Tag Archives: read

The Skull beneath the Skin

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When I go out on a jolly, I usually end up with a theme. Today’s theme was skulls.

Memento Mori – remember you will die

I went to Portsmouth to visit the Cathedral. I love a good Cathedral, and one features in my work-in-progress (currently titled Georgiana and the Municipal Moon). I was on a gargoyle and grotesque hunt, so I walked round the outside first. I came across that wonderful 17th century doorway (detail shown above) – and a tranquil Garden of Remembrance.

I wanted to take pictures of the gravestones but a sign exhorting me to treat it with respect made me hesitate. Was it disrespectful? Grief is grief – two months or two centuries ago, surely? I reflected on this as I walked on the crazy paving made of bomb-damaged tombstones. I recalled the Ancient Egyptian maxim: to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again. I believe telling stories through words or other forms of art does exactly that.

Once inside I found more skulls. I overheard the lovely ladies in the coffee shop remarking on my photography later. It made me pause a little. Am I morbid, overdoing the Goth thing, death obsessed – in this and my writing?

I would argue that children and young people love a bit of gruesome. The bowels of Buckingham ( and his sister) interred there would fascinate most, I think. I recall very clearly finding an ossuary in Ireland by the Kenmare river and being both fascinated and  horrified by the skulls at one and the same time.

This skull sits beneath the urn containing the viscera of the Duke of Buckingham – and that of his sister.

But I think there is more than just pleasurable terror involved in a fascination with bones and the like. There are deeper issues of mortality. These can and should be dealt with in books for younger readers. The bracing comedy of ‘Henry Tumour’, and the powerful honesty of ‘A Monster Calls’ bring hope and strength  to the world, not despair.

I have recently read ‘Constable & Toop’, which also deals with death. There is humour and quiet dignity, and ghosts. (They will be a subject for another post or two). But my point is that children will come across death at some point. Their pets will die, or their grandparents. Perhaps they will see an accident and ask questions. People are fascinated by death – and touching on it with honesty brings depth to a writer’s work.

In the midst of life we are in death.
Book of Common Prayer, Burial Service

Whatever your beliefs, it is inescapable. But in the same way as shadows are the darkest when the sun shines brightest, the thought of Death should bring intensity to Life – in this world and any fictional one.

The naming of places

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Like Terry Pratchett, I was blown away on first reading Tolkien:

It’s got maps! And names!*

I am still in love with his entire lexicon and mythology of Middle Earth, and one of my favourite features  was the names he gave places. Now it helps if you are an expert in Anglo-Saxon and all-round-brilliant, but still I aspire to have towns, harbours, moors and rivers that convince. The place is a central character for me.

Map from the Hobbit courtesy of Josh Calvetti (Creative Commons)

As most of my readers will know, I was born and brought up in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Norse words are part of my cultural DNA. Give me tofts and thorpes , skels and scars, and I’m a happy woman. I suppose I could set all my work in the Danelaw – but I might like to branch out.

Now since I write stories with more than a touch of fantasy, I could just make it up. But that  seems like selling the reader short. I have to confess a more-than-reasonable dislike for place names made up out of real words with different meanings ‘because they sound good’. Call me a nerd, but I like a bit of toponymic integrity. If it’s set in the Fenland, I want names like Penny Soakey, Toseland St. Agnes and Green Knowe (thank you, L. M. Boston).

The Manor at Hemingford Grey
or ‘Green Knowe’
Image by Richard White (Creative Commons)

One approach I use is to blend existing names: I took Sel (seal) from Selsey and  –chester (southern variant for ‘Roman settlement’) from Chichester to create Selchester, my City-on-the-Sea. I still like to be careful about origins (no Pictish elements with those from the Jutes  for example –  like mixing Aberdeen with Canterbury) but it works.

Another way is to recycle the names of abandoned or lost settlements – those places deserted after the Black Death, or victim to coastal erosion. There are a great deal of powerful story backgrounds here too.

Wharram Percy by Andy Nunn
(Creative Commons)

You can also look up old maps and use the alternative spellings or earlier forms of places. The Domesday Book is brilliant for that, and zoomable old OS cartography is a wonderful time sink, I have to admit. There are cracking books too: Caroline Taggart’s The Book of English Place Names and the splendidly browseable McKie’s Gazetteer ( which gives any number of odd stories).

