Tag Archives: creativity

Ravens & Writing Desks

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I have no good answer to Lewis Carroll’s riddle ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ – but I’ve always thought there must be some connection with trees.

I love trees. I am an unashamed tree-hugger. I have gazed in wonder at giant redwoods and stroked their strange fire-proof bark, stood enchanted by the mysterious Dragon Tree in Tenerife, ridden amongst the cork forests near Tarifa with delight and I hold an undying affection for the poor old Crouch Oak, Addlestone.

The Crouch Oak marked the boundary of Windsor Great Park and is said to date from the 11th Century

And in books – oh so many to treasure. The apple tree that grew immediately in the brand-new Narnia & made that wardrobe, The Whomping Willow, the Mallorns and all the wondrous Ents. I have wept for the fate of the Entwives.

So it’s not surprising that I can be moved by bonsai. A really well-executed one can take me into another world. The bonsai creator tries to mimic the natural beauty of the  yamadori – a tree shaped by its surroundings into a sculpture reflecting its struggle and survival. The ceation of bonsai is, of course, artifice: a simulation of effects that occur organically into a pleasing, portable form.

Like a book.

All writing is like that: reality shaped into a pleasing form, however minute or contorted. We might have to bend the truth to make it fit, snip and constrain to make the very best work – but our readership still responds to something like the yamadori. 

And I think there’s more to this analogy – it lies with the writers themselves. Writers need to put down roots, spread them out into the humus of our culture : we need to read, watch, listen. Some of us may have a tap-root of deep knowledge in one area, others may go in for a mat of widespread understanding – and every convoluted variant in-between.

J. R. R. Tolkien in his natural habitat?

We have to develop a trunk to support us – the heartwood of experience. In bonsai, the most damaged be can be the most resilient and the most prized. I believe that can be true of writers.

And then comes the crown, a canopy of photosynthesising leaves that nurtures us first before providing shelter and pleasure and food for others. Creativity takes the up-coming sap of ideas and dreams and magically turns it into new, beautiful things. How mysterious is that?

This bonsai was being trained when Charles I had his coronation in 1626

That’s my alternative to the much-used journey metaphor: growth. I think we each have to find the right place to thrive. Sometimes that might be barren and constricted – and what makes us fruitful.

It’s all to do with maturity – and that’s a wide-ranging thing. Trees vary – like us. Willows can be at their prime in their twenties, beeches barely begun at sixty and the yew is still adolescent at one hundred. But whatever their life story, trees never stop growing.

Bristlecone pines can be thousands of years old and still growing.

I am much encouraged that the ‘early ancient to senescent, or Veteran Stage’ :

for trees with a strong defense system such as oaks, … may be the longest life stage.

(Tree Care Primer – Christopher Roddick)

I take heart in that. My time for blossoming could be now. I may only get rooks and ravens hanging about in my branches – or be felled to make someone else’s writing desk – but thus far, I’m still growing.

Chuck chuck chuck chuck chicken…

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…lay a little egg for me.

Tomorrow finds me on a train to Frome in Dorset before I attend a Golden Egg Academy workshop on Saturday & Sunday. I’m making a day of it and intend to explore a wee bit. Changes of scenery can often lead to new inspirations – not that I’m short of anything to write about but a little prompt whilst between major works-in-progress keeps the creativity ticking over nicely.

I’ll be sharing accommodation with my www.seamagic.org pal Claudia Myatt – so an exchange of sea yarns will be going on, I suspect. It will be great fun to meet up with other writers for young people too – if nothing else, I will find that stimulating.

However the biggie is help sorting out the stack of tamboured muslin, talking gargoyles and civic corruption which is Georgiana & the Municipal Moon. I think you’d have to envisage my first draft as a cabin trunk jammed full of grubby little scene oddments, faded images of neo-Regency life, salt-stained maps of Selchester, the City-on-the-Sea, and the odd transcript of curious dialogue. It seems as if it should all fit together somehow – but I need some serious help putting my scrapbook together.

I am both nervous and thrilled to have Imogen Cooper take my story seriously. I want all the help I can get to make it work the best I can. There is a core, like the spine formed early on in an embryo that I can’t or won’t change, but otherwise: whatever it takes to tell the story.

To be continued…

The Tenth Muse

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I am not referring like Plato to Sappho, or Ann Bradstreet – The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America as she was called in the first volume of American poetry, but Chance.

