When you
find a scribbled note on your manuscript from your editor to say that ‘this
section made me cry’ it’s incredibly hard not to chalk one up in the air. In
fact, it’s impossible. Especially if it is the part of the story where even I
had to break off and get a coffee because I was sobbing as I wrote it.
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| Author Milly Johnson |
One of the
questions I’ve been asked more than once is, ‘Do you laugh or cry when you’re
writing?’ And the answer is a big fat yes.
I can be found chuckling at my own jokes – which isn’t as big-headed as it
sounds because often when they appear on the page, it’s the first time I’ve
seen them. You’ll have watched comedians crack up at their own material and use
the excuse, ‘Sorry, I haven’t heard that one before’ – and I know exactly what
they mean. It’s as if someone else has made up the joke and used you as a
conduit. And when I write about sad events, I am in the middle of the action
feeling it all. In The Yorkshire Pudding
Club, I felt very claustrophobic writing about Elizabeth running away from
her father; in A Spring Affair, when
Lou is clearing out her attic and breaking her heart, I was breaking mine; I
was giggling to myself writing about the very fat dressmaker in A Summer Fling and in White Wedding I felt so desperately sad
for Glyn’s parents, I had to stop myself trying to rescue them. And in my new
book, A Winter Flame, the chapter
that so affected my editor crippled me to write because (no spoilers) I didn’t
want it to happen, but it had to – and I felt as guilty as a murderer. That’s
the trouble with characters – they become too real and authors grow attached.
And if you feel sad when someone you like dies in life, you feel a loss too
when you have to ‘kill your darlings’. But I know that if my writing doesn’t
move me, it isn’t going to move anyone else.
It’s not
just laughter and tears I feel. I’ve had the vapours a couple of times writing
a bit of a saucy scene. Gratuitous sex doesn’t fit into my novels, but my
heroes and heroines are full-blooded people and occasionally it is necessary to
have them indulge in some passion. I can come over quite melty because of some
of the nice things that happen to my heroines, and feel hurt for them too.
Sometimes I can do that by conjuring up old stored feelings of rejection and
betrayal, sometimes I have to call on my imagination. If I didn’t have the
capacity to imagine, I’d never have been able to write a book about a
snow-filled Christmas theme park whilst sitting on the balcony of a ship
cruising through near-tropical Mediterranean air. But then, I’ve had a career
in writing greetings card jokes for years and it always happened that I was
writing jokes about Santa sunbathing in the garden (that’s me sunbathing, not
Santa) and composing gentle springy Easter cards in the middle of winter.
Sometimes
you have to do a bit of research, of course. I can imagine a semblance of what
it must feel like to be widowed young or to have won the lottery, but it hasn’t
happened to me so I need to do some work on getting that right. Then again,
people react differently to joy and crisis so at least you get some leeway. But
knowing your characters well will give you an indication of how they would meet
with any life-changing events. I like to get inside my ‘people’ and wear them
like an overcoat, walk in their shoes. It sounds daft, crazy because it is.
Writers are artists – total nutters – but perfectionist nutters. All we can do
is accept that fact and carry on.
