Once again- apologies to those expecting the usual ‘Essential Guide’. This week, luckily for me (perhaps unluckily for you) Isabel Costello has kindly tagged me in Lucky Seven – Seven Lines from New Works. These are the rules:
My Novel
Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript
· Go to line 7
· Post on your blog the next 7 lines, or sentences, as they are – no cheating
· Tag 7 other authors to do the same
This is an extract from a work in progress called ‘The Romantics’. I have to laugh as I write this because it has been in this state of ’progress’, like a disoriented Galapagos turtle with one leg shorter than the other, for more years than I am willing to admit.
White Heat; not written by me
It concerns a group of friends who meet in the 1960′s and are reunited in the present after long estrangements based on the usual stuff; misunderstandings, love, betrayal, toxic lemon curd. Those currently watching the BBC production of ’White Heat’ written by Paula Milne, may find this theme a little familiar. It is always one’s worst nightmare as a writer, that someone will write your book before you. Luckily Ms Milne hasn’t (no lemon curd for instance). On the other hand when I submitted this novel to a Literary Consultancy for an ‘In-depth Editorial report’, it was said, that readers wouldn’t be much interested in a bunch of university educated baby-boomers cracking smart dialogue back and forth. Perhaps, I thought, now that hippies are objects of derision and that generation are being accused of being the authors of today’s woes, no one will want to read my little book. Then ’White Heat’ came along. I also started reading Linda Grant’s latest novel ‘We Had it So Good’ which covers the same time period, tracing a couple and their friends through to the present. I began to think that maybe there had been a market for ’The Romantics’. The transformation of flower children who eschewed capitalism and were kicking out the old order, into pillars of today’s existing order is perhaps a little hackneyed, but I still find it fascinating. Whether anyone still has an appetite for this subject or if that joint has been smoked, is up to you, dear readers. Please feel free to let me know! Meanwhile if the thirst for things 1960 have been quenched, I’ll blame it all on that lumbering bloody turtle which has been going round in circles for too many years!
The Romantics is more like this
On turning to Page 7 line 7, I find that it is the moment when main character Bryony (aged 17 in 1968) is just reeling from being kissed by the gloriously Byronic and ironic Edmund March; a boy whom she has previously considered to be so out of her league, as to make this intimacy an absolute impossibility. Edmund has just finished his second year at Cambridge, he is glorious to look at and hitherto has been the permanent boyfriend of someone else. Bryony is a naive girl who has flunked her education and settled for a drab job in a provincial town. Just before kissing her, Edmund tells Bryony that she is bright and should go to university. He suggests she comes to Cambridge to take her A levels at the F.E . College. When she asks why, he says that if she was there, it would give him something to go back for.
His words tumbled in her mind, a candied elision of syllables, which she fought to shake into any kind of sense. Was it an actual invitation or a piece of dialogue straight from one of her most saccharine fantasies? Either way it was absurd. But Bryony attached herself to the absurdity with limpet madness and sucked out every sweet possibility. Maybe she wasn’t simply the sum of her estimations; not a fairly ordinary girl, with an ordinary mind in a plump body, but a girl who could belong, who should belong, in the rarefied world of Edmund March.
‘I’m sorry’, she asked, ‘what did you say?’
So now according to the ‘rules’, I have to tag 7 other lucky writers. here’s my list:-
Wendy Storer
Ms C
Lesley Walker
Greg Moodie
Cathy Dreyer
Pixi Peters
Cathy Lennon
Thanks for taking part (again) and for this quality offering. Personally I think that period and this kind of premise for a novel are pretty much inexhaustible – I know I want to read The Romantics and I bet I’m not the only one. Linda Grant is one of my favourite authors (I met her recently and she was fabulous in person too) and We Had It So Good is brilliant – as I said in my review – but yours would be different. Nobody, but nobody writes the way you do!
Thanks so much Isabel for your typically generous words; I can’t tell you how encouraging it is! In fact it will definitely spur me on to finish the damn thing.
I envy you meeting Linda Grant, there’s so much in that novel that I identified with. I really admired the way she handled all the structural elements of that book too; multiple viewpoints etc.
I know you are right and when publishing people make sweeping statements about genres or subject matter, or the importance of likeable characters or whatever, it’s usually contradicted by the next bestseller that comes along. It is all in the writing. That’s my mantra from now on!
Tremendous! Definitely keep knocking at doors with this. First, your writing is so lovely. Second, anything involving toxic lemon curd in the premise is phenomenal. And third, I agree with Isabel: this era is pretty much inexhaustible. I’m not even a product of the 60s and I’d still love to read this book!
Wow, Monica, thanks so much.. That’s a real shot in the arm. I am encouraged by your response. I shall finish the damn thing! So glad the toxic lemon curd was a winner with you. Thanks again.
I love your prose. You put words together beautifully. Like Monica said, I would definitely keep knocking on doors with this.
Thanks Erin! I feel inspired to get back to re-writing this. Funnily enough, I’ve realised that that particular extract is not only the ‘inciting incident’ but one of the main hinges on which the whole plot moves. How Lucky 7 is that? So thanks so much for your generous encouragement!