Tag Archives: read

Tell it true

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David Almond’s handshake was warm and strong. He was welcoming and unpretentious though the delegates were quiet and perhaps, like me, thought – that’s David Almond, that is – and I’m here in the same room. Me.

Despite all that hero-worship, he encouraged us to offer own work written oh-so-quickly there and then. He gave off appreciation and candour – even to Mrs Gobby here.  In the spirit of that openness, this post will be about those elements of the master-class that really touched me. They are interspersed with  some of my images of Newcastle to give you pondering time.  The quotations are David’s, the rest is my understanding of what he said.

Protect yourself as a writer.

Wherever you are along the writer’s way, you need things to sustain you. You will feel ‘stupid and insignificant and rejected’. There will be moments of bitterness and frustration. David said ‘create your own mythology’ of how you came to be a writer as something to draw on.

Honour your own work.

Every day find that piece which is you – identify what’s authentic. Where have you connected with the story and transcended the obvious ? What resonates? Get that stuff out and value it – it might be scary but it is truly yours.

Indulge in the process.

Being playful allows you to be all sorts of writers. You never know what sort of writer you are until you become that kind – it’s a sort of acting. When you think about it , as he said, ‘My Name is Mina‘ by David Almond is such a pretence. Playing lets you be ‘alert and relaxed’ without the brain too engaged – the ideal state for writing. He likes to scribble, to jot, to rough things out by hand – it leads to messy notebooks and a sense of freedom. Speed can help too.

Find unexpected opportunities in yourself.

‘Stop fighting yourself – let who you are out’. Such an inspiring thought – that it’s our imperfection that generates creativity. ‘Sometimes the things you draw on you might not want to’ he acknowledged – but he rejected the concept of challenging difficult emotions and experiences.

Writing well comes from every art of you.

It’s not about confronting –

it’s about allowing.

There was more about about turning ‘the mess in your head into straight lines on the paper’ but I want to finish with what seems to me the fundamental notion of writers I admire:

To write a book is an act of great hope.

My hope is that one day a book will come to me as Skellig did – ‘full of energy and grace’. Meanwhile, I will take advice that I have had from many different sources ( David Almond, Greg Mosse, Celia Rees, Linda Newbery…) – write some more.

Souvenirs de Carcassonne

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I have just sorted out my photographs of Carcassonne. It has been quite revealing to see what I wanted to capture and what I recall best. For me, it has shown up recurrent obsessions that are reflected in my writing.

 

As you know from last week’s post, I’ve been itching to go to Carcassonne for quite some while – and it isn’t all Kate Mosse’s fault. I have long had a hankering for the medieval: my A level Art project was Women’s Costume 1340-1485 ( which I believe I still have lurking somewhere complete with a picture of nobles listening to Chaucer) and I’m a bit of an Early Music fan too. I am hopelessly wrong but romantic – I don’t actually mind that Eugène Viollet-le-Duc ‘restored’ things in his own way. I love the world he conjured, even if it never quite existed.

I think it’s safe to assert that I won’t be writing contemporary social realism.

There I am walking round and my inner child is fighting off dragons, repelling besiegers and generally having an Errol Flynn sort of time. I can’t wait to get onto the battlements, peer through arrow slits and charge along the wooden galleries. (Did you know they were covered with animal hides to prevent fire?) I take many a panorama of La Cité in its setting and daydream about minstrels travelling along the banks of the Aude.

You might just guess from that I Iike action and adventure, and I aspire to big books with lots of scope. I am no Jane Austen.

I have lots of shots of gargoyles and grotesques. I love them. I love the craftsmen’s humour, their attention to detail and the edge of darkness it shows. I have also focused on decay, on the derelict and the hidden. There are glimpses of funeral wreaths inside crypts, flaking shutters and half-open doors. I am terminally nosey. I want to know what happens behind the façades. What are the secrets, where have the lost souls gone?

I’d suggest you don’t read my work if you want only sunny fun and bonhomie. Expect creepiness.

Even my water passion got a look in – it astonished me how delighted I was that I could hear the Aude purling over its weirs from our little room. I so enjoyed crossing the Pont Vieux and walking along the Canal du Midi too. Just the little waterspouts that worked made me want to clap my hands.

