Tag Archives: writer

Betwixt & between

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This time of year can make you feel adrift. Though traditionally we are still in Christmastide until Twelfth Night, it now seems more like a form of Limbo – waiting for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. There’s a pause in the circling of the year as it turns over to start all over again.

The colloquial use of Limbo as a place or time when everything is held up may well seem apposite for these days – but it feels more like Purgatory to me. There is a sense of working through things, of heading towards a new destination.

In Science for Year Three, we looked at  the life-cycle of the butterfly. I learned that the caterpillar doesn’t just sprout wings that it already had and fly away. Remarkably, it deconstructs itself, becoming a chrysalis full of insect soup before re-assembling its constituent parts as a butterfly. It strikes me that such a radical transformation is not entirely comfortable.

This time of year is often unsettling. The shades of those who are not here drift across the celebrations. We recall things we wish we had not done – or perhaps regret things we have. The focus on our families and friends can stir up muddier thoughts and feelings than we care to consider aloud. Where are the boundaries?

From a writer’s point of view, this is all good. I make no wonder that there are ghost stories a-plenty – so many secrets, so many hidden things coming to the surface ( see my post from earlier in the month).  As my YA author friends know, The Edge is an interesting place to be.

Yes – emergence is demanding.

So to all my writing friends – and any one with  expectations for 2012:

I wish you a hopeful Christmas

I wish you a brave New Year

May all anguish, pain and sadness

Leave your heart and let your road be clear.

(Greg Lake)

The Ambridge Delusion

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The long-running serial ‘The Archers’ works best when it creates illusion of being there. The writers make the audience almost believe they are overhearing something as it occurs.How do they achieve this sense of immediacy?

First off, there is no prefiguring: no-one announces what will occur in the future. They cannot possibly know, so they don’t foretell. This applies well to a novel too.

Secondly, there is little back story. OK , sometimes a newly-arrived character will be brought up to speed – but that kind of exposition can be clumsy even in experienced hands. Best not to have ‘As you know…’ dialogue, then.

Thirdly, there are rarely more than two characters interacting in any one scene. There’s no confusion that way. This seems a reasonable idea to pursue, in dialogue especially – no problems with attribution then.

Furthermore, characters are created by layering. Habitual Archers listeners will have heard many different aspects of the regulars over the years – but only one at a time. We compose our view of the characters out of the evidence we’ve been given.

It cracks on because there is only dialogue and implied action. Nobody wastes time reflecting and informing you what they are thinking – you have to work it out.

Finally, there’s no voice-over. No busy-body author telling you what to think or describing the scene in boring detail – that’s left to a few choice sound effects and your imagination.

All-in-all, not a bad way to think about keeping it apparently real.

Summoning up the past

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On Wednesday 7th December, I went to the opening of a Christmas Tree Festival at St John’s Chapel, Chichester in aid of Chestnut Tree House Children’s Hospice. The lights were switched on by Kate Mosse and the twinkling trees were a delight. But the thing that struck me most was the smell. I wasn’t the only one: a lady lost in thought murmured:

‘it takes me right back, that scent.’

Inspired by the event and with the help of a little mulled wine, I decorated our Christmas tree. Out came the wonky angel made by my middle son at playgroup, the toilet roll mini Christmas tree made by my youngest at nursery, and the dangly felt and bead caterpillar my eldest once sewed ( they are all in their twenties now). So many memories.

I put on Radio Four to keep me company – and caught one of their Weird Tales. It was, I thought, suitably spooky. It started me thinking about ghost stories and Christmas.There are fine literary  antecedents: M. R. James, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton – not to mention the oral tradition. What is the link?

At a simple level, the dark months make us hungry for brightness – and a light casts shadows. Could my Jewish or Hindu readers tell me if here is a similar need for the uncanny around the festivals of Hanukkah and Diwali?  Humans love the contrast of light and shade – few things better than being safe indoors while the storm is out there, or the wraiths.

But there is more. Ritual brings us closer to those who have gone.

