THE GAME OF THE NAME

It may come as a shock to you (or you may not give a stuff), but Jane Ayrie isn’t my given name. Well, the Jane part is, but the surname is completely made up. 

My original surname is perfectly unobjectionable, but it’s also very common. In 1954 a lot of its owners apparently had a revelation and decided calling their daughters ‘Jane’ was the best idea ever. Far too many of these daughters, if you ask me, became academics or writers. There’s bloody millions of them out there. I am vain enough to have Googled my name on a few occasions and it’s like looking at one of those big shoals of herring you see on ‘The Blue Planet’. They’re all little individuals with their hopes, dreams and ambitions, but no big fish is going to bother distinguishing one from the other.

I’m very fond of my first name. It’s my identifier. My parents chose it with love. I’ve never really got the fuss about family surnames, though – they’re just accidents of history and if you need a name to remind you which family you belong to, maybe you should be looking for another family. I suppose if it’s something extraordinary you might feel an attachment to it, or it might be important as a signifier of your culture, but ordinary run of the mill names like mine really don’t warrant the fuss.

My kids have both parents’ surnames, which was still a bit of a novelty when they were born. I was amazed at the number of people who asked, in horrified tones, ‘But what about when they have children? Will those kids have three surnames? Or four??’ To which the obvious answers are: a) why should you care? and b) in my experience, people generally have sufficient gumption to sort out names for their kids. I might not like some of those names, but that’s not my business either. 

The names we choose for ourselves, professionally or personally, are very significant. The reasons for a pseudonym vary: John Le Carré said his position in MI6 made it essential he used a different name, and both the Brontës and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) were pretty sure unambiguously female names would hamper their chances of publication. Some writers feel adopting another persona helps them focus when they sit down to put words on the page. I find that. For me, it’s part of ‘going to work’. The non-writer part of me is a directionless slob who, given half a chance, will sit doing crosswords all day, drinking cups of coffee (morning) or tea (afternoon) while nibbling toast (morning) or scones (afternoon). Occasionally this persona will look up to peer through the front window, conveniently placed to observe the coming and goings on the three streets that converge in front of it. Jane Ayrie is the persona who says, ‘Get up, you lazy, nosey bitch. The sodding draft won’t edit itself.’ 

Why people choose particular names, though, is often less clear. Le Carré sometimes said he chose the name because it would stand out, and sometimes said he’d seen it in an advert on the side of a bus. Gloria Jean Watkins chose the name bell hooks (deliberately not capitalised) as a tribute to her much admired great-grandmother. Whatever the reason, there is something about it that clicks with the writer and feels right. It says something about who we are, to ourselves if no-one else.

‘Ayrie’ emerged from fiddling about with my username on a writing website. No great emotional heft, no clever word play, but I knew when I looked at it that it would do the job well. 

I get a similar moment of joy when I discover the right name for a character. I say discover, because I don’t choose characters’ names. I have to wait until they introduce themselves properly. Sometimes they piss me about, trying to fool me with false monikers, but I know when they’re lying. I can see it in their eyes. I know that if I just wait, they will eventually tire of the game and tell me the truth. And then we’re good to go with their story. We don’t get anywhere until they tell me their name.

I find the processes of naming, whether real children, characters, or ourselves, endlessly fascinating. I’d be delighted to hear what you think about it all.

Thanks for reading! 

Jane

What I’m reading: 

Dhalgren, by Samuel R Delany (I have a 50 year old copy published by Bantam, so I don’t know who publishes it now). This was first published in 1975, so I’m giving it an anniversary re-read. It’s been compared to Ulysses, but don’t let that put you off. I was gripped from the first word, which is not something I can say about Ulysses. There is a story, about a drifter, the kid, or Kidd, who fetches up in a place called Bellona, with no memory. From there on reality is fluid, narrative is circular, narrators are unreliable (or are they?). Language is beautiful and at times incoherent. I’ve read it many times and I hope this time to work out what it’s actually about. Nah, who am I kidding?

Samuel R Delany is one of my favourite writers, and this is my favourite of his books. It’s both revered and excoriated, and Delany does tend to be a Marmite author. If you don’t know his stuff, it’s probably best to start with his magnificent short stories, and there’s a lovely collection titled Aye, and Gomorrah published by Vintage. For my money, Delany is one of the most brilliant speculative fiction writers we have, but I’ll shut up now, because I could go on about him for ever.