And if nothing else, all this research will give you a smile when you come across delights such as Wetwang, Triangle, Great Fryup Dale, Booze (with no pub) and Blubberhouses Moor (all in Yorkshire).

* this may be apocryphal – but it’s too good not to use.

 

The child who survived

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Photo by Savannah Roberts

My dear,

The creative adult is the child who survived.
The creative adult is the child who survived after the world tried killing them, making them “grown up”. The creative adult is the child who survived the blandness of schooling, the unhelpful words of bad teachers, and the nay-saying ways of the world.
The creative adult is in essence simply that, a child.
Falsely yours,
Ursula LeGuin

My experience doesn’t quite agree with Ursula LeGuin: my schooling was not bland. In my various Primary Schools, there was a good deal of violence: of playground bullying and the sneering rejection of the newcomer with the odd accent and ‘posh’ vocabulary. The continuous mockery of anyone who showed talent (other than on the sports field) by my peers didn’t exactly encourage the bright children to offer answers or stick up for each other.

Secondary School brought fewer bruises but more harm to my self-confidence. There was isolation, exclusion and worst of all false friendship. More than once I was stupid enough to believe in my apparent acceptance into a popular group. I would relax, be myself, be the star turn – only to have the set-up gleefully explained to me.

‘We just wind you up and off you go.’

Then came the loneliness again.

Trapped by Timo Waltari

And what of the nay-saying ways of the world? In my case, never mind the world, what about some parts of my family? Water on stone: a steady erosion of my self-belief.

Dolly Daydream.

Lizzy Dripping.

What do you want that for?

Why can’t you do it properly?

That’s not for girls.

Why can’t you be like Mrs Perfect’s daughter?

You’ve spelled that wrong.

Silly waste of time.

That’s not how it’s done.

Join e to d like this.

What’s that supposed to be?

I’m too busy.

Photograph by Kalev Kevad

This piece isn’t intended as a plea for sympathy (though I do appreciate a little support at times, if I’m honest). My point is that many creative writers and other artists I have met have been thorough the mill like me. One way or another they have survived.

As a survivor though, I have scars and flashbacks. There are damaged, healed-over places which are painful to probe. There are memories I don’t want replayed.

But that’s where the best raw material lies.

‘Rapunsell’ by Duygu

Do you know ways to deal with this? To let the child survivor out to play safely?

 

 

 

What’s in a name?

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All the Tour De France hoo-ha has thrown up the splendid name of Bradley Wiggins. Now a name like that conjures up the cheekiest boy in 4b to me, a dab hand with conkers and adept at pulling faces when the teacher’s not looking. He’d have sticky-out ears, a tuft of unruly hair he sticks down with spit and a good line in the dog-wrote-my-homework excuses.

What about Tempest Pollard? This wonderful name was found whilst researching a family tree. For me, she is a bold red-headed girl, a fisher lass as strong as many of the lads and quite capable of cutting anyone down to size. She’d help haul the lifeboat through winter snow and pose for Frank Meadow Sutcliffe with her local bonnet on.

But to someone else, Tempest Pollard is a solid ox of a man, a farmer with hands broad as spades and a slow burr of a voice. He’s not given to much speech, but what he says he holds to.

So how do I choose names for my characters? I could go the Dickens route and make them up – you know what you’re getting with Mr Gradgrind and Lady Honoria Dedlock. Yet although my writing has fantasy elements in it, I strive for a certain degree of authenticity.

By that I mean the names should reflect the place and time that I’ve chosen – even if they are alternatives to reality. For example, I have lots of fun researching names and occupations in early 19th Century Sussex to populate Regency Selchester. One of my best sources are old directories which you can search by decade and area here. It’s a fascinating resource/timesink.

Another entertaining, if slightly creepy, approach is to visit graveyards: I guarantee you will find at least one fascinating name. To avoid offending family sensibilities, I do tend to mix and match forenames and surnames. I also cross-check on the internet to see if my character’s name throws up anything inappropriate or offensive. So far, I’ve been fine.

