Authors, be careful what you read...

Does what you read affect how you write?

I've just finished reading The Woman in the Picture by Katharine McMahon. This novel, following the life of a female lawyer, Evelyn Gifford, in the 1920s London, is written from the point of view of the heroine and very much in a formal style of the time.

I loved the book (gave it 5 stars on Goodreads, no less) and was so engrossed with Evelyn's trials and tribulations (excuse the pun), that when I went back to writing my current book, Oh England!, I found that I was using the language of the 1920's rather than the 1980's which is the time period of my novel.

It's not the first time that I've noticed this phenomena.  When in the middle of a new book I have to be very careful with the kinds of books, or genre I'm reading. Even the period of my reading matter can sometimes be detrimental to my writing. Same goes for reading books in another language; since I begun writing in earnest, I've had to give up on Finnish and Swedish books in their original language altogether. Sad, I know!

At times when - like now - I am in the crucial second part of the novel, I've had to suspend all reading of fiction all together.

Who would have thought that writing fiction sometimes forces you to stop reading it?

Do you find that you need to keep to your genre and time period when in the middle of a writing project, or as me, have to go cold turkey on reading all together?

Oh to be in England - Part Three

This is an excerpt from my diary started just weeks after I married the Englishman and moved to the UK.


Previous posts can be found here.

19.08.1984


I have this problem with men. To me, a man, a husband, should be perfect in every way. He should understand me inside out and always say the right thing to calm me down or reassure me. Like a father. But the difference is that a child doesn't understand that a father has no idea what he is talking about. The child hasn't yet learned the emotional jargon which really says nothing at all.


I don't mean that The Englishman doesn't mean well or that he doesn't care when the things he says come out as platitudes. No, it's just that he's not perfect. 


See how far I've come?


I just wish that sometimes he would stop and think before he says things. Well, if he did, I guess I wouldn't love him so. Because I truly do, more than life itself. Of course he can't be perfect and I wouldn't want him to be a macho man telling me what to do. I'd hate that. 


You've guessed it - he's gone away to sea.


Early this morning when he was leaving I thought how tall he seems when he's about to go. I stood in the hall, still in my nightie, while he was dressed in his uniform, with his pusser's grip packed, the cap in his hand. He wrapped his arms around me and said, 'When I'm with you nothing can hurt me.'  Simple words that meant everything to me.

Oh to be in England - Part Two

This is an excerpt from my diary just weeks after I married the Englishman and moved to the UK.

26 June 1984


Financial Advisers, or brokers, what are they? Bold people with hearts of solid gold, dollar signs in their eyes and veins running with icy water. And there they were giving a lecture on ethics. I could earn a lot of money, I know, and I guess I'd be helping people (to part with their money!), but I sat there trying to stop myself from screaming out, 'Wait a minute - isn't this cheating?' I wanted to stand up and say, 'I think you're a bunch of bastards, how can you live with yourselves?' And walk out.


But I didn't. I stayed in that office with the other people desperate for jobs, all of us in suits, trying to look professional, eager and ambitious. Everyone being so 'positive'. I too sat there smiling sweetly, ignoring the lecherous looks the man at the front with greased-back hair was giving me.


The Englishman says I could do it, if I told myself I could. Which of course is true. I don't suppose he believes I could get anything better, a job where I might make difference, a worthwhile job. Is he afraid I won't get a job at all? If I were to put that question to him, he'd be furious, I can hear him now, 'You are imagining things. It's you who's not got any belief in yourself. You are the best, of course you'll get a job!' But his actual behaviour speaks a different language.


Last Sunday I really got my eyes opened. We went to Jackie's lunch party up in London. She knows the Englishman through a Navy friend. It was a very sunny and warm day, and I wore my new sky blue silk skirt and a matching strappy vest. The Englishman had persuaded me I didn't need to wear a bra as it would've shown underneath. He kissed me as we were getting into the Ford Fiesta and told me I looked gorgeous.


