Kitchen Table Writers

The king dies...the queen dies...

2012-02-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died and then queen died of grief is a plot – E.M. Forster

Foster’s definition of plot and story is pretty tight; the only difference is the word grief. No wonder I’ve noticed my students getting a little confused at times between the two.

Literary theorists like to differentiate between plot and story: plot is the way events are presented to the reader; story is the wider sequence, as we the reader (and author, of course) imagine them to be; their natural order and duration, which, from the perspective of the writing, is somewhat hypothetical.

A good example of this would be the way a soap opera works inside the head of the viewer. They watch half an hour on screen; the plot they view includes; a couple having a row; a young girl being punched by an older male; a scene in the pub where two old codgers plan some shady business. When the programme is over, the viewer is still processing this; they might ask…what other young girls has this chap hit before…this one should do something about it…why did the couple not see this row coming, after all she’s been ignoring him for her job for months…does this mean divorce is in the offing…will the old codgers get away with this plan, as they did the last… Such meandering is the story behind the plot. We can utilize this in our writing.

Plot is the action that dramatizes the story, making characters come to life. This action consists of the patterns of events and situations that have been selected and arranged by the author to elicit a particular interest in a reader (or audience). Plot has been called the ‘narrative melody’ as it is the motivation around which the story is told, and that melody is entirely in the hands of the writer; they select the story they tell and create a plot to hold it together.

Plot arises from the result of human activities and adventures, and can be summed up by the word conflict; the opposition of forces between focus characters and their surroundings. A plot should develop conflicts that are eventually resolved, and trace a process of change within the characters caught up in the events.

An illustration would be the news you tell a friend on meeting them. ‘My dog died last week,’ you say. ‘I’m really sorry,’ the friend replies – they’re your friend and so they are interested – they probably knew the dog. But for this story to interest a reader, it must contain a tightness that creates surprise and drama, and, most importantly, one that concludes with some satisfaction; whether that’s a happy or sorrowful ending: ‘My dog was run over last week. It was touch and go. I was there by his side all the way. They told me it was a one in a million chance he’d pull through. Then the vet called in a specialist from the city, some bigwig with a new technique. And here he is, by my side, aren’t you Fido?’ (Notice how I can't resist a happy ending!)

This brings us to Cause and Effect. P D James takes Forster’s quote even further. She says...To that I would add: the queen died and everyone thought it was of grief until they discovered the puncture wound in her throat. That is a murder mystery and, in my view, it too is capable of high development.

Causality is a massive part of the plotting mechanism which will have a riveting effect on the plotting of your stories. Readers love to see the ‘story build up’, as events, thoughts, behaviour etc., set up in the early moments of the story, connect, build and develop the story.

Causality is linked closely to the motivation and personality traits of the characters. As the plot unfolds causality results in a process of significant change which gives the reader regular emotional hits, until the conclusion is revealed.

A plot builds up from incidents that impact on one another. These incidents should not be a series of unrelated events. Causality will help you get a patterned, driven, tight plot that takes the reader on a journey via the motivation of the characters. Causality also helps you guard against implausibility; if the character’s motivation and conflicts are always directed by cause and effect, the writing will be far more believable.

It is by combining causality with conflict that the strongest plot affects are gained. Conflict allows the ‘screws’ of cause and effect to tighten towards the end of the story. The reader knows all the complexities will be sorted, but they can’t for the life of them see how. A good ending will generally spring that sort of surprise; the ‘how’ of making a satisfactory and (if the author wants) happy ending, where the character has survived his ordeals, and learns and grows as a person. Using a learning/growing outcome often helps the plausibility of the story, and leads to a satisfying end, because the main character will have mostly sorted things out for himself and be responsible for most of the good outcomes.

So, looking at Forster’s quote above, it becomes clear that story, however interesting it might be to those caught up in it, does not have sufficient structure to hold an outside observer. Bear this in mind while you are plotting. The story that surrounds the plot, that led up to it, is also the story that that could lead away from it in any direction...floating away from the nice construction of cause and effect. Be aware and beware of that and you will keep your structures and devices tight and focused.

What are Ma Creative Writing courses really like?

2012-01-26T03:58:00.000-08:00

When people ask me if they should undergo an MA in creative writing, I'm never sure what to say. I can certainly tell them that is was one of the most exciting years of my life, but it was also one of the most stressful. I did get some advice, by mostly this was from my peers, rather than from the lecturers, and some of it (even from lecturers) was conflicting and counter-produtive.

"My best piece of advice was that I should write a book that I myself should want to read," said Christie Watson, who's just won the Costa Prize new writer category with Tiny Sunbirds Far Away. She gained an MA from UEA, where, shortly after it was founded 40 years ago, Ian McEwan started his career. She describes 'being immersed' in an atmosphere of writing, and I would certainly vouch for that. Everyone was brimming with enthusiasm. But, when it came to getting my writing right, my personal tutor quickly told me to ignore what he'd said if I didn't like it... "I will try to make you write the book I want to write," he admitted, and followed that by showing me his manuscript, which, straight out of Michael Douglas' character in The Wonder Boys, was dog-eared and overlong...and unpublished.

"I got very little advice," Ian McEwan says on this BBC ipod discussion from the Today Programme about Creative Writing MA's. "

People go on MA's for very different reasons, from a genuine desire to learn to writer professionally, to a chance to network their skills. I signed up because I was 'stuck' in a book and longed to finish it. I did finish it...but what I actually gained from my MA was my work as a writing tutor, and that has brought me great joy and a part-time career I love.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9652000/9652677.stm

Happy Writing New Year

2012-01-03T03:53:00.000-08:00

I've been working as a tutor for the Open College of the Arts for quite a few years now, but it constantly amazes me that so many people want to learn to write creatively. Maybe because writers 'do it in their heads', I used to assume I was a slightly odd person, alone in my passion. Surely no one else had a brain like mind, filled with all that writing I couldn't help but do?

But I'm not alone. I have a file filled with other people's names, all of who long to write well...some of whom already are writing well...profiles of their writing lives, and their reasons for taking OCA writing courses. When they phone me, students often start with...hope I'm not bothering you...Bother! do they realize just how much I love talking about all aspects of writing? And are they ready for the way I will rabbit on about writing?

People long to write. It's a way of letting thoughts, opinions, memories and stories pour out of our heads. A bit like Dumbledor's Pensieve...down through our arms, into our fingers and onto a screen. After I've written (a blog...a novel...) I feel so good...orgasmic, almost. I have to pull in one of those shuddering deep breaths that tell you everything is alllllright with the world. For now, at least.

This is one of the reasons I love to blog. So that I can share my love and longing for writing with other writers. As a blogging virgin, I used wondered if it wasn't it just all waffle. Then I listened (on radio 4) to the Iraqi girl who blogged her life during the war in Iraq and it was sobering and fascinating. Actually, one of my own OCA sudents has won an award for her natural history blogs. But when I surfed other people's blogs randomly...don't know quite how to put this politely... their sheer mind-blowing tedium and egocentricity gave me short-term attention span.

Blogs, in their essence, are simply the thoughts of ordinary people - this is their glory, but also their downfall. Millions of words sliding throug the ether...how do you catch the nuggets of gold among them?
I do hope - I certainly try - to make my blog interesting, informative and varied. In 2012 I promise my subscribers that's exactly what I will be continuing to do.

Happy Writing New Year

Getting into Gear

2011-12-02T02:12:00.000-08:00

I've always believed that creative writing should have powerful narrative drive. Coupled with strong characterization and an eye-catching plot, it can be the major reason why a new writer stands out from the slush pile. It is the very stuff of readability.

But 'narrative' is a confusing term - it means more than one thing and can mean different things to different people. When writers talk about their plot, or structure, everyone knows what they're on about, but as soon as they move on to describing the narrative drive of their work, people's eyes glaze over. The only drive they feel comfortable with is the one that gets the car out of the garage and down the road.

Actually, there's a strong similarity. The word narrative might be ambiguous and confusing, but driving the plot of a story, or any other kind of creative writing along, is a pretty straightforward concept.

Perhaps the first step to feeling more comfortable with narrative is to search for a solid definition.

First from www.wikipedia.com ...A narrative is a story that is created in a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, ‘knowing’ or ‘skilled’.The word ‘story’ may be used as a synonym of ‘narrative’, but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative. An important part of narration is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the narrative.

Hmm...hope you're clearer now! Perhaps ths, from the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms will help...A telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee. Narratives are to be distinguished from descriptions of qualities, states, or situations, and also from dramatic enactments of events. A narrative will consist of a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot). The category of narrative includes both the shortest accounts of events (e.g. the cat sat on the mat or a brief news item) and the longest of historical or biographical works, as well as novels, ballads, epics, short stories and other fictional forms.

A fair degree of agreement between the two sources, but for writers, the word narrative also holds a far more explicit and particular connotation. When refering to this second, more writerly sense of the word they usually are talking about the parts of fiction that are not dialogue-ridden scenes or action-packed descriptive moments in ‘real time’. – in other words the exposition of the story, which binds it together.

If you've been reading my Kitchen Table Writers Blog for a while, you'll probably know that I'm always encouraging new writers to 'show, don't tell', and exposition is the dangerous and difficult part of writing, because it certainly is close to 100% telling. But it's a necessary part; it's the string that holds the beads of your scenes, especially in a longer piece of work.

Narrative Trajectory
When writing, especially when writing a longer piece of work,the comprehension and formation of the whole is assisted if you can hold that first, dictionary definition of narrative your mind as you write. Writing gets you very close to the internal workings of story; to return to my string of beads, what you are concentrating mostly on is creating beads and stringing them. That stringing process...the complete necklace...is your narrative trajectory. Over tens of thousands of words of writing, it's a terribly difficult process to keep a check on, especially if your full work has a complex plot. But doing so will create the overall picture in your mind and you'll be less likely to only see the trees and not the wood.

Narrative Drive
If a ‘trajectory’ suggests a road along which a journey is taken, the word ‘drive’ might suggest the vehicle or fuel needed for that journey. Think of narrative drive in this way; it will guide your story towards being compelling and filled with natural suspense. Narrative drive is what makes a story a page-turner, and makes us care deeply about the character and wonder what will happen on the next page. Think of yourself behind the wheel of your writing - although don't take the car analogy too far; you don't have to start out, or finish in first gear, for instance! But you do have gears within your narrative drive and successful use of them is an integral part of getting it right.

