I have been pondering recently on what it is to be a writer, and before you all start to groin about me on a downer, I’m not! No I have been on the next stage of finding out what it is to be a writer, I have been reading guides on writing, from ‘Penguin’s Writer’s Manual’, to Oxford University Press’ ‘A-Z guide to punctuation and grammar’, and many more. There are a lot out there to choose from and I have six that I am making my way through. I’m learning new things everyday from these books, but they do tend to cover the same ground.
What is clear is that writing is like War. Let me go through this analogy. A writer is a 5 star general, or if like me your British, a Field Marshall, safely behind the lines of anonymity we sit with our forces laid out in front. Our troops are made up of grammar, a division of vocabulary, our mounted cavalry of computers and our squadron of research books. We position our troops strategically, carefully to optimise the impact of them, then we unleash our ultimate weapons our artillery of ideas if you will. And then the ultimate solution, my solution, my Atomic bomb, my intercontinental Ballistic Missile is the question, ‘What If?’.
What if? Is a powerful question and is certainly the question that starts off all my writing. I look to the garden and ask what if the sky was pink? what if I saw a plane flying overhead in flames? what if I look out to the garden and it wasnt there?
It is this line of questioning that forms the basis of my writing and I am sure most people’s writing. People ask writers where do ideas come from, how do you come up with this stuff, and the answer, for me, is very simple, What If?
A writer must be inquisitive, must be more analytical than Sherlock Holmes, more disbelieving in truth than Fox Mulder, and more obstinate and determined than a blood hound on a hunt. The attributes of a writer is something that often bubbles to the surface of the protagonist, our main characters can often be reflections of ourselves, they can often show the traits that perhaps we strive to have, or even some of our worst aspects that we dislike of ourselves, and that causes conflicts in our creations. This is prevalent in the works of Stephen King, often the central character, like King, battles addiction (Revival, The Shining, Doctor Sleep). Often the central character is a writer (The Dark Half, Misery, Finders Keepers), reinforcing the idiom ‘write what you know’. When I read Stephen King, and I do, a lot! I feel that with each book he reveals more of himself.
It is with interest I read lots and see if I can see through the masquerade of words to the heart of the novel. At GCSE, A-level we were taught not to take the text at face value but to look behind for the hidden meaning, like in William Golding’s Nobel wining ‘Lord of the Flies’ as every student of a certain age can tell you, it is about the hidden seed of evil within all of us and how, without rules and the constraints of society we are no better than savages. this is true, but, what if this was just a metaphor for the darker side of Golding, not just his character, what if deep down he rather be a little native. a little less constrained by the rigours of post war England, or even a reflection on how the world was fundamentally changed in the years 1939-1945 by the acts of barbarism, or from the perspective of an onlooker, a society withdrawn from decency where such atrocities existed. Maybe the story tells us more about him?
Anyway I digress, we are talking ideas, as you can see by the above post, ideas run away with me. No bad thing sometimes, but how about having a look at someone elses views on the subject and who better than one of the worlds foremost ideas men, Neil Gaiman, see what he says here:
Peter Lewis, Writer 