At the end of the party when we'd all had a several glasses of Pimms, Jackie came over and started chatting with me. I'd been standing by a bay window admiring the courtyard below. Her flat was on the second floor and overlooked a cobbled yard where pretty flowers were growing in pots and out of hanging baskets. 


Jackie asked me what I did and I said I was looking for a job. I told her about my degree from Finland and she said, 'Can you use your qualifications here in the UK? I didn't think you could.' That I couldn't put my degree down on my CV hadn't occurred to me before. Hadn't crossed my mind. I couldn't say anything and looked down at the floor, my mind whirling with questions. Someone called for Jackie across the room and I was left alone again.


On the way home in the car, when the Englishman drove along the A3, I didn't have time to look at the scenery. I felt as if I'd been cheated. To work so hard for a degree and then not get anything for it. Or not even that, I felt cheated that I hadn't known about this. Or that it hadn't even occurred to me that my degree would not be recognised here.


I'm in bed now, writing this. I can hear the Englishman coming up the stairs. Shall I ask him about this and so start another hot discussion, or a row, followed by a hot silence? 


The story of how I met my Englishman will be published on Kindle very soon.

Oh to be in England - Part One

I may not have told you that I'm planning to publish How I Came to be in England, a series of blog posts, which so caught the imagination of many of you, as a digital book. (I am eternally grateful for all you readers who left such beautiful comments during the months that I wrote those blog posts. Your encouragement has spurred me on to finish the story properly.)

It's going to be called The Englishman, and I should be able to give you a link to download it very soon.

In the meantime, I have something else to share with you. When the story came to an end, many of you asked me to write a sequel, but I just didn't know how to do it. And then a very strange thing happened: during our recent move, when unpacking yet another misplaced box from our last but one move (the one from the sticks, remember?) I found a diary. It's the first one I ever wrote in English and it's the story of my first year in the UK, and I'd forgotten all about it. The diary is half written in English, half in Finnish and it's an incredibly personal - and very frank - account of my first year in England. 

I've named it, 'Oh to be in England', after the Robert Browning poem. Hope you like it.

25th June 1984
Southsea
Hants


The trouble with writing in English is of course that some of the meanings of the words are misconstrued when the author is foreign. But, in spite of this, I will try.


We moved to the married quarter two weeks ago. It's lovely to at last have a place of our own, even though everything is still in the wrong place. The Englishman doesn't seem to have any talent for home decoration. He's sort of interested, but I guess there's been so much else to do in the first weeks; thank you letters to write (hundreds!), friends to meet up with. The process of taking the washing down the road to the laundrette and back occupied our first week. I find it strange that they have no communal machines here in the cellar of the block of flats like they do in Finland. 


Unpacking and deciding where to put all the wedding presents took a while too, especially as The Englishman just didn't seem to mind or know how to arrange things for the best. This wasn't helped by the fact that when we stayed at The Englishman's friends place, we threw practically nothing away. Old flight and opera tickets show up in the most peculiar places. And there's always another box to empty when we think we've unpacked the last one! Oh well, I know I want to take my time with getting the place looking like home, so that slows down the process.


As nice as it is to have a home of our own, (the maisonette is huge: there are three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a large kitchen/diner and a separate lounge), the married quarter furniture doesn't please my Finnish eye. Every piece is - in one word - awful. I haven't told the Englishman how I feel about them, of course. And I have to admit, the ugly solid teak sideboard, dining table and chairs, the moss green flower-patterend curtains, not forgetting the red and yellow three-piece suite, are better than having no furniture at all. 


I'm sure we'd soon get divorced if we had to sleep and sit on the floor. Mind you, we may not last more than a year the way we irritate each other at the moment. Our romantic 'love story' seems just a distant memory now. Missing each other so dreadfully for the last four years feels like a dream or some over-emotional fantasy. That I will probably sink into a deep depression full of misery when The Englishman goes away to sea again is hard to believe right now, when I keep wishing he'd go away and never come back.


Perhaps I only really love when he's not here? 


Every day I tell him I love him, and he tells me he loves me, but why then do I have this feeling of emptiness inside of me?