The biggest problem with writing is it depends on words.
“Well Duh,” I hear you say, but what I mean is everything I write is mashed up into an approximation of meaning and delivered to you, the reader. You then put your understanding on the words and it is a miracle we ever communicate at all. Not only are there as many meanings for each word as there are people, there’s context, experience, bloody awful computer dictionaries and – THE SUBTEXT.
We might say one thing – “Go and make a cup of tea”, for example, but we actually mean something very different. What we really mean is “Go and make enough tea for us both/(insert as many people as are in the room at the time here). Get milk in a jug or some suitable container, bring sugar for the unreconstructed over 40s, remember teaspoons, put all on a tray preferably with saucers if you are actually using cups and bring it back here as fast as you can. And don’t forget the biscuits”.
Now most of us understand this type of verbal shorthand or pick it up as we go along. Some poor souls never get the hang of it and spend their lives in a fog of misery, probably in fairly menial jobs because exam papers are stuffed full of this sort of subtext.
And then there are things you see that tell a whole, horribly and often hilarious story in a single word. I understand there are signs under the gel dispensers in many southern hospitals warning people not to drink it (I know – disgusting). Well, up here in the North-East we have neat little notices saying :
DO NOT SMOKE OR USE NAKED FLAMES FOR TEN MINUTES AFTER APPLICATION.
Nothing more needs to be said. Twelve words telling a vivid and rather horrible story.
I was visiting a minor stately home in Essex recently and picked up a leaflet outlining their summer attractions. Falconry displays! Oh, my favourite! Then I read down the page to see the following note.
PLEASE DO NOT BRING SMALL PETS TO THE FLYING DISPLAYS EVEN IF THEY ARE ON LEADS.
A vision flashed through my head – “Fluffy!!! Noooo….”
Overhead power lines
On a recent trip to the Levels I came across a sign beside a lovely, calm bit of the canal. I am so stealing this one for a cameo in the fourth Somerset book.
Just two short sentences can mean so much and we all have our own pictures, conjured up by our own experiences and lives. Maybe this is what “Death of the Author” entails. I can be as descriptive and eloquent as I want but in the end what you, the reader, experience is not what I really mean but what it means to you. A symbiotic partnership, when it works. So thank you for all the work you put into my books. They wouldn’t be at all successful without you.