The joy that comes from a mess and how do you go about polishing a story?

Emma Donoghue.

I have just added a second quote to my right-hand column. It comes from an interview in yesterday's Guardian with the author Emma Donoghue. It encapsulates how I feel about writing. It's the first time I've come a cross a successful author speaking so plainly. Certainly, none of my tutors have been as bold as to say, in effect, 'Just write, you can make sense of it later'. My problem is that I don't pay enough attention to the after bit.

Perhaps, having come to fiction writing late, my head is full of a lifetime of ideas, all competing to escape, so I write them down and, the ones I like, I share on SeniorFiction. Most have been read and re-read half-a-dozen times before I have the courage to share them, even then I continue to edit the stories online. I tell myself that what all successful authors have is an editor. I know I need an editor buddy to do, in the words of Emma Donoghue, 'The polishing'.

Ian Rankin.

Over the years I have read enough articles, listened to and watched successful authors talk about how they write, a few of whom are honest enough to go as far as to say what they have with their editors is 'a relationship'. Ian Rankin is one of them. He also says that such relationships are not always successful. In one of his interviews I remember him describing an editor he worked as 'a real plot doctor'. The book was called Westward and published in 1990. It was, to quote Rankin, 'a mess'…

…which brings me neatly back to Emma Donoghue.

Perhaps the moral of this story is the age old one of 'be careful of what you wish for', but if anyone out there wants to edit one of my stories and sell it, providing we share the money fifty-fifty I'll be happy. I'll also agree to the editor having his/her name alongside mine.

Remember as we write?

What comes first, the thought or the word?

It could of course be an image or something we hear. I sometimes hear a story in my head which prompts me to write and as I write the story changes. I have, on occasions, watched my hand write, then read the words. I have had 'out of body' moments for as long as I can remember. Watching myself. And since my mother died in 2006 I have thought myself to be her a few times, not that we were ever close, given that I rarely lived with her.

Published fiction is 'sanitised' fiction insomuch as what the author writes is picked over by the publisher's editor and comes out in a form which may be different in terms of plot and wording. What the author writes and what the reader gets are two different things. Neither should we forget how many times the author re-works his or her text before it is handed to the editor. All writers do it, self-edit.

Should we be afraid of what we write? Perhaps. I am glad that I have come to fiction writing through my interest in local history and life-story telling. I see the me in what I write, the good and bad, what I want the truth to be and what it is. 

Some years ago, a friend's mother was worried that she was showing signs of dementia. After a long chat we came to the conclusion that her mum was a seventy-something with too much unoccupied time and that she needed an interest. The solution turned out to be bread-making, so my friend bought her mum a bread machine. Within a week she had become the family baker and so she remained for next ten years or so. There was always something to talk about, orders to make, recipes to discuss. I was able to help because I introduced my step-father to soup making and bread-making when he was 71 and recovering from a heart attack. Not that he appeared to be in any danger of suffering from dementia  as his mornings were taken up by the Red Cross shop he managed in Eastbourne, then his afternoons were spent in the kitchen, shopping or help my sister in Hastings look after her garden. My mother watched and read. Both made it into their mid-eighties without any hint of dementia.

My friend's mum finally succumbed to dementia and my friend said to me "I can tell you the moment I knew the worst and what made it worse was that Mum knew too". It was when she forgot something and no longer knew that she forgot things. It seems as good a description of dementia as any others I have heard or read.

You may wonder what all this has to do with writing? I believe that how we write is an exercise in how we remember. Nothing comes from nowhere. I begin to write and unlock memories of sorts, but if or when I forget how to write that is when I will be locked in my head, unable to communicate.

We articulate our thoughts with words, except when we cry or scream or act in some physical way. Even then we will return to words.

Perhaps all published fiction should be accompanied by an online copy of the author's original text. We may find we prefer the un-sanitised version, but then what would editors and publishers do to re-order the world?