Method/No Method
In response to a couple of queries about writing processes. Enid trained as an actor, so it's interesting to compare the two processes, because I feel they are very similar, though focused in different directions --from the page to the world, from the world to the page. The process of identification and personalisation are pretty similar (though some actors I know get very caught up the sacerdotalism of their trade: they are the personification and incarnation of The Word (Made Flesh) and can talk almost as much bollocks about it as writers can. Neither can we claim immunity to the 'look at me!' thing either --we just have nicely smelling pages to hide behind.

I'm rambling about acting because a couple of Enid's mates espouse 'The Method', which causes me to raise a philosophical eyebrow --it sounds very Brechtian --all we see is The Method/The Message acting itself out. For me, actors and writers evolve their own methods --and for me, it's evolved over the years and is never the same for any two books. I'd like to think I try to practise Miyamoto Musashi's 'Method/No Method' school of swordfighting in the Book of Five Rings. I don't want to have one way of writing that I rely on --I wouldn't trust it, and much less would I trust myself.

But there are certain states of mind I need to get into to embark on a big book --and in this way it's like The Method. I do need to get a clear angle on the characters, their families, their friends, their histories, the way they dress, the way they talk and react and feel, and especially what their inner contradictions are. It's an old screen-writers trick I picked up years ago, but it's a handy shorthand --a character type and a contradictory adjective. So Mr Nandha from River of Gods is a Prissy Bladerunner. Vishram is a Horn-bag Businessman... and so it goes.

I'll collect names as well --currently mining every Brazilian name I can find. I'm a bit particular about trying to get names right --I was certainly made conscious of this in River of Gods, and I can identify names from all States of India. I've no doubt that our uber-cool Japanese names sound as odd in Japan as Engrish

http://www.engrish.com/

sounds to us.

I'll spend a year or so collecting this information to build a kind of cognosphere of wherever I'm writing about --one of the first things I try to get is the music (thanks for the baile MP3 --my CD arrived today). I reckon everyone writes to an inner soundtrack, certainly it's one of the simplest hooks to pile memories and associations onto. Moods too -when I was writing the death of Aj in RoG, it was Godpseed You! Black Emperor's Motherfucker/Redeemer at house-shaking volumes, over and over. At this stage it's absorb absorb absorb --I never use 90% of my research, but you have to lay the groundwork of the mundane (that word again) so I know where the freaky fits onto everyday life. Do I generally write to music? Only if it's something you can ignore when you need to. Nothing wordy. Radio is of the devil. Why do they think we want to hear them talking?

I find putting words on a page so traumatic and difficult I do whatever it takes to make it simple, so story development goes through three stages:

1: Strategic/outline view. I sell a book on an outline, so it has to be detailed enough for me to know what the big story is, and also give a sense of how it's going to read and feel. This is the masterplan --though the finished product invariably ends up different. You never write the book you want. It's always different, and when you finish, that beautiful book you planned? You can't remember a word of it. It's at this stage that I get the 'voice' for the book --how it will be told: RoG through the prsimatic viewpoints of ten characters, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. 'Brasyl' through three different timelines and the whole idea of parallel indentities and lives.

2: Storyline structural: sequence by sequence breakdown of what happens to the main character(s): yet again, I don't want to have to be thinking about 'what happens next' while I'm trying to write. Everything changes again at this level --characters come in, sub-sequences emerge, little 'what about' ideas. Tense (present, past) and individual character voices come at this stage. How they talk about themselves and theor worlds.

3: Nano-scale: outlines and ideas and phrases I'm going to use in what I'm writing today. These can be on paper, or onscreen as little notes-to-self, most of which end up totally different by the time the lines of marching letters catch up with them. They're like little landmarks in the story --not quite 'Oh, there's a mightly plot-headland' , more, 'there's the wee corner shop'.

Basically, whatever helps me concentrate on what words I'm putting on a page (rather than plot or character or twists or turns), works for me. I'm alwasy aware that words are not precious --that combination that went down on that page in that order were whatever happened at that time. Another time, another place, they would have been different. No better, no worse. So I'm not too bad about killing my darlings. Revising --MS Word seems to have abolished the whole tradition of draft/redraft --I constantly twiddle and tinker --especially at the front end, as the book evolves. Having said all that, it is an organic, growing process: buds and fruits burst out all over the place, at all stages of structuring.

I like to get the first line and last line of a book and story sorted before I begin --still haven't got a closing shot for 'Brasyl' --in RoG it was obvious it had to be the river, closing the loop.

That's my Method/No Method --it's been different for every book so far and I expect it will change and evolve again. That do ye? Not too damn luvvie, I hope, mwah mwah