So there we have it: my books are likely to be set in an invented world that evokes our past, involve a fair bit of action, contain a good dose of weirdness and at least a splatter of the wet stuff.

I think that’s fair.

What about you – do your holiday snaps reflect your writing?

Playing away

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I am going to Carcassonne for the first time tomorrow. I have a soft spot for any walled city or castle and a deeply romantic yearning for the medieval. I think I have dragged my poor parents to every single Norman castle in Wales and one of my earliest memories is being told off for using the clothes prop as a lance. I can only have been five.

You can guess that I am really excited.

However this trip has absolutely nothing to do with my current work-in-progress The Wedding Ghost, nor any other writing I have on the back-burner. It certainly has no relevance  to selkies. So what is the point?

First of all, it is a creative respite: in Julia Cameron’s terms, a chance to refill my well. I have been bashing the first draft of my ghost story and I’m pretty drained. Something unrelated yet inspiring gets the muse going again, I often find. Besides a little French cuisine and culture is all to the good.

Cassoulet - this I must try.

Secondly, you never know, it might start something off. I do not think I would be treading on Kate Mosse‘s toes if I were to write my sort of fantasy adventure prompted by  Carcassonne. A. she is far too generous a writer to mind, B. I don’t think I could manage such involved doorstops as she does and C. it would end utterly transformed by the time I’d finished with it if any of my other locations are anything to go by. Scoresby is not Scarborough, Selchester is not Chichester nor Selsey and The Isle of Wythering exists in some dark space on the South Coast entirely of its own.

Thirdly, it is a deliberate distraction. My MA novel provisionally titled The Seal People of Scoresby Nab is out there: somebody professional is reading it. I am understandably nervous yet I need to focus on what I am supposed to be doing now. I cannot emend my work by telekinesis so worrying about it is fruitless. Hence a trip away thanks to The Beloved Husband.

I am a very lucky wife and writer, I realise. I expect this will stoke me up for quite a while. I shall report back soon.

Which new place would you chose to set your muse singing?

Squaring the circle

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In The Alchemist, Paul Coelho created a memorable image of someone going through a wonderful palace carrying oil in a spoon. In the first pass, the acolyte could  recall nothing of the magical surroundings. Sent again, the precious oil was spilled. The skill was to observe and concentrate at the same time.

For me, writing is like that: doing two difficult, incompatible things at once.

Here’s one example of what I mean:

I have to fully experience life  to have anything worth saying – and I also need to be a disinterested observer. I need emotional engagement – ‘no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader’ and yet I must step outside my feelings. How else can I control their appearance on the page to best effect?

Something similar applies to planning. On one hand my rational side loves to organise, create outlines and have it all under control. Yet on the other, I know some of my most original writing stems from the unexpected, from departures from the planned route. How to be logical yet open to creativity? It’s a struggle.

Here’s another – how much to connect with other writers? I love the creative buzz of physically being with my colleagues, and the virtual common room which is the net, but it can easily distract me from my own purposes. I have to be centred in myself too. The same goes for reading – the good earth of others’ work is essential for my growth – but I must also find my own garden to nurture. Somehow I want to be informed and yet uninfluenced.

And I could go on.

What irreconcilable opposites do you cope with?

Worlds apart

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World-building is something most obviously associated with authors of science fiction and fantasy. However it is also clearly relevant to history writers  – and I would argue almost any writer worth their salt. Even if you write contemporary social realism, you are still  investigating a culture.Especially if that culture is located elsewhere to that of the intended reader, you have to indicate it.  Google Earth doesn’t show attitudes.

For example,  we all know what an airport look like so you don’t need to describe it in great detail, but what aspects will be central to the people in your book? What will they pick up on? It’s the perspective that matters.

As part of the MA at West Dean, we looked at the opening sequence of ‘Robots’. Here an entire mechanical town is brought to life in seconds through minor characters before we get into the ‘real story’. A notable feature was that each little robot character had its own volition – they were all doing something for themselves ( not our benefit) that brought us into their world.

