IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTIONS

‘You Speak Good English’ by Izumi Miyazaki

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your fabulous questions.

I have answered some below, and intend to answer the rest this week.

If you have any more, please post them below.

I have had such fun corresponding with you . As always, if you have the means, it would mean a great deal if you could support my writing and become paid subscriber.

CAROLYN STACK

Have you had to make an adjustment to how you find your voice since your tragic accident? How do you find your way to those times when your creative voice is alive?

HANIF

Dear Carolyn,

Since I can no longer use my hands, which is probably the worst thing about this accident, I cannot use my beloved pens and ink. I used to love getting up first thing in the morning, making coffee, going to my desk, and starting to make notes with my various pens.

Since my accident, I haven’t been able to get back to my study, which is on the first floor of my house. I miss it terribly. I was a bit of pen queen. I no longer write fiction, and nor do I have the desire to make up stories. Although I do keep this blog, which some of you read, and I can reply to letters like yours.

I am presently in my hospital room, writing this letter to you as I write my blogs, which is dictated directly to my son Carlo, or other members of my family, and it is a form of direct writing, one which I’ve never used before.

Previously, I would love to revise; I would start with a small idea and make it bigger, with a gradual accumulation, a thought at a time. Now that that is no longer possible, I speak it in one go, and hope for the best. This seems to work. I have reached a large audience, and I am thrilled by the work Carlo and other members of my family have done in enabling me to continue to be a writer. It is the only creative thing I can do, and it is a wonder.

AMY JO MINETT

How has poetry influenced your writing? Are there particular poets who move you?

HANIF

Dear Amy,

I’m sorry I don’t read as much poetry as I think I should. My old publisher Faber and Faber used to send me a lot of poetry books which I would keep around me in my study. When I was bored, I would pick up one or another of them at random, read a few pages here and there, and would inevitably feel inspired to continue on with what I was working at. So I do have some contact with poetry.

There is an American writer called Fred Siedel whose work I much admire, because he makes me laugh. He writes a lot about motorcycles and sex, and I would read him anytime. I have written in most forms – short stories, essays, novels, films, plays – but never poetry. I would not know where to begin.

All best, Hanif.

JK2

How do you make sure to produce your own work in equal or greater measure of time spent? Any tips on ignoring the noise when necessary and picking up the pen?

HANIF

Dear JK2,

You’re right, the world is full of noise, some of  it good, a lot of it bad. I have always loved the arts and continue to seek out movies, plays, novels, art exhibitions, anything that fascinates me. When I was younger, I was more easily influenceable than I am today. There are writers whose voices I couldn’t get out of my head, whom I managed to integrate into my final style, which is this. Luckily for me, when I write, it comes out like this; this is me, this is Hanif, I don’t think I sound like anyone else, and I don’t want to. I admit it is difficult not to be overinfluenced by others voices, but if you allow that to happen, you’ll never have a voice of your own, and the reader will pick up on it, and smell your inauthenticity.

Yours sincerely, Hanif.

SANDY FRANCIS

Is there any piece of your own writing that particular stands out for you - that you think of as ‘wow that’s bloody good’ and why?

HANIF

Dear Sandy,

There are bits and pieces throughout my career as a writer that stand out for me. These will not necessarily be whole essays, stories or novels, but will be particular passages that will seem to me to have achieved a certain style. I cannot tell you what these are, but occasionally I come into contact with something I did in the old days and will admire it. Much more likely is the fact I will come into contact with something and not admire it. I will think how wonky and wrong it is; and I will wish I had done it better. So I try to keep away from my past work and think only about what I am doing next, like writing this letter to you.

Yours sincerely, Hanif.

AMYSUE CHASE

I cannot turn off my internal editor that says whatever I write is so bad I can’t risk it-this despite not writing for others to see.

I guess my question is have you, as a writer, felt constrained by this type of problem and if so how do you push past it?