Narrative Arc
You may hear this phrase when reading or talking to writers...you may use it yourself! It refers to the trajectory or journey of a narrative, suggesting that, as a story unfolds, its shape should look something like a rainbow; reaching a peak before settling towards its ending. I like to think of an arrow shot from a bow; it travels on its trajectory which is the shape of an arc. But we've already mixed enough metaphors in this Post - necklaces and cars - without adding bows and arrows! However, using the phrase narrative arc should remind you that your story must have shape.

Narrative Mode
This refers to the methods the author uses to convey their plot. Narration occurs because the writer is using the narrative mode. It encompasses several facets which multitask to create rich writing. Most important of these is narrative point-of-view, the perspective and view of the story; and narrative voice, which determines the manner through which the story is communicated to the author.

Narrative Participation
Narrators can said to be either non-participant or participant; i.e.an implied, omniscient or semi-omniscient being who does not take part in the story but only relates it to the audience, or an actual character in the story, often the main character or protagonist; and that participation can differ in substance, concentration and form. For instance, the narrator may be a fictitious person devised by the author as in the novel Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda.

Marcel Proust said ...The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes... looking at your narrative through new eyes can really help you see the complete landscape of your writing.

Plots or people?

2011-10-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

Plots or people?

click the link to read Elizabeth Underwood's article about my workshop at Ilkley Lit Festival, which is on http://www.weareoca.com/creative_wrtiting/plots-or-people/

Plot Junkie or Characterphile?

2011-10-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Plot Junkies and Characterphiles

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said...Plot is character and character is plot...and I’ve always believed that to be true. I tell students that if they can create a living, breathing character, that character will show them where the story should go. But I also believe in careful plotting – in always having a flexible way forward. I think this is especially important for a novel, but it’s also the reason many writers never get to the end of most of the short stories they conceive; they may have a character, but that character has nowhere to go.

I’ve talked to so many writers on this subject, and I’ve come to the conclusion that most of us are unevenly balanced, when it comes to character and plot.

Some writers create characters easily. Before anything else comes to their minds, a person walks into it, often fully formed. They get to know them before they start to think what their story might be...except of course, that the character is likely to tell the writer what their story is. J K Rowling famously said the Harry Potter arrived in her mind during a train journey. If he introduced himself as a boy wizard about to go to a magical school, you can see how the story might immediately start to take shape. I call writers who are character-driven, allowing the character to drive the story and create the events within it, always generating events that event affect the character. These writers I call Characterphiles – they can’t help but start with character.

Some writers (myself among them) start with an idea, a concept, a theme, the twist at the end of the story, or the way the design of a story within cause and effect. P G James tells us that she almost always starts a story with a setting; she sees a landscape or building that affects her. The story grows from the setting, and the character slot into it seamlessly...when they’re ready for them. Plot-driven. Stories in which the driving force is subject matter, often encompassing a concept or theme, or locations and scenes. When the idea for a story starts like this, the characters have to be ‘fitted’ into the story, rather than steering it themselves.

I call writers who cannot help but see the ideas, themes and plotlines first, plot junkies.

So although I recommend to my students that it’s best to summon up the characters first and let them build up the plot by the conflicts they create as they grow, so that the characters show the writer how the action works, this simply cannot work for plot junkies. And although I do recommend this, it’s often the reason so many stories fall into the mass grave for unfinished fiction.

There are advocates of both character and plot driven stories – published writers who allow characters to lead them where the characters want them to go, and published writers who always start with the idea, sort out the plot first, and only allow the characters a look-in once that is all settled in black and white in their notepad or file.

The ‘characterphiles’ shudder in horror at the idea of squeezing a character into a role, suggesting that readers love the people that inhabit fiction above all other things, and what they really want to know about is how those people tick – what happens to them in the story is almost secondary and mostly useful in that it illustrates and represents this particular person’s journey through their life (and through the pages). ‘Plot junkies’ would argue that the easiest way to give interesting characters sufficient ‘cause and effect’ to generate strong drama is to explore an idea first and foremost, using invented people to do so.

Good examples of this are a couple of writers of ‘crossover’ fiction (for teens and adults alike). Philip Pulman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is based on specific ideas that he wanted to explore – he does, however create extremely interesting characters to do the exploring, but critics have passed judgment on his books for being ‘idea-centric’. Sonya Hartnett, an Australia writer, on the other hand, clearly allows her characters to make up and star in their own stories, and her novels can meander in a slightly vague way because of this. Both are loved, but I’m not sure if both are loved by the same reading public.

However, there is a ‘middle way’, especially useful for students who are still attempting to become published writers. I recommend this as a compromise. In this writing structure, the writer is simply always aware of what is happening as they commence a new story, always asking themselves…is this story plot-led? Is this story character-based? Whichever the answer to that question, it is on the other side of things that the writer focuses attention, working hard to make sure they concentrate on the weaker side in at least equal measure to the stronger.

Charles Dickens was clearly a characterphile; his characters have lived in reader’s imaginations for almost two centuries. His friend and peer, Wilkie Collins, must have been a plot junkie. After all, he almost invented crime fiction, and his plots are involved and complex, with amazing twists at the end. Apparently, the two friends constantly helped each other’s writing; Collins suggesting better plot devices to Dickens, and Dickens helping Collins to enrich his characterization.

Do you know which you are? A plot junkie or a characterphile? Maybe you too can find a writer who is on the opposite side of the scale, so you can help each other.

Failing this, be sure to bolster the weaknesses of your tendency, while working to its strengths.

Characterphiles should put time aside to work on the plot, using whatever methods they find most useful, such as brainstorming and ‘what if’, plus index cards, ‘timelines’, and other plotting techniques (see below). They should also tap their writer’s imaginations to discover how their character can find opposition, face drama, be blighted by conflict and face up to causality.

Plot junkies should put equal time aside to really get to know their characters. This can be done by allowing the character to invade your brain, becoming more real, and by using exercises that reinforce characterization, such as character diaries, character profiles and character histories.

Once you know which sort of writer you are, you can try one of the exercises to your left.

Watch the eyes swivel

2011-07-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

For all their concentration on inventing vibrant characters who move through convincing (if surprising) lives and react in ways that make the reader truly identify with their plights, that the writers who create them do not necessarily like people all that much.
I'm not suggesting for a second that writers are all sociopaths who go through life sucking their stories from humans like vampires with a perverted desire for ink, their eyes filled with demonic delight as they manipulate real, observed events into gripping and saleable stories, but I know that I fall just a little short when it comes to a desire to stay in the moment with my friends whenever there's a danger that they may tell me something that's perfect for a plot.
I've just had a lovely holiday in the Bay of Naples and the al fresco dining was fantastically social; huge groups of us chatting the evening away over Lachryma Christi wine and Lemoncello liqueurs - all of us animated and affable, British tourists soaking the Italian dolce vita. But every so often, I could feel my eyes slide away from the company. My mind quickly followed. An issue we were discussing...the body language of a companion....the view of Vesuvius or the glittering sea...something falls into place like a cog and I was away...into the land of narrative dreams.
I've noticed this about my fellow writers, too. They are often said (not always, of course) to enjoy their own company, perhaps a bit too much. But in fact, it's not their own company they are enjoying...it's the company of a myriad of characters, settings, situations and dramatic events....story...of course.
There's a late sketch by Boz of Dickens sitting in by his fireside while, in the air around him, the characters that peopled his novels float, as they had seep from his mind while he dozes. It's a nice idea, and a fantastic sketch, and at least partially true. It is what happens in writer's minds - especially when they are alone, but (depressingly) even when they are partying. I reckon that to some writers a holiday is not so much a chance to to see the world, meet new people, pursue a hobby, get a tan, get wasted, get laid, as much as it is a wonderful opportunity to find new story, and new characters to fill it.
My own short story The Tomb of the Tomb Builders (shortlisted for the Derby Prize but not so far published) came out of all the lovely tour guides I met in Egypt...and a single encounter with a tiny village child.
'Going all dreamy' is part of the writing condition, I think. All artists must have moment when their eyes swivel away from the day in hand and their mind goes somewhere else. Perhaps what we are visiting is our muse...and what better place for me to do that than the slopes of Sorrento, or the little square in Amalfi, or on the deliciously silent chair lift from Anacapri.
Sorry, folks. I'll be back in a mo. Keep the wine chilled.

Using Yourself as a Character

2011-06-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

The next few Posts will all be about breathing so much life into your characters, so that you can convince your reader that the people you describe are as real for them as they are for you.

We are a gregarious species. We naturally band into families, clans, tribes, nations. As human beings, it is people – what they do and what motivates them – that fascinates us. This is because all other human beings are reflections of our own natures; what a writer shows in a story may disturb us by revealing our darker selves or inspire us by reflecting our capacity for altruistic love.

Creating characters that ‘leap off the page’ rather than lie there in the same two dimensional way as an illustration, is not something that can be achieved in a few moments. There are ways of approaching intimacy with character, and we’re going to investigate many of them in this Notebook, but there is also a certain je ne sais quoi about the way a character seeps into the mind of the reader. Characters can take on a life of their own, once they are reinterpreted by readers. A student recently admitted to me that as a teenager, she was fully in love with sultry, sexy Heathcliff. When she read Wuthering Heights as an adult, she saw the selfish, aggressive sides to his portrayed nature, and did not even like this character any more.

The people you write about and how you write about them should speak directly to your reader - get under their skin. Think of the books you love, and how you identified with the characters, page after page, worrying about them even when you’d put the book down, terrified for them when you picked it up again. You may not remember the ending to a book after a year or two after reading, but a good character will stay with you. This is your brief, as a writer of fiction, or even a biographer – creating characters that stay with readers, long after the story fades – characters that are believable and engrossing.

There is a link between creating characters and being the character. It has been said by many literary theorists that all character is autobiography, and that no writer can get under another person’s skin – they effectively reinvent themselves each time they invent a character. This suggestion is vehemently denied by many authors of fiction, but openly acknowledged by others.

The definitions of ‘fiction’ and ‘autobiography’ are subtle and flexible, and can be exploited to the writer’s benefit. Your own life in its vast array (style, opinion, experience, thought processes, memories, hopes, traits, flaws, education etc) is a tremendous source of character if you want to use it. For a start, you know it better than any other.

