Welcome!

Do you keep a journal? How does it help you?

Telling writers what to do is like herding cats. They don’t make a point of being single-minded, skittish, aloof or obstructive, it is just part of their nature. And in the same way a cat-lover understands and respects their cat’s behaviours, so should a writer’s tendency to do everything their way be accepted as being for a very good reason and not to be awkward. They do it that way because that’s how it needs to be done for them.

Take writer’s journals. Ask a writer to show you their journal and you might see:

A blog
A scrapbook
A notebook
A computer folder
A shoebox
A pin-board
A diary
A box of index cards
A camera

… They might even shrug and say they don’t have one.

Each approach has different benefits, but all work towards getting new words on the page. We’ll explore some of these different methods in Part 2, but first let’s look at journal keeping more generally. How does journal keeping help a writer? To answer that we need to know what they’re up against. In Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande suggests we face ‘four difficulties’ with writing.

Firstly there is the difficulty of writing at all, that is to say making a start, breaking through the barrier of inhibition, putting words on the page until achieving a ‘full, abundant flow’. Most writers can tell you of times when they’ve been in this flow and how exhilarating and rewarding it feels; the difficult thing is maintaining it. For most, it’s not something that can be turned on like a tap – it must be worked for. A journal, whatever form it takes, greases the writing cogs and keeps them turning.

Secondly, Brande refers to ‘One-Book Author’ Syndrome. This can be a killer to the creative process. As soon as a writer produces anything they’re halfway pleased with, they find themselves faced with a set of expectations for future work – it must be at least as good. Regularly keeping a journal can assuage this because it encourages us to think of writing as a daily practice first and foremost. It helps us learn that first drafts are still valuable despite not being dazzling, polished pieces of work.

The occasional writer presents the third difficulty. This is when a writer’s creation of new work is so sporadic it is like an engine sputtering into life in a cloud of smoke and steam. No sooner has the rust been scraped off the wheels than everything falls back into dormancy and the rust returns. This is not to say that fallow periods aren’t sometimes a natural part of the creative cycle, but I think most writers, if you asked would they like to double their output during creative times without lowering the quality, would want to. A journal is a way to bolster those touch-and-go times when writing is hard or slow and might fall by the wayside because it gives us some parameters to work within. And it gives us a bit of momentum.

Finally, the uneven writer is faced with a more technical problem. Some aspect of their writing holds them back. They might be a bit edit-shy, or have a tendency to overwrite. They might use a few too many cliches or have a tendency to repeat the same words, or have other writing ‘tics’. Keeping a journal may help first with identifying these tendencies, and then with ironing them out.

So, keeping a journal can certainly be a valuable way for writers to overcome obstacles to their writing, but what actually IS a journal, and what do you put in it? And are they always as good a thing as they’re made out to be? In Part Two we’ll look at some different approaches to journal keeping along with the benefits and pitfalls.

Morecambe's Winter Gardens, back in the day.

Thanks, Simon Kurt Unsworth for inviting me to do this. Although I’m still managing to squeeze in writing when I can, things like going to readings, running events, blogging etc has taken a back seat for the moment with the arrival of baby Ted, so it’s very nice to have these questions to plug the grey matter back into the writing world!

1. What’s the working title of your next book?

Titles seem to either present themselves early on, or cause weeks, months or even years of searching. You know when you’ve got the right one, though. My novel is called Finding Funny, and I’m pretty happy with it. It takes place in Morecambe, where I lived for many years. Set in the austerity post-war era of the 1950s, it follows ten year old Essy and her father Henry in their life as Variety Show performers. It was a poignant time – Variety was trying to regain its feet after the war and maybe could have succeeded, but other factors like rock n roll, cinema and television caused what we can now see as an inevitable decline.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’d been on the search for a novel-worthy idea for a while. I came to the conclusion I was trying to be too clever. Rather than playing around with meta-structure and narrative style, first I needed to actually learn how to write a sustained piece after years of flash fiction and short stories. I went on the look-out for something rich and fun. Then, the winter before last, there was a short series called (I think) The Golden Age of Variety. As the guests reminisced, I sat in front of the fire with a notebook on my lap and scrawled and scrawled – dates, anecdotes, characters of the time, contextual information. I knew this was something I could immerse myself in for a 400 page stint.

3. What genre does the book fall under?

Probably simply ‘Fiction’, although within that it is humour and historical.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?