Every now and again I’ll be dropping in a re-edited quote from one of the Bryant & May novels or something else I’ve written over the years. This isn’t as entirely arrogant as it first appears. I’ve written so much that I’ve forgotten a hell of a lot, and it will refresh my own mind to glance back over these all-but-forgotten pages…
‘I’m here for the Conspirators’ Club,’ said Longbright.
‘Well of course you would say that, wouldn’t you? You could have read that on our website. Anyone could have read that, found out the address and just come in here off the street, and we have no way of knowing if they’re friend or foe. Do you know the password?’
‘Oh, give over, Stanley, how can she know the password when you keep changing it?’ asked a pleasant-faced woman in her mid-forties. ‘Last week it was Inkerman, this week it’s Bisto, how are we supposed to keep track? Just let the lady come in, for Heaven’s sake.’
Exchange from ‘The Victoria Vanishes’
Doesn’t sound arrogant at all. Unless you write flat Government prose, a good writer will have a voice of his/her own and for some writers a series, or individual story, will have it’s own pace, tone and style.
Reading some of your old work – particularly in a series – sets you in the “style” of that series and helps you reenter the right door in your mental maze. This may be especially true for writers working in several genres. Although many writers have a single style and every books reads the same, but…
Problem with rereading. I find, is after not too long I say: I wrote this? I don’t remember That. Well, MG how did that get by? If I just change this little bit and then – like in knitting – I may find I have to take it apart and redo and that way can lead to nutters’ville. But, yes, rereading and trying for some touch up is good, normal, and human. “I write, therefore, I revise..”
But what I miss is ripping an offending sheet out of the carrage, crumpling that sheet into a fearsome ball and tossing it at the basket/bin. Go…al! Go…allll! Tossing the laptop just isn’t as effective and then immediately there’s tosser’s regret.
That’s marvelous! I remember reading that in Victoria Vanishes and smiling. Here’s something about passwords in fiction you will appreciate, Chris. I included it as an illustration (rather than laboriously typing it out) in my review of the book The Singular Case of the Multiple Dead by Mark McShane from which the passage is taken.
That was one of the delights of The Victoria Vanishes, the groups and gatherings they all attended to get information. I am just assuming that they all exist, since every day I find more esoteric groups meeting in our little corner of the world. I’m waiting for a “Safety on Our Bridges” (SOB) group to form as we have a brand new multi-million dollar bridge that dropped chunks of ice onto unsuspecting vehicles below. The Insurance people said there were over 60 cars damaged, several people were shaken up and one person was sent to hospital. The group could be just as conspiratorial as the Conspirators Club.
Long live Longbright.
On the weekend I was in a favourite bookstore and found two Chris Fowlers! One of them I didn’t own! It was 77 Clocks which I am now reading. The cover is interesting since it doesn’t match either pattern. It’s a North American paperback but the cover is quite elegant, brown with layered info,the Houses of Parliament, cog patterns, a girl’s profile, an Edwardian male and some swirls that look like springs unwinding. Illustration by Christopher Gibbs. Too bad the later ones weren’t illustrated by the same artist. This is a good one to read after Full Dark House, as someone else said. I know they were separating from the Met in this one and that apparently they had dealt with all sorts of other cases but I’m only at pg 156 and there have been mentions of goat bothering bishops, transvestite Conservatives, diamond robberies, gang beatings and secret codes in a multiple – oh, that’s the Water Room, of course. The others, though. I am annotating my copies with words to look up on one blank page at the front and cases referenced on another. I want to know when the verb To Weave was regularized to weave, weaved, have weaved. I learned it as weave, wove, have woven. Is English moving out from under my feet again?