Here’s a tiny snippet of my own work that fuses fiction with my own life...

‘Someone will have to speak with her.’

It was her aunt Vivienne’s voice, a modulated and gentle flute, blown note by husky note. It always made Bridget’s body feel as floppy as a rag doll, like Kate, eyes permanently closed, limbs limp, the way she felt in the optician’s chair when he said: ‘Now, which is clearer…the red…or the green?’

‘Obviously it must be Ann,’ said Aunt Paula.

‘I honestly don’t know if she’s up to it.’

Two of them, Vivienne and Paula – two of a host – heavenly host, her aunts with

wings and nativity halos. Bridget smiled. The family descending, her mother had said. As if from heaven. There were too many for comfort, even when you subtracted Father. The bedrooms were full of family.

Bridget paused in her search through the dressing-table drawers. Paula and Vivienne

stood (she couldn’t imagine they would sit together on the bed) in the tiny box room one wall away.

‘Tony could do it.’

‘Why him?’

‘He’s the…well…family elder.’

‘No. Not a man. We must give Ann time.’

‘How much time are you suggesting?’

She was nearly eleven, too old to be imagining that every conversation was about her

– bad as thinking everyone out walking is going the same way as you. Childish thoughts, for children.

The whole house was full of whispers. Passing through rooms, she heard tones

dropped and muted. Not for her ears, these conversations, so they whispered around her. Bird-watchers in a hide, looking out at that rarest of ornithological wonders, a child who must not hear.

‘Well, I don’t care.’ Glimpsing the colours of her swim-suit behind school knickers, she

yanked it out and carried it off.

She ran down the road, the swim-suit sailing behind her, still gripped by the same

finger and thumb that had snatched it from the drawer.

‘I don’t care. I don’t care.’

Nina Milton The Diary of Bridget Wakeham (New Fiction, Forward Press 1992)

This is autobiographical fiction – in other words the writer draws on her own experience to weave a story. The section quoted doesn’t stray far from the truth – but the as the story progresses, the ‘plot’ dictates that the story veers into complete fiction...unlike the passage below:

When I was eleven, my father was taken seriously ill with a stroke. He lay in the middle of my parent’s double bed, so that when the family arrived, the house seemed filled to bursting with people trying find somewhere to sleep

I had been playing in my friend’s garden. When I came home, no one knew I’d re-entered the house. I overheard two of my aunts talking. I can’t remember what they said now, but what I can recall is that at the time of listening I half-understood they were discussing who would tell me my father had died. Later, when my mother did tell me, I recalled the incident, confirming what had been going on.

This second example is autobiographical – here I’m simply recounted only what I am sure I truly remember. It’s bland, rambling, forgettable. The concentration on accuracy removes the build-up of tension we gain in the story. It might be thought of as a first draft, in which the writer is quickly getting things down in the right order, something that could be polished, even as autobiographical draft, to use parts of the fictional account unchanged. Strong writing cannot stick too closely to a remembered chronology of events and slightly altered, or ‘held back’ information generates tension, removes the ‘blandness’, and slows the writing down, to prevent it becoming ‘garbled’. Equally, when a recalled event has been completely revamped to create a satisfying plot, you can still use the character as you remember (as, in my story, I remembered myself).

Try this at your own kitchen Table:

Think back – possibly, but not necessarily, to your childhood

The memory does not have to be crystal clear, but it should still raise emotion in you
Recount it, just as you remember.
Try to write between two and eight hundred words

take a break, then, go back to the kitchen table:

Rewrite the facts you’ve now recorded as a very short story or an extract from an unwritten whole.
Do this fairly quickly...use freewriting and don’t think about it much beforehand...you did your thinking during the previous exercise. Take the three tips below:

Dip down into a scene – as in the first extract above.
Concentrate on that scene – not on the facts your remember
Recall the emotions you felt and try to portray them, rather than just the facts

This time aim for between five hundred and a thousand words.

In Sexing The Cherry (Vintage), Jeanette Winterson gets her main character to introduce herself in an extraordinary way:

How hideous am I?

My nose is flat, my eyebrows are heavy. I have only a few teeth and those are a poor show, being black and broken. I had smallpox when I was a girl and the caves in my face are home enough for fleas. But I have fine blue eyes that see in the dark...

Describing character – especially mannerisms and features – is always difficult, and one reason for this is that we rarely gaze at length at people. We don’t often have chance to peer closely and take in all the variations of expression that a single face can display. But your own face is yours to have a good look at, and it is also yours to describe ‘warts and all’, without spooking another person. By practising on yourself, you can learn the tricks of watching others and absorbing the little gestures and specific features that make them individuals. You can also begin to move from mundane description to extraordinary...early experiments might turn out to be a bit over the top, but practise makes perfect.

Now try this at your kitchen Table.

Look at a photo of yourself (or look at yourself in a mirror)
Create a simple list of you features, trying to be entire objective. c
Continue by allowing your imagination work freely as you engage in this description, so that it becomes extraordinary

Write further descriptions of yourself, within these categories:

Clothing and accessories
Action
Speech
Psychology and mannerisms (body language, demeanour, habitual gestures inner traits and even your hopes and fears are exhibited the way you think...)
Your entire physicality – including your health, stature, and any uncommon aspects of yourself – are you losing your hair, do you paint your nails purple?
Also cover any other category you created yourself

I always think it is useful to start with oneself as a character. But in my next post we’ll branch out, and try to get under other people’s skin...and invent our own characters entirely.

HAND-TO-DRAFT-CO-ORDINATION

2011-05-27T02:33:00.001-07:00

How is your hand-to-draft-co-ordination? I know so many writers who believe they can only get that first draft down if holding a pen, or tapping a keyboard, or using a certain notebook, or writing in a certain place in their house. Some writers find it hard (some find it impossible, but I guess they aren’t doing much writing) to overcome the first attempts at drafting something new.

We all have your own hand-to-draft co-ordination, and understanding this may help make the best of our writing...so long as we fully understand that it’s only a part of the creative process and not a block that prevents us from ever attempting something new.

One of my students, Josephine, recently wrote to me...

I firstly hand write so the process can be spontaneous. These first attempts are always terrible but I carry on knowing that it is only for me. Then a pause is necessary for the story to start reforming in a more understandable narrative. Then I can draft and redraft on the computer. Each process is different, and all absorbing. During this time I allow myself to change my mind, while I feel it organically taking shape. I chose many names for the two protagonists...until my choice works.

I personally find writing by hand very difficult nowadays. Clearly, my ‘hand-to-draft-co-ordination’ has a direct link from my ten touch-typing fingers to the writing part of my brain. But we’re not all the same. I know writers who must ‘talk’ their first draft into a tape recorder and others who have to sort of ‘sketch’ out their idea, because they see it so visually at first. Film directors in the making, I suspect! But Jo likes to write by hand and that process is undeniably organic and active.

I loved the way Josephine openly confessed she thought her first attempts are ‘terrible’. I bet they aren’t as terrible as she thinks. We are usually our own worse critics, as Gustave Flaubert pointed out in Madam Bovary...The human word is like a cracked cauldron upon with we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance, when we are trying to move the stars…If even Flaubert thinks his writing isn’t up to much, I’m sure the rest of us can relax about our lack of self-confidence.

Anyway, Jo has got that covered, because she knows this first draft is ‘only for me’. What she is sure about is how to move on from ‘terrible’ to something she is pleased with. She has a routine she can move along, and that can be very helpful for any writer - it prevents us floundering around in a slough of writerly despondence. What Jo choses to do is sensible. She puts the work away for a while. This allows it to continue to brew in her head, which often picks up the underlying problems and begins to solve them, almost subconsciously. It also allows the piece to feel ‘new’...almost ‘someone else’s work’ when it is read after the resting phase.

There is probably an equation that gives the appropriate length of time this brewing process should take. Let us say; at least a couple of days for something quite short; at least a week for a short story proper or a new novel chapter; at least a month for an entire full-length piece. Jo uses the ‘putting away to brew’ technique quite early on in the writing process; I tend to do this much later on, say when I’m half way through a final draft of a novel...or when I’m pretty happy with the draft of the short story I’m writing at the time.

This might be the most frustrating part of Jo’s process, but it’s well worth while. And putting things away does not mean that she can’t go on writing. If she can’t manage two projects at a time, I’d recommend she writes a diary, a blog or letters to friends to keep going - or tackles something completely different, such as ‘filler’ articles for magazines or letters to the editor. This will keep her writing brain well-oiled without constantly scratching at the item that is being brewed.

Finally, Jo recognises that things must change. She looking for ways of reforming until she has ‘a more understandable narrative’. During that almost subconscious spotting and solving of problems, radical ideas might enter her head - ideas she should consider, and only dismiss when she’s sure they are wrong for the work. Changing the names of the characters can help a lot, but it should be only a small part of the things she’ll be asking. Major questions to tackle would be...does the story feel plausible all the way through? Does the beginning draw the reader in, or can I omit the first line...even the first paragraph or page? Do the characters start out with an aim/difficulty/need/blockage/desire? And if so, is it resolved well? In fact, are my characters right for this story...or is my story right for these characters? Will the reader feel satisfied with the end - surprised or engaged?

By the time this process was over for Jo, and she’d sent her work to me, she had created a solid piece that she could be proud of.

Have a look at your own hand-to-draft-co-ordination. Ask if it’s working for you, or if you need to change it. Sometimes two heads (or lots of heads )are better than one, and you might like to make a comment on your own early writing process below this post, and see what others come up with.

Thank you Jo, for letting me quote your letter, and I’m sure your co-ordinated writing process will constantly help you in your writer’s career.

Writing a Five Fingered Exercise

2011-03-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

When I was a small child, just starting school, my favorite moment in each day was the one, after we’d finished our tea, when my father went into the front room. He’d say to me, ‘don’t pull the curtains and don’t switch on the light.’ Then he’d sit at his piano in the last of the evening light and play; Chopin waltzes, Mendelsshon’s Songs without Words, Beethoven’s concertos and pieces from the shows. I would dance around the room for hours, my skirts twirling, my arms doing what I thought might be pointy ballerina movements.