According to the Greeks, the Muses were inspirational beings:

  • Clio, history,
  • Calliope, epic poetry,
  • Euterpe, music,
  • Melpomene, tragedy,
  • Polymnia, sacred song,
  • Terpsichore, choral song and dance.
  • Thalia, bucolic poetry,
  • Urania, astronomy,
  • Erato, erotic poetry
I cribbed this list from Sheila Finnigan’s The Last Of the Muses

Wonderful names and a surprising set of disciplines you need inspiration for. I do have a soft spot for female embodiments of concepts. The thought that ideas can be beautiful and feminine seems both true and powerful.

Though why not male Muses? Perhaps they would be like the daemons in Philip Pullman’s The Northern Lights – the opposite gender to the person they enthused?  I wonder what other Muses there might be nowadays.

Chance is the Tenth Muse

Sadly I don’t recall who said that. I think it is a translation – probably Spanish and possibly a Surrealist. I think it was at West Dean that I heard it.

At any rate, for me there is a great dollop of truth in there. Not just that things come together in curious, unexpected ways – but that you must listen to the inner voice telling you so. Now it’s up to to you whether that spirit, anima, genius is a concept or a reality – but whatever your view, tuning into that moment of serendipity is essential for all creators.  As Horace Walpole, originator of the word ‘serendipity’ asserted, an individual needs to be sagacious enough to link together apparently unrelated facts to make a valuable conclusion – whilst in pursuit of something else.

Our current world has so many possibilities for making strange, unexpected and wonderful links between things – and so much distracting us all from doing so.

Just occasionally,I am sufficiently ‘relaxed yet alert’ (David Almond’s phrase) to allow such connections to take place. My writing benefits enormously. But I do have to be on my way, but not anxious and blinkered.

How about you, dear reader? Does the Tenth Muse visit you? Do you discover accidental inspiration on your route to something else?

I’d love to know.

 

Interscotia

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Apparently the interscotia refers to the period between Christmas Day and the New Year. It’s often a time for reflection on the Old Year – and ideas about the New.

This short post will be where I declare my commitments as a writer for 2013:

  1. To write every day. By that I mean as well as editing, promoting and analysing, I vow to create at least some small piece of original work every day. I have kept it up throughout December – inspired by Nephele Tempest’s December Writing Challenge – and largely throughout the rest of 2012
  2. To read at least one book a week. Again this is something I’ve been close to during 2012 – but I need to read more, especially works related to my writing. I commit to reading more – for Serendipity Reviews, to enjoy and to develop my skills.
  3. To enter as many competitions as I can. I find it stimulating to have a deadline and any long-lists, short-lists or even prizes are all to the good. By ‘as I can’, however, I do mean competitions which relate to my strengths, to who I am as an author. There must be some element which engages my heart – not just my intellect or fancy.

What are your promises to yourself, I wonder?

A North Country Lass

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The Romans had a phrase for it: genius loci. Their protective spirit found in a specific place has now come to mean the distinctive atmosphere of a given spot. For me, these are faces of the same understanding. There are parts of this small country possessed of their own soul, their own character.

To go farther, all places have their own voices but some are so muffled, I cannot hear them well enough. Perhaps I would need more time. Surrey rarely spoke to me – the odd word on the heathlands, and an occasional whisper beside ponds and rivers.

Ah, but Northumberland! That is a land that sings.

My recent weekend near Seahouses reminded me of that glorious county’s powerful voice. The accents of the people, the strength of the great shoreline castles and the rolling force of the sea. History there is as obvious as the wrinkles on an old man’s hands. I cannot think of it without the echo of reivers, Grace Darling and the stories of Robert Westall. There’s a soundtrack too: the Keelers and the Unthanks, Kathryn Tickell, and David Almond reading his own work in his gentle lilting voice.

I love the space, the harsh honest weather. In one weekend we had gales, snow, hail and a magnificent rainbow over the Farne Isles. Each hour the weather presented a new drama.

Every time I’ve been, it has felt more real. The wheep of oystercatchers on the shore, and the friendly murmur of Cuddy Ducks. The hush of marram grass and the black outlines of winter trees against the enormous sky. Snow on the Cheviots and cheek-polishing wind. The massy stones in quay and castle and saint’s refuge.

It’s a thin place.

How strange such a physical place should be so spiritual too. But the body does not lie – and the senses bring us back to ourselves. Glamours are blown away by walks beside the North Sea,  self-deceit doesn’t stand long against home-cooked food and there aren’t many airs and graces that can fend off a belted-out sea shanty.

