Writing by Numbers 5

by Adrian Glamorgan

Just when you thought you had a hold on life and its inner meaning, along comes love. It's there, in the structure of the rose, five petals, five calyx, and if you think that describes the vulnerable beauty of the scented symbol, you've forgotten about having your heart scratched by glass, the first crushing experience of puppy love, never held a child who's dear to you, or found God and had a good argument with Her.

Five is dancing in the structure of the orchid, and as with the rose, there is a tantalising desire to linger, grasp the always evading beauty. Aphrodite moves ever-so slowly her hips, confidently smiles and we are entranced. Up in the heavens, even the planet Venus describes an apparent orbit around the sun with five loops. Never mind it's a climate change hell-hole, from down here, it looks like the evening star.

The trouble with writing about love is platitudes, and plenty of them. Theirs was a love that could never die. Forbidden love. She attracted many, but couldn't find the one. Can't live with him, can't live without him. Addicted to love. Unrequited. Love conquers all. Cliches! And yet cliches are not wrong, just badly told truths. The gift of the love goddess is so much material. Her levy on you is that you've got to tell your story in an authentic way. The thwarted writer whose homeric poem on accountancy has been rejected twenty times decides to write a romance novel just for the money, and discovers that it's not so easy. Readers spot fake, and unless you find a way to help them enjoy the phoniness, your manuscript will sink to the bottom of the slush vat. Write about love, and you end up having to write about your own self, especially the part that hurts and overcomes. Travel writing is always an alternative. If you are thinking about moving on to romance novels, consult the experts. The big publishing houses have style guides online, and are a good read in themselves. Like any genre, romance has rules and ways to bend them. Janes Eyre and Austen do it for me.

Of course all this talk of romance is so cloyingly Western. Love is bigger than the sex act, or the nuclear family, so try to sidestep the trap of narcissism and self-absorption disguised as attraction to another. Farley Mowatt loves his Canadian wilderness. Filial piety, and its complexity affect billions. At this moment someone is working digging a well. It's a big world out there. Behind every epic story is some search for a way to love peacefully, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous history. Dare to seek these stories out, and see how they affect you. Romance, saga or Booker Prize: do it because you enjoy it. A writer needs to love their imagined reader.

Leonardo da Vinci's famous pen portrait of a serious naked man in a circle, arms and legs outstretched, gives us a five pointed star, a pentagon, and the secret number phi which tells us there are perfect proportions in the human body, the Parthenon and the well-made text. You don't have to tell your reader there's something going on: themes are meant to be underlying: just let your audience enjoy the outer effect.

Leonardo's drawing reminds us of the physical harmonies in the human shape, and the zest for learning. Our five fingers on each hand enable us to type, and every would-be writer does themselves a writerly favour by giving up pecking the keys with the index finger. These days there's the software to help out. Just practice, practice, practice, and put up with a temporarily slowed rate. A friend of mine who's been a very successful historian with a couple of dozen books to his name regrets he made himself work so hard by not disciplining himself to go beyond two finger typing.

Traditionally five has been about the highest attainments of the human being. It's the number of love. It's also the number of sides of one of the biggest office blocks in the world, the Pentagon, the home of the US Department of Defence. There was a fad when the Pentagon was being built: everything in the Army was being organised around fives. Only the Pentagon remains from this time. Almost as a challenge to love, the Pentagon's professional task is to make war in many countries, often without noticing the international rule of law aimed at giving us harmony. The pentagon creates phi, the secret number, so perhaps that is why so much secrecy, and secret wars. The Pentagon reminds us of an entirely different genre, the action novel with American values at its narcisstic heart, but also of the Pentagon Papers, the insider story of how an imperial president was defying the country's written constitution. The Pentagon was also attacked by hijackers from Saudi Arabia, part of this whole Orwellian nightmare of unnameable wars against unknown enemies with unknown objectives. Could be a novel there.

There it is: love, and its betrayal. What better material to write about? Well, get to it. While your at it, love your reader, your editor, your publisher, even if you haven't found any of them yet. And love your writerly self, gently, forgivingly, courageously. Challenge yourself to put aside the excuses and hindrances, and just do it. Even if you haven't found yourself yet.

Try this:

1. Write about your experience of adolescent love. It will give you the vividness of being "in love" for a character of any age.
2. Write honestly (even if for no one else's consumption) about a time you hurt someone who loved you. Be ruthless as a writer. When you've finished, reflect on this writing. Does it have a compelling quality? Why?
3. Sketch out a cliched plot. Now intervene. How could you challenge the cliché, and make it authentic? Discuss over a cuppa with another writerly friend.
4. Interview someone who's loved well - loved their dog, their husband, the planet. Find out what works behind this love. Write about it.
5. Write a short note to someone you love. Tell them.

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