Then the big day came, when Daddy said he would begin to teach me the piano. I was so excited; as far as I could see it would be no time at all before I would be playing like him. Why, I did so already, racing my hands over the keys and swaying my body like a professional pianist. So it came as a bit of a blow when I realized even five-finger exercises were baffling and onerous. It took me a long time to play my first Song without Words; two decades to be exact.

Writing a novel is a bit like learning the piano; a lot harder than you might think. Bill, who’s just completed the Open College of the Arts Advanced Creative Writing Module with me, wrote to say...When I started the journey, my initial objective was to write a novel. I, like many people, didn’t understand how difficult this task was. I originally thought that having a good idea and a vivid imagination was all that a person needed. The rest was just a matter of course and would happen naturally and with the minimum of effort. I now appreciate how just what a difficult task it is to write a novel. Anyone who completes a novel, let alone has it published, has my total admiration.

Spot on, Bill. Writing a novel is like inventing an entire new life...many people’s lives, actually. If you’re into fantasy, you’ll be inventing new worlds, as well. How could that possibly be easy? Certainly, having a mentor who can support you in those first stages when it all seems a complete mess - when even the five-finger exercises of writing feel onerous - can help enormously. Bill wrote; When you are placed with a tutor there is initially, a certain amount of natural apprehension. You’re faced with another lengthy and unknown learning process. My initial feeling was that the way ahead seemed insurmountable. I’d spent a few months standing still and had reached a non-constructive plateau without any end in sight. It felt I was drowning in a sea of uncertainty. You reassured me that I was not alone with this problem and that most novice or indeed many professional writers suffered this at one time or another during their writing career. The way through this dilemma and off the plateau was to keep on writing.

Naturally a writing student should expect a little more than simple words of encouragement; a tutor, unlike a mentor, also offers practical, technical and creative advice that will move the student’s work properly forward. They should be able to see through the confusion in a way the poor old writer can’t - they’ll be too busy looking at the wood, while the tutor will be viewing the trees and hopefully recommending a better planting and growing order for the the entire forest.

But it’s important for the tutor to stay enthused and energetic, as it’s likely that the writer will sag and droop, especially around the middle of the novel.

Your enthusiasm for creative writing is infectious...Bill said in his letter...and I can honestly say it rubs off and has bolstered my failing spirits. Creative writing is not the easiest thing in the world to study but having an excellent tutor has made it a bit easier. Many thanks for your time, advice and patience over the last year or so.

Aw, nice of you to say so, Bill. I’m just so proud of the way this student’s writing developed over the module, which is far more to do with the concentration and energy he gave the project; it’s the writer who needs the time and patience to be honest. Without that it’s unlikely they’ll get further than playing chopsticks.

Bill (and I) make this process sound so arduous, so hard to achieve, that novice writers reading this may wonder if they’re not put off trying, just a little. Bill says, The journey, I feel, has been an exceptionally hard but enjoyable one. I’ve tried to put into practice everything that you have suggested and I feel that my writing has not just moved forward but taken a considerable leap. Completing this last assignment and ultimately the course has been a great achievement for me.

Bill hasn’t quite finished his book yet, but now he’s got the confidence to write by himself. My final advice to him was to stop redrafting and get on with the writing. Working through a writing course always results in a lot of redrafting. It’s the quickest way up the learning curve. But once the foundations and basic skills are laid, I suggest that people tackling a long project just get on with it...one word, then the next, then the next until the next two words you write are ‘the end’. Only then can you redraft with any clear understanding of what the book looks like and says.

Thanks, Bill, for letting me quote parts of your letter in this post, and good luck in your forward endeavours...may your words always sound like songs.

Writing at my Kitchen Table

2011-03-29T03:10:00.000-07:00

KITCHEN TABLE WRITERS
Mentoring and appraisal for CREATIVE WRITERS

from NINA MILTON Experienced, qualified, published writer

…Embark on Nina Milton…and you won’t stop reading… (Naomi Lewis, Sunday Observer)

Writers have been sending me their work through the post or via email, and coming to my workshops and talks for half a decade now.
Below are just some of the many positive comments I've received...

...I was delighted with your comments and ticks, as well as feeling very willing to take your fiurther suggestions on board... You seem to be on my wavelength to have appreciated this work so well, or given your experience of writing and tutoring, very capable of getting on different wavelengths...Your comments were not only enjoyable to read but they helped me enjoy the story as well as opening new doors...(Roger, OCA Student)

Just wanted to say a massive thank you for yesterday - 'Discover your Creative Self'. I got a lot out of it and I think you have a real talent for engaging and inspiring students. When I think of the cash I've blown at prestige workshops...you knocked them all into a cocked hat...(Sally, Workshopper)

You became all I could have wished for, knowledgeable, friendly, supportive, perceptive, encouraging and very professional... I have a great respect for you opinion on my work ... (Tasmin, OCA Student)

Your outside, fresh perspective has sent me in the right direction more than once. I feel my writing is more organized and deliberate since I started this course. (Peter, OCA Student)

Thank you for another instructive - and inspiring - workshop and for creating an environment where people could share ideas - and their writing - in a productive and positive way. Still not quite sure what direction the next book will take but am writing snippets as they come to me and waiting to see what develops. I think the main thing I got out of the workshop, and talking to people who are just starting their books, is that its important to just enjoy the writing and not get too hung up on the outcome. Something its easy to forget.
Take care and lots of love Lin (workshopper)

Manuscript appraisal; A mentoring, appraising and critique service for both long and short fiction and life writing. FEES :

UNDER 8,000 WORDS –
£40 per item

OVER 8,000 WORDS –
£40 per 10,000 words

FROM 70,000 to 100,000 –
£250

100,000 WORDS UPWARDS – P.O.A.

contact Nina at kitchentablewriters@live.com

How to Improve your Handwriting...

2011-03-01T08:23:00.001-08:00

Nina, said my English teacher. Your handwriting is abysmal – no one can read it, even you. Your spellings seem to have arrived from the planet Urgh. And your presentation is dreadful – ink blots, scratchings out and no hint of a margin on either side your page. So I’m setting you some homework this summer holiday, and I want to see it on the first day of the new term.

First year of senior school. I was far too busy with other things to worry about the presentation of my work. Friendships, for instance, took up all my waking moments. Girls were starting and dropping friendships like they were fashion accessory items and I wasn’t getting the hang of this at all.

Even my oldest pal from primary school had already ‘gone off’ with someone else, and I was left to choose from Denise Winters, who had goofy teeth and a strange scent emanating from her clothes, and Shirley Court, who was scarily lesbian at a time when I didn’t even know what the word lesbian meant. Then there was the gang of girls who hung about in the lane that led from School Road to Cow Horn Hill. They all snogged boys and were into tattooing themselves with needles and ink. If you cut off the corner by going down the lane, they’d stand across it, their needles at the ready.

And when I wasn’t working out how to keep friends and keep away from foes, I was dreaming, building worlds of fiction and wonder, in which the relationships that were so disastrous in reality worked out fine.

Taking home an empty exercise book for the summer holidays was hardly a punishment; it seemed a wonderful thing to do. I wanted it to be far more than a handwriting project. It would be an illustrated anthology, I decided, of all my favourite authors.

Things quickly deteriorated on the presentation front. I’d forgotten my artistic skills were not up to illustrating anything more complex than an Easter Friday boiled egg. And I quickly forgot that the point of this exercise was to improve failing handwriting, rather than seek out excerpts from all the wonderful literature of the world. But I did have fun, that summer holiday. I started with my own bookshelves. They were rather overfull with Enid Blyton, so I chose a single story – The Island of Adventure – and wrote a ripping summary. Then I picked the bit from Anne of Green Gables where she tells her new guardians about her belief in God. Next came Alice in Wonderland and Little Women (the bit where Meg dies, of course!), followed by the lovely moment in Secret Garden, where Mary gets into the walled garden for the first time, and the bit about Mr Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Then I started rummaging through my parent’s books. Mum’s favourite was Lorna Doone; Dad’s was The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I found that hard-going, but loved falling into Lawrence’s hot, dry world. At the library, I pulled out books on astronomy, photography and history. I also took out Lady Chatterley’s Lover on my father’s ticket; not fully understanding what the word ‘abridged’ meant. Finally, as I neared the end of the exercise book, I fell upon a book no one had ever told me about, but that I have loved ever since those early days...

‘Now tell me how old you are.’

‘I’m fourteen, Monsieur.’

Jacomet’s pencil remained poised in the air.

‘You don’t say. Sure you’re not exaggerating?’

‘Oh no, I’m going on for fifteen.’

Jacomet pushed his chair back from his desk and squarely faced the delinquent. ‘And now, my child, give me a full account of your experiences at Massebielle.’

Bernadette crossed her hands over her stomach, as peasant women do all over the world...

‘A pretty crazy story,’ Jocomet said at the end with appreciative emphasis. ‘Don’t you know who the lady is?’

Bernadette’s eyes opened widely. ‘No, naturally I don’t.’

‘A queer sort of lady. Elegant as anything and appears where Leyriss herds the swine...’ How old would you say she was?’

‘Sixteen or seventeen.’

‘And you say she is very good looking?’

Convulsively Bernadette pressed her folded hand against her heart. ‘She is more beautiful than anything else in the whole world.’

‘Listen, Bernadette, you remember Mademoiselle Lafite who got married a few weeks ago. Is the lady better looking than she?’

The comparison amused Bernadette. She laughed. ‘You just can’t compare the two, Monsieur.’...

The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel

Maybe Bernadette just had a teenagers imagination - who knows?
I was so proud of my book full of the golden nuggets of literature, but I bet you won’t be surprised to hear my English teacher was not so impressed! My handwriting had deteriorated even further over the summer, as I’d discovered more and more wonderful writing and scribbled extracts into my exercise book. In fact, my handwriting is still as bad as ever...but I’m still dipping into books and love to share my finds with other readers. Go to BOOKS I WANTED TO READ BEFORE I DIED - AND DID! in my Pages, to see what I’ve been reading recently...