Anyone who has done any ancestor hunting will know how frequently certain names turn up: Elizabeths, Marys and Margarets; Georges, Williams and Thomases run right through many a family tree. This is where accuracy needs sacrificing to art.

  1. You don’t want easily confused names
  2. You want your main characters to be memorable

I have been known to keep an alphabetical list to make sure no initial letter gets repeated – though it gets interesting with C and K, Th and F. I have learnt I have a real penchant for surnames starting with H.

So after all this, I sound terribly organised or weird depending on your point of view. But I will end on a confession: some of my favourites come out of nowhere. Both Mattie Henshaw and Clemency Atwell sprung out of my mind like Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus.

How do you choose? Do you see someone from the sound of their name?

Confused of Sussex

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I cannot define ‘literary fiction’ but I know it when I read it.

I love ghost stories ( as anyone who reads my Wedding Ghost blog will attest) . I read a lot of them and at the moment I am enjoying the Virago Book of Ghost Stories. It’s fascinating to read women writers that I might not have expected having a go at the genre: how about Stella Gibbons with a strange Cornish story ‘The Roaring Tower’ and Mrs Gaskell’s first person ‘The Old Nurse’s Tale’ ? Both disturbing and memorable in their own way, they have a strong forward momentum that draws the reader on.

A different sort is Edith Wharton’s ‘The Eyes’ . This story only makes sense at the end, and demonstrates a more subtle psychological approach than many others. Yet still there is an inherent drive for the reader to know more. There is a plot.

‘The Happy Autumn Fields’ by Elizabeth Bowen is another story in the collection. She is a much admired writer and this piece was full of beautiful language. It suggested this and implied  that and hinted at another thing. The point of view shifted between heaven knows how many people. It was all awfully clever, terribly literary – and it annoyed me no end. It annoyed me almost as much as Henry James’ ‘What Maisie Knew’ ( one of the very few books I have actually flung across the room).

For me this sort of writing has a shifting sense of implication – and if you don’t get it, if you don’t appreciate the the oh-so-subtle references and sub-texts; well, you’re ignorant. I will cheerfully admit that sort of tone has a similar effect on me as The Oxford Voice on D. H. Lawrence.

Yet part of me, the part that went to Wakefield Endowed High School for Girls and took ‘S’ Level English Literature and actually read ‘To The Lighthouse’, feels I ought to value it. I ought to find ‘literary fiction’ somehow better and I ought to aspire to writing such quality work.

Why?

That’s where I am truly puzzled. But my one consolation is that there is a far bigger audience for more populist fiction ( which one is encouraged to sneer at)  than there is for the clever stuff.

Spectrum by Chronon6.97 on Flickr

Where do you stand on this continuum? 

Acts and ideas

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‘It is by acts, and not by ideas, that people live.’Anatole France

I asked my youngest son what I should write on my blog today; he said ‘character research – where do they come from, how do you make them seem  real?’

This surprised me – but led to an interesting train of thought.

It has to be said he has always had high E.Q. and was an excellent actor at school, so I should not have been startled at his focus in writing. He made me think about the various ways I could approach creating my characters, and the implications of these.

Observation

– the obvious source of behaviour. but it comes with several reservations.

 

Spy video camera by Emilian Robert Vicol

 

There is the morality of my ‘using’  family and friends for a start: I could hurt people’s feelings; inadvertently divulge secrets or embarrass them. As for strangers and acquaintances, well, it’s not good to stare and note-making is a bit obvious ( my memory isn’t that good).

Syncretion

I could blend people together; a kind of character pic ‘n’ mix. There are gestures, tics and idioms of different people I could combine. If I make them diverse enough, I might avoid offending any one person.

 

Gaudi’s trencardis lizard at Parc Guell – by Richard Uzermans

 

That seems cowardly as a motivation, and the result likely to seem artificial without a great deal of care. Actual behaviour – now that’s another thing. Translating action I have seen from one person to illuminate a single aspect of my character – that appears more honest.

Invention

‘Just make it up’ – that feels like a valid way to get on with it and avoid procrastination too. Let the back of my mind do the work; watch what my characters do and say in my imagination and write it down.