I cannot attach the one remaining little bird with its spun glass tail without thinking of my Nanna. I feel that pinch to the nose, that puckering of my forehead which show sentiment has got the better of me. I see her fingers pinching the tiny clip. This physical resonance is much deeper than creepy stories to out-scare the ghoulies and ghaisties and long leggedy beasties.

Some call up benign spirits – I think happily of L.M.Boston’s Children of Green Knowe – but others fetch more furtive shades. Not all memories should be recalled. Nonetheless, I think that’s why love ghost stories at Christmas – they close up the gap between the living and the dead.

Writer for Sale or Rent

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Vintage 1961 model in good working order

  •  includes brand new MA (Creative Writing)  from West Dean College
  • at home with Junior School children ( has previous as teacher)
  • however it would be fair to point out disturbing darker side to personality
  • addicted to anything maritime, the weirder aspects of folklore and ghost stories
  • excellent creator of imaginary worlds but definitely not streetwise
  • needs direction – middle grade, tweens or teens?
  • worryingly keen on dressing-up
  • grammar, punctuation & spelling in good condition
  • has demonstrated writing stamina
  • Yorkshire background – will work for tea and crumpets

All suggestions considered.

 

What sort of writer do you want to be?

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The viva voce for my MA in Creative Writing was on Monday. I have passed ( thanks to superb tuition from Greg Mosse) – and I am immediately wondering which subset in the Venn diagram of authors I should inhabit.

I’ve been asked to consider writing for adults. Straight off I flinch at that. I will admit to an entire Harry Ramsden’s on my shoulder about the status of children’s writers. It is compounded of my experience as a teacher that your rank is in direct proportion to the age of the children taught; the same impulse that made the ‘Children’s Writing IS a proper job’ badge sell out so quickly in November 2010, and Martin Amis’s remarks in February about brain injury and writing for children. The subtext is that writing for adults is somehow better, cleverer, more valuable.

Well, I’m with John Dougherty:

Don’t worry Martin. We can’t all be imaginative and versatile.

One of the things I admire most about the literature published for young people is the sheer range and breadth of ideas. Big ideas, written for people who will not be blinded by the effulgent beauty of your prose nor give one microfortnight of attention to reviews by your literary chums.

It is notable that David Almond (a literary hero to me) found a sense of liberation in writing for the young. I am put in mind of this concept:

Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.

Robert Moss, Dreamgates 

Quite simply, I believe young people are more likely to be receptive to the stories following me about and asking to be told than adults. And I bother to write because of my belief in those same young people, and what stories are for.

 Every word written, every sentence, every story, no matter how dark the story itself might seem, is an act of optimism and hope, a stay against the forces of destruction.

David Almond, Hans Christian Anderson Award acceptance speech

Now before I get all too Messianic, I’d also like to point out that despite all the moaning of the pessimists, the children’s book market is thriving. According the ‘The Bookseller’ in 2001 it was worth £193 million – and in 2010 £325 million. Christopher Paolini’s ‘Inheritance’ sold more than 76,000 copies in UK in first week of publication this November.
Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ (Man Booker winner) ? 14,600.
Children’s books often demonstrate the effectiveness of long tail marketing: they carry on being bought long after the brass bands and banners have left town.
It’s possible for me and my colleagues to do well.
When I decided to get serious about writing, I read Alison Baverstock’s unsettling but finally very useful ‘Is there a Book in You?’. She made it quite clear how important a support system is for any writer. My best scaffolding comes from SCBWI – I know I can contact wonderful people who will talk me down off the parapet, sort out my formatting issues or just plain be there. The conference in Winchester is a highlight of my year.
What other sort of writer could I possibly want to be?
Then come the next questions: YA or middle grade? Fantasy or thriller? Ghost stories or sea stories?
 to be continued….

Cooking the books

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Those of you who have been on Arvon courses will know that taking part in the cooking is integral to the Arvon experience. At The Hurst, I was a member of the Thursday Singing Crew and whilst stirring my onions and belting out Songs from the Shows, I thought about the creative process.

