A writing update

 

"So how's the book going?" friends ask when I emerge from my study, and I'm never sure how much they really want to know. They probably could do without the re-enactment of the knotty plot crisis in section two, which involved pacing up and down the kitchen while stabbing a biro into my own head. An account of 'flu survival while being unable to work for two weeks will probably suffice. They can be spared details of the cold sweats and near delirium after the phone call from my editor in New York who only asked some basic, logical questions.

 

But one of the attractions of writers' blogs, whether reading or writing them, is that there is a core of honesty. Otherwise, why would you bother doing either, right? I find it interesting to know how the process works for other writers, how fast they work, what interventions and constraints there are in producing a new novel. Sometimes, there's an element of reassurance. There's a useful sense of how long it takes from first idea to finished book.

 

So, for those who are interested in such matters, here's how it's going. I had an end of March deadline to deliver the first draft of the book I've been writing since September, incorporating a novella I wrote earlier in the year - delivery to my literary agents in the first instance; delivery to publishers was fixed for the end of June. I am extremely lucky to have two literary agents these days, one in New York and one in London. It's quite the dream team.

 

I sent the manuscript in mid-March and enjoyed my freedom, not expecting to hear anything until a few weeks after Easter. Over lunch in London in mid-April with both my agents Stephanie and Araminta (who are great friends and colleagues) I was given the great news that they thought the first draft was good enough to go straight to the publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. Hurray, champagne all round - we were ahead of schedule by two and a half months!

 

Perhaps it was partly relief after all the intense work that brought me down with the 'flu, perhaps it was the busy social time the following week. At any rate, I was knocked out for a fortnight and came round to find that editorial work was already starting. When the call came from my editor at HarperCollins in New York, my brain was so foggy I couldn't even remember the names of my own characters. A few days of panic ensued, during which I had to take a long hard look at the nuts of bolts of my plot - marvelling at my editor's laser focus on the crucial issues. (It's astonishing how the asking of a very simple question can open up weaknesses.)

 

I'm feeling much better now, in all senses. The editorial process has begun, while waiting for more notes from the UK publishers, Orion. I'll keep you posted.  

The Beckoning Silence

 

It's been vile, this bout of 'flu. I've been wiped out for two weeks and am still not quite right. But while I was breaking into a cold sweat climbing the kitchen stairs with another mug of Lemsip, I raised a reddened eye at the bookcase as I paused for breath, trembling, and saw exactly the companion I wanted: Joe Simpson. Possibly because the stairs in our house felt like the North Face of the Eiger at that moment, only the perspective of a mountaineer would do.

 

Simpson is the master of the adventure and endurance tale. Touching the Void, the story of his extraordinary survival against the odds after a climbing accident on Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, made his name. But he is a compelling writer who has gone on to write several other books that examine the psychology of the human spirit in adversity and under pressure.

 

The book I reached out for on the stairs was The Beckoning Silence. It's a sombre read. In other hands, it could be anything but inspirational. In it, Simpson reflects on his climbing career and the accidents and near-misses he has been lucky enough to return from. He intersperses his own experiences with the accounts of the daring ascents that inspired him to start climbing, and the tragic outcomes that awaited the bravest of them all. The world opens up: from the Himalayas to an avalanche in Bolivia, paragliding in Spain, and extreme ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado. As he writes:

"There is something about reading that takes you beyond the constrictions of time and space, frees you from the limitations of social interaction and allows you to escape. Whoever you encounter within the pages of a book, whatever lives you vicariously live with them can affect you deeply - entertain you briefly, change your view of the world, open your eyes to a wholly different concept of living and the value of life."    

                                                    

But along with the extreme climbing, it's the extreme honesty that makes this such a thrilling read. For Joe Simpson is not sure how much more fear he can face, how long his luck will last. Along the way, too many friends and motivational figures have died. He tells their stories, too, as he plans one final challenge: to climb the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland before giving up his beloved sport.

Well. The stories in these pages are so terrifying, the writing so tense and dramatic, that after a while it was hard to tell whether my clammy skin and rapid heartbeat was the result of empathy with the doomed climbers caught in storms in inhospitable places, or my own imminent demise from foggy headache and racking cough.

