Reading Aloud

Reading my work in public for the first time in such illustrious company as Tyler Keevil, Carly Holmes,  and Maggie Harris was probably not the best of ideas.  

(photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

But the ‘Cellar Bards’ in Cardigan is a welcoming and supportive group, and I was lucky enough to have some friends and friendly faces also contributing that evening.  

(photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

(Anne Marie's Blog)                   (Jackie's Blog)

So… well, I did it, and really, it wasn’t so bad at all.

(photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

The Bards meet every month, but Friday was the celebration of their third birthday, so Tyler was invited as their special guest.  He was a great choice, as his reading was so entertaining, drawing the audience into his story, holding our attention, making us want to know what happened.   He himself believes this is partly due to having an excellent drama-teacher in school, which shows, perhaps, the element of acting necessary to reading as performance.   Fortunately, I bought his book, so I know what was in the bag…

And for anyone who might want to know what happened in the rest of my story, it’s soon to be included in an anthology called ‘Secondary Character’, published by Opening Chapter.  (More details to follow!)

(photo courtesy of K. Drinkwater)

Thanks to everybody at the Cellar Bards, particularly Tyler  - and Carly, for being such a great compère, with a good word to say about every participant.  And also to Tyler’s parents, who were just so nice!

A feeling of place

Layla’s walking up the hill again, up to the top of the Mountains that ‘flaunt themselves in patchwork, fashioned by flora and weather.  Green, brown, purple with the heather.  Red with the dying sun, white in the heat of the day.  Only when the rain clouds slink over the Bluff do they turn dark as blankets.  But still they call them black.’

This is an extract from one of my stories, currently featured in the online edition of ‘The Lonely Crowd’ magazine (thelonelycrowd.org).  It’s great seeing it up there, and I’m particularly pleased because it’s set in one of my favourite places – the Black Mountains, the hills in the eastern part of mid-Wales, sheltering the small town of Talgarth, where we used to live.  I always felt that both the mountains and the town suffered from lying in the shadow of more famous neighbours – the Brecon Beacons; and Hay-on-Wye, the town of books, kings and emperors, and the greatest literature festival in the world.  Talgarth was always being declared - by estate-agents, anyway  - ‘up and coming’, and it’s well on the way now, with its highly-regarded mill/café venture (as seen on TV!), and fashionable residents, such as Owen Sheers and the guitarist from ‘Blur’.   But I loved it even back then, when it was in struggling small-town mode (closing facilities, boarded-up houses)– and I especially loved the mountains that rose above it.

Perhaps that’s why they feature so much in my writing. The main character of half my dual-narrative novel lives in a secluded house in the middle of them.  My collection of what I call ‘folk’ tales is set in various locations in and around them.  And now there’s ‘Queen’ – or as it was originally titled ‘Queen of the Black Mountains’.

In it, Layla turns out to be a figment of the narrator’s imagination – just as both these characters, and their ‘stories’ are figments of mine.  But the hill Layla climbs is real enough, leading from Talgarth, past the gates of what used to be the psychiatric hospital, and on, up to the heights.  And there are plenty of other images, still perfectly clear in my mind, insinuating their way onto the page. The Mace was the focal point of the Square, with a crowd of gossiping old women a permanent fixture  outside.  The Balloon Man wandered about, and Nike cap girl. And I remember looking out of our bedroom window soon after we moved and seeing the purple mountains, and thinking ‘they’re not black, at all’.  I’ve used this image here, and repeated it in several stories, just as I’ve done with the freedom ‘Layla’ feels up on the mountain tops – something I myself always experienced, the kind of emotion that only ‘being there’ might reveal.

Writing about the topic of setting in ‘The Guardian’ recently, David Nicholls talked about whether ‘being’ in a location was necessary for a writer, in these days of virtual mapping on Google.  His own preference is for first-hand experience, but he quotes many examples of fine novels, with perfectly-drawn, evocative settings, where it is well-documented that the author never visited.

For me, place, whether in fiction or real life, is to do with those emotional reactions, - connections, one might say - which have the ability to colour our perception of our surroundings and so influence our response to them.

I never really liked Northamptonshire, or Buckinghamshire, where we also lived, although I appreciated their ‘green and pleasant’ countryside, and their chocolate-box villages.  But I loved North Wiltshire, and, in particular, its ‘mythical/mystical’ elements – Avebury Stone circle and all the other megaliths strewn about the area;  Silbury Hill; the barrows; the white horses; the crop-circles (it never seemed to matter whether they were man-made or not - walking into one of them, the woman in front turned to me, with an ecstatic look on her face, saying ‘Can you feel the vibration!?  Can you feel it!?’  Well, I couldn’t, but I still shared her wonder).  Avebury is the setting of my Young Adult novel – a key aspect of which is how the three teen characters view this mysterious environment. And I hope my own ‘connection’ will be conveyed to my teenage readers, and allow them to share in its magic.