HANIF

Dear Amysue,

Your issue is a very recognisable one in the writing community. We all have this internal editor, or superego voice, telling us that we are shit and useful and so on, most of the time. But it is possible to put up a fight against the superego voice, to turn it off, or at least to quieten it, otherwise nothing will ever get written, and you may have noticed that there are billions of books in the world, as well as newspapers and other forms of written material. So, someone or other, somewhere, has succeeded in turning off their internal editor in order to get on with some work, and I am sure it is something you too can do.

I wish you all the best, Hanif.

SARAH CLEMENT

You wrote in one of your posts that you no longer have a desire to write fiction. I wondered if you think the 'rules' of writing (if there are such a thing) are different when we write directly about ourselves?

HANIF

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your lovely letter. Yo have given me much to think about. Carlo and I were having this discussion the other day, while walking by the bridge in Hammersmith, which is my favourite walk at the moment. He was saying I should apply the rules of fiction more to this blog, and that I should expand the characters of his mother, Isabella, and the boys, in order to fill out the characterisation. I don’t know yet whether I will do this, because the people I write about are not characters, but human beings, and I will have to be careful about overexposing them.

I myself am happy to write about everything and everyone, since for me they are both human beings and characters. I try ot make this blog mostly about myself and my miseries, since it brings me into intimate contact with my readers, like you, and I need to feel that I am still a real writer, as opposed to someone who makes up sentences in their head. David Bowie once told me that he always has music going around and around in his head. I wonder if that was a torment or a benefit. But I realise that it is just something that artists do. And I have sentences circulating in my head most of the time, waiting to be let out. It is a way of practising writing.

All best.

LAURI

Can you tell us how you know you are at the point of needing to write about something?

What is it about being alone that frightens you so much?

HANIF

Dear Lauri,

That is a great question, because I guess it would apply to any artist, which is a question of when you think an idea is a goer, is ready to be formed to reach an audience, as opposed to another idea which you may contemplate and then reject.

The question is about which ideas you reject and which ideas you continue with and develop, and turn into material for a book and wider audience. But these are judgement calls, you must decide on these questions after much thought, an idea may circulate in your head for weeks before you decide to proceed with it.

Recently a novelist friend of my visited me here in hospital, and I asked her how it was going. She said the best thing she had done this year was to put aside something she had been working on for a long time. I said that was an incredible thing to do, and not something you hear about much, a writer deciding to put away their work. It is a brave and necessary decision. Somethings, like some relationships, just have to be abandoned. There is no bravery with proceeding with an idiocy. So you have to make the decision, preferably at the right time. But sometimes, you get it wrong. You can work on a novel for months or even years, before realising it is an utterly stupid idea, and it’s all rubbish.

In reply to your previous question about what frightens me: I have been living in the hospital since my accident on Boxing Day, and I have been very frightened, the isolation, the sense of abandonment, the separation from my previous life, my desire to get back to it has left me with many terrors, terrors which I don’t believe I deserve.

I experience this nightmare as a kind of punishment from an unspecified crime. Why, I ask myself, are my friends allowed to walk around freely using their hands when I am in hospital, bed bound, and permantly disabled. These questions run through my head when I am alone. I am also powerless and helpless, since the only way I can get anything done is not by doing it myself but by asking others to do things for me. This has left me vulnerable and afraid. But I am still functioning, I am writing this at my kitchen table with my son Carlo, and it gives me a reason to go on. Hanif.

CAROL BRYDOLF

Do you have any spiritual beliefs that help you make peace with your most difficult situation?

HANIF

Dear Carol,

My partner Isabella told me once that I was one of the least spiritual people that she had ever met. And my son Carlo says he gets told that as well. I don’t know if it is because I am fully planted in reality, or because I lack something. I love the world as it is, but don’t wish to impute more to it then is already there.

I don’t know what it would be to be a spiritual person, and I often wonder whether so-called spiritual beliefs are just a lot of hot air. If I were religious, and perhaps could believe in some kind of higher power – some form of intention – perhaps I would not suffer so much. But you cannot force yourself to believe in the ineffable if it is not there for you. Thank you.