I’m reading Jackdaw Summer by David Almond at present. Here the introduction shows us the boys’ world very clearly through their eyes by the things that they do – again well before we encounter the ‘main ‘ story.

In each case the introduction is economical but effective. There is a profound sense of much more thought underpinning what we see. But the creation of culture, however intricate, isn’t enough. You don’t need to create languages and maps and dynasties of kings like Tolkien, wonderful though they are. His worlds work because they are illuminated by cracking good stories and characters we care about.

It’s similar to special effects in films – like fire,  CGI is a good servant but a poor master. We all know films that look wonderful yet feel empty. The same can occur with books – full of style but forgettable.

The point is that whatever we put in the book must move along the story or cast light upon the characters  – otherwise it’s so much window-dressing. Brian Froud’s fabulous parallel cultures of the Mystics and the Skeksis in ‘Dark Crystal’ are there because they matter to both the plot and the beings in the film.

There are  dangers in portraying another world too carefully, be it designer fashion or a space outpost. One one hand you can insult the reader’s intelligence, and on the other loose the things that matter in a welter of detail. This doesn’t mean you can neglect your homework, though. Aardman animations can get Gromit’s subtle expressions right because they put in the hard work in the first place.

So whatever your genre, take a leaf from the Old Masters. The second rate portrait artists were superb at showing lace and jewellery and sumptuous fabrics. The best left those aspects sketchy and put the most skill into the faces. You have to choose what really matters.

 

A little bit of what you fancy…

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Today I had the pleasure of visting Arundel. I’ve always liked the name, it sounds vaguely Arthurian to me, and it is by a tidal river. Now it so happened that my chauffeur-cum-Long-Suffering-Husband took longer than he’d said and I had more time than expected.

So I day-dreamed. What else does a writer do?

I drank tea and watched a man explain how to use the motorboat they had hired to a rather wobbly family. He stroked the cover of the engine absentmindedly, like the flank of a familiar horse. ‘Oh ho,’ goes my imagination,’what if the riverboats were truly alive?’

Over a little while, the river changed course. The golden brown water went from wrinkled to smooth, turned ripply and headed the other way. The mat of weed I’d seen whooshing along towards Littlehampton with its cargo of a camellia blossom came back.

What other things might come back and forth? Things people had cast away. Things they wanted to get rid of. The thrower would have to be someone not familiar with the river – someone up to no good.

And as for the strange tunnel I saw heading into the hill, well, it was only a sense of trespassing that meant I stopped at just a photograph.

I didn’t even need to go to the castle. I found stories all over. If nothing else, my imagined tales kept me amused on a blustery changeable April day, but it may be that these thoughts are the seeds of a larger story. Ideas have a tendency to grow.

I believe imagination is our most valuable resource – and a bit of indulgence is always welcome.

Where does your fancy lead you?

 

 

 

 

Copy – wrong?

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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – anon

It is very easy to echo a favourite writer. Like picking up a strong accent, you may well do it in unconscious admiration. Does that make your work fake? A blend of your most-read authors would not be plagiarism as such – but would it still be your work ?

Since we are a result of our life experiences – and a book properly read and interacted with is an experience – I would say this is inevitable. We write who we are – and we imitate.

But I’d suggest taking it one stage further. Do it deliberately.

Take an aspect  – the structure of a thriller, the rhyme scheme of a poem, one choice character – and play with it. Analyse how they did it and apply your new knowledge. You might draft a thriller set in a completely different world, compose a poem on another topic or send that character on a new voyage.

It worked for Constable – an avid copyist:  Shakespeare – a great ‘borrower’ of stories and writers such as Jean Rhys in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ & Susan Hill in ‘Mrs de Winter’. There are many more examples – indeed for most of art history learning from the Masters (please forgive the sexist term) was de rigeur.

You may wish to acknowledge the original  – to make the source obvious. I did so in my poem ‘Meanwhile, Mr Ferlinghetti’ because it was a reply – but it is not compulsory.

There is plenty of controversy in this area – arguments over intellectual property are complex and often heartfelt. I would say that it’s not the idea that matters – it is the execution: something I have learned from Greg Mosse on the West Dean MA. If I put in the spadework and create something new – well, then it’s my work.