Avebury Stones (photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

As a writer, setting is a way of keeping the place with me, long after we’ve departed, as it has been with those Black Mountains, left even longer ago.

I haven’t set anything in Pembrokeshire yet, but I’m sure I will – that empathy for the landscape certainly exists here.  How could it not, when I am surrounded by its spectacular, ever-changing coastline, amazing wild-life, and its own sprinkling of magical stones?  I’ve got a few ideas, idling in the back of my mind, waiting to come to the fore.  Waiting for the right moment.  But not waiting for us to go from here, this time.  Home – another sense of place altogether.  And perhaps the best one of all.

Pembrokeshire Coast (photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

A Pause for Thought

A pause.

The Golden Egg book map is finished (in some form or other…).

The sun is shining.

Spring is rushing by, and the brambles, nettles, and creeping buttercup won’t hold themselves back, just because I want to write.

So…

Three days of work in the garden.  Three days of hard, physical labour, away from the computer, books, words.

Except, of course, it doesn’t work like that.

To begin with, I’m writing this blog in my head.  Such a long time since I posted last - that book map!  So I’m putting down a few thoughts, just to let any friends and family, who bother to check this out now and then, know that I’m still here, writing!

But it’s not only that…

Stories have a habit of behaving like a small child, and claiming your attention, no matter what you’re trying to do.  You may have decided that you are going to abandon them – for a few hours, days, weeks, even.  But they see things differently.

So here I am, on my hands and knees, for all the squirrels, birds and Buddhas to see; trowel in hand, weeding amongst the bluebells.  And all the time, my head is with a little girl in Avebury.  Sometimes, she’s right up in the front of my mind, whilst I work out what she’s saying, to whom, when.  At others, she’s just there, idling at the back, carrying on her own life, doing what she likes to do. It would be easy for me to say that these thoughts have been triggered by the tiny bird, ferreting around in front of me.  The girl (my YA novel’s heroine) is called Wren, after that bird.

But now there’s a young woman with a mother who says she’s God  - the subject of a short story I’m working on.

And the man with the axe, from a story I’m editing, keeps on reminding me not to forget him – there’s still work to be done.

Perhaps it’s just me.

Perhaps I need to practise my mindfulness, and learn to feel the earth beneath my hands (and knees).

Or perhaps it’s the way a story owns you, even though you thought it was the other way around.

Whatever it is, it’s not such a bad thing – to find yourself lost amid the wonder of these imagined lives and worlds, when what you seem to be doing is straining your back, whilst pulling up goose-grass in a Pembrokeshire back-garden.

E-Book Experience - an example to us all

Yesterday, I had my first experience of uploading a novel onto Amazon's Kindle Store.

Uploading to Kindle (photos courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

Well … not really.

The technical aspects were left to my husband, who knows the difference between a JPEG and HTML.

And it wasn’t my book.   It was ‘Single or Double’, a debut chic-lit story by a friend of mine, Julia Horton-Powdrill.   (see www.porthcwm.co.uk)

Single or Double?

 Together with Sheila, another writer friend, I’ve been with Julia since the moment she decided she was going to publish her work-in-progress as an e-book.   This is a route I personally don’t want to follow, preferring to continue to aim for the ‘traditional’ print approach – though, as with so many things, it’s better never to say never.  Still, accompanying Julia has given me an interesting insight into the process.  What has surprised me is the amount of work involved.  It’s commonly said that it doesn’t take long at all, but that’s just the final up-loading bit. Getting to that point takes a lot of effort and determination.  Obviously, there’s the essential ‘first write your book’, but once that’s done, much of the role of the publisher has to be taken on by the author – editing, proof-reading, cover design etc. 

In this case, Julia would be the first to admit she’s been given plenty of help by a number of friends, and if you’ve already clicked onto that website, you’ll understand why we were all so happy to do so. 

All the proceeds of ‘Single or Double’ are going to ‘Prostrate Cancer UK’ – a charity close to Julia’s heart, following the death of her husband, Brian, from the disease last year.

We all write in different circumstances, or ‘environments’.  These include our physical surroundings, our mental or emotional states, our personalities, even.

From the physical point of view, we all may covet that ‘room of one’s own’, but few of us are lucky enough to get it.  I’m at one end of our bedroom, with a dressing-table as my desk – not ideal, apparently, especially since I’m not a good sleeper, and a bedroom is supposed to be devoted to just that – bed.  Julia, in happier times, likes nothing better than to write on a train journey – also not ideal, since she lives in a town miles from any railway.  Another friend manages on her lap, while family life goes on around her, rather like Jane Austen.

