Tag Archives: writer

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?

 

Get over yourself

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Yesterday I made a complete fool of myself. In public. In front of people whose good opinion I deeply desire and those I am supposed to be helping.#epicfail

I had to take part in a mock interview with a much-respected colleague as a demo for newer MA students. I was simply supposed to speak about my work-in-progress.

I really struggle to tell a story in mid-field, as it were. I can give you the grand sweeping overview – girl with magical powers has to choose between saving her mother or saving her city – or the close-up detail – Georgiana plays knucklebones with her friends the Blewcoat Boys. Anything inbetween I still find appallingly difficult. Before I’ve even opened my lips, what I have to say sounds so lame, I just dry up. And when I do venture something, it’s just plain wrong: not what I was asked to do.

So humiliating.

Those around me could not have been more supportive. No-one tried to make me feel pathetic – I was surrounded by encouragement.

But I still couldn’t do it.

Having been told it was both easy and an essential skill didn’t really help. Nor having it demonstrated with admirable skill by others. Currently, I feel an utter failure with no future in writing.

I know. Ridiculous. But it is how I feel amongst the tears.

But I’m still carrying on. I watch my friends stream ahead of me with book deals and agents and distinctions and just plain skill. I just crawl a bit further.

Give me a wave when you pass.

 

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.

Washing the Elephant

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When you start a novel – where do you begin? Assuming you’ve done all your research and your thinking, how do you set about it?

I think there are two main approaches: Character-Led and Plot-Driven

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
Michelangelo

This mysterious process is how the Character-Led writer works it seems to me. They know who’s inside their imagination, set them free and follow their adventures.These authors see action and hear dialogue – and then record what occurs. Marvellous stuff.(Meg Rossoff, I mean you.)

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

But what if you make a mistake? If the chisel slips? If you find what the protagonist does on page 136 means you have to change pages 97, 43 & 25 and that means Chapter 3 is a bit dodgy too. Rather like sorting out a Sudoku when you write the wrong answer and only realise three entries further on. My puny little brain can’t hold all that in, but clearly some writers can.

Now for the other sort: Plot-Driven.

This seems to me like creating an armature when sculpting. You focus on getting the underlying structure to work first.

One day I will be a pussy-cat.

It might not much look much to start with but it gives shape to the finished work. You add more and more layers to create the final piece. And these are relatively easy to change. A small adjustment can make a big difference in characterisation – think of manipulating millimetres of Plasticine in Gromit’s face.

Of course, you can make your own frameworks. You don’t have to follow some pre-made thing like a Paint-Your-Own-Gnome set. It was fascinating  to see how Marcus Sedgwick devised the structures for his novels on the SCBWI-BI retreat at Dunford House.  He said he found that though some decisions seemed arbitrary at the time,  the finished book showed them to be entirely right.

Not everyone feels confident about creating their own from scratch: there’s nothing wrong with using a tried & tested form and adapting it to your own needs. ‘Cinderella’ becomes ‘Pretty Woman’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ becomes ‘West Side Story’. It’s a long and honourable tradition.

I think you can tell which I go for.

I made it!

One final thought: my perception is that many women writers can do the character-led thing, indeed prefer it, whereas male writers tend to favour the plot-driven approach ( and ex-tomboys like me). Is this imagined or real?

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?

 

 

 

 

Truth and tradition

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The Penny Farthing Post

I am indebted to the BBC news for this treasure – the wonderful Graham Eccles who collects and delivers post around Bude by penny-farthing bicycle ( video link here). Who could not admire his initiative? We all like active heroes and the rise in the price of stamps won’t harm his enterprise. But there’s more than just this.

Certainly there is the sheer visual charm – which cannot but delight tourists and locals alike – but he is carrying on the fine British tradition of eccentricity. He is also providing a service by putting a new spin on an old idea.

Carlin Sunday

This report I owe to the venerable yet lively Whitby Gazette (established 1854). It is the custom to serve carlin pease (a kind of medieval mushy pea) on Passion Sunday – and it is still done in some pubs in the North- East – report here. There are a variety of stories to account for this – in different ports in particular – a fine example of how folk tales evolve to explain customs. You can read more here.

I love how the much-neglected English Civil War crops up in this – reminding us of our shared history. The people of the British Isles should be proud of who they are. I don’t believe this excludes anybody – our much-settled isle has enough stories to share with the whole world.

 What relevance to the writer for young people?

These (and so many, many more) traditions go beyond quaint. I happily accept that quirkiness is to be cherished for its own sake but the observation of Pace Egg Rolling and Shrove Tuesday Skipping in Scarborough and the like is also a reply. The continuance of shared customs – through taking part and celebration in writing – is a counter-blast to the dominant celebrity ‘culture’.

It’s not corporate. it’s not blandly international like the wall art in hotel rooms, it’s ours.

Recently I  heard someone fear that books can be rejected for being ‘too British’. Well, pah to that.  Felicity Bryan at the Chichester Writing Festival ( see my reports here & here – and also  Liz Fenwick’s here) gave an excellent answer to that, which I paraphrase:

Don’t worry about a book’s appropriateness for a given market – if the story and the characters are universal, the rest won’t matter.

 

Being true to who you are, to the ways of your own background whatever that maybe , is essential to you as a person and as a writer. I’m not saying you must mention Morris Dancers in your next book ( though the wonderful Terry Pratchett has given them a boost) but be aware of your tradition.

I want to see more writers exploring and reinventing folklore. Tradition dies if it is not re-invigorated – like marriage has received a fillip from the influx of same-sex couples.

I’ll leave the last words to the marvellous Show of Hands:

Seed, bark, flower, fruit
They’re never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoot
They need roots 

 

Roots by Show of Hands