Elidor by Alan Garner (originally published by Collins, but still out there somewhere). Another anniversary re-read! Elidor came out in 1965, and I got it for Christmas when I was eleven. I have re-read it every couple of years since. A group of kids in Manchester slip through a portal into another world and return as guardians of ‘treasures’ that must be protected to ensure the realm of Elidor can be saved from the powers of darkness. But darkness keeps seeping into 1960s Manchester…

This was my first introduction to what I suppose would now be called Urban Fantasy. I was gripped, scared out of my wits, and filled with the desire to write stories like that. These days, the fact that a group of kids, at least two of whom are pre-teen, can wander about Manchester day and night with no means of contacting their parents or anyone else, while no-one raises an eyebrow, seems as fantastical as the interdimensional baddies chasing them. Alan Garner is one of our greatest story-tellers, and this is one of his best. If you had the misfortune to see the bloody awful BBC TV adaptation in 1995, don’t let it put you off. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to the book.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

“Hello,” says the new person whom Imposter Syndrome and I have just met. They run their eyes over me, decide I obviously qualify for a bus pass, and ask, “Are you still working, then?”

Imposter Syndrome takes a step back. Real life is nothing to do with her. “No, no I’m retired,” I say breezily. “Packed all that work nonsense in, ha ha, best decision I ever made, ha ha, lady of leisure now, ho ho.”

If the new person is a similar age to me they nod vigorously and say, “Well, quite, don’t know about leisure though, grandchildren keep you busy enough, ha ha.” 

Imposter Syndrome lets me take this one too. “Lucky enough not to have grandchildren yet, hee hee,” I say. 

The new person looks at me as if I have just revealed horns and a tail. “So what do you do with your time, then?” they ask icily.

“Um,” says Imposter Syndrome, reluctantly stepping up. “I, er, I write a bit, ha ha. You know. Creative Writing. Keeps me occupied…” She trails off.

“What sort of thing do you write?” the new person asks, with a vague flicker of interest.

“Oh…stuff…you know…a bit of the supernatural, a bit of science fiction, a bit of…well, all sorts really.”

The new person is well brought up and politely feigns interest. “Are you writing something at the moment?”

Imposter Syndrome shuffles our collective feet. “Well, yes, sort of…”

“What’s it about?”

“Um, it’s a sort of ghost story, only not, it’s about ghosts that aren’t ghosts…”

The new person gives us one last chance. “Have you published anything?”

Imposter Syndrome perks up. “Well, yes, actually, I’ve had stories in several anthologies and I’m a contributing editor to an international online writing community and I…”

“Anything I might have read?”

“Um…probably not, unless you’re a fan of small literary magazines and online writing communities.”

At this point the new person usually discovers they have an urgent appointment with either the bar or the toilet. 

Of course, if the new person is of a younger generation, the conversation doesn’t get beyond “I’m retired” because the younger person gives me the look that says, “It’s OK for your fucking generation, Boomer, mine will never get the chance to bloody retire,” and of course they’re right. Neither I nor Imposter Syndrome have an answer to that one.

It took me while, though, to realise the answer I always give to “What’s it about?” was entirely wrong. It should be, always, “I don’t know. I haven’t finished it yet.”

I was completely astounded when, after going to a critique group for a while, someone said of my contribution for that month, “Of course, your usual themes are there.”

“My what?”

Everyone else looked at me as if I were stupid. “Your usual themes. Your thing about the past seeping into the present, and the process of memory, and intergenerational buggins. It’s all there.”

“But it’s a story about a cat having a conversation with an alien mouse.”

They were very kind. “Dear, you could write a story about a brick having a conversation with a garden gate, and all that stuff would be in it. That’s your thing.”

“I’ve got a thing?”

Some writers start out with a thing, a theme, an Idea, and fit their stories around it. They know who they are, what they want to say, and pretty much how they want to say it. I envy them. They undoubtedly save a lot of time, and their Imposter Syndrome is probably smaller and less vocal than mine. I mean, how can I have a ‘theme’? I’m about giving people a bit of a jump scare, or making them laugh. A conversation, or an image of someone engaged in a particular activity, or a character name, or even a title for a story, come into my mind and demand I find out what’s going on. I don’t start off with a theme, or an Idea. I just like playing about with words.