How much harder it is to write in the space governed by our emotions and what is going on in our lives!  We have all heard of those past writers in their garrets, suffering from TB, madness, and extreme poverty, yet producing works of genius.  How do they do that!?  For myself, I need my head to be in a good place if I’m to write anything at all.  If there are any problems around me, I’m lucky to be able to read, let alone put down some words on paper.

Julia has produced this book in extreme circumstances.  Her original hope and intention was for Brian to live to see it published, but that was not to be.  Instead, she took her story from first draft to this moment before, during, and just after Brian’s death.   She likens it to her equivalent of running a marathon, and the work involved has surely been as long and hard.  Some may call it distraction, therapy, displacement, but it has still been a remarkable endeavour.

And for this, she deserves our admiration and should be seen as an inspiration for us all – including myself.  Just as with the physical landscape, we must manage as best we can.  So no more excuses in 2015 – I  (we) must just get on with it, and write, write, write!  And who knows where it will lead?

Celebrating the achievement (photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

Hatching the Egg

London.  A cold, crisp December’s day.

                                                                                      (Video courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

All around me, hordes of people are fighting their way to Oxford Street; to pop-up ice rinks; faux French/German/Lapp log-cabin markets – all part of the Winter Wonderland that is the capital three weeks before Christmas.  But I’m here for something quite different and far more egg-citing – the first of my Golden Egg workshops.  

 And yes, it is exciting.  Energising. Nerve-wracking.  Stimulating.  Confidence-boosting, as well – to be told that only one in four are successful in their applications.  And it is different - unlike any course I’ve been on before.  But why?   What gave it that feeling of being special, making me believe that by the end of it my writing dreams may actually come true?

Firstly, I think it was because what we were told came from the ‘other side’ -  the side of the editors, publishers and agents.  ‘Golden Egg’ is led by Imogen Cooper, former head of fiction at Chicken House publishing, with whom they work closely.   Imogen was our main tutor on Saturday.

Hard at work with Imogen

And she described the ‘Egg’ process as a ‘foot in the door’, or a window on the industry.  How many of us have sent off a manuscript to have it returned, with the words ‘you write well, but…’?  It’s that ‘but’ the Academy is going to work on with you, because they will look at your book with an editor’s eye, they will drive your ‘good writing’ to publishable quality.

I’m not going to go into how this is done – there’s plenty of information on their website, www.goldeneggacademy.co.uk.   And it was stressed by Imogen that it’s not going to be easy -  ‘You will be pushed!’  Five re-writes are not unheard of!  But there will be support – for both your work and you.  Because that is another difference about this course – it doesn’t end on the day – far from it.  There are more workshops, one-to-one sessions with your assigned editor, social gatherings, communal tweets, mentoring.  A ‘buddy’!  I have become part of a community!

Enjoying Lunch

And the purpose of all this is to get to know you.  It is the team’s belief that an editor should know their author – the author and his/her novel.  This is the essence of it all – just as finding the heart of one’s story is crucial for the writer.  ‘Essence’, ‘heart’, ‘centre’ – all key words in the process.

So… I’ve been assigned my editor (Dr. Vanessa Harbour, Senior Lecturer at Winchester university).  We’ve been given our first task – to provide a detailed overview of the novel, so that our editors will have so much more than the usual ‘first couple of chapters and a synopsis’ to go on.  My ‘buddy’, Emma, has already emailed me.  I’ve got my ‘Golden Egg’ bag.  And I’m ready to go.

Yes, definitely much more exciting than Christmas shopping…

So watch this space!

A Spell for Letting Go

A Spell for Letting Go.

Take a thread…

Knot your thread three times three, the witch’s number.  Knot with your intent.

Cut it, then bury it far, as deep as you can, into the earth beneath.  Bury it back to the mother.

There are many spells for letting go…  

This is the opening of one of my stories – a story I love, and believe in.  But there are plenty of others I’ve written over the years that make me think ‘what rubbish!’   So how come they’re still filling up my ‘bottom drawer’, plus the rest of the chest, as well as half the wardrobe, and, and, and…?  Why can’t I just get rid of them?   Why can’t I let them go?

(Photo courtesy of dp-multimedia ©)

I’ve been taking advantage of the dark, wet days of autumn to work on my children’s novel, ready for my first ‘Golden Egg’ workshop in December.  I’ve also been attempting to have a ‘clear out’ of my work-space, which happens to be my bedroom (yes, I know it shouldn’t be, I should have a ‘room of my own’ etc., etc.  But this is how things are.)  I’ve been meaning to do this every winter since moving here, which turns out to be five years ago, now.   Somehow…  And of course, I was supposed to do it before we moved, and the time we moved before that, and that, and that.   But here they still are – box after box of useless short stories, articles from a previous lifetime when I also considered non-fiction, a couple of novels.  Poems, even.  Some are so old that they were written long-hand, then typed up, three copies, with those little Tippex strips for each tiny correction in between.  Those are from the days when I swore I’d never change to a computer.  (Am I a masochist, or what?)