 

Cartoon writer created by Joan M.Mas

 

I have to acknowledge the inevitable influence of what I’ve read ( not to mention seen in films and heard on the radio). I recognise there’s a danger of resorting to cliché and stereotype too. But it is all the more reason to read widely – and I find non-fiction and biographies have much for me to absorb.

Creation

I need to acknowledge that whatever approach I take, it is filtered through my perceptions.No matter how hard I might try to be a disinterested observer, it’s still me on the page in one way or another. This is where multiple personality is not a disorder.

I get to try out different selves, live more lives than one and let rip with my inner actress. The characters that live are those with most authenticity: they are a part of me. So I have to be honest and accept that the bitter, vengeful Celia in The Wedding Ghost is as much ‘me’ as the courageous Lorna in The Seal People of Scoresby Nab.

That’s quite a thought.

Mirror in New Orleans by Scott E.

I’ll finish with a quotation from Beryl Bainbridge:

‘When I write a novel I’m writing about my own life; I’m writing a biography almost always. ‘

The Case of the Invisible Girls

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This is a very simple post addressed to fellow writers, illustrators and publishers especially for younger children.

Where are all the girls?

photo by katiek2

Seriously.

I looked in ‘Carousel’ – these are my stats for the Spring 2012 edition.

  • Babies Books: 9 books reviewed , 2 male central characters & 7 neutral.
  • Toddlers: 8 books reviewed, 5 male central characters, 1 female and 2 neutral
  • Picture Books: 15 reviewed, 8 male central characters, 5 female and 2 neutral
  • First Steps: 8 books reviewed, 6 male central characters, 1 female and 1 neutral
  • Reading Alone: 14 reviews, 5 male central characters, 4 female & 5 neutral
  • Reading with Confidence: 13 reviews, 5 male leads, 6 female & 2 neutral
Out of 67 books, 31 had male leads, 19 had either a neutral or an equal balance, and only 17 had female central characters. That gives 46% male (OK) 28% neither/both & 25% female. Take out the books that had an equal ratio or featured neither and this remains:

65% male to 35% female central characters

Now I have no wish to criticise ‘Carousel’ – it reports what there is – and it might be just a statistical blip. So I thought I’d better cross-check with Amazon.

I won’t bore you with the full breakdown but here’s a summary:

  • out of the top 30 best-sellers from 0-8, 14 featured male characters, 11 were neutral or balanced, and 5 had female leads.
  • 47% male, 37 % neutral & 16% female
  • 74% male to 26% female (if you take out the neutral books)
I did the same with ‘The Book People’:
  • out of the 60  Top Ten books promoted in ranges from Babies through to 9+, 32 featured male central characters, 14 were neutral & 14 female
  • 70% versus 30%
What on earth is going on?

Photograph by D Sharon Pruitt

To my shame, this is a rough transcript of a conversation betwen me and an agent for children’s writers.
‘I’m stuck – need to choose between a boy or a girl as my  central character in my 9+ fantasy adventure – which would you suggest?’
‘Well, if you really can’t choose any other way, then the boy commercially speaking.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘Girls will read books with a boy central character- but boys won’t read it if it’s a girl.‘ ( my emphasis)

by youleah

So all my readers that have anything to do with books – what on earth do we do about this?

Them bones, them bones…

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This week I have been working on the underlying structure of my work-in-progress (provisionally called ‘Georgiana and the Municipal Moon’).  I’d be dishonest if I didn’t remark on how much there is to think about.

It’s set in an alternative Regency England – but I want consistency so I’m using the years 1808/9 for days of the week , phases of the moon and tides. Even though I’ve dreamt up the City of Selchester, I do want my Sussex geography to be feasible (magic notwithstanding) and the details of everyday life to be convincingly Georgian. Research into where and when and how can throw up no end of plot possibilities – and problems.

Regency Ladies by O. Benson

Then there’s the question of scenes and chapters. Each one must add something to the plot and the reader’s understanding of the characters as well as having a crescendo. Why would you read on if the scene isn’t going somewhere?

