The interplay between reading and writing

In 2023 I wrote my first novel, Epiphanies and Robberies, and serialised it here – month by month. Whilst I’m the author of quite a few academic books, I’d never before produced something like this, an extended work of fiction, with characters and a storyline totally of my own invention. Certainly, over the years I had mapped out ideas or even made a start on novel writing, but always I failed to produce a completed manuscript. Until now.

The sense of fond ownership of my script has become quite profound. The encouragement of friendly readers is also touching. The urge to see my story published, surprisingly strong. So this year I’ve been making tentative forays into the world of commercial fiction and trying to work out how to get my book into print (or indeed digital format).

Compared to the working practices of the University presses, this whole process seems hazy, rather daunting, and highly likely to bring disappointment. Few publishers accept direct proposals from authors. Most work exclusively with literary agents. Many agents only open for enquiries periodically. Almost all tell you they don’t reply to unsuccessful submissions.

There are many stories about best-selling authors who struggled for years to find a publisher, from Ian Fleming to JK Rowling. Likewise, there are plenty of online sources that share experiences and offer tips to the wanting-to-be published novelist.

The importance of reading

Among all this advice, one persistent theme has caught my eye. A curious charge to the struggling author. Read prolifically! There’s method in this. By reading more, our writing improves. We learn from the best of writers, as well as from those perhaps less accomplished.

Publishers also want to know where an author’s work might be found in a bookshop and how it fits with whatever else is on offer. So it’s good, we are advised, to read ‘genres’ and titles that are similar to our own endeavours, and to understand where we fit in that context.

Now, all of this can be tricky.

Many writers will tell you they can’t read whilst immersed in a new piece of work of their own. I often feel the same way. But it can be a good thing to get away from one’s own literary formations, and delve into the completed work of others – for inspiration, new techniques or perspectives, or simply as restful distraction.

Some may also opine that no writer is quite like them. That’s a conceit worth avoiding. To an extent all writers reflect their social world and the times in which they live. The greatest writers also shape those worlds and times. No writing is indivisible, and uniqueness is rare.

With all this in mind, I try to keep reading, even when in high writing gear on a piece of my own. Looking back on my reading habits over the first half of this year, I can see how they relate quite specifically to my own preoccupations.

A miscellany of titles

A Christmas gift introduced me to Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day. I was immediately drawn in and soon read all of her novels and collections of short stories. I found an economy of language, as well as provocations and skills through which she delves deeply into cultural assumptions, the place of religion in the world, and those actions that are stirred by human compassion. I could not aspire to such writing, but there is much to learn from it. Her novels are quite short and achieve something rather rare: the immediate desire to go back and read them again.

After these, and in complete contrast, I discovered a crime writer whose stories are set in the region where I live, Dumfries and Galloway. Since the lockdown, Lynne McEwan has published a volley of four novels based around a female detective inspector who also doubles up as a lifeboat volunteer. The combination makes for intriguing plot lines and also beautiful insights into the landscape and ecology of the Solway Firth. A stranger to the series, by chance I found the most recent one, The Gathering Storm, in my excellent local bookstore, and enjoyed it so much, that I immediately bought the previous three, and read those in order.

I also delved into six other novels set in contemporary Scotland, all of them recently published. Marion Todd’s Old Bones Lie is the latest in a string of pacy police procedurals, located in St Andrews. The Bone on the Beach (bones are au courant in Scottish novel titles at the moment, it would seem) is a debut mystery novel from Fiona Gillan Kerr, which explores contemporary life in the Scottish Highlands, sitting alongside an enduring legacy of folklore and mythology, and a hint of Deidre of the Sorrows. Jackie Fraser’s The Bookshop of Second Chances, by contrast, is a whimsical tale of new life after divorce, set in a thinly disguised Wigtown, Scotland’s well known book town. Chris Carse Wilson’s Fray is a probing and challenging first novel. Built around an abandoned cottage in the Highlands that is filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying handwritten notes, this is a dark and disturbing story, replete with the metaphors and ambiguities of searching for a lost person. Best of all in this Caledonian bag of books however was Louise Welsh’s campus novel, To The Dogs, set in the University of Glasgow. Its gritty depiction of neo-liberalism in higher education should be required reading for all Vice Chancellors and seemed a brave venture for a writer in residence.

In a return to past reading pleasure, during the Spring I got hold of the latest novel by Armistead Maupin. I first encountered his Tales of the City back in the 1980s and always enjoyed the characterisations of life in San Francisco, the gay scene and his poignant accounts of the arrival of the AIDS epidemic. In this tenth book in the series, Mona of the Manor, he takes us back to the early 1990s, but now moves the setting to the quintessentially English Cotswolds. Thin at first, the story soon matured and deepened to humorous effect, as Californian liberals rubbed shoulders with more conservative locals. Albeit, the ending failed to convince.