As I see it, when you get ideas for a book and you do research, you’re looking in the fridge and the larder. You dig out the things you have in store, your experiences, your memories. Maybe you pick up something new. You assemble all your bits like the TV chefs and have a good think.

You might already know the shape of the book, the form it will take: you’d know if you intended to make a soup or a sorbet. Likewise, you’d have an idea of genre be it a ghost story or a spy thriller. Sometimes the best things come from fusion – anyone for supernatural romance or a sci-fi western? Whatever it may be, you’d need some idea of the conventions if only to subvert them.

Some mixes might have limited appeal, like snail porridge or a robotic bodice-ripper but throwing everything in results in a mish-mash, a pot-boiler, which pleases no-one. You know the kind of bottom of the fridge stir-fry, or plot with far too many elements thrown at it. The Venetians have an expression:

non piu di cinque ( no more than five)

not a bad idea in writing as well as in your risotto. The more you add, the more it diminishes the whole.

But that doesn’t mean the judicious use of herbs and spices doesn’t have its place. Just a little of something unexpected can lift the ordinary into first class: chocolate in your chilli; an astonishing image at a critical moment. It all comes with effort and odd bursts of inspiration.

At first, you stick to the recipe, read every How-to. Then you get bolder, take a few risks, produce the weird and the inedible. Only after a great deal of experimentation, maybe with the help of someone more experienced, do you learn how to handle it yourself.

Finally, I hope, you reach a stage where your work pleases your taste and people like what you do. You create for yourself, using your own intuition as a guide but not ignoring thousands of years of tradition. You have a style, a voice of your own and, although people may adapt what you’ve done, you make something distinct and original.

Like a soufflé, there may be lots of work done to create a short-lived moment, but at best, something may linger in the memory of many people. We all need things to sustain us.

 

Remember, remember.

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This week’s blog is later than usual due to the absolute lack of internet at The Hurst in Shropshire. It was a great week full of workshops and advice from the lovely Linda Newbery and Celia Rees around the creation of YA fiction. One of the great bonuses was the opportunity to have work read and a tutorial from each of these successful writers.

I had my slot with Linda early on – she was as encouraging and helpful as I expected, and has helped me tighten up the beginning of my Scoresby story. It was much appreciated. The chance to ask for Celia’s expertise came on Friday. Truth told, I was a little anxious about this: she had been quite forthright in her opinions all week and I suspected sh.

Nonetheless, I asked her to give my structure the once over – and she was kind enough to offer to read an extract too. I know from my feedback from Ellen Renner some years ago that honest advice is much more useful than cosy niceness. It might be pleasant to be reassured how good your work is – but it won’t advance your understanding much.

So I went and I listened and I learnt: curiously I was more interested in the things she saw needed changing than praise (though that was relished). The stand-out piece of advice, the rocket that soared over the whole bonfire of pertinent observations was:

Don’t get hung up on the ordinary stuff.

Now the immediate context was the overlong first section of my book. Celia explained that although competently written, elements of this detracted from the true story and should go. They were relatively pedestrian and it was time to murder a few darlings.

But there was more to this. Throughout the week, it became clear that quite a few of us often wrote what we felt we ought to, rather than what truly excited us. When we babbled on about our enthusiasms, or better still, wrote using them, our work came alive. So why on earth weren’t we using our true voices?

So the message I’ve taken, burnt into my understanding like the trail of a sparkler, is that mining the resources inside myself will develop who I am as a writer. I’ve never been what you might call ‘normal’, and it’s always ended in tears when I’ve tried to be. Let others write realistic contemporary urban: I’ll stick to my own variety of weirdness.

Sense of Place

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When scouting for a new novel, or just out and about, I love to collect sensual details.I enjoy experiencing the feel of clambering up ancient marble and hanging onto broken tiles incorporated in the masonry of an abandoned Ottoman castle, the pungent almost medicinal smell of the arid scrubland and the squidgy icing-sugar dusted pleasure of lokum.

