How I write
I’m looking at and touching a teenage laptop - fourteen years old. It’s what I work on and the subject of a bit of mild derision lately from a young man in a computer shop: ‘Not seen one of those lately’. It isn’t even mine, but on extended ‘loan’ from a friend who has something much more sophisticated to replace my old near twenty year old laptop (programmed to Windows 95). The key factor, so to speak, is that these two machines are not (and never have been) connected to the internet. No viruses, no e-mails to answer: no distractions at all. I go to the Library for my e-mails, or use friends’ computers. This is easier for me than most, admittedly, as I’m inclined to being itinerant, a sort of house sitter, so for great chunks of the year it’s often a question of leaving this antique computer, at lunchtime or evenings or if I’m stuck in my writing, to see what’s in my inbox. This laptop with limited facilities – a souped up typewriter, in effect – is switched on in a morning and I get straight down to work. Easy as that. I discovered rather late in my writing life that I’m a ‘morning person’ (maybe this is just part of getting old and not needing eight hours’ sleep) and sometimes, on a good day’s work, I’m twiddling my thumbs after about 11 o’clock, having put in about four hours.
Of late, I’ve found myself writing biographical plays (Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Flaubert no less). I suppose, more strictly, you’d call it a fictional recasting of actual events. Of course, this involves a lot of research, which I enjoy, and it’s arguable that these days I can’t write without having what we might call data to start with. A biographer connects up the dots in the picture, having first found the dots of data. The only fiction is the space between the dots. I still make things up, but try hard to keep to what we know happened. So, as I’m reading the biographies, I have a dictaphone to hand. I generally fill up about five or six 90 minute tapes with relevant material. Bits of dialogue emerge; a shape or order of scenes presents itself. I listen to these tapes several times, often composing a new tape (I have a second sit up and beg tape recorder on my desk) as I do so. The play gets written before I start touching the laptop keys.
Finally I’m pursuing inner images, more or less urgent dreams. My subjects generally choose me, and I choose my way into the subject: a year or a few months of the life. But my job here is to describe the mechanical side of the process which is that I cut myself off (with unexciting equipment) for four/five hours a day. A memory stick inserted into the back of this machine then inserted into someone else’s whizzy computer ends the process.
Of late, I’ve found myself writing biographical plays (Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Flaubert no less). I suppose, more strictly, you’d call it a fictional recasting of actual events. Of course, this involves a lot of research, which I enjoy, and it’s arguable that these days I can’t write without having what we might call data to start with. A biographer connects up the dots in the picture, having first found the dots of data. The only fiction is the space between the dots. I still make things up, but try hard to keep to what we know happened. So, as I’m reading the biographies, I have a dictaphone to hand. I generally fill up about five or six 90 minute tapes with relevant material. Bits of dialogue emerge; a shape or order of scenes presents itself. I listen to these tapes several times, often composing a new tape (I have a second sit up and beg tape recorder on my desk) as I do so. The play gets written before I start touching the laptop keys.
Finally I’m pursuing inner images, more or less urgent dreams. My subjects generally choose me, and I choose my way into the subject: a year or a few months of the life. But my job here is to describe the mechanical side of the process which is that I cut myself off (with unexciting equipment) for four/five hours a day. A memory stick inserted into the back of this machine then inserted into someone else’s whizzy computer ends the process.