Who knew it first? The Onion Affect

2011-02-22T04:26:00.000-08:00

I've had some wonderful comments coming in about my last post - 'Write What You Know', and the idea that one cannot create an image that hasn't already been known within the world the writer lives in - which is why sci fi is usually based on images from the real world in some way or another.
Tania Hershman suggests that it is a 'philosopshical connumdrum' that any writer could create work that wasn't based on something already within their knowledge and that writing and knowing may be two separate things. Joe thought that readers should 'suspend disbelief'...but can writers do that and invent truly new worlds and ideas? Mark writes: when I was a painter my tutor used to say 'you can't truly know what you're painting until you've completed it'. The idea of working from a notion became essential to my art. And I take that into my writing too - the act of writing clarifies our thoughts - it orders them, prioritises, and helps us to understand what we know from what we thought we did. In this sense writing 'what we know' is an end point rather than a beginning. I do like the idea that what we create when writing can grow and develop even as we're working on it; the end product can be a real surprise. Mark also supplies a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5IweYkXlMU
But it occurred to me that what happens in writing is a sort of onion affect; right in the middle of the onion is the very first writer to push a boundary of thought and imagination, probably many years ago; possibly even before writing was invented and story was passed by word of mouth around outdoor fires. Slowly, over decades and millennia, the ideas and inventions are taken, rewritten, expanded, re-described and re-invented. From the Mabinogian, we get the image of people turned to stone statues. This was used by EE Nesbit in the Enchanted Castle; later, CS Lewis used the idea in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Was that coincidence, or did the writers take the earlier stories in with their milk then turn the image into new and delightful stories? Slowly, the onion is layered, until someone could write 2001, a Space Odyssey, or create a world like Middle Earth, or the weird landscapes of HP Lovecraft. Because, although none of use want to plagiarize earlier work, I'm sure we are all influenced by what we've read and been influenced by.
I'd love to hear other people's take on this.

Write What You Know?

2011-02-05T07:19:00.001-08:00

A student wrote to me recently, saying…They do say ‘write what you know’. However, having recently read an article written by Susan Hill in a writer’s magazine, I was thrown into a bit of a turmoil. I began to question what I am writing and wondered if I should hang on to the belief of writing what I know. She said that writers should use their imagination and make things up – not write about what they know. Having thought about it in some depth, I am not sure I actually agree with her entirely. Really I am not writing about me. I am writing about a character who is loosely based on someone I know…well, someone I kind of know through someone who I know very well…Hopefully you will understand what I am trying to fathom out.

I certainly did have sympathy with Amanda – and I’m sure a lot of writers will too. Write what you know is one of the oldest pieces of advice offered to writers, but confusion does arise about this – the advice seems contradictory. Many writers create vivid pieces after researching a subject from scratch. Writers of fiction invent new worlds, or set stories in historic periods they can’t experience. How does this fit with the notion of writing only what you know?

For me, ‘writing what you know’ means drawing on your own experience, memories, knowledge and passions, then taking your imagination and powers of invention to create something entirely new.

Struggling with subjects that have no interest for you will result in work that is flat and stilted – the lack of passion will show. The very act of researching new ideas will be made easier if you can summon up a sincere interest. But no one is going to know everything (well okay, some people can retain amazing amounts of fact/memories, but they are not your average dude), so some research is always necessary.
My friend Jean Burnett has recently placed an historic novel (The Bad Miss Bennet) with Little Brown for publication next year. She knows quite a lot about Regency England, but that didn’t mean she could skimp on the research, and doing it threw up some interesting details that enriched her story. However, Jean’s passion for the period is what gave her that extra mile while writing…and you really feel you are in Brighton and London after the Napoleonic wars as you read.

‘Writing what you know’ also relates to the people you write about; your fictional characters. You can use things you understand about your own psyche, and what you remember about your own past, as well as what life has taught you about other people, to enable you to get under the skin of almost any character, however different they are from you.

As a children’s writer, I have often step into the shoes of characters that are nothing like me…children from other lands and cultures…children who are experiencing things I’ve never undergone. As I write, I try to recall how I felt when I had experiences of my own that made me at least feel as they would be feeling; scared, excited, frustrated, moody, tearful. Dropping your own emotional familiarity into the character’s mind and body allows you to write with confidence on things you know little or nothing about.

Sometimes amazing, invented settings come out of what we already know. What would Middle Earth have been like if Tolkien had not witnessed the mud and slaughter of the First World War? Would Alice every have fallen down the tunnel if Charles Dodgson hadn’t seen the private tunnel that leads from a Brighton garden down to the beach? It's sometimes a suprise, but 'writing what you know’ can lead to startlingly varied and imaginative worlds.

My advice, is don’t lose sight of what you know and what you have a passion to find out. But as you write, ask one question of yourself all the time…WHAT IF? That’s the question which turns what you know into new and exciting worlds of fiction.

How to Win Writing Competitions

2011-01-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

As a winner and judge of short story competitions, I wasn’t all that surprised to see that both times I’ve held this workshop, it’s been well attended. Competitions are a deep mysterious pool for writers – and if you don’t know how to swim you certainly won’t stand much of a chance. Last Saturday at Bristol’s Folk House, I was joined by some great and lively company – everyone keen to win writing competitions!
Just one five-hour day to cram everything in, so this workshop concentrates on the ‘tricks of the trade’. After all, I think most writers know that to win a writing competition, they do have to write a cracking story – and it takes a bit longer than five hours on one Saturday to work that problem through!
So we concentrated on some crucial points –
• How and when to stick to the rules...and just how to understand them, as a lot of the time they are pretty impenetrable....
• How to understand what the judges want and how to write what they will like
• Making your entry eye-catching so that it stands out from the crowd
• Whether humour helps
• How to lay out and present your manuscript
• What to do if you don’t win
• How to grab the judges attention with your first 700 words
We managed some exercises to oil up our writing hands and produced some really lovely spontaneous writing As the group all had stories already written, we did some work with examining completed drafts to see how they could be improved. Some of the afternoon was spent researching how to find writing competitions and how to extrapolate the information supplied by the competition. Everyone read at least one competition winner, and finally, I took home a bunch of stories to read and comment on.
I’ve had some nice (and useful) feedback, including this from Jenny:
This to say an extra thank you for Saturday. I woke up this morning buzzing with ideas about things I’ve been stuck on. I really enjoyed the day and your unthreatening approach to the group; if it gets my novel going again, with a different (and maybe workable this time) structure and focus, it will be a real bonus...
Sadly the Trade Description Act wouldn’t allow me to promise that the group will all go away and win competitions, but I do hope they all feel they now stand a better chance...
So the very best of luck to all of you!

Have you made your writing New Year resolution?

2011-01-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

A VERY PROSPEROUS AND PRODUCTIVE NEW YEAR

TO ALL THE READERS OF KITCHEN TABLE WRITERS.

I hope you’ve all sorted out your new year resolutions for 2011. If you have, the best of the world’s luck with them. If you haven’t, take a look at my advice below. I might help you sort out what you want – which is a good start when resolving to achieve something. Remember:
Goals should motivate you to reach them, not be obstacles in your way.

The simplest way of arranging your thoughts is to divide your aims and goals into three:

1. Short-term plan

2. Middle-distance target(s)

3. Long-term ambition

Short-term Plan:
Your short-term plans should be as ‘achievable’ as possible – as simple as possibly. They should be things you make a weekly or monthly list of, then tick off as you go. Here’s some possible for 2011:
1. Subscribe to Kitchen Table Writers
2. Decide how often you can find time to write and stick to it
3. Take a writer’s magazine
4. Enter a writing competition
5. Attend Nina’s upcoming workshop on How to Win Writing Competitons on the 22nd January
6. Read a piece of published work equivalent to the things you are trying to achieve yourself
7. Join a writing group in which you can read your work aloud.
8. Failing that, read your work aloud to your partner
9. Failing that, read it aloud to yourself!

Middle-distance Targets:
You may already know what you want to write. You may want to produce several short stories, and you may already have a ‘market’ in mind. Or you may already have a half a novel in a drawer which you’re hoping to rejuvenate. Aspirations such as…finishing a first draft…or…sending Nina a short story for her to critique…are excellent middle-distance aspirations, although if you feel confident, you can ‘push’ your middle-distance target…getting an article published for a fee...could stir you into further action.

In the meantime, revisit your first loves. You may not know the sort of writing you’ll want to achieve, but you already know what you love to read or watch. (Do you prefer magazines to books? Do you seek out certain genres of paperback? Do you only read non-fiction? Do you prefer cinema to the theatre? Do you love radio plays or TV sitcoms? Ponder over what you’d like to do.

Long-term Ambition:
Even if you have never done this before, try now to visualize your writing goals. Because this is ‘visualization’, you can be expansive …imagine yourself winning a Nobel for Literature, if you like! Peoples strive towards long-term ambitions for most of their lives, so yours can be as ‘go-get’ and high-powered as you like. It’s also good to be realistic, though.

Now you should create a written ‘statement of intent’, summing up each stage

Short term plan_________________________________________________________

Middle-distance targets__________________________________________________

Long-term ambition_____________________________________________________

Finally, take the short term statement of intent and create a KEY PHRASE that will drive you forward at this moment in time. Make this a screen-saver or post-it on your corkboard or magnetize it to the fridge or use it as a bookmark – anything to make sure it gives you a friendly wave every day.

Now you really will have a productive new year…hopefully leading to a prosperous one.

WAYS OF FALLING

2010-12-20T03:33:00.000-08:00

The new anthology from Earlyworks is out; it is a classy-looking paperback full of well-realized and well-told short stories, some of them dark, some of them a little lighter. I'm afraid my SEA GOD, (pg 162) is within the 'dark tales' catagory. My inspiration for this story comes from the Welsh book of Myths, the Mabinogian, but this is no fantasy; it is set in the real world of today. To purchase this book, to go Amazon.co.uk, or contact http://www.earlyworkspress.co.uk/

WRITING COMPETITIONS: WINNING TECHNIQUES

2010-11-29T12:25:00.000-08:00

Back by popular demand, my full day Saturday Workshop returns on 22nd January 2011 at the Bristol Folk House, Park Street from 10am to 4pm
We will examine all the components of a good submission to a writing competition and look at the sort of stories that have been successful in the past.
The workshop is a blend of advice, research and exercises where you can work on new ideas or hone up completed stories. I am always happy to give individual advice on stories you bring with you.
I am a competition prize winner, I've judged a national short story competition and many of my students have also won prizes.
Don't leave your competition entries up to chance - join the class by going to http://www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/ or phone 01179262987 or email admin@bristolfolkhouse.co.uk

MEET MY PAL ED.

