Greetings, writers—
For the past year or so, most of the novels I’ve read have been relatively short, written by women, and published between the 1940s and the 1980s. I’m not sure this has been on purpose, but it can’t entirely be a coincidence, either.
Many of the books were delightful (e.g., The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin; Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey); some were sad and dreamlike (The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns; Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys); one I decided not to finish (Comyn’s The Juniper Tree).1
Right now I’m most of the way through A Far Cry from Kensington, by Muriel Spark, which was published in 1988.2 Set in 1954 London, it’s narrated by a young war widow, Mrs. Hawkins, who lives in a shabby rooming house and works various jobs in publishing (Spark herself worked in publishing3, including for the legendary British publisher Peter Owen4).
Mrs. Hawkins (we don’t learn her first name until well into the novel) is generous, capable, and absolutely no-nonsense: she loses an editing job because she keeps calling an untalented would-be writer a pisseur de copie.5 This unfortunate young man, she says, “vomited literary matter, he vomited and sweated, he excreted it.”6
Though she has unkind words for this fellow (who, in addition to being a terrible writer, is also a creep), she has warm-hearted advice for other aspiring writers:
“You are writing a letter to a friend,” was the sort of thing I used to say. “And this is a dear and close friend, real—or better—invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly; without fear or timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published, so that your true friend will read it over and over, and then want more enchanting letters from you. Now, you are not writing about the relationship between your friend and yourself; you take that for granted. You are only confiding an experience that you think only he will enjoy reading. What you have to say will come out more spontaneously and honestly than if you are thinking of numerous readers. Before starting the letter rehearse in your mind what you are going to tell; something interesting, your story. But don't rehearse too much, the story will develop as you go along, especially if you write to a special friend, man or woman, to make them smile or laugh or cry, or anything you like so long as you know it will interest. Remember not to think of the reading public, it will put you off.”
She goes on to note that this method succeeded with debut novels and short stories both.
All this is within a novel, of course, so it’s not technically true. But I’d be surprised if Spark herself never gave similar advice (and honestly, A Far Cry from Kensington feels as if it were a letter to a close friend).
Today, take Muriel Spark/Mrs. Hawkins’s advice and write about an experience (real or imagined) privately, without fear, right to the end of the letter.
Happy Friday, happy last day of school for Portland public school kids, and happy writing.
Emily
P.S. When Muriel Spark was asked how she began to write a novel, she said, “I generally begin with a title,” and that selecting a title is “more a poetic process than a rational one.”
I mistakenly read ahead, saw a tragic plot point, and immediately put the book aside. No way was I willing to read toward that awful event.
It’s a good book, but her best is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which is wonderful.
“I was an editor, I was a dogsbody, a secretary, almost everything in the houses I worked for. And I worked for the Falcon Press, whose owner really was rather mad, and who really did go to prison for forging checks,” Spark said.
He brought Anaïs Nin, Hermann Hesse, Yukio Mishima, Jean Cocteau, and many other foreign writers to an English readership.
Literally, copy pisser; figuratively, a writer who churns out shite.
Mrs. Hawkins goes on: “His writings writhed and ached with twists and turns and tergiversations, inept words, fanciful repetitions, far-fetched verbosity and long Latin-based words.”