I long for that in my writing –  the things that remain, that mean something, the bits that Bede would understand and St Hilda and a kipper smoker from Craster and a little lass of ten from Alnwick. The elemental.

It’s not even my county. The people here feel like kissing cousins. I may not get all the dialect  but the humour’s still there. I am teased and talked to and encouraged to sing. I’m not some fine Southern visitor treated oh-so-politely at arm’s length.

Not all pride is a sin. Love of a place can lead to creativity rather than divisive patriotism. My experience  of Northumberland draws out my pride in my own homeland.

As they say:

You can take the lass out of Yorkshire,

But you can never take the Yorkshire out of the lass.

Is there a homeland in your work?

 

 

 

 

 

Words and Pictures

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On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of visiting the Oxmarket Centre of Arts in Chichester. It’s well worth a look as there are constantly changing exhibitions. I was interested the work of a local artist David Souter for the seamagic.org website as he paints a fair few sea scenes.

Luckily, he was there (with his delightful little dog) and we got talking. I was struck by how much of his practice as a painter chimed with mine as a writer.

He said his finished works were each a jigsaw, a fitting-together of imagination and observation. That’s what writers do, observe and then fit their understandings into a given shape. It’s the imaginative structure that holds those pieces together.

He felt the real work was in the sketches beforehand and the actual painting didn’t take him long at all. I’m not at that stage, it takes me a fairish while to write a novel, but I certainly find the repeated exercise of my craft is essential. Little notes, pen sketches and the like   drawn from life feed the larger work.

Many of his scenes were recognisable places. Others were creative amalgams. He was honest and unapologetic about re-arranging people and sometimes other elements to suit the composition. That’s what I’m doing right now: I’m editing a first draft to bring out the shape. Some characters will move, some will blend and others may well get painted out. The overall shape, the arrangement of different elements, is what brings pleasure to the reader – or the viewer.

A final aspect that tallied was his desire to create a sense of movement in his work. His images are not static. There is a sense of a before and an after – we are seeing something happening – not just posed. I suggested that this was how writers approach character: we show the person doing something in order to convey them to the reader – we rarely describe them at a standstill.

I found this cross-fertilisation from one art to to another quite a tonic. I wonder what my readers think?

Fear and Loathing in West Sussex

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Today I am 65k into the first draft of my work-in-progress and finding it bally hard going.  I knew this one wasn’t going to be easy – nothing worth doing is.  It has at its heart a difficult relationship and calls on, somewhat tangentially, areas in my life I’d really rather not confront.

I don’t want to give spoilers, or pre-empt things that might not get in the finished book, but I’d like to comment on a particular aspect in this post. One strand that runs through the book has an ick factor in some people’s minds. It deals with something we don’t talk about – and most certainly don’t write about in fiction for young people. At the back of my mind,  Mrs Sensible says ‘you keep that in and no gatekeeper will ever let you in – never mind the book’.

Yet Ms Creative says ‘it stays – I’ve gone through a lot to put that toe-curling, squirm-able part of my life into a fictional form – and that’s what makes it good, something readers will engage with.’

Who is right?

If I look at the opinions of rational, professional writers who have to pay the bills like Stroppy Author – Mrs Sensible wins hands down. After all, I have the luxury of a patron (Lovely Husband) and not being published yet – so no expectations from the industry. But I want to be professional, to write well and to pay my way. ‘Submitting something a bit dodgy – not wise,’ says Mrs Sensible.

On the other hand, the only method I have for writing original stories which avoid the banal and the obvious, is to use the heartfelt experiences inside me. In this case, it has led to something a great deal of adults are squeamish* about – and may make it unpublishable. But it matters – it’s been hard to write about and although it’s not finished, it’s good. It matters to the central character and makes a difference to her relationships and the plot. Not so easily removed.

Mrs Sensible suggests ‘write it for an older readership then’ – Ms Creative counters ‘they’ll be too old, it’ll be memory, not experience’.

See – I’ve resorted to visual euphemisms.

What to do? All comments very gratefully received – I haven’t had any for a while.

*including me

Reading week

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On Saturday  29th September I have the great good fortune to be going to Greece with some of my nearest & dearest.  My darling husband will use the time to indulge in non-stop  sailing, wind-surfing and other wet & active things. I will not.

Ready & loaded.

I will join in some sort of keep-fit and swim and snorkel, but mostly I shall READ.

Set to make notes.