The legendary route up the Eiger is marked by chilling names. Death Bivouac. Traverse of the Gods. Difficult Crack (Blimey, if these stony mountain men think it's difficult...it must be Absolutely Bloody Impossible.) Climbers have to spend at least one night roped to an almost sheer face on their way to the summit. When I couldn't sleep at night, I focused on thinking how much worse my situation could be on Death Bivouac in a snow storm...

On the Eiger, the mountain face can transform in an instant. Simpson watches from a (relatively) safe shelter as the rock wall becomes a confusion of small avalanches, waterfalls, hail, and boulders skittering down, any one of which can kill. Here is Simpson's description of what happened to two other climbers on the Eiger during his own ascent with his climbing partner Ray:

"The fall was slow, almost lazy. He stepped across his left foot with his right and planted his feet parallel to the ice field. Then he fell. He wasn't hit by falling rocks and there was no indication of a hard impact, no sudden, violent loss of balance. His feet simply slithered away beneath him and he went down onto his right hip and then onto his flank.
   It seemed to be the fall of a tired man - a typical slip that every climber has experienced at some point in his climbing career.
   The figure twisted round swiftly onto  his stomach, raised his ice axe and aimed a hard blow at the ice field, to little effect. The band of soft snow absorbed the ice pick but gave no purchase. Immediately he swung with his other axe but it cut through just as easily as the first. He tried again with the axe. Nothing happened. He still seemed to be sliding down with deceptive, almost languid slowness. As he made a final swing with his axe - more hurried as if with the first hint of desperation - his body moved onto the snow-free hard ice and he accelerated away with brutal abruptness."

As the first man's fall becomes unstoppable, the momentum pulls the rope connecting him to his partner, snapping him away from the wall. There is nothing than can save them.

Even if you don't have an outdoor bone on your body, I highly recommend Joe Simpson's books to open up the world and take an unflinching look at its big questions. At the first sign of a sniffle, take one immediately.

Not so great...

 

I'm back. (Just about.) I wish I could bring you tales of exoticism and intrigue, but I've gone nowhere you would want to follow. I've had the 'flu. This chap knows how I feel. I've been beached on a sofa, watching Homes Under the Hammer, feeling the homes were not the only things under the cosh.

 

I will spare you the details, though only because I can't be bothered to write them out again after Blogger just wiped what I'd spent half an hour writing - the Law of Feeling Wretched insists that no mercy is shown. So this is just a feeble wave rising from the tissues, sinus spray and cough syrup, but life is stirring. I will return. 



A wander through Apt

A spring morning in the South of France...just wandering through the streets of an ordinary little town feels like a sensuous adventure. In the medieval Rue des Marchands that runs through the centre of Apt, where the 800-year-old market takes place every Saturday morning, there are all kinds of intriguing doors to enter, from small brocantes (above) to patisserie emporia and perfume and wine shops.

Here's a glimpse inside Senteurs et Provence, which offers a range of fragrances you won't often be able to buy outside France:

They also stock these charming metal pomanders, which hold solid blocks of scent - there's a lovely selection of fragrances to choose from, and they make great gifts. I hang them in wardrobes, but I liked one large design filled with amber and orange blossom so much that I keep it by my bedside.

 

Just down the street are several linen shops, with vast ranges of the traditional Provencal boutis, the padded cotton squares used for bedspreads and tablecloths.

 

 

 

As it's France, food is all-important - so the displays outside the kitchen shop are equally alluring. If anything is ever going to entice me to purchase a garlic grater or a herb-grinder, these might!

 

 

The displays outside the flower shops are pictures in themselves...



 

 ...and the Patisserie Rousset always has a window display to draw you in closer...





Time for a coffee or a Perrier on on one of the squares, watching the world go by - and wondering whether it might be worth going back via the boutique to try on that crushed silk tunic top, and perhaps making a slight detour via V Comme Vin, the best wine store for miles around. And let's just pick up a copy of Paris-Match to read in a sunny corner of the garden later...

