On research

One thing distracting a lot of aspiring writers is the question of research.  I know people who write beautiful, entralling prose yet don’t work seriously on their book because they ‘need to do their research first’.  Yet one person I know spent weeks researching the suffragette movement and the resulting information was used in only one paragraph of the finished book.  Yes, it’s important give the reader confidence that they know their material, but it’s more important to finish the writing.

I recently discovered the writer Jim Crace.  I’d bought his book Being Dead on a whim and was surprised to find it was a great novel.  Reading an interview with him, he had this to say on research:

"I invent
everything. I don’t do any research. Life is too short. To be a
convincing liar, facts don’t help. What you need is vocabulary, the
ability to use words with confidence. This came home to me when I was
in the Judean desert, before I wrote "Quarantine," which was set there
but 2,000 years ago. I went not to research but to see what the desert
was like so I could tell informed lies. I had a Bedouin guide with me,
with his gun on one hip and his mobile phone on the other. We slept out
one night under his jeep, and in the morning, he said "Jim, how did you
sleep?" I said "Oh, I slept like a log."

I saw his eyes
narrow, and I looked over his shoulder at the desert stretching away
with, certainly no logs, and at best about 600 meters away, a little
skimpy thorn tree. I knew this hadn’t worked. He spoke better English
than I did, but the English didn’t work. It was badly researched
English; it didn’t travel. So I said "How did you sleep?" And he said,
"I slept like a donkey. I slept like a dead donkey. If you’d have
kicked me, I wouldn’t have woken up." I thought here is the answer.
This is how you persuade a reader that you know your subject and are
inhabiting that culture. It’s not about research. It’s all about
turning your logs into donkeys. I just love that trickery."

Something I found with the WW2 book (which I plan to finish real soon…) is that the research didn’t help make it more plausible.  People believed the things I’d made up, but always questioned the situations and events based on fact.  The research made the book less believable.

 

Where’s James?

I’ve not been so good at updating my weblog the last fortnight (I was updating twitter in the meantime).  I spent a couple of weeks relaxing in Blackpool.  I did lots of writing, rediscovered my love of reading and spent hours walking along the beach.

Since Thursday I’ve been in Brighton.  I’ve caught up with a few people, but not as many as I would have liked.  Mostly I’ve continued relaxing and started preparing for some J2EE work.  I’m going to be here until Saturday at least, then I’m going to Derbyshire for a week before starting the new job.   As of the start of March I’m beginning a six month contract in Coventry.

I’ve not caught up with everyone in Brighton I would have liked to.  However, I’ll be making frequent trips back over the next six months.  I’m definitely going to be around the weekend of March 15/16, where I’ll be attending ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ at the Hanbury and BarcampBrighton2.  Hopefully I’ll catch up with some folks at one or both of those events.

Lytham St. Annes

My Uncle and Aunt invited me for tea yesterday so, just after lunch, I set out to walk from Blackpool to their house in Lytham (I’ve been walking a couple of hours each day recently).  This walk was fantastic – the first half was across Dunes and sandy beaches straight out of a Ballard novel: jet planes flying overhead, the sea so far out it was almost invisible, and the weirdness of St Anne’s Pier, which I’ve yet to see with the sea below it.

 

I found a cafe in St Annes.  There were few people out on the beach but this seaside canteen was packed.  I took away a cup of coffee and a slice of the best fruitcake I’ve ever eaten.  I also shot a couple of fantastic photos nearby but, since I don’t have the grey lead to connect my phone to my PC, I can’t share them.  I was going to try describing them instead but one of them (a weird beach-sculpture) is beyond my powers.

I arrived in Lytham early so haunted the charity bookshops, where I found a copy of Edwin W. Teale’s ‘The Golden Throng’ which I’ve wanted to read for years.  Then to my Uncle and Aunt’s for tea and Ashes to ashes.  I had a good day.

More Anonymous videos

Two new posts from Anonymous have appeared.: "Anonymous is everyone and everywhere. We have no leaders, no single entity directing us…"

I still owe this weblog posts about graduation, the Deckchair guide and what I’m up to right now, but that’s going to wait until I reach my destination and get settled.  Meanwhile I’ve been thinking about Anonymous.

