Writers and Writing

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When I lived in Vienna twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to find an apartment not too far away from one of Mozart’s houses in Domgasse and Beethoven’s fourth-floor apartment in the ‘Pasqualati House’, on the Mölkerbastei – part of the fortifications that used to surround the city. I often walked around each area, trying to soak up their music.

One day, my partner [ now my husband] and I went to Domgasse 5 to visit Mozart’s grand house which was six storeys high. In one large room, I was transfixed by Mozart’s piano which had a grill covering the keys.

I inched towards it, looking around for any lurking attendants and was delighted to see none. I reasoned with myself, when would I ever have this chance again? When could I ever say, ‘I played Mozart’s piano in Mozart’s house? What was the worst thing that could happen? I thought. While David was studying a beautiful Grandfather Clock, I glanced around and removed the grill. He suddenly turned around and stared at me in horror. ‘You can’t do that!’ he hissed frantically. ‘You could be arrested!’ ‘It’s worth it,’ I answered as I sat down.

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Within seconds he had disappeared from the room, obviously not wanting to share my fate. I started playing the piano and for one glorious moment, it was just me and Mozart, until I heard the thunder of pounding feet up the stairs and into the room. I stood up as two uniformed guards glared at me and screamed at me in German telling me that I ought to thrown into prison. ‘Are you too stupid to read the signs saying don’t touch? We are going to call the Bundespolizei and demand that you are locked up!’ I kept shaking my head, saying repeatedly ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand.’ I kept up this mantra for a long time. They looked at each other and one of them put a finger near his head and made a circle. I was obviously unhinged. The other one said in abrupt English. ‘You are a very stupid woman who should learn to speak German. Shut up, get out and never come back!’ I was tempted to say ‘ I don’t understand’ but I thought that might be pushing my luck. I ran out of the house and danced down Domgasse chanting to myself in delight ‘ I’ve played Mozart’s piano! I’ve played Mozart’s piano. ‘

This is the only time I’ve touched something precious, but I wanted to touch a little of Mozart’s magic so much that I couldn’t resist.

Has there been something you couldn’t resist too?

So, you’ve sent out some chapters and a synopsis of your manuscript to hundreds of agents and find that they either don’t reply or just write, ‘it’s not for them’. Does this make you feel depressed or angry? Many people give up at this stage, but others trawl through the internet and discover that there are some publishers who actually ask you to send them your manuscripts! So, you send your precious words to them and they love them! Joy of joys! I’m going to be a published author, you think. Then you read the letter again and at the bottom, they mention the word ‘money’. You discover they want a lot of money to publish your manuscript, but they haven’t mentioned this fact on their website. These people are vanity publishers who have taken for ever to send you that letter. You’ve been on tender-hooks for months waiting for an answer. That’s the psychology they use to reel vulnerable people in. These underhand tactics are explored graphically on the site Writers Beware. It’s well worth reading.

https://accrispin.blogspot.com

Please don’t use these predators!

They prey on people who are desperate for their first book to be published. And it is easy to understand why such predators exist. Writing a novel is an incredibly time-consuming, often frustrating journey that might take you more than a year, or if you write like Flaubert, it could take much longer. [He spent more than six years writing and rewriting “Madame Bovary”, and he wrote for twelve hours a day!]

‘But if my manuscript isn’t published,’ I can hear you say, ‘all those thousands of words are wasted.’ But I don’t believe they are. Your first book is like an apprenticeship. You’ve learned how hard it is to write well.

You’ve also shown immense commitment and tenacity in finishing your first novel and that is a great achievement.

• Find a paragraph from some published fiction work of a minimum of 100 words and copy it. Then rewrite it by changing nouns, verbs, etc. Rearrange the sentences to make it more interesting. If you ever suffer from writer’s block, this is a method to ‘unblock’ you.
• Take a piece of your own writing. Choose something you are not happy with. Now change the name of your main characters. Change many verbs to make them more powerful. Cut out the adverbs. What does this do the piece? Keep on making small changes. If you have passive sentences, make them active. Rework the order of your paragraphs. Play with the piece and see what each set of changes does to the overall work.

Mary Welsey

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

Mary Wesley, the English writer, published her first novel when she was 70 and died at the age of 90. Wesley was passionate about what she did, deliberately sought out friends of all ages, and once said her success was an example of “arrested development.”

She went on to write nine more novels, (three of which were filmed for TV) and was regularly in the bestseller lists. 

Wesley is a hope to all of us – it’s never too late to become a successful author.