I aim to use this sort of detail to locate the reader in a specific place quite economically – without breaking their concentration on the point of view character. The details must be integral to the action of the character, or they become distractions, mere showing-off. So describing a decayed, hand-built door with its intricate handle that our heroine goes through is legitimate – but one that she just passes – no.

I could also use the physical sensations encountered in a given place to add to the mood of a scene – the so-called  ‘pathetic fallacy’. A character on the run across the maquis above the Gulf of Izmir will feel the harsh spines of the grey thorns and perhaps bark their shins on a rough volcanic outcrop.On the other hand, a reflective moment might give them chance to appreciate the red lanterns of autumnal pomegranates and feel the tiny downdraught of a hummingbird hawkmoth.

The details have to be those that the character focuses on in accordance with their emotional state.

Another use of the specifics of an area is to suggest back-story. When showing the initial status quo of the central character, elements of their past can be summoned by the location. Jason Goodwin does this successfully, and in fascinating detail, in his Yashim books – both for Yashim and Istanbul herself. Similarly inherent conflict with secondary characters can be shown – the house with the rusting bike chucked up on the stone walls of the old town as against the modern apartment close to the new marina.It doesn’t take a great deal to suggest differences in culture, social status or wealth.

But the aspect of location that really matters is its relationship with plot. I need to seek out the geography of action: those things that the heroine could experience, those things she might do. I might have her sodden by unexpected rain whilst minding her mother’s stall in the Friday market – the pide is ruined and there will be trouble, or she collects broken boxes after the street market and breaks the thin wood across her knee to feed their fire because the Anatolian winter has come early.

All these things, however exact they may be, are only any use if they add to the story. If it doesn’t help tell the tale, it’s only padding.

I need to be a magpie,collecting the shiny and the attractive everywhere I go – but I need to realise only some of my hoard is true treasure.

Facing the Truth

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Today, 3rd September 2011, I went toPallant House Art Gallery’s Open Day. This was an ‘artist’s date’ to use Julia Cameron’s term. Having reached the end of the first draft of my novel for the MA, my inspirational well was bone-dry.

I needed to make the most of it, so I took my time and explored David Jones’ Xtension exhibition and other artists’ work. The thing which struck me was the unashamed truthfulness of the best artworks. In ‘Icarus in Brighton’ there are beautiful nymphs or goddesses, the pier, the fallen young man – and a coke can. This ‘outsider artist’ showed what he saw in his mind’s eye.

I compared the ships of the naive artist Alfred Wallis with the other works of the St Ives artists represented in the collection.For me, his work has an unselfconscious strength. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder, wondering what critics might think. He created. That’s all.

I coughed up my £2.50 and went to see the Frida Kahlo & Diego Riviera Exhibition. I loved how Frida painted her own moustache with the same care as the lace round her neckline. She showed faces with warts, scabs, pouts and unplucked eyebrows.

Her husband said it all:

‘She tears open her heart and her chest to tell the biological truth about what she feels.’

As a writer, I aspire to such honesty, such ‘telling it as it is’. I think of Rembrandt’s later portraits – who would not aim for such truthfulness of compassion?

So that is my justification for observing closely a family drama played out in a cafe. I noted down the expressions, the phrases and the actions in order to convey emotions truthfully as I see them. I shamelessly dissected what was going on, remaining uninvolved and dispassionate ( I recall Kahlo trained to be a doctor). The point of such apparently callous behaviour is to get at the truth.

Squeamishness in a surgeon is something to be overcome – and I think it is also in a writer.

Mapping out the territory

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Swaledale Barn by Andy Coulson

A few years ago, we went on a giant pub crawl around the Yorkshire Dales. There was lot of laughing, rain , sheep, quaffing, rain, sheep, drystone walls, scenery and rain. My part in this adventure ( Four Go Mad in Swaledale sort of thing) was to mark out the route. Continue reading →