Derbyshire countryside and naturally I lost my way there, arriving late and feeling more than a little out of place. I quickly got into the spirit, watching ‘live taxidermy’ – if you mind the pun – and chatting enthusiastically to Guild members. I was intrigued to hear the talks. One by an award-winning taxidermist addressed amateur errors, such as systematic over-grooming. Max himself makes a similar observation in The Bloodstone Bird:

The trick is not to over-preen. The taxidermist always wants the perfect specimen, but nature is imperfect. Fur is sometimes ruffled, twitching and shifting in response to muscle tension beneath the skin.

Most of all, the experience of meeting such a varied group of enthusiasts reminded me that it’s dangerous to make assumptions about people. It would be easy to consign the taxidermist to the role of storybook ogre. I was determined to avoid simplistic type-casting. Max would be a complicated, faintly melancholy character, a man who struggled with fatherhood and the pressures of a world that is alien to him.

A Nubian catling waits for scraps beneath a table in a cafe

In my current book, The Tygrine Cat: On the Run, Mati and his friends stow aboard a cargo ship bound for Suez to escape the menacing phantom cats. I visited Egypt in November, taking notes about Nubian ferals and absorbing the sounds and smells that a catling – a young cat – might experience. Were traders patient with their city’s feline co-habitants? Would the Nile look brown or green up close? Did papyrus reeds really line its banks? The answers to these questions would help me to set down the landscape of the story.

Closer to home, I have recently spent a delightful day at the Port of Felixstowe, where a chaplain from the Seafarers’ Society gave me a tour and arranged a visit aboard a massive cargo ship. Felixstowe is one of the largest ports in England and akin to a city of ships, containers and giant cranes. Without seeing it with my own eyes, I would have struggled to appreciate the scale of the dockyard or understood how a cat might climb the metal gangplanks. The ‘gangplank scene’ is pivotal in the story, and I knew that I had to get it right.

Much of the research for each book will never appear on a page. At Felixstowe, I filled reams of a notepad with numerous and random observations. None of this is lost – it all helps to contextualise the story in my mind, to set out the world of the book. It has energised me and allowed me to empathise with the characters. When Mati weaves between metal containers to discover the immense tarmac gangways, I understand what he sees. With him, I raise my eyes to the moon and shudder. Heart thumping, I know that the phantoms are close. In the nature reserve outside the borders of the dockyard, a shadow stirs.

The air grows hazy. A hiss catches the autumn wind. I spot the metal gangplank and realise it’s my only hope…

Next week – Chalk and Cheese? The Author and the Editor