The recent Anonymous videos have been fantastic as works of art, reminiscent of the footage from Pattern Recognition, which Beth studied in her dissertation.  Anonymous’ work puts into play many of the theoretical concepts I love.  Who is it that signs a work as Anonymous when anyone can give a work or a tract that name?  It is impossible to canonise Anonymous work – it is up to the reader to agree or disagree with an individual piece, since unpleasant or insulting messages might be signed as Anonymous.  Anonymous is potentially juvenile and pointlessly offensive at times; but since anyone might be Anonymous, you can judge the messages only on content.  Anonymous might be anyone.

Anonymous’ pirating and remixing of pop culture reminds me of the situationists and their practise of detournement (the Fox news report on Anonymous is like something from Chris Morris).  Anonymous has the advantage that it cannot be recuperated as the work of the Situationists was.  If someone steps forward and repudiates or sells out their own anonymous work, they are no longer Anonymous.  You can’t negotiate with Anonymous.  You can’t make terms with Anonymous.

Anonymous

I don’t have any particular feelings for or against scientology, but I thought the anonymous video was interesting, even while it seemed to crib Keanu’s speech at the end of the Matrix.  (Matt Webb has some interesting thoughts on the footage)

Walking past the Jubilee Library in Brighton I saw the following poster outside one of the boarded-up shops (link to full-sized version):

It will be interesting to see how Anonymous crosses over to the real world.  It’s like religious persecution as some weird ARG

Poets vs MCs II

Just been for breakfast with Mum & Dad and came home to change into my suit.  Looking forward to the ceremony but expect my feelings to be different after two hours of listening to names read out.

Tom has a post on last night featuring photos and a link to a video of Spliff Richard.

OK time to change.  Had to buy a new shirt because I didn’t fancy wearing a black shirt with my suit.

Busy Thursday

Yesterday was my last day with Sigmer.  I’ve very much enjoyed working with everyone there, and will hopefully stay in touch with them in the future.  Hopefully it won’t be too long until my next visit to The Swan!

After work I went to the Jubilee Library for the launch of Queenspark‘s Deckchair Guide to Brighton and Hove.  The book is a guide to Brighton, written by local residents, which I helped with last year.  I haven’t blogged about this before, so it deserves a post of its own (probably next week).

After that I met Tom and Sophy at the Komedia for Hammer and Tongue‘s 5th Annual Poets vs MCs Slam.  The event featured a lineup of rappers and poets and was framed around the idea of seeing which were best.  In the event it turned into more of a showcase of two Brighton scenes, with interesting combinations such as an MC freestyling over a ukelele song.

I’d seen a number of the rappers at Slipjam:B in the past and, for whatever reason, they didn’t seem as tight as usual last night.  The poets (including Robin from BPS, Chris Parkinson, Rosy and Jimmy McGee) were very good , thriving in front of a massive crowd.  The most impressive performance came from Spliff Richards, who won last year’s Hammer and Tongue slam competition.

Today is another busy one, as I’ll be graduating from my MA.  Expect photos of me wearing full robes in due course.

Ann Quin

As I posted recently, I’ve been looking at the writer BS Johnson, reading his novel Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry and Johnathon Coe‘s biography Like a Fiery Elephant.  The biography is excellent so far, making Johnson sound like a character from a novel (which in some ways he was…), as well as raising questions about the genre of literary biography.

One sign of a good book is that it leads to other interesting things, and Coe’s biography led me to the writer Ann Quin.
Quin died the same year as BS Johnson.  She came from Brighton, growing up in Lewes Crescent, and committed suicide weeks before Johnson himself, swimming out to sea off the Palace Pier.

 

I found a long article including some exciting excerpts from Quin’s work.  It points out "The University of Sussex library contains none of her books", which remains the case, despite recent re-releases of her work.
The article also quotes a review stating that her book Three is "exquisitely written from the first page to the last. If you don’t read it then you’re not interested in the present and possible future of the English novel".  I hope it’s still as good now as it seemed to be then.

I’m not the only person thinking about Ann Quin, as Lee Rourke wrote an an article on her for the Guardian website:
"Berg is a beautiful novel: it is dark, esoteric, haunting – sometimes disturbing. It is saturated with detail, particulars and minutiae. A novel of voices and voice. The best novel ever set in Brighton in my opinion – forget Patrick Hamilton (as splendid as he is), Ann Quin’s Berg is the real deal. It cuts through the superfluous like acid and marvels in the seamier mystery all our seaside towns, and especially Brighton, keep hidden. For an insight into what British literary fiction could have been if we’d only have listened, I’d start with Berg by Ann Quin every time."