In addition to Claire Keegan’s novellas, I also re-read a couple of other well-crafted works of fiction.

The first, prompted by over-hearing A Good Read on BBC Radio 4, was Neville Shute’s On the Beach. I first encountered it when age about 12, and now with much older sensibilities, I admired the quiet dignity of its small group of characters who face the inevitability of death as the fallout from a nuclear war slowly drifts towards them.

The second re-encounter was an object lesson in immersion. I returned to Antoine Laurain’s beguiling story of a Paris publishing house, The Reading Room. This time I also bought the original French edition. I then proceeded to read the two of them, one chapter of each at a time, whilst on a short holiday in the French capital. Staying in the 6th arrondissement and reading in the Luxembourg gardens (two of Laurain’s favourite settings) whilst re-visiting one of his classic works, was very special indeed, despite my limited language skills. To cap it all, when I got home a copy of his latest novel had arrived as a birthday present. Its title: French Windows!

The relevance to my writing

So how did all this reading pleasure impact upon my own writing endeavours in recent months?

As I ponder any of these books, my first reaction is admiration for the author. Carse Wilson’s first novel was written over four years, on a bus whilst travelling to work. Writers like Maupin have written stories about the same group of characters, that have evolved over decades. Police procedurals, formulaic perhaps, require skill, the ability to surprise, and sound knowledge of the local ‘patch’.

‘I could have written that’ is a reaction to a book that rarely convinces me nowadays.

Having completed a manuscript for a novel last year, I no longer incline to dismiss the published work of others. They have stayed with their mission and to whatever extent, found an audience. They must also face the subjective views of the reading public, the perspicacity of reviewers, and the hard metric of sales figures.

Within all of the works mentioned here, I have found some form of inspiration. In several cases, immensely so. It would be inappropriate to try to emulate Keegan or Laurain. But their directness, unfussy language and acute observation are motivating. McEwan amidst her unfolding murder enquiries, also doles out passages of gorgeous nature writing. Maupin is testimony to the value of staying with one’s characters, over the long durée. Almost all of the books I have read this year have a well developed sense of place, a focus that interests me greatly.

Epiphanies and Robberies has some of these elements, as you can see from this draft blurb:

Andrew’s retirement from general practice coincides with the sudden death of his wife. He is facing the start of 2023 with a sense of dread. Then he meets Michael, a work-obsessed environmental scientist with marriage problems, and Anne-Marie, an ambitious freelance musician. New connections open up between them, fuelled by their shared experiences of rural living, as well as their personal and family struggles. When a wave of art thefts sweeps across their home region, the three are drawn into a puzzling conundrum that triggers unexpected pathways for each of them. Epiphanies and Robberies evolves against the beautiful landscape and seasonal rhythms of Nithsdale in southwest Scotland. The 12 chapters are set in a single year and unfold, one month at a time in a twisting feel-good story, with real substance, and hopeful possibilities.  

There is also quite a bit in there that I don’t want to give up. Maybe there’s more to be learned about Andrew, Michael and Anne-Marie? Similarly, I have enjoyed the creation of a mystery and would like to do so again (whilst as before, avoiding murder!) In particular, I want to stay in Dumfries and Galloway, and specifically Nithsdale, which is where I live. So with these things in mind, I have started to think about a sequel to the first novel. Here is the core idea:

Two women now in their 80s have lived entirely separate lives in Scotland and in Germany. Always puzzled by their family history, their shared story begins to unravel in 2025 when events forged in the aftermath of world war two finally surface and a special connection is revealed.

Woven into this will be the same main characters we met in the first novel, as well as new ones, both from the locality and from elsewhere. Taking a cue from Maupin’s time-specific approach, this story will be set two years beyond Epiphanies and Robberies, though the action will be across the summer and autumn, rather than a whole calendar year. Marking a new turn in my approach, there will also be passages evoking historical events, that take the reader back many decades.

At the moment this possible work has the glorious working title of Novel #2. I have made a lot of notes about it, but won’t be making a start on the writing until Spring 2025, when the story itself begins.

In the meantime, I continue my efforts to find a publisher for Novel #1.

And my current read? Well, it’s actually non-fiction. I’m engrossed in my friend Alan Warde’s Everyday Eating, an exploration of food, taste and trends in Britain since the 1950s. It’s conjuring up many a childhood meal of mine, and giving lots of food for writing thought too.