Now when I went to University, we had Reading Weeks. Now that was a long time ago – rooms in Halls of Residence didn’t have en-suites, shared kitchens were not visited by any  form of cleaner and ‘wireless’ meant the radio. I don’t know if Reading Weeks set aside for personal study still exist.

But what a splendid opportunity if they do. I intend to make the best of mine.

My reasons for reading

  • to refill my well of creativity – it works like a dowser’s charm: ideas bubble up out of depths I thought were as dry as a camel’s eyebrows
  • to suss out the competition – well really to get the feel of contemporary children’s fiction – and decide where I stand
  • to escape my own head – it’s so good to take a trip into somebody else’s imagination, to wander places I would never have thought of
  • to peek behind the scenes – to admire how they do it and pilfer any good ways of showing character, developing suspense, using structure…
  • to support my friends and colleagues – if I read with my full attention I can help if I am  asked, and any sale is a good sale1

So – what would you do on a Reading Week – and why?

#seamagic

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On the weekend of 14th -16th September I went to the CWIG conference at Reading. One of the many good ideas I took home was the concept of the collaborative blog. (I am indebted to Susan Price and The History Girls for this.)

‘Goose’ illustration by super-talented CWIG committee member Nicola Smee.

What are the advantages of shared bloggery?

  • more variety for the reader
  • more frequent posts for the reader
  • less taxing for each individual contributor
  • more readers will come – the followers of the various contributors
I decided I would start one up based on my shared love of the sea and the magic it evokes in writers and artists. I have already put some feelers out and have a small select band of interested parties ( you know who you are!)

I wonder what you’d hear from this?

What might it involve?

Ideally we would want 28 contributors to do one post a month ( as do the History Girls) – the extra days could be covered by guest posts. We could start with one post a week and review in the New Year – or we could trial one-a-day on a rolling basis and see how that turns out.

Nautical bookshelves thrive in my house.

Who takes charge /  takes the flak?

I am offering myself as curator in the first instance. I read and research voraciously about the sea and I am willing to edit and post on a simple site.

Creative Commons - you are free to use & adapt

I don’t want to be Gully-no-mates…

MANIFESTO

  • all posts will reflect delight in the sea
  • all posts will be suitable for fluent readers – no swearing, no talking down
  • writing and artwork in the widest variety of forms will be welcomed – poetry, reminiscences, jewellery, photography, folklore, flash fiction, stained glass…
  • concise and attractive posts will be preferred
  • all images will be licensed, Public Domain or copyright to the poster – Creative Commons are encouraged

Who wouldn’t vote for this?

How can I get involved?
  • follow & use the Twitter hashtag #seamagic
  • ask to join the seamagic facebook group
  • email me:  kmlockwood AT hotmail.co.uk
  • tell anyone you think just might be interested

Pay attention at the back!

Three important points:
  • NO commitment yet
  • your thoughts are very welcome
  • it’s not about direct sales – but contributors can link to their own sites/ books/artwork

 

The Heart of Lightness

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(dedicated to the Music Room Poets and all my other creative friends)

Image courtesy of Futurity.com

In the last week I’ve been think about the core of things a great deal.

My friend Kathryn Evans.

I thoroughly enjoy my belly-dancing classes and here we work on our cores so that we can do two contrasting things at once. It’s a little like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. We might do snake arms as a slow and sinuous pace whilst shimmying our hips fast enough to make the coins on our hip-scarves jingle. Lots of concentration involved for me.

I also go to yoga – and core strength is central here too (pun intended).  By engaging the core, you can develop flexibility, say, in bridge pose to loosen the spine safely – but you can also use it to increase your focus in a balance like tree pose. The key is not to force but to allow a posture to come.

This last weekend I was at West Dean for a magical poetry workshop led by Philip Wells. One of the themes I picked up on was the core of engagement with each other and our creativity. On one hand, I need to open up, allow myself to be vulnerable – but on the other hand, I have to respect my own truth as I do that of others. Somehow I want to show sensitivity to others without that horrible inhibiting self-censorship: that’s me back to doing two opposing things at once.

In my understanding , the physical core and the creative are intimately connected. It doesn’t matter if it’s dance, painting or writing novels. By sloughing off my outward shy and sometimes cynical outer shell, I can let something new, trembling but truthful emerge. It takes courage – ‘coreness’ – to do that ( I think of Chaucer and hir corages ).

How do you centre yourself?

Dragonfly image by Eduardo Terrazas

Dragonfly

I crack my sternum:

The imago pulses,

A skin sinks in the pond.

                                       K. M. Lockwood September 2012