2010-11-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

Editing should feel like an old friend, standing by your side telling it like it is. And, just like most old friends, love 'em though we do, we don't want them there 24/7. They should drop in for a coffee and leave again before you have to hint you're busy. Ed's just the same. Although he knows he'll be needed even at the stage where ideas tumble about the brain, nudging each other aside in the hope they’ll get chosen, you honestly don't want him peering over your shoulder until you've got them all down in the raw.
You're scribbling down every thought that comes - filling your notebooks, Word files, diaries, backs of till receipts - it's all pouring out, but there comes a time when you have to chose which of these bits and bods to develope. And there he is, Ed, whispering...‘chose the ones you think will work.’
With any luck, Ed will help you chose a workable idea, but it’s not going to flow out of you, word perfect. So close the front door on him, or leave him mooching over his beer in the pub and get that first draft finished. Naturally, this draft has a ton of hitches. So when you've got a first draft down, give Ed a call, so that he can appear to give you a hand.
Sometimes I prefer to think of Ed as my friendly roadside breakdown mechanic, checking the brakes and the engine...is the plot going in the right direction? Do the characters’ motivations work? Have you got the right point of view? Sometimes – and I promise I’ll drop the analogy after this – you have to hang the expense go for a new model, because Ed is telling you this version is too costly to fix.

Finally, you have a good draft. ‘Don’t think,’ says Ed, ‘that all you have to do now is tinker – cross out adverbs...check for clichés. Dear me no.’
So you ask...should I have more or less dialogue? Should I have more or less scenes? Is there a strong narrative trajectory that pulls the reader along? Is my protagonist likeable – or at least intriguing? Do I use all five senses? Does the beginning jump up and bite? Does the middle sag? Does the end make you sigh?
Ed’s at your shoulder again. He’s reminding you to do that final proofread. Get rid of typos imbedded in the text.
Then he winks. Waves good-bye. Till the next time. Those thoughts are jostling already...

screaming

2010-10-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

Have you watched that scene in Cabaret, where Lisa Minnelli runs under a viaduct, waits for a train to roar over her head, then screeeeeeams?

First time I got a rejection slip, I wanted to do that. Sadly – no railway close enough, so I put on a DVD instead. It might even have been Cabaret; I’m a sucker for musicals when I’m down.

It felt like a surgeon had removed my stomach in an emergency gastrectomy and now he was contemplating pre-frontal lobotomy, because my head was buzzing so hard, logical thinking was impossible.

No chance of telling myself, with fingers still burning from the touch of poisoned paper, that rejection is common to every writer. Each editor’s desk is littered with submissions, even those of publications that pay badly, or not at all. Editors will – must – take what they like and send the rest back in boomerang time.

I was sure this editor had barely glanced at my manuscript before he placed it, with the horrid little rejection slip, into the SAE. And I was probably right. After all, he doesn’t have to take unsolicited work. He didn’t ask me to send it.

The movie ending was sad. I dried my tears and took a deep breath, finally ready to read the slip. Right at the bottom something was scribbled in black pen. A jotting, telling me why they’d rejected my work.

I clung to those words. They felt like a glimmer of light when you’re lost under the Mendips. I rewrote the piece, taking note of them. I did that a lot, over the next few years – the entire routine, I mean –rejection arrives in the post...watch the movie...tears...read the slip...rewrite...resubmit...

Finally, a letter arrived. A cheque fluttered out.

I drove right across town to the railway viaduct and screeeeamed....

TOP TEN PLACES TO WRITE YOUR MASTERPIECE

2010-09-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

1. Railway carriages. Long journeys over rattling rails helps your mind to become contemplative, almost trance-like. The constant movement of the scene outside encourages your imagination to follow trajectories, invent plots , link themes , see outcomes, understand characters and visualize landscapes.
2. Bed. While you are lying there, waiting for blessed sleep to descend, you might start to daydream a little about the characters or scenes in your latest story. Don't worry if you drop off to sleep in the middle of this; you're bound to recall snippets of it later. And if you can't sleep - if your mind is buzzing with ideas - don't fight it. Keep a notepad by the bed so that all those good ideas can be jotted down. Never mind the morning grind. Matchsticks are the sign of a writer!
3. The garden shed. Obviously, I’m not suggesting you share it with the lawn mower. But if you’re lacking a ‘room of your own’, to quote Virginia Wolfe, a little wooden shack at the bottom of the garden might be the answer.
4. The library. The idea place. It’s out of the house, so if your major writing problens us that people insist on stopping you while you work from home, or 'drop in for coffee’ as if you're a person of leisure, then the library is an ideal office. It has Internet access, tables and chairs, and all the research facilities you'll ever need. When inspiration dries, you can wander round the shelves, noting down interesting titles, to get yourself going again.
5. The park. Fair-weather writers can find all the stories they ever need in a park. It is full of people interacting and reacting with each other. There’s the couple whose dogs fell in love before they did...the father who brings his son here on his access day...the woman who pushes her elderly aunt out in a wheelchair...what are their stories? Or rather, what are the stories you might write for them?
6. The beach. Holidays tell great tales. Toss the sunblock to oneside, prop up the deck chair and spill the beans onto paper.
7. The local cafe. Take a tip from JKR and finish your novel over a cold latte. It may end up a bit stained and damp, but you will be in exhulted company. Which leads us to...
8. Under the stairs...or any bit of dwelling place you can cleverly transform into an office space. Once you are thinking of this area as 'office space', you will have somewhere where all your things can be stored together (rather than scattered around the place) and where, as soon as you sit to write, a little 'tap' gets turned on in the writing part of your brain, as it thinks...ah, here I am, in the place where words spill effortlessly from my pen...
9. In front the telly. I am not joking - I spent the whole of one writing year writing in on an easy chair, my laptop (suitably) positioned on my lap. It was the only option, so I took it. I was able to 'switch off' from whatever antique was being sold at a boot sale, but there are always ear plugs to help this along. The downside to this option is your seating position; it's not good for your back to balance a laptop on your knees. I did end up seeing an osteopath! But I got of lot of writing done. So if your only writing opportunity and location is while everyone else is wrapped up in Eastenders, get out the earplugs.
10. The kitchen table...of course! Hands up if you eat regularly at your dining table. Hands up again if it's actaully covered in stuff that really ought to be put away. How about storing your writing equipment in a nice strong box, a little larger than A4 size, and leaving it in a corner of the table? Then when you need to write, you take the box off the table, take out the necessary and use the newly-gained space to write on. And if it really is in the kitchen, you won't have to move far to make a coffee.

A Tribute to a Good Friend

2010-08-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

I use a winning writing resource – stimulating, user-friendly and widely available, it’s without charge and needs no upkeep, power supply or insurance policies.

Without fail, this facility always motivates and refreshes me. When I’m depressed, it reminds me of all my small achievements, and as I’ve used it a long time, those reminders go way back. When I’ve something to celebrate, there it is, ready with metaphorical cork-popping champers. Not that this is some anodyne application to my writer’s ego. No; it ceaselessly supplies me with sparkling new versions of So? Live with it...and... pull your finger out, girl.
This appliance is generally under-used by my fellow writers. They don’t seem to understand the full worth of the well-spring, or if they do, they don’t appreciate it like they should. I’ve seen this facility ignored, squandered and left to fade away in a dusty corner. Then the writer complains the resource has let them down when they needed it most, or that someone else is monopolizing it. They should be ashamed of themselves, for there is no finer writer resource. I am quite sure I wouldn’t’ve achieved any of my success without it.
My favourite writing resource even has a name...Gail. Yours should have a name too...Jim or Hilary or Sue. Because, in my opinion, the best resource a writer can have is a writing friend. A friend who knows the dark days, blank screens days, the evil rejection slips, the crashed screens, writer’s cramp and silent tears of frustration. They should do – they’re suffering too.
Naturally, they’ll expect you to be a writer friend right back. Gail and I agree...that’s like twice the resource. Double the result for us both.
I wouldn’t be without her, so...thanks, Gail.

The Despondent Writer's Question and Answer Session with Nina

2010-07-19T03:04:00.000-07:00

FAQ from Despondent Writers...
Q I feel low about my writing
A…make sure you keep all correspondence that has perked you up (especially my Reports) and leaf through them from time to time
QI have nowhere quiet to write
A… Invest in some ear plugs and you can even join your family in front of the telly.
Q I never seem to be in the right mood to write
A…You may find this disappears, once you put all the tips into effect…especially notebooking, Tapping Your Imagination, reading relevant books, dipping into research and using piecharts and timetables. But you may also want check your writing ‘time’ is at a good part of the day for your mood – not when you’re exhausted, or have had alcohol, for instance. Find one effective way to ‘beat’ your own mood and put it into action at the start of your writing time.
Q I really want to write, but just have no ideas
A…the more we focus on something, the stronger those ideas become. So focus in on one project and go all out to research it, making notes as you go and using your ‘Miscellany book’ to store ideas.
Q I feel guilty spending time on my writing.
A... How important is writing to you? Give it a score, as compared to other important parts of your life, out of ten. Now look at how much time you give to other parts, and allow yourself at least as much.
Q No, it’s not me, it’s those I live with – they make me feel guilty.
A...This time, your list should be about how much time they spend doing what they like…watching rugby, chatting on the phone…watching soaps…their new Wii…now you feel better, don’t you?

Got the writer's blues? If the question you're burning to ask isn't here, when not post it as a comment below?

