Between Breaths
Deep down, I’m a poet. Fun fact: I studied poetry at university, and while I obviously value plot and story, the truth is, as a writer, I love language above all else, and I think that’s clear in my work. The feedback I usually get is “atmospheric, lush and descriptive,” which is exactly what I’m aiming for. I want to quietly reel you in with atmosphere and imagery, and then break your heart!
But it’s tough to be a “quiet” writer in today’s publishing market. You only have a moment—if you’re lucky, a chapter or two—to reel in the person digging through the slush pile. And even if you do win her over, there are many, many more people to impress after that, before your book is ever considered for publication, and every single one of them is busy, rushed, and probably doing the job of three other people! They don’t have time for “quiet.”
And for a writer like me, that’s hard. I’m all about the “quiet” plot, where the real story happens between the big moments. I want to sink you into a scene, and hold you under for a while. I want you to notice the little things, like the way the mouthful feels under your tongue in the moment before you realise you’ve been poisoned.
I also studied film writing at university, where I learned that the English title of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is actually a garbled translation. In French, it’s À bout de souffle. In a straight-up translation, that means “out of breath,” which then becomes “Breathless.”
But in fact, there is no English phrase that properly translates, because what it really means is the moment between breaths, after you’ve breathed out, and before you breath in again. A tiny moment. A quiet one. In a gangster movie!
Not all out-of-breath and breathless from rushing around, stealing cars and shooting cops, but that tenuous moment between breaths—in which everything happens. I love this concept so much, I actually put it into a chapter in BLACK CHUCK, my first published novel. Let me know if you find it there!
In a world of overworked, rushed, stressed-out readers, it’s tough to catch anyone’s attention, especially with a book that whispers between breaths—although I do keep trying.
Sometimes the critique I hear is “Oh my God, nothing happens!”
But other times what I hear is “Oh my God, I looooooved your book” and those are the readers I’m looking for—the diehard ones willing to wander with me through dark dreams, soaking up language like toothy white paper soaks up ink.
Shirley Jackson, one of my favourite writers, can write whole novels about “nothing happening,” yet you can never escape the pervasive sense that something terrible is either going on where you can’t see it, or about to happen (see especially her 1951 bildungsroman-gothic, HANGSAMAN, a book I deeply love, in which “nothing happens.” Or does it?).
I will say, though: I get it. The worst feedback is hearing that people “skimmed” because the writing got in the way of the story—and I’m not at all opposed to working with an editor that wants to help me find a happy medium between poetry and plot! BLACK CHUCK’s editor, Sarah Harvey, told me to “reign the words in,” and she was obviously right (she’s also available to help you reign in your next project, too, if you want to work with an editor who has launched the careers of many a fresh and dream-filled writer!).
And just to prove that I’m not allllll about the snail-paced slowdive into dream worlds, I just finished writing an adult novel (my first!) that goes so fast, it practically tumbles from one sentence to the next—which is appropriate, because it’s about a drunk whose whole life is on the verge of sliding right off her bar stool. I hope you get to read it one day, along with all my other, slower, quieter works!
Pssst! In the mean time, wanna buy me a coffee? Scan my Tip Jar QR Code here. I promise you every penny feeds a writing / caffeine habit that will never die!