So I’ve been happily imagining what the exit point of each scene might be. Sometimes it’s a steady build-up, in others, a different strand comes to interrupt the flow and forms the climax. All good stuff – it’s taken four rough drafts to get this far.

One thing I’ve tried this time is working backwards. It sounds odd, and it is a brain-strain, but it does make sure everything pays off.

Here’s a ‘frinstance’:

I knew I needed a particular character to successfully forge a signature on a document. By tracing that in reverse, I could put in an earlier moment where they are praised for their handwriting (much to another character’s disgust) and and even earlier incident where someone who might spot the forgery is shown to be unlikely to. The difficult bit is making this none-too-obvious: lots of head-scratching and the use of distraction were needed.

So now ( version 5) I have a dirty great long sequence of discrete episodes grouped into chapters. There are some gaps with notes like Her experience at school will be largely unpleasant – but by-and-large, it is done. My foetus has vertebrae.

Image by Leo Reynolds

How do you tackle the spine of your work?

Excuses, excuses…

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This week I have been mostly playing.

View from our bedroom window

On Wednesday TWH ( The Wonderful Husband) suggested a break away beginning on Saturday. It would have been rude to refuse, wouldn’t it?

Shadow of a palm tree - see, there's sunshine.

I have managed a book review and a short story for a competition on the literary front. I’ve done surprising amounts of exercise, eaten really quite healthily and actually experienced sunshine – in Corsica. There’s been aerobics in the sea, a ride on a catamaran and best of all (so far) a walk to a waterfall and a swim in its plunge pool. It was bliss.

Cool and lovely after a walk.

So I’m sorry there are no writing revelations this week to share with my faithful readers…

A little past Pimms' o'clock...

…unless you can think of something yourselves?

 

Reading material

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This post owes its parentage to Vanessa Harbour on ‘The importance of reading as a writer’ and Maureen Lynas’s writing about an approach to structure. I thank them both for getting me thinking about what I read and how it affects my writing.

One notable feature of the MA at West Dean was the challenge of reading in new genres. Without that I would never have discovered the emotional intensity of ‘A Quiet Belief in Angels’ by  R. J. Ellory  or to be honest ,the complex and satisfying structures used by Agatha Christie & Ngaio Marsh. I didn’t ‘do’ crime fiction before. It’s taught me to be an even wider ranging reader.

Now I enjoy being sent books by Vivienne Da Costa for Serendipity Reviews. There are joys like the sheer delight of seeing a much-liked author Chris Priestley come into his own – really using his deep knowledge  to create ‘Mister Creecher’. Or the pleasure of reviewing a colleague’s debut novel like ‘Slated’ by Teri Terry.

I am sent different age-ranges and genres – this helps me to see what I admire, and also what I don’t want to write.

Greg Mosse insists students understand that it’s not what we like in a Reading-Group-glass-of-wine-and-nibbles way that matters, but what works. To my family’s annoyance during the MA year I couldn’t watch anything without taking it apart to see the gears and cogs. I keep quiet now – but I’m still anatomising in my head.

And yet…

It’s not just that, however useful. It’s about inspiration. The things that make me want to write.

This will sound cringeworthy but it is true: I want to pay it forward.

I want to take readers to new worlds.

I loved Narnia and Earthsea and Pern and Middle Earth ( yes I know -it’s our world millenia ago). How wonderful to transport other people somewhere special.

I want to speak with my own voice.

I can hear writers like David Almond and Robert Westall, and Leon Garfield and Joan Aiken. They taught me I can be myself, Northern vowels and all. That you can use language to give flavour and identity. I want to share that.

I want to revel in reworked tradition.

I think of Alan Garner, George Mackay Brown Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper and nowadays Katherine Langrish, Jackie Morris and Pat Walsh. They develop shared folklore, myth and legend and keep it alive. It’s too good not to pass on.

I want to express my delight in transformation.

Books move me far more than cinema or TV, they always have done. I can never forget the change in Mary Lennox in ‘The Secret Garden’, or Eustace Clarence Scrubb in ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’. And I’m still a soppy date about Scrooge & Silas Marner. Who wouldn’t want to show what people can become?

So, in short, I think you have to read and read and read  to be even a halfway decent writer. Or at least I do.

How about you?