This posting originally appeared in Nina Milton's Notepad Programme

linking up a web of creativity

2010-06-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

A student recently wrote to me, towards the end of her course work. This is what she wrote...
Through the first part of the course I thought about my finished stories like a hierarchy of pieces of work. I suppose I judged them as a list of titles with the best at the top and worst at the bottom. A liner system that reminds me of my experience of learning at school. Now it feels like all the stories and poems are spread out on a web or ecosystem that keeps growing. They are all valuable. It’s not all about which one is better than the other. They are all interconnected. They contain tools and craft and experience and all have a positive experience in the evolution of my writing.
This feels much more of a comfortable process to work with in and one that can be continually added to in the future. This web also expands to contain all of my other types of creative work. Having an understanding of an ever-growing web also make it easier to give my stories to other people to read, which I have started to do, instead of keeping them all to my immediate family and myself. This, I am finding, is a very valuable experience...
What wise words! It would do us all good to think about our collections of creative writing in this way. We should consider every single piece as ‘grist to the mill’ – a widening and growing understanding of how we’re developing as a writing, everything linked; everything essential. Part of that ‘web of creation’ my student talked about.
And, even if, on finishing something new, we decide to put it away because it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, or because it doesn’t feel ‘up to standard’, that doesn’t mean that later on we can’t return to it. We may come back with a fresh approach, or renewed vigour and tackle this piece in such a way it becomes valuable within the collection.
With this in mind, look at my Exercise of the Week. Would this be an onerous task for you as a writer? Or would it be something that might stimulate and energise you? You may find that it’s actually an enjoyable activity...that the old stuff you put away years ago as juvenilia, is, with the hindsight of experience, something you can revamp or learn from.

A Fleeting Moment of a Wider Picture

2010-05-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

There is no warning; one moment I’m gaping up at the reading lamp, wishing I could switch it off because its heat is burning my face so badly I can’t breath; the next I’m above it, looking down.
I’m floating above the light, above the bed, above myself in it.
There are two of me now, the ethereal floaty me and the creature lying prone. I know which one I am – no doubt – I am the one looking down. The other one below is the thing I floated out of, and I was pleased to do it because it felt bad; breathless and oven-baked and faint and sore in a weird internal sort of way
The metal shade of the lamp throws a glow over the proceedings. I can see everything clearly, but I feel no connection. I’m not scared or angry, or even confused; although it is apparent that everyone round me is frantic with confusion. I see them as if they are birds, the perching, flocking sort of bird that is small and anxious. They move as if they have both wings and very small feet with a short gait. One flutters in, hovers over me so that the spotlight is on the back of her head now, on the stripes of her dress and her tight ponytail. She flutters off and brings more of the flock back. They hover, raising their voices. I can hear the words, but I’m not all that concerned. Crash, they say. Quick! Arrest. CPR. Phone – no – button. Dammit!
One glances up. I soar away. Strangely, I don’t want to be seen. I am a bit embarrassed about floating. Anything like this is embarrassing to me – I never like to complain in a shop, or be the one that trips in the street. I like to be invisible, normal. But, no, she is not looking at me. She is adjusting the light, so that it shines on my face. Yep, that’s my exterior, but not in great shape. Too white, with that waxy gleam my mother’s kitchen floor always had. Eyes dull in the head, staring into oblivion. Mouth open. I look ugly, stupid.
I look dead.
I am having a baby. I can see that it is in me, a big round hill of baby underneath the pale counterpane. But something was going wrong with my blood, I was poisoning the vacuum sealed compartment the baby lives in. So, looking down like this, seeing my other self and the baby it contains under the spotlight, I’m glad I’m out of there, because now they can take the baby away from the body that is destroying it and make it better. Offer it light, air, warmth, food. Nowadays, they can do anything, can’t they? The incubator is equivalent to the mother’s womb. You pop the baby in and feed it through a tube until it can suckle. Simple…the baby won’t need my poisoning system anymore. And from up here, which is both just above the bedstead and also in another place entirely, I can made that kind of dispassionate decision. I can see that I don’t matter. I am not so very important in the overall scheme of things. Life will revolve and go one and go on again so long as the next generation exists.
The baby is crucial.
Even though I don’t like being in the spotlight, even though I don’t like to create a scene, I float down at little, in case they can hear me.
Save the baby, I say. Save the baby, not me.
The rest of the flock have fluttered in and are hovering over me. One has thrown curtains round the bed, another has tossed the pillows to the floor, where the little nurse who comes to wash me flicks them away from under the feet of the flock. Each has their own job, and seem to know it. Two of them lay me flat, quickly, neatly.
Save the baby, I try to remind them, but they are not listening. A massive block of apparatus on wheels is rolled through the doors of the ward which crash open and bang shut behind the thing that sways like moon buggy with its shiny, hooked antennae holding a bag of clear fluid, swaying along the ward with the woman pulling it shouting something and the nurse with the ponytail responding with one word.
She puts her face on mine. I drift closer. She is kissing me better. I cannot feel the kiss on my mouth, but something lifts in me, something inside my solar plexus pulls…tugs…

And I am back. I open my eyes and the flock of birds dart back, as if I am a cat. They chirp and tweet. One of them says, ‘hello!’
Hello.
You’re fine, they say, later, while I’m recovering. It was a kind of surgical shock from the pre-eclampsia. It won’t happen again. You’re fine.
I nod. I can’t tell them. It would feel irreverent, after their efforts, that all I wanted them to do was save the baby.
But from time to time, as my child toddles, then walks, then runs, I recall that feeling, the desire I had as I gazed down on my body.
It reassures me.

FINDING THE LIFE-BLOOD OF WRITING

2010-05-09T04:31:00.000-07:00

There are many strange truths about writing. In my ‘quote of the week’, John Gardiner sums one of them up perfectly. The more detail you chose to include, the less boring the writing becomes. Skimming over a description loses the reader, zoning-in absorbs him. It’s yet another way to create fiction that is strong, absorbing and energetic
Remember, you don’t have to describe the whole of something. That is the difference between a chunk of description and the detail of it. By looking closely at the most interesting parts of the whole – whether it’s an artifact, a person, a landscape or an interior – the description of it will be enhanced. The reader won’t want to see it all, because that’s like being too close to the screen in the cinema – too much information.
Symbolism can truly help to get to the core of what you want to say. Using it is fairly simply. Take something symbolic and examine that as a single descriptive detail of the whole.
To find the right symbol, think about the ‘core’ of the thing. For example, your scene is an inner city waste land. Don’t try to describe all of it, your reader’s eyes will glaze over. Instead, focus your imagery on one blighted buddleia, seemingly imbedded in nothing more than rocks and dust, where no butterfly has ever ventured.
Of course, your first draft may be rushed, with not much detail – you are trying as much to get down your thoughts on the story as to write it. It’s fine to end up with a rushed first copy that is possibly ¼ as long as the eventual manuscript. But whether you start this way and return to the beginning, or prefer to get in close in your first draft, when you do this, you’ll find it will actually help you understand your story. It will highlight the small, vital moments that add up to the whole.
This is quite the opposite as providing chunks of description. Today’s readers are not keen on chunks of either description or exposition – that died out with the bustle – so the way to add interesting detail is to slide it in surreptitiously as the action, interior monologue and dialogue continues to move the story on. On the other hand, try not to cram too much description into a short space of words. This tentancy is also the opposite close-up detail, which takes the time…and the amount of words…it has to take to be itself. If you delve into vivid, symbolic imagery while creating your action, dialogue and narrative moments, you will bring your writing alive.
So this is the strange truth…the more detail you chose to include, the less boring the writing becomes…moving into close-up is absorbing and paints the imagery of the story.
Here’s a fast first draft version of a moment in my latest book for children:

The captain’s knife cut into Jake’s cheek.
‘You’re my slave, with my mark on you, boy,’ said Captain Elliot. ‘We’re bound for England on the next tide, and you’re coming with me.’

There’s nothing wrong with getting the bare-boned basics down in this way. What you’ll have is a sort of fusion between draft and plot outline.
Writing fast without putting in the detail is something you might want to do when your head is full of plot – or conflict between two characters. But having got it out of your head and on to paper, you can go back and look for those details that will not only brighten the writing style, but also help you ‘see’ the images you’re creating on the page – it’s essential that you can visualize exactly what is happening in any scene, as this brings the entire narrative alive.
Once I’d written this tiny section, I could begin to imagine what it was like to be there, on the quay side, for Jake:

The captain grasped Jake’s ear and held him firmly. The knife from his belt glinted silver in the hot noon sun, yet it felt like ice as it slid down Jake’s cheek.
‘You’re my slave, with my mark on you, boy.’
Blood dripped. Jake felt it tickle its way down like a raindrop. It ran behind the iron collar that had been round his neck since the Captain had paid good English Stirling for Jake in the marketplace.
‘We’re bound for England on the next tide.’ Captain Elliot liked to chew tobacco and the black spit flew everywhere, smelling of the tang of the sea. It landed on Jake’s cheek, mingled with the oozing blood. He felt the chain jerk at his neck, felt the screech of pain from the raw skin. He tried to swallow, but there was no spit left in his mouth.
‘And you’re coming with me.’

In this fuller version, I’ve ‘seeded in’ description by using symbolic imagery. I don’t tell you what the Captain is wearing (although I could later), I focus on his aggression via the knife and his general unpleasantness via the tobacco. Notice that I’ve added the sense of touch (the icy knife, the warm trickle of the blood, the pain of the collar) to the passage, and craftily added the smell of the sea via the tobacco. You don’t need to squash every sense into a single description, but sound, touch, taste and smell do work exceedingly well to draw a reader into an image.
I’ve tried to avoid describing Jake’s emotions, though, because that often ends up in telling, rather than showing… ‘Jake was scared.’ I’ve gone for showing, through his dry mouth, which links back to the opposite symbolism of the squidgy, wet tobacco wedge that the captain is chewing. I've tried to imbed the entire description between dialogue and action.
You might like to try the Exercises of the Week – like me, chose a bit of your own work and see what you can make of it.

WRITING FROM YOUR OWN INSPIRATION

2010-05-01T09:15:00.001-07:00

I first experienced an ‘inspired visualization’ in the home of a Druid Priestess. There were twelve or so of us sprawled out on her carpet. I laid my jumper over my eyes and listened to her seductive voice describe an imaginary landscape, telling us to smell the scents and look around us. She called this ‘using our psychic eyes’, which, apparently, were open behind our closed lids.

At first, thoughts kept getting in the way… do I look a prat lying here…is my bag of Chorizos good enough for the communal table? Bit-by-bit, I began seeing things that felt very real. I could feel the grass beneath bare feet, hear a skylark singing. Her voice faded away, and it was up to me what happened next. It was, in fact, just like plotting a story.

Visualization is used regularly as a therapeutic tool to help people with difficulties, and within various spiritual paths to explore the subconscious, and…whether they know it or not…by most writers. A mild trance state takes you from one world (physical, concrete) into another (spirit-based and ethereal).

