Tag: 1960s

I am now 18000 words into novel number 2. This is particularly exciting because about half of those words have been bashed out in the last ten days or so, marking an stratospheric increase in the pace of progress. It also means that I’m having to get my head around the new challenges of book 2, as compared to book 1.

Book 1 was set between 2002 and 2013, and occurred entirely in places where I have actually lived. There was a tiny bit of research involved in making one character, a mathematician, sound like he knew what he was talking about, but that came down to getting a couple of books from the library and reading them. Not too onerous, even for a naturally workshy animal like myself.

With book 2, however, I’ve set a whole section of the story in 1967. Now 1967 isn’t like 1867 or 1267. We’re not into massively unrecognisable “past is another country” territory, but we are ten years before I was born. I’ve shifted into writing about stuff that I don’t remember, and I didn’t live through.

Even though it’s only 46 years in the past, there’s a surprising amount that I don’t know. I need to find out about homes for unmarried mothers, and the Abortion Act, both of which require in-depth research. But it’s not just the big things that form stumbling blocks. In many ways it’s the smaller details that are trickier to make authentic. What did 17 year olds who wanted to look cool drink in 1967? Has the legal driving age changed since the 1960s? What did a pharmacist’s shop look like in a provincial town in 1967?

I’ve tried to make it a little bit easier for myself by setting this part of the story in a place I know really well – the town where I grew up. That’s tricky, in its own way, too. I have to keep checking when certain buildings were built, when they started being used for a particular function, whether it was possible to walk directly from a to b via that route in 1967, as it was in 1987 when I was growing up. Now you might say that that doesn’t matter, that you can fiddle with those details in the name of fiction. And I would say you were right, but, as the writer, I feel like I need to know which details I’m altering and which are absolutely right.

So be warned, any of you who were bright young things in the mid-late 1960s, expect to get badgered with lots of inane questions about your youth when next we meet. And please accept my apologies in advance for how completely annoying that is likely to become.

The other writing challenge I’m working on at the moment, is trying to get better at talking about my work. Writing a novel is such an unbelievably solitary experience. You find yourself living in your own head with only made-up people for company for big hunks of time. Those made up people are often delicate, and prone to damage if brought out and exposed to critical gaze too early or too often. (More thoughts on that quandary here.)

And when you’ve written the thing you have to go out and try to sell it. You have to be able to explain what it’s about in as few, and as interesting, words as is possible. You also have to be able to talk to friends at dinner parties, and in bars, without running back to your husband and hiding when they ask about your writing. Not that I do that. At all. Ever. Very often.

I do find the ‘talking about it’ part of writing incredibly difficult though, simply because you spend so long writing and creating a world, that then discussing it with other people feels like stepping out of the writing bubble into a dark and jagged place where people might tell you that it sounds crap. And that is a wee bit scary. So I’m going to try to offer you a very occasional blog about what I’m writing as a sort of gateway process into actually talking about it to real physical human people. This was the first one. I hope you enjoyed.