Please welcome What Remains author Philip Leslie to CLP!
Guest Post: The Writing Process
I hate writing first drafts. There’s nothing as intimidating as the blank page. Actually there is: a whole wad of blank pages. Various tactics I’ve adopted to get past this intense dislike (more accurately, fear) have included writing a draft of a novel entirely in dialogue, with the narrative reduced to stage directions for fleshing out later; and constructing novels out of umpteen short sections. This latter method, which is the equivalent of building a house out of Lego, enabled me to add new material piecemeal, anywhere in the book, completing the story from the inside out, as it were, rather than ‘knitting’ it from page 1 onwards.
Plotting is not something I find easy. My preference is for books (and movies) that are light on twists and turns. I’m always irritated when former lovers and long lost relatives turn up (I’m talking books and movies here) and cause ripples in the status quo. Thus, when I have an idea for a book or story, characters and setting come first; giving them something for them to do is an afterthought.
From the start I’ve written first drafts in pen on paper. I’ve tried inputting straight onto typewriters, or into Word/Pages, but with limited success. One ballpoint-and-paper book I’ve been working on and have put to one side for the time being is a prosimetrum, in which sections of prose are mixed with poetry. It’s unlikely to be published as it’s a load of tripe, but so far I’ve spent two and a half years on it, writing for writing’s sake. Every one of its poems began life as a handful of words which sprouted new and different words with each rewrite. Some of the poems have had fifty complete revisions, and yet they’re still not ‘quite right’. Similarly, the prose has grown and shrunk and grown back again dozens of times. But that’s where the fun comes into writing: getting it to the point that it does feel ‘right’. Eventually I might end up recycling sections of it in other projects. I’ve done that before.
If I hate first drafts, I do love rewriting, as I hope the above paragraph demonstrates. I rewrote ‘What Remains’ several times, not including the revision for publication. Of course, what I ought to have done was plan it meticulously before setting down a single word, but seeing the mountain fro a distance, as it were, would have made it even harder to ascend. The great and late novelist Diana Wynne Jones gave me some guidance many years ago, when I’d just finished art college and was aspiring to be a fantasy writer. She advised me to speed up my writing method, which at the time was too slow, resulting in a loss of momentum. She told me to scribble down the first draft as quickly as possible and then devote my time to making the completed draft as perfect as I could. It’s a method that suits me, although it wouldn’t do for everyone.
Author Bio – Philip Leslie
Philip began writing poems and stories in his teens, inspired initially by Dylan Thomas and Henry Williamson, later by Faulkner, Joyce, Ted Hughes and Muriel Spark. At art college in South Wales he was a core member of the creative writing group run by poet in residence Gillian Clarke. Novels followed, and the inevitable rejection letters. In 2001 he won a consolation prize in the Bridport Writing Competition with a short story. The following year this was adapted by a theatre company and given a dozen performances at the Edinburgh Fringe. A full-length novel, ‘The History of Us’, was published by Legend in 2009 and shortlisted in the fiction section of East Anglian Book of the Year. Philip is also a composer of amateur woodwind music with a number of titles in print. He and his wife live in Cambridgeshire.
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