SHIRLEY

Would you like to share your recollections of working with David Bowie?

HANIF

Dear Shirley,

I am sure I have written or spoken about working with David Bowie elsewhere, there is a long piece in my book ‘What Happened’ about Bowie. Here’s my link to it here:

Other memories of working with Bowie, spending time with him, occur to me from time to time, and I guess I should write them down. A new book by Suzi Ronson is about to come out, her mother was Bowie’s hairdresser and then Suzi became his hairdresser, and then she went on tour with him before before marrying Mick Ronson, his sidekick and great guitarist. It’s an excellent book, which I got Faber and Faber to publish. It is, as it were, the inside story, and I’m sure you will enjoy it when it comes out, I guess next year. Hanif.

PATRICIA

Do you think Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a role in writing?

HANIF

Dear Patricia,

My son Sachin knows a lot about AI and has studied it, and he believes that whole swathes of television could be written by AI in the future. This is, I guess, one of the reasons for the writer’s strike. I would hate to think that AI could replace real writing, since what I consider to be real writing, writing of literary merit, comes from experience and having lived, which is something a computer cannot ever do. AI writing is an imitation at best, and a good one. But the human imagination is such a fabulous and unique instrument, I cannot believe it could be replaced.

Hanif.

LAURA WATTS

I have written a diary for 38 years but reading back sometimes I fear what I’ve written is very dull. My life isn’t dull but my writing is. I say things like “had baked beans for lunch”. How can I make my diary more pithy?

HANIF

Dear Laura,

You say that your life is not dull, and most people’s lives are really not dull at all. But some people prefer to represent themselves and their lives as being dull. Perhaps excitement is hard to bear, and as a child one may have been brought up to fear excitement, anticipation, sexuality and the more thunderous emotions.

Hence one might prefer to be dull, since it seems safer. But do not forget that dull writing is a choice. Many young people’s diaries are full of sentences such as ‘had baked beans for lunch’ when in fact their lives, and those of their parents and siblings, were probably full of difficult if not painful experiences. The diary can be an invasion, a place where nothing really happens, but it is not the truth. I am sure after this, in your diary, you will try to go to the heart of things without interruption, and you will find a more buoyant, lively and accurate representation of what has gone on.

Hanif.

NINA TREE

In your opinion how does one go about the getting short stories in front of readers? What do you feel about Substack as a place? Further thoughts and advice?

HANIF

Dear Nina,

One of the biggest problems for any young writer is how to get their work in front of an audience. For some people, it may take a very long time, since not only is it a matter of talent, but of access. In other words, one has to persuade someone else to like and promote one’s work. I have found that Substack enables one to publish immediately. It is a fabulous facility. I can write this letter to you, my son Carlo can type it out, and fifteen minutes later it is published. There are no publishers, editors and other intermediaries involved. It is absolutely direct. Whether one reaches a wide audience or not is another questions. But this instant access provides a fantastic opportunity for young writers to at least begin to reach a wide audience.

All the best Hanif.

EDWARD BUCKBEE

Chuck Close, big-time painter, was paralyzed at 48. He remained prolific for another 33 yrs, adapting his process and with help. His greatest work, maybe. Wondering about you and dictation, for the time being, as your recovery continues. How does it limit? (Might be obvious, maybe not.) What does it make new? Any surprises?

HANIF

Dear Edward, thanks for that. I am aware of Chuck Close and his work. You cannot have an accident like mine without it affecting your work. As soon as I had my accident I began dictating this blog to Isabella, and at that moment, my life and work changed.

We are all of us in constant development, we are never the same as we were yesterday. All the time we are changing, there is no going back, but my work has taken a zig where previously it zagged, and that is because my whole view of the world has been smashed and remade by this terrible accident. It has changed, and there is nothing I can do about it. Lets see what happens, and how my imagination continues to develop.

Hanif

More next week.