So what’s the problem?  What stays my hand between the bedroom and the recycling bin, or better still the fire, from which there can be no fishing between the cans and plastic to retrieve triumphantly and carry back ‘home’?

It’s all about the fatal mistake of having ‘one last look.’  You tell yourself it will only be a tiny peak, or a quick flick – nothing more.  Then, before you know it, you’re caught – tormented by ‘what ifs’, and ‘maybes’.  ‘The theme of this one is actually quite good.  What if I just change…?’   Or ‘That’s not a bad plot.  Maybe if I…’  And before you know it, they’re back in their folder, waiting for some mythical future when you’ve got the time and inclination to revisit them.

Still, there are some that are beyond hope, beyond repair, no matter how desperately you try to spin them.  So surely there’s no need for you to hang on to them?  Only…  Except…   Suddenly you’re seeing a part of yourself in them.  Sometimes, it’s straight autobiography  (names changed, but little else).  There’s you, as a child, scared of your teacher’s hand-puppet.   That’s the house you used to live in, your bedroom, the garden.   That setting, that character is from when you lived in so-and-so.

With other stories, there’s a muddling of truth and fiction that engages you, forcing you to question what’s real.  Did my grandmother’s lodger really hold my hand?  Did that strange man hug me in the street?   False memories are the stuff of fiction.  Are they the stuff of fiction-writers, too?  These are issues that shouldn’t be thrown away lightly, along with a few faded pages.

Yes, there are plenty with no visible connection to your own past – a foreign location, a different age - but you, the author, are still there.  Your opinions, perhaps;  your beliefs;  your feelings, of course.   If nothing else, your imagination.  Most of all, your imagination.

So your life is visible on every page - your real life, but your writing life as well.  It’s mapped out for you.  How you’ve developed (hopefully!);  your experiments with different styles, different voices.  At what stage you gave up on a particular novel, leading you to question ‘why’?  When you progressed from that portable typewriter to this laptop!

With all this history triggered by a single box-file, is it any wonder, then, that the drawers and cupboards are still overflowing?

But this time, it’s different.  The orange bags are outside, waiting for the bin-men;  the fire’s blazing.  I guess it’s partly an age thing – in the same way as I no longer keep on reading a book I’m not enjoying.  But it’s also because I’m focussed on what I’m doing.  I’ve got a writing plan, you could say.  There’s my children’s novel, and its sequel (!);  my ‘folk tales’, such as the one that opens this piece;  my ‘new’ short-stories;  the idea for a novel that’s waiting in the wings.   I’ve got enough to fill the next few years, without wasting time revisiting the past. 

And, surprisingly enough, it’s a good feeling.  I can view it as another part of my writing progression.  I can even believe I’ve reached the million words, that many experts declare to be necessary for good writing.  I can tell myself ‘tidy space, tidy mind.’

Most of all, there’s an element of catharsis, a satisfaction in finally getting rid of the old, both in life and work, and moving forward.  There’s been no magic spell, but I am definitely feeling the joy of letting go.

And I’ve got myself a few empty drawers into the bargain!

Creative Writing Workshop

A few days ago, I attended a Creative Writing workshop, run by Deborah Winter (www.deborahwinter.co.uk), a prize-winning short-story writer.

Deborah has recently moved to the area from the south-west, where she established a loyal following for her classes, and nurtured her group’s talent to such a degree, that their collections were repeated winners of the David St John Charitable Trust anthology award.  She is now hoping to emulate her success in Pembrokeshire.

Deborah Winter

Creative writing workshops come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  This was a day course, billed as ‘suitable for all levels’.  There were nine of us – which is a good number – but, as the majority were beginners, Deborah quite rightly tailored her teaching to their needs.

As a tutor, Deborah was friendly and considerate, putting us at our ease.  She was enthusiastic and very encouraging, asking pertinent questions in order to ensure we all contributed, both orally and on paper.  And that was her key aim – to get us writing.  She did this with a variety of short exercises, wanting to provoke ideas and start us off.  Soon, we were all scribbling away, but we were never under any pressure to read, or to keep to her brief, as ‘go where your imaginations take you!’ is what she believes in.   She offered guidance if required, but was also happy to leave well alone.  And, as promised in her ‘blurb’, there was a lot of laughter.

What did I, as a more experienced writer, gain from this workshop, in addition to an enjoyable day spent with like-minded company?   The opening of a story…  One of Deborah’s prompts was a list of phrases.  The three words ‘I am falling’ resonated with my inner voice, and sparked off some sentences which could go somewhere.  I’m not sure where, yet, or if they’ll ever arrive.  But a good beginning is always welcome – essential, maybe, when it comes to short-stories, and I went away with an idea, which is just what Deborah was hoping for.  And me, too!