‘Everyone does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay’ - Christopher Hitchins.
I share a city of birth, a university, and the fact that our fathers served in HMS Jamaica ( but at different times) with the late Mr Hitchins. I do not share his view on this, not because I think everyone has a book in them that ought to see the light of day, but rather because I actually believe that not everyone has a book in them at all, at least not a novel.
Just as there are people who are tone deaf, and for whom music is a meaningless cacophony, there are those whose imagination is not fired by words, though they might be most creative in some other form. Such people do not read fiction because what is on the page does not create vibrant images in their mind; they cannot lose themselves in a narrative. That reduces ‘everyone’ to, at best, ‘most people’. Yet even if we discount that small minority and narrow the parameters very slightly and say ‘Anyone who reads and enjoys fiction has a book in them’, I would still argue that it is not true.
I hold that a writer, an author, is better described as ‘a wordsmith’. Why that term? I would argue that creative writing at a level that could be considered publishable, has two required elements, which are ‘The Words’ and the means to craft them into poetry or prose, the smithing. If there is one without the other then you are stuck. You can take as many creative writing courses as you like, and learn how to construct dramatic tension, good subordinate clauses etc., but if you have not got ‘The Words’ you lack the material on which to use those skills.
I compare the craft of writing to making a pattern welded sword, though it is pure coincidence that wordsmith and sword smith differ by just one letter. Forging a sword is not a case of hammering a bit of metal into a shape with a pointy end and sharp sides and saying ‘There’s a sword’. It takes the selection and twisting of heated metal rods, and the combining of bundles of those rods into a forged blade, and tempering (other than in the earliest blades) of the whole. A combination of strength and skill is required to create the pattern welded blade. Such weapons were treasured, given names, and only those of rank and wealth could afford them. The wordsmith has to have ‘The Words’ as those rods, and then the craft to create with them. ‘The Words’ are a gift, and an occasional curse too, since it is very awkward making sure dinner is on the table, or the tax return filled in, when one’s head is crammed with ‘The Words’ desperate to get out. I do not think everyone has them, just as not everyone could write a symphony (or a number one hit), or paint a work of art. It is not a failing not to have them, just one of the aspects that makes for variety in human beings. Where ‘The Words’ do not exist, no amount of knowledge in how to work them will avail you. Perhaps that sounds a bit mystic, but I think it is simply realistic.
If a person has ‘The Words’ then there is a reasonable chance that they can acquire the skills to work them into something which communicates not just at a literal level, but at one which is deeper, more visceral and emotional. Of course most of us will never reach the standard of the great master craftsmen, but a good journeyman (which I count an equally gender neutral title) is still worth reading. Crafting involves drafting, redrafting, excising, tweaking here and there. Not every sentence melds seamlessly into the next and I am sure every wordsmith has looked at the previous day’s endeavours and winced at something that in the new day is patently dismal. Yet even the more lowly of us are blessed occasionally with seeing a sentence that we know has its own intrinsic beauty from the way the words work together in a harmony that equates to a perfect chord in music. Within a complete manuscript there will always be little imperfections, just as in the forged blade, but if at the end the wordsmith can survey their work, look at it from various angles as the sword smith would study his sword, and see a strong, functional, and aesthetically pleasing whole, then that is success. Of course we then aim to make the next one even better.
Sarah Hawkswood is the author of 'The Lord Bishop's Clerk: A Bradecote and Catchpoll Investigation', a new mediaeval mystery story set in Worcester. The lord Bishop of Winchester’s clerk is bludgeoned to death in Pershore Abbey and laid before the altar in the attitude of a penitent. Everyone who had contact with him had reason to dislike him, but who had reason to kill him? The Sheriff of Worcestershire’s thief taker, wily Serjeant Catchpoll, and his new and unwanted superior, Acting Under-sheriff Hugh Bradecote, have to find the answer. At first nobody wants the murderer to be apprehended, but attitudes soon change when another body is discovered.