Writing from the side of my eye

I was listening to Desert Island Discs this morning, and the castaway was the writer David Almond. Now, I went to college, the famous College of Commerce,  with a Dai Almond, from the same place, similar age and I have always wondered if they were the same person… probably not, but you never know!

David Almond is a much respected and excellent writer of children’s books… but I’ve never actually read any! Even when I was teaching English  his work was not on the syllabus, and I’m not the sort of reader who likes children’s books. I’ve never read Harry Potter, although I did try the first… I have my own opinions on it which are not shared by many… the only ‘children’s’ book I’ve read recently is ‘The Hunger Games’… anyway.. enough of my reading habits.

David Almond was asked about how he had written ‘Skellig’ his most famous work; he said he didn’t think too much about it, but wrote it from the side of his eye; I think he meant he wrote as if he was an observer, and just let the story unfold on the page. That is very much how I write, as if I’m an invisible observer in the lives and stories of my characters. Sometimes I seem to shadow one character in particular, Deke in ‘Farholm’, or Tyche  in ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov’, for example, but whenever that is apparent on the page, in reality my writing process has been different  My first draft is nearly always ‘side-of-the-eye’, but when it is complete, I then think back over the events and I shadow a different character. I did this very much in ‘Night Vision’ where, although their stories do not appear on the page, I know the stories of other characters, particularly Rafi and John.

I don’t start my writing with a full formed plan; I usually start with a situation, and although I may have other scenes half-formed, or dialogues, or events  I let the story unfold on the page. Sometimes I come to a full-stop; either there is a gap which I need to fill to get to another scene, or I run out of writing road and am not sure where to go next. My story of Frederico Milan, for example has come to a bit of a full-stop, because I really don’t know which of the possible routes it is taking; it needs a lot of thinking and dreaming about!

Sometimes something appears on the page which ambushes me, and I have to rethink where I am going. In ‘ Rosa’, as I began writing it I had a pretty clear vision of the end, whatever happened between the start and the conclusion, and I knew it would be resolved in one of two ways, by either Luka or by Tic. Luka was Rosa’s husband, Tic was her lover… Then suddenly, in about the third chapter, there was a dinner party, and a guest who was supposed just to make up the numbers suddenly took over the story and became a major player. My other two endings were cast aside… and yet, and yet, I had to make the outcome believable within the context of the narrative… Gosh, I did do a lot of thinking and head-scratching over that one, and a lot of writing and re-writing! If you have read ‘Rosa’ I really would appreciate your comments on the ending, to know whether you thought it was the right outcome!

So, thank you, David Almond, for your thoughts on writing from the side of the eye, and are you, by the way, Dai Almond who I went to college with in Manchester for a year?