I would love to know other people’s views on this – is it always wrong to copy?

Judge not…

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…that ye be not judged. Matthew Chapter VII verse i King James Bible

First of all I recognise that I need to look beyond first appearances. It’s too easy to dismiss people with assumptions and not make the effort to tease out their story. I need to observe actively, with more empathy.

The same goes for portrayal. Even the minor characters can be more than just ciphers with a bit of effort. The tiny receptionist with her tightly plaited hair muttering ‘Work isn’t important, hey handsome?’ behind her boss’s back as he wanders off – she’s too good to waste.

I also need to dig deeper, to talk to people my mother warned me against. I will admit to a certain degree of cowardice on  this one – but I know what I aspire to:

But oh how I need to be aware of the voice that disapproves of people. A close relative of the Inner Critic, it needs shutting up. In my work, I must let the reader see what the characters do, hear what they say – and leave it at that. Let the reader decide – provide no commentary from my interior Hyacinth Bouquet or even the closet fashionista.

I don’t need to pass any remark on Bermuda shorts, coral rubber beach clogs and sports socks pulled up to the calf, do I?

Finally , although not all adjectives and adverbs are an evil – they are suspect. This is how the nasty little Imp of Prejudice airs its views. Before I have even realised, it has sneakily slipped a stereotype into my story. Not only is it patronising, it’s lazy.

I wonder what tips my fellow writers have for exorcising this particular demon?

‘Psst – wanna do something illegal?’

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Truth told, Kathy Evans didn’t quite put it like that – but I did get the chance to go with her to the launch of Miriam Halahmy‘s ‘Illegal’ at Blackwell’s Bookshop, Portsmouth University . She mentioned it on Facebook and I blagged a lift – she is a delightful chauffeuse, I have to say (or I might have to go in the boot in future.)

As a writer, you don’t tend to get out a lot. It’s a solitary business – so a bit of human contact is good. Not only that but the outside world provides its own stimulus. Even a change of scenery can prompt better writing – and going anywhere near a place of learning – well…

There is more. I was glad to see Anita Loughrey and Amanda Lillywhite there – more SCBWI pals. Regular readers will know how much I value the fellowship that SCBWI offers. Not only do they understand the obsession you have, they share it too  – and encourage you in your lunacy. That’s some support network.

I hope Miriam felt suitably encouraged.

It isn’t just about the friendships, though. There is also a good chance of meeting agents and publishers at launches. You might build up other contacts such as publicists – and it does no harm to be seen.

However, it was when Miriam read the beginning of ‘Illegal’ that I found the most personal reason to be there. People from a fair old variety of decades and types stood and listened. They went  into that little world that Miriam had squashed inside the pages of her book. It wasn’t a world that I could make. It wasn’t marketed at the readers I write for – but the story still existed. And that’s what mattered to me – one day it could be me. People might want to enter my little worlds.

I need that hope to hang on to.

Thank you, Miriam and Kathy.

All that is gold does not glitter

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This week I thoroughly enjoyed this blog post by Meg Rossoff  and the reply from Kathryn Evans here. Both wrote fascinating and well-constructed accounts of their intriguing lives. I feel honoured to have such brilliant people among my friends and acquaintances – and I know very many of you reading this could come up with equally extraordinary autobiographies.(Please do – I’d love to read them.)

But I also felt very humble. I haven’t done anything half so interesting – I’ve had a rather dull little life. How can I possibly account myself a writer in amongst these wondrous folk?

Well, I do have that essential quality for a writer – imagination.

My CV may not include the distillation of noxious herbs and their application to vile old women ( you’ll be glad to read), I may not be qualified to mount the most spectacular fireworks display in a ruined priory – nor am I actually able to shape-shift and explore the depths of the North Sea – but I can dream these things up.

And I am something of a pirate – I raid books and magazines and TV programmes and films and other people’s conversations. I sneak off with the shiny bits and clothe myself in their finery. I can nab a bit of someone else’s life and try it on for size: the more magnificent, the better.

Sometimes I even dress that way.

So my friends, if you are like me, a bit commonplace, it’s fine. The source of your writing may not be obvious.

Even a little grey pigeon can be a peacock on the inside.