Have you ever read the opening of a book and thought ‘ergh, not sure about this one?’
I had that last night with ‘How I Live Now’ which has won a zillion awards and been praised by all and sundry. It starts just how you’re told not to start a book: ‘My name is Elizabeth but no-one’s ever called me that.’
But am now a third of the way through and it’s a beautiful, shiny little gem. Or, as the Guardian put it, ‘A crunchily perfect knock-out of a debut novel’.
It’s written in a very strange way – almost stream of consciousness. A rat-a-tat of words where most full stops and paragraphs and speech marks are thrown to the side. Clever because you do very much feel that you’re reading something from the (teen) horse’s mouth. The love story is wonderfully written too (and you know I’m a sucker for love stories), very pure, bittersweet and urgent.
So it got me thinking about two things in relation to my novel. First, openings (again!) and second, narrative voice.
As I said earlier, the opening isn’t as wonderful as the rest of the book. It isn’t as ‘crunchy’. But this is just my humble opinion, many millions may disagree. In fact, if this is the first page Rosoff sent to agents / publishers, then a very important person disagrees with me. Which makes me wonder: is my idea of a good opening the wrong idea? I know it’s a matter of opinion but I so desperately need to get it right. I’m happy with the majority of my book but still, the opening mocks me!
Now narrative voice. Some of my novel is delivered as blog entries from the main character, Tori. Sometimes, I’ve written it in a quirky teen kinda way. Other times, it slips into mainstream (bland?) first person narrative. But this is the girl’s blog! It’s supposed to be her voice, right? Reading ‘How I Live Now’ has made me realise I need to re-look at the narrative voice, make it more personal – more crunchy. I don’t mean as quirky as Daisy’s voice in ‘How I Live Now’ but just more personal.
I was actually (stupidly?) thinking about sending my synopsis and first few pages to an agent I have my eye on. I really like what she’s doing for other writers and I feel a sense of urgency. But I know how important it is to get my book as perfect as I can before sending it out. I mean, I could send it as is, I’ve read it through as has my writing buddy Bertie but it still needs some fine-tuning. Mebbe I’ll fine-tune it in two weeks, who knows?
BTW, I do realise it took me a month to write my book, which might scare many people. Especially as some people takes months, even years. But I’m a damn fast writer and editor (it’s my trade!). And you gotta remember I worked on it non-stop out of office hours (plus I took three days off to focus solely on it) and didn’t get much sleep. If I had a job that allowed me to write it during work hours (I wish!), I would’ve finished it even earlier! The fact that I write for a living helps too as it means words tumble from my mind to my fingertips like autumn leaves from a tree. It’s part of what I am, this writing lark.
Anyway, will blog on this a bit more in a future post but keep this in mind: Stephenie Meyer spent about one to two months writing her first draft of ‘Twilight’ …
x
