Listen Up!

I am currently reading Maeve's Times, selected writings from Maeve Binchy's five decades of contributing to The Irish Times newspaper, published by hachette.ie.
I have to admit that I am not a fan of Maeve Binchy's novels but I always enjoyed her articles in The Irish Times. This is a wonderful collection of her wit and wisdom over the years. She had a sharp eye for detail and an uncanny ability to listen to conversations going on around her and present them in a fascinating way to the reader. Some of the blurb on the cover of the book shows her talent very clearly: 'At the shop in London Airport, there was a young man studying the display of postcards......he bought twelve of one that said "sorry".'  and most tellingly 'I suppose I am obsessively interested in what some might consider the trivia of other people's lives'.
Except it was never trivia to Maeve who picked up on nuances, moods, joy, sadness. It was simply that she liked her fellow human beings.
In an article in The Sunday Times magazine yesterday, there was an extract from Richard Reed's If I Could Tell You Just One Thing: Encounters With Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice, to be published on November 3rd by Canongate, Bill Clinton is quoted as saying "I've come to believe that the most important thing is to see people".  Incidentally, I have already earmarked this book as an ideal Christmas present to various people and I will definitely be buying it myself.

Bill Clinton and Maeve Binchy, two very different people, both had the same interest in seeing and hearing other people. Maeve Binchy translated her observations about people she saw and listened to into entertaining novels which gave pleasure to millions of readers.  Bill Clinton demonstrates how important it is to pay the other person the courtesy of seeing them as an individual.
All things we as writers can learn and use to enrich our work.

Here is the latest version of the cover of Love at Close Range. I have a feeling this is an ongoing project!
 

I've updated two book covers - what do you think?

Sometimes when you have finished a novel you choose a book cover which appeals to you at the time. At some stage you take another look at it, out there with all those other fancy covers on Amazon, and you think:  I don't really think I like that....  So it's back to the drawing board.

I have been working hard with my cover designer, John O' Mahony for the past number of weeks trying to get the kind of book cover which I think is appropriate for two of my novels in two very different genres.

Here is what we came up with for Ending in Death. 




What do you think?  It's the second book in the Sergeant Alan Murray mystery series and is set in a lonely village in Co. Kerry, Ireland. 
You can view on Amazon here:
amazon.com

I also updated one of my romance novels, Love at Close Range, the second one in the Sunshine Cafe series.
I thought this cover better suited the story.

 

Here's the link
Amazon.com

On second thoughts, this might need a bit of re-working!  Watch this space.

What is your personality type?

Recently a scientist or scientists at Madrid's Carlos III University did some experiments, the result of which, they tell us, points to there being only four personality types in all the whole wide world.
Why did we ever think we were unique with minds of our own?
The four categories are (according to Carlos III de Madrid Universidad, I hasten to add):

30% can be classified as Envious
20% Optimist
20% Pessimist
20% Trusting

Yes, you are right, that still leaves 10%. The survey said that there is a fifth unidentified group of people which make up this 10%.  Aha!

A scientist explains the experiment thus: 
Problem:  you can hunt for deer together only or hunt alone for rabbits only.
The answers were the pointers to what classified Envious, Optimist, Pessimist or Trusting.

I have a problem with that: I am against hunting for sport.  Would that make me one of the 10% unidentified people?

What did I learn from reading about this study of humankind?  Only that a) scientists should have better things to do and b) the basis of the study sounds a bit flaky.
However, on thinking things over, this might be an absolute ice-breaker at that awkward dinner party/boring cocktail party you are attending.  How about turning to the nearest person and asking "if you had to hunt rabbits on your own or hunt deer with a partner, which would you do?" 
Whatever the answer, it would most likely be lost on me because I have nearly forgotten the rationale behind the survey. 
Everyone I have ever met is an individual with their own unique story. No scientist in any university anywhere in the world is going to change my opinion on that.

Why do we write?

All writers spend long lonely hours writing. And we don't like being disturbed. We read what we wrote yesterday, edit it a bit, then soldier on with the next 1,000 words or so. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard work. Why do we do it?
I am often faced with this question when introduced to someone as a "writer". To many people, being a writer means a) someone who has written a literary masterpiece and b) someone who has written a bestseller which is about to be made into a film and c) someone who has made a lot of money out of a) and b).
Why would you want to spend all that time writing if you don't make money on it? someone asked me the other day. I found it quite hard to explain that writing is a compulsion, that I get enormous fun out of creating characters and worlds and putting it all on paper. It is definitely not about making money. It is about having fun. The day I find it a chore is the day I stop.
I picked up a book at the library the other day entitled "Why We Write".  It has contributions from 20 acclaimed authors - Jane Smiley, Isabel Allende, Jodi Piccoult, Armistead Maupin to name but a few -  on how and why they do what they do. Not surprisingly, their motivation is more or less the same as mine. They love writing.
There is an extract from the first page of one of the authors' novels and this is where that old rule of writing is so clearly demonstrated: in every case the opening paragraph made me want to read the book. I had not heard of one or two of these writers but I will most definitely be looking for their works.
And here's a tip, hoary though it is, to all of us writing our stories: hook the reader from the first paragraph, don't wait to get into the swing of the story. The Germans have an expression mit der Tuer ins Haus fallen which means literally falling into the house with the door. You can imagine it: you simply want to turn the knob on the door and instead both you and the door crash into the hallway.  And that is how we should write our novels. The reader must want to know what happens next.
A word of warning here for us all: there are some novels out there which start with a great hook and can't sustain the story beyond the first chapter.  So the plot has to stand up to sustained suspense and no great beginning lets us off giving our best to the writing of the story.
So now it is time to leave off writing my blog and put some of that dynamism into practice.