Finally got round to this, glad I did, lot of good stuff, so happy we all agree about writing being ‘overtaught’ nowadays (so that initial passion/inspiration gets lost, not sure if that’s how you’d put it) swamped by technical CW competence . . Fascinating comment too by one of you that the writing technique gets more useful as material gets sparser . . Or something. As you use up your autobiographical material I took that to mean . .
Going to make myself unpopular now & say that Sex is glaringly absent from this interview; Welsh is a lads writer telling lads stories whose graphic descriptions of sexual violence are v hard reading, dare I suggest, for us serially assaulted women, as most women are by time we get old, to greater or lesser degree (especially if we’ve lived a largely ‘unprotected’ sort of life). I’m not disparaging that, just thinking that his stated focus here on the brutalising effect on the perpetrator just highlights for me the sparsity of much illumination of the erm other brutality taking place here. It’s tough to write about trauma and all credit to Welsh for managing it; but let’s not forget the most traumatised of all are generally too screwed to coherently put pen to paper afterwards.
Plus, all too often nowadays, if they try, they are accused of ‘weaponising’ it - who wants to read that sh*t eh?!
I'd like to hear (a lot) more about how to avoid the reader sensing 'process awareness' in our writing. I agree with IW that too many works of fiction are the equivalent of watching a magician who keeps stopping in the middle of tricks to consult their magician's textbook, or even worse, read as though they've been written by AI. What we're aiming for, surely, is to *hide* the craft, to at least appear that everything's being said off the cuff.
I met Welsh once, and the experience was the precise opposite of don't-meet-your-heroes. A very sound and wise guy, and oddly Zen as well.
There's a very interesting part of this discussion where Irvine talks about a character trying to be good (better), and there being consequences to their actions. If they were just bad all the time their choices wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Some good insights there about creating characters.
Finally got round to this, glad I did, lot of good stuff, so happy we all agree about writing being ‘overtaught’ nowadays (so that initial passion/inspiration gets lost, not sure if that’s how you’d put it) swamped by technical CW competence . . Fascinating comment too by one of you that the writing technique gets more useful as material gets sparser . . Or something. As you use up your autobiographical material I took that to mean . .
Going to make myself unpopular now & say that Sex is glaringly absent from this interview; Welsh is a lads writer telling lads stories whose graphic descriptions of sexual violence are v hard reading, dare I suggest, for us serially assaulted women, as most women are by time we get old, to greater or lesser degree (especially if we’ve lived a largely ‘unprotected’ sort of life). I’m not disparaging that, just thinking that his stated focus here on the brutalising effect on the perpetrator just highlights for me the sparsity of much illumination of the erm other brutality taking place here. It’s tough to write about trauma and all credit to Welsh for managing it; but let’s not forget the most traumatised of all are generally too screwed to coherently put pen to paper afterwards.
Plus, all too often nowadays, if they try, they are accused of ‘weaponising’ it - who wants to read that sh*t eh?!
I'd like to hear (a lot) more about how to avoid the reader sensing 'process awareness' in our writing. I agree with IW that too many works of fiction are the equivalent of watching a magician who keeps stopping in the middle of tricks to consult their magician's textbook, or even worse, read as though they've been written by AI. What we're aiming for, surely, is to *hide* the craft, to at least appear that everything's being said off the cuff.
I met Welsh once, and the experience was the precise opposite of don't-meet-your-heroes. A very sound and wise guy, and oddly Zen as well.
There's a very interesting part of this discussion where Irvine talks about a character trying to be good (better), and there being consequences to their actions. If they were just bad all the time their choices wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Some good insights there about creating characters.