Trance states are not all that rare. The rhythmic waves that are the electrical impulses of our brains beat at various speeds. When we are alert and about our daily business, they’re fast-paced. When deeply asleep, they slow dramatically. But as writers, we can tap into the cycles that lie between sleep and alertness, when the waves slow to an Alpha rhythm.

It’s that common experience in the supermarket. Tin of beans in hand, our minds soar off somewhere. When a passing friend calls our name, we don’t hear them, and if they tap our shoulders, we jump, hopefully without dropping the beans on their foot. Writers can take advantage of ‘losing of yourself’. In this slower state of thinking, the relaxed, twilight world of the trance, vivid imagery flashes into the mind’s eye.

Like most other writers, I’m fascinated by how plots, characters and entire scenes arrive from nowhere, and recognize that the act of physical writing is merely the setting down of the words and pictures that have already appeared in our imaginations - whether that happened moments, weeks or years before we write. But the guided visualization in the house of the Druid made me ask, what is our imagination? What happens when we visit the world of ‘story’ – when characters stand gazing out from headlands, the salt spray on their lips, despite the fact we’re actually doing the washing up?

Enhancing this imaginative process enables the writing to become sharper, more ‘present’, more melodic. Settings have colour, taste, smell and the subtlest background sounds all built in. The techniques are simple, but need clear instructions to help their effectiveness.

Deliberately entering an imagined world begins by finding a quiet place. The journey into a ‘story’ starts with gentle breathing and waiting for the thoughts that drift, unbidden, through your mind to become focused.

Imagine, for instance, turning the pages of a book. To find your story, keep gently turning pages, moving along until you’ve left the physical realm outside your body behind and are actually inside your own head. Allow the experience to take shape in anyway it likes – words, pictures, symbols, dance, feelings. Don’t worry if you fall asleep – take advantage of those ‘drifting’ moments that are even deeper than the Alpha brain wave state.

If your writing relates to a particular world, you may like to play music that will summon up the appropriate image, but keep the noise level down and avoid song – the words will overtake your own internal dreaming.

Place your notebook and pen by your, and, as soon as you are back, write down everything you experienced. This is the most important part of the exercise. Write immediately, using a freewriting technique, not stopping to correct your work. Describe in detail whatever comes to you.

When you’re stuck for something to write, visualization will send you in search of childhood memories or forgotten moments of passion. If you’re stuck at a point in a story, you can seek the clues to the puzzles of your plot. You can become your character’s therapist, or watch them choose what they wear, eat, drive. You will soon find that your mind is full of startling revelations and things jump out at you and demand to be written down.

Imagination is where your writing begins – using this ‘visualization’ technique, you can enter it and roam around it at will. Writing will spill out. You’ll never be afraid of the ‘blank page’ again…you’ll be writing directly from your own inspiration.

THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?

2010-04-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

My ‘How to Book’ on keeping chickens poses the question…‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’ Quick as you like comes the pithy reply… ‘Neither. It was the dinosaur.’

You might ask the same question about fiction. ‘What comes first, character or plot?’ And the answer might be…that old dinosaur…whichever turns you on, of course.’

I’m not entirely joking (which must be a relief, for those that appreciate good jokes). I think the personality of the writer has a lot to do with how they approach this subject.

Some people can’t help being ideas dudes. Writers from Agatha Christie to Philip Pullman come in this category. Their thoughts revolve around subject and concept, and the characters simply have to accept their slightly secondary role in their creators’ minds.

Others see new people in their mind’s eye and immediately begin the story of their lives…which slowly evolves into plot. My friend Gail is of this bent. It seems to me that her entire life has been accompanied by imaginary people who feel as real to her as her own family, and whose stories she know more intimately than the lives of her friends. But she will admit that creating satisfying novels that sell, is not easy for her. The characters go their cavalier way about things and refused to be straight-jacketed into plots.

The secret is…well, it isn’t a secret, really...it's that old middle way. Compromise. Fusion. Knowing your own failings and working with them. Not a secret…more a dinosaur.

As you write – or rather as you read – your first draft, ask yourself; is this story plot-led? Is this story character-based? Chicken? Or Egg? Whichever is the answer to the question, look to the other side of things. Give extra time and energy to the weakest half of the story dilemma.

Chickens
In character-led stories, put time aside to work on the plot, using whatever methods you find most useful – try some or all of the following:
• Index cards
• ‘Timelines’, that prove your story works in space and time
• Web diagrams
• Meditations – ‘day dream’ your way to a better plot
• Redrafting techniques
• ‘Brainstorming’ – use your friends to help you get it right
• Whiteboards or pinboards linking your freshest ideas
• Freewriting techniques
If what you love is character, you might be of the opinion that plotting is dull and stifles the life out of your writing. Try to think of it as a challenging puzzle that will allow your characters to live on the page. Quality plotting can bring out their hidden flaws, create complexities and make them one hundred percent convincing.

Eggs
In subject-driven stories, the writer should put aside their passion for careful plotting and give equal time to get to know their characters. This is best done ‘off page’:
• Candidate characters should first fill out a ‘personality CV’ in the shape of a questionnaire.
• Then, find an appropriate photo or make a sketch on the character
• Note down all the physical characteristics- from moles and tattoos to weak hips and a tendency to nibble a thumb nail. Not down accent, mannerisms, dress sense, body language and any other characteristic you can think of.
• Having noted physical and personality details, write a ‘character portfolio’
• List the things found in their pockets or handbag
• Enter the room this character thinks of as their own and poke around.
• Interview the character – they may surprise you.
• Finally, use the Health Spa Exercise for this week to see how your character responds when they find themselves sharing a table with another character.

Cause and Effect is thought of as part of the plotting mechanism, but in fact it is a technique that can be used to ‘fuse’ plot and character successfully. It can have a riveting effect on the plotting of your stories. Readers love to see the ‘story build up’, through events, thoughts, character traits etc., that are set up in the early moment then link and develop the story towards the end.

A way of utilizing ‘cause and effect’ is to build up tension. An excellent ‘aide memoir’ for this is the ‘5 C’s…Characters Conquering Conflict Create Conclusion. Explore, as you’re working on a story, how you might represent the conflicts that characters – especially the main character – have to struggle against…and how or if they will overcome them. This works whether you choose to summon up your characters first and let them build up the plot by the conflict they create, or have a model in mind which needs characters to fulfil its potential. Either way, you must know why they are in this story, and make them grow on the page, so let the characters show how the action works by keeping them under constant stress.

Be a Dinosaur!
Don’t be ruled by the chicken and egg dilemma; in your first draft, it’s better to be a bit of a dinosaur and take the middle way.

Juggling with Stories

2010-04-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

“A good short story knows its ending before it is begun, it is always working towards its end”…so said A.S. Byatt recently in the Sunday Times Culture section. This may sound impossible to live up to, but she softens the blow a little… “A good short story establishes its own rhythm at its very beginning, and the reader has a sense of the rhythm reaching ahead, towards the end”…

So, what happens when this clearly isn’t happening in the story you’ve just begun, or the story you’ve been plugging away at for some time? Recently, a student wrote a personal observation of their writing, which they’ve been kind enough to allow me to pass on…

“I’m not very good at getting back into my writing after a break and this seems to happen frequently at the moment. So this story acted as a sort of warm up session to the Spider Woman one. I think this was a really important part of the process for me; that one story evolved into another. I always start writing my stories in a sketch book. Writing with a pen always feels more comfortable and I just try to write down as much as I can before I start thinking too much about characters or plot. I have tried it the other way around but it usually slows me down. I start putting the story onto the computer sometimes before I’ve got to the end and this seems to spark off more ideas. I then seem to go between the two – sometimes when my head is full of the story, I’ll jot a line or two down in my book – sometimes I’ll sit and tap away.”

I was rather impressed when I read these words. For a start, the student is writing down how she feels about the writing process. This is something I always recommend, but I know from personal experience that it is hard to ‘write about writing’ and this often it takes a back seat. However, writing in this way often gets to the nub of some of the hardest things about becoming a writer. For a start, watching and reflecting how one’s own psychology ‘works’ is extremely effective and can often break through problems like ‘creating a routine’, ‘gaining the confidence to write’ and ‘facing the blank page’. But actually recording these thoughts, as part of your writing life not only prevents you from forgetting them, but actually helps consolidate them and implant them in your mind and allows you to work on them.

What the student has done here, is observe herself writing a story that didn’t work, allowing that conclusion to be drawn (always a very hard one), then picking out of the ‘non-workable story’ the themes, emotions, characters and ideas that could still be used (or reused), and creating something new and more successful with them.

Byatt suggests that we should ‘know’ when the rhythms of a story aren’t working…when, however much hard work we put into it, never come right, that is, “work towards its own end”. My student cleverly understood this – that you didn’t have to write ‘the perfect story’ first time round. Sometimes an embarrassingly fruitless version has to be ‘hatched’ first. I’m trying to think of an analogy that would fit this process – the only thing that springs to mind at the moment is that it’s like ‘creating’ a caterpillar, then allowing it to become a chrysalis and reform over days, weeks, months…before emerging as, yes, cheesy I know…a beautiful butterfly.

An awful lot of professional writers create their stories (for children and adults) with this try/miss/hit method. Many a successful novel started life as an unpublishable short story or metamorphosed from a play into a piece of crime fiction…or whatever. Many a colourful character began life as something very different, almost as if they were waiting for the right story to be part of. Famously, Tolkien’s Strider began life as a kind of hobbit. Tolkien had written the first draft of ‘Fellowship’ all the way to the Prancing Pony at Bree without actually knowing that Frodo and pals would meet any kind of king there. But once Strider stopped being a hobbit and became Aragorn, the way ahead must have been clear; the rhythm of the story assured.

Good systems include asking ‘what if’ after the struggle with the first draft is over (as well as before it begins) as well as ‘which bits’ and even ‘which story’? Moving, slotting, juggling and slicing chunks of story are also common strategies, along with ditching. Ditching, for the writer, is not a farming pursuit alongside hedging…it’s the heartbreaking knowledge that something must go. The first chapter is often the part that has to be ditched, because all it does is explain things too quickly, too openly. The great ‘dinner party tale’ of writers is that William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was rejected by dozens of publishers until one actually read past the first chapter and told him they would take the book if he omitted it. Not many people have ever caught a glimpse of that first chapter.

Luckily, it’s almost never too late to come to these realizations. