What makes someone want to be a writer? Is it a need to emulate our own writing heroes or something else. I mentioned in a post last week that it’s important to be creative and we can be creative in a huge number of ways, not just in traditional artistic pursuits but also in everyday things, decorating our homes for instance, posting on social media, putting together a CD music mix or many other things.
I’ve always been a writer. As a child I used to scribble stories in notebooks and I even wrote short TV and film screenplays. I used to cast the characters from the film and TV actors of the time and I even remember one in particular. I was fascinated by the espionage fiction of the time, things like The Man From Uncle and James Bond 007 and I wrote about my own secret agent, Agent 80.
I cast Steve McQueen in the role as Agent 80 and put together a dossier on his secret agent character choosing which car he would drive and what sort of a place he lived in, cutting out pictures from magazines to make up the fictional file. Back then I was really interested in espionage and sci-fi and all my writings were pretty much about things like that. Later, as an adult, I started to write about things that happened to me; working in an office and working for the bus company and the pubs and bars I used to frequent. One of my favourite essays that I produced back then was something I wrote while waiting in a pub and I scribbled down notes about two people sat opposite and their smoking ritual involving getting out the packets, taking the cigarettes, flicking the lighter and then lighting up and the way they smoked, the way their hands moved and so on.
These days a lot of people in bars place their mobile phones carefully on pub tables looking over occasionally for messages. Back when I was a young man smokers placed their drinks carefully by their cigarettes and lighters, their table becoming a sort of personal shrine saying this is my space.
Two people who became writing heroes to me were Dylan Thomas and James Hilton. I won’t go on about them too much as I’ve written about both before (click the highlighted links for previous posts) but here are some basic thoughts;
Dylan was a hard drinking, pub going writer and it was perhaps that image which first appealed to me. The other thing which really interested me was the incredible power of his writing but add that to his spirited readings from his work and his radio broadcasts and well, I was totally hooked.
Hilton is the author of one of my favourite books, Lost Horizon and he is also a fellow northerner like myself. Hilton was born in Leigh in Lancashire, now part of Greater Manchester and he made a journey I would love to have taken. He went from Leigh to Hollywood, California and he wrote a number of books and screenplays that were made into classic films. He wrote Random Harvest starring Ronald Colman and Goodbye Mr Chips starring fellow Englishman, also a northerner, Robert Donat who hailed from Didsbury in Manchester.
Dickens is of course a great and famous classic writer. I’ve got to say that some of his books I’ve found a little hard to read. I’ve tried and tried to read Pickwick Papers but I just couldn’t get through it. Not long ago I picked up Bleak House and once again I couldn’t really get started on the book. I have read A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and my absolute favourite, David Copperfield.
My favourite character, apart from Copperfield himself is Steerforth, a friend of David Copperfield but one who ultimately betrays him. The best part in the book probably, for me at any rate, is the storm when David returns to Yarmouth. Dickens builds the storm slowly and each word and phrase adds a new layer to the sense of danger and foreboding and when Copperfield is finally reunited with his old friend Steerforth at the height of the storm’s ferocity, death comes between them and Steerforth is sadly drowned.
Dickens reveals this in a very unique way, he does not tell the reader Steerforth is dead. He leaves the reader to realise this themselves and, in the process, makes the reader almost at one with the narrative. Throughout the book, Dickens mentions in passing about Steerforth’s habit of sleeping with his head on his arm. It’s referred to many times in the narrative almost as a matter of non interest, something unimportant that the reader doesn’t really need to know, but when David Copperfield spies someone aboard a stricken ship trapped in the fierce storm who evokes some faint remembrance for him, a tiny warning bell is set off.
Finally, when the body of a drowned man is brought ashore and lies mutely on the sand, his head upon his arm, we know just from that simple bit of information, without the author telling us anything more, that Steerforth is dead. The prompts and clues that Dickens has hinted at have paid off for the reader in the most satisfying of ways.
Noel Coward
Coward has really been a surprising writing hero to me. I’ve been aware of him for years through film and television and his slightly eccentric persona has always been a little amusing to me. I remember once seeing an interview with him on the stage at the BFI, (British Film Institute) Richard Attenborough was interviewing him and seemed to me to be treating him as some sort of God that had been beamed down from the heavens. Coward was puffing away on a cigarette and lapping up all the praise.
A favourite film of mine is Blithe Spirit. The film starred Rex Harrison as a journalist who wants some background for a novel and he invites a medium, Madame Arcarti to officiate at a séance at his house. Unfortunately for Rex, Madame Arcarti evokes the spirit of his dead wife who at first is only visible to him. The film and of course the stage play that came before is a wonderful witty comedy. I liked it so much I wondered if the play or the screenplay was in print. I was happy to find that it was and I bought a paperback copy which also contained two other wonderful plays, Hay Fever and Private Lives. Again, these other plays were outstandingly witty and humorous and off I went in search of more works by Coward. As I write this, I’m currently reading a collection of his autobiographies.
Coward liked to arise early in the morning and then write until lunchtime, after which he would then enjoy his lunch and relax for the afternoon. Not a bad set up really and one I could do with taking up myself. Of course, I’m not so keen on lunch as Noel, I’m more of a late breakfast kind of guy, brunch I think they call it in places like the USA. Also, I don’t get up that early. I have done in the past, in fact I once did a regular 6am shift which meant getting up very early indeed.
Anyway, after writing about these four great authors it’s got me in a creative mood. I’ve done quite a bit of writing lately but I’ve realised that I’ve been neglecting the video producing aspect of my creative side. It’s clearly high time I produced something new for my YouTube page. After all, video is important for plugging my media profile as well as the two books I have for sale on Amazon.
I got out my video camera and thought what could I do. Yes, a piece to camera. I’ve been reading up lately about Marilyn Monroe which is why the late Hollywood star has featured in quite a few recent posts. I decided I could talk about my Monroe book collection and articulate a recent post I did concerning an internet debate about Marilyn’s death. I worked out what I was going to say in my head and then shot the whole thing in one take as a sort of rehearsal. I took off my scruffy polo shirt, changed it for a nice shirt and did the whole thing again. Not bad I thought.
Next I went about editing the video. The light wasn’t good so I upped the exposure and added some contrast. I cropped a few of the shots and closed in to a tighter shot covering me and the books I mentioned in my collection. I added the titles and credits and then settled back to review the entire thing. It was a good few hours work and I was ready to upload to YouTube when I spotted something.
During the video I mentioned a BBC documentary a few times. The documentary was called Say Goodbye to The President but for some inexplicable reason I realised that in the video I had somehow managed to refer to it as Shall We Tell the President, which happens to be the title of a novel by Jeffrey Archer, which as far as I know, has nothing whatsoever to do with Marilyn Monroe.
I wonder if any of the writers mentioned above ever had problems like this?
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