The Natural Detective

 

The rotten almonds on this tree tell the story: the winter was long and wet; torrential rains bore down even in early spring. How do we know? The nuts are still clinging fast to the branch. The moisture that holds them fast has not been dried by the sun, which would allow them to drop. The blossom is dedraggled, battered by showers and wind; it should have been out weeks ago.

 

I've always enjoyed the narrative suggested by observation. On a basic level, it is purely journalistic, providing realistic detail to give richness to the story. Taken a step further, it is Pathetic Fallacy, as defined by Rushkin, "expressions of external things" which are related - in an unreal or exaggerated way - to human emotion and circumstances. I used a great deal of it in The Lantern to suggest an enclosed world where reality and imagination merged.

 

Here, for example, the soggy black almonds could also be described as "sad". Clearly the inanimate nuts have no emotion; the sadness would be a reflection of the state of mind of a character in the narrative. Perhaps the most satisfying use of these subtle metaphors occurs when the attribution works equally well for nature and human nature, as might be the case for making the blossom "vulnerable".   

 

Apprentice writers seem to enjoy the challenge of 'writing prompts'. I can't think of any better writing prompt than simply to go outside with a keen eye and look. The more you do so, the more you see that all the clues are there in nature.  

Digital Impressionism

 

The point of art is to make us look again at the world with new insight. Hardly surprising, then, that the monolithic yet sensuous exhibition at Les Baux de Provence (see previous post) should fracture the real landscape into shards and layers of colour devoid of sharpness. Here, for example, is the main road through the Luberon valley, captured on digital camera from a moving car.

 

The cherry and apple orchards are in full blossom, and it's the time of year when the grass between the trees and vines is bright yellow, thickly speckled with dandelions. I snapped away through the open window out of curiosity to see what would be captured on camera, hoping to get something of the lines and layers of these small regimented fields. 

This morning I've had some fun playing around with the images by cropping them, isolating parts that seemed interesting. Now, I'm well aware that to most reasonable people, these are simply blurred photographs, but if you relax and don't try to focus too hard, you can see that they have elements in common with paintings, the suggestion of what is there in life and the light. After all, this is the way the Impressionists began, by daring to suggest rather than slavishly reproducing.

This last is as far as I want to take it - vines, dandelions and a drift of blossom - but even so, it makes an interesting pattern with naturally complementary colour. I'd quite like it as fabric for a scarf! 

 

Les Baux: "Voyages en Mediterranee"

Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Derain, Signac, Dufy, Chagall, Bonnard: the shores of the Mediterranean drew them all to paint the bright, warm colours of the South. Once again, the extraordinary art space of the old bauxite mine at Les Baux-de-Provence has been transformed into a 21st century multi-media exhibition of the familiar made new and exciting again. The paintings engulf the viewer, sliding and dancing around the vast projection walls, choreographed to music by Ravel and Gershwin and sinuous jazz.

The show begins with the 18th century marine landscapist Joseph Vernet, commissioned in 1753 to record the life of ports in France, including Marseille, Toulon, Bandol and Antibes (above). Monet's waterlilies swirl all around, on the floor and on the ceiling, to Debussy's Clair de Lune, possibly the most atmospheric suite of all.

 

In 1883, Renoir spent time with Monet in the Midi, and was so enchanted by Cagnes and the possibilities for painting that he ended his days there.



 

The Fauvists arrived too, of course: Matisse, Derain, Camoin and Signac were among those who wandered the southern shores with little money but big, explosive visions. You feel that they, in particular, would be thrilled and amazed at the presentation of their work.

 

Raoul Dufy was born on the northern coast of France, at Le Havre. Pulled south to find true colour and working in his distinctive style of Fauvism, he captured St-Tropez and Hyeres, but became best known for his views of Nice and Vence.

Then came Chagall, with his peerless blues and dreamscapes. Here, in Les Carrieres de Lumieres, to music by Khatchaturian evoking the artist's Russian heritage, the atmosphere gradually becomes calm and spiritual.

As in last year's Van Gogh and Gauguin show, the designers Gianfranco Iannuzzi, Renato Gatto and Massimiliano Siccardi have produced an astonishing spectacle in these cavernous spaces - bigger this year by 500 square metres. It's very well worth visiting, and runs all through the year until January 5, 2014.