I also struggle with endings, but I know I’m not alone there. It has, though, taken me far longer than it should to realise that if I’m struggling with an ending, it’s because I don’t really know what the story’s about. 

I’m not much of a one for tidy endings. I like a bit of ambivalence and ambiguity, but there’s a difference between ambiguity and leaving your reader asking, “What the fuck was that all about?”, and not as in, “Oooh, I wasn’t expecting that, I’m going to go back and read it again, because otherwise this will keep me awake all night”, more your “Well, that’s a few hours of my life I’ll never get back”.

There’s a story I’ve been working on for, oh, a number of years now. Literally, years. It started off with an image of a man standing in the middle of a road. I knew his name, and it was a very unusual name, and I knew he was in rural America. The story evolved and I realised it was related to a meeting I had with someone in my teens. I also realised it was important to me, and I thought it was about a significant World Event. I couldn’t get the ending right at all. 

I rewrote the bloody thing. I took it to a couple of critique groups. They all said the ending didn’t work, but no-one was able to put their finger on exactly what was wrong. I put it away. I got it out again. I put it away again. I asked myself what it was about, and told myself it’s bloody obvious what it’s about. I got impatient with both me and the story and put it away once more.

I recently got the damn thing out again and asked an American friend, someone I know through the wonderful online writing community ABC Tales, if he would read it and make sure the dialogue, terminology etc was appropriate to the US. Also, any hints on an ending. He was kind enough to say yes. I went through it once more, before I sent it, shouted at my shit ending, then sat down and asked myself, “Yeah, but what is it about?”, and realised I’d pretty much forgotten why I originally wrote it.  

I jotted down a few questions in a sort of a list.  (I am a bit wary of lists. I always associate them with a former partner who couldn’t get dressed without making a list, but at my age they’re a necessity. They really do give you some insight into the perennial question of why you’ve walked into this room.) I stepped back, literally, staring at the list lying on the table, and demanded, “What? Just what?”

Quarter of an hour later it gave up teasing and produced an answer. After which the ending wrote itself. 

There’s a thrill in finding out what our stories are actually about, but I also find it disconcerting. I’m seventy. I always assumed that by this point I’d have things reasonably worked out. I am this person, these things are important to me, these things can be left behind. But that’s the problem with this writing lark. It has a habit of asking, “But why this? And why now?”  

I’ve learned that sometimes I have to completely discard preconceived ideas of what the story’s about. ‘Kill your darlings’ doesn’t just apply to overripe phrases or meandering dialogue. It can mean the whole concept of the piece. Somewhere in there is the truth of what I’m writing. I’m just too wrapped up in red herrings to see it. Sometimes I may not even want to see it. Sometimes, it takes a while. 

I’m not sure, though, that the next new person Imposter Syndrome and I meet will be overimpressed when we tell them, “Haven’t got the foggiest idea what I’m writing about, come back in about six months and I’ll tell you. Or hey, buy my book of short stories, when it comes out! The answers to all your questions will be there!”

I think Imposter Syndrome and I need to have some brisk conversations about marketing strategies in social situations before we can quite manage that pitch, though.

Thanks for reading!

Jane

What I’m reading: 

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander (Picador). One of the funniest, most insightful and moving novels I’ve read. Auslander is writing about a diaspora community struggling with identity and tradition in a changing world, but this diaspora community is like no other, and has very good reason to worry about the reaction of others.

Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier (Penguin). I first read Don’t Look Now decades ago, long before the film came out. It was in another collection then, where it wasn’t even the headline story. I suppose her style is old-fashioned now and yes, she lived in a very different world. But the power of these often strange and eerie stories remains. She was a consummate short story writer.

YER A WRITER, HARRIET

So here you are. You’ve managed to stop crying and get out of the foetal position

you adopted when your novel/story/poem/memoir was rejected, or ripped apart at

your critique group, or insisted on glaring at you, unfinished, from your screen or

notepad.

“Not a writer,” you mumble. “Never will be. Can’t be. It’s just a [insert profanity of

choice] waste of time.”

But you kind of have to face it, you’re addicted to words.

Folk come to writing, like they come to anything else, in all sorts of different ways.

Some of us have been scribbling since we could hold a pencil. Some of us never

thought it would be the thing for us, or were told it wasn’t the thing for us, and came

to it later in life. Some of us wanted to record a particular experience, or remember a

special person, and started trying to find the words.

Most of us, when we did find the words, didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do

with them.

Conventional wisdom states that the best preparation for being a writer, is to be a

reader. It is enormously helpful if you already have an idea, through reading, of how

words can be manipulated to make you feel happy, sad, scared or nauseous. It also

helps to know what works for you, what fires your imagination, or leaves you cold. If

you get the chance, read widely, read all sorts, don’t be put off by categories.

Categories are a marketing ploy. It’s nice to know where, in the library or bookshop,

you can find your favourite authors, but categories are basically the analogue

equivalent of those annoying pop-ups on Netflix or Amazon Prime: You Watched

This So You’re Going To Love This, Look No Further.

Also, one book does not a genre make. If you hated Isaac Asimov, it doesn’t mean

you don’t like science fiction. It means you don’t like Isaac Asimov. Try China

Mieville. Do yourself a favour and try China Mieville. You’ll thank me.

Not everyone gets the chance to read a lot of books. Lots of us don’t get the

chance to read much at all. We may not want to. It never occurs to us. But we speak.

We watch TV, or go to the cinema. We see all sorts of stuff on social media. We

observe people around us. We are interested in stories.

That’s the most important thing for any writer. An interest in stories. Your own,

other people’s, the history of that cat over there, doesn’t matter what it is.

So there you are, there’s this story you’re interested in, and into your head pop the

two most important words in any writer’s vocabulary: What If…

What if the cat is an alien? What if the grumpy old bloke on the bus is grumpy for

a very good and heart-rending reason? What if your great-grandmother had the

chance to tell her story to the world, how would she do it? What if you fancy telling

any of these stories?

Pick up a pencil, or fire up your laptop, or unleash whatever other device you have

about your person (I’m seventy, I text with one finger, I have no idea what wizardry

came out last week). Write a few words. Just a few words. Doesn’t matter if it’s the

start of the story, or the end of the story, or somewhere in the middle, or just a few

jottings about what you want to do. If you have the time and inclination, write a bit

more. If you enjoy it, set aside a bit of time to do it again.

If you don’t enjoy it, think about why you don’t. What if…you tried doing it at

another time of day? In another place? In mirror-writing? (Trust me, that one’s a

doozy. Rediscover your inner child.)

Maybe writing really isn’t your thing. Maybe it’s something you’ll enjoy doing now

and again. Or maybe you’ll find you’re addicted to words.

If you write stuff, you’re a writer. If someone has a brilliant voice, they’re a singer.

No-one says no, you’re not a singer because you haven’t done it in public. No-one

says you’re not a painter if you haven’t had something in the Royal Academy. You

can work towards becoming a published writer, if that’s what you want to do, but it’s

not a club you have to join. These days, you can be a self-published writer for

minimal cost, and then you can work on your marketing and try to make a living out

of it, or you can print off a few copies for your family. Or for yourself.

I was twelve when my first story was published, in The Brownie Annual of 1966,

‘Brownies Own Stories’ section. It was decades before I had anything else published.

For years I didn’t write anything much at all, and when I did I had no confidence in it.

But somehow those words wouldn’t stop coming, niggling away, and I couldn’t stop

my writerly habits: eavesdropping on other people’s conversations in cafes, peering

into people’s windows in that magic time when the lights are on but the curtains

aren’t drawn, having conversations, either in my head or out loud, with people who

didn’t exist anywhere outside my imagination. And always the What If… What if I

wrote this story, and what if I sent it off somewhere, and what if they accepted it…or

what if they rejected it and I learned what not to do next time…and what if I joined a

Writers’ Group and got some helpful feedback…and what if I felt it was OK to spend

quite a lot of my time doing something I really loved?

If you love doing it, or even if you just quite like it, never be put off by others. If

you’re arranging words, on a page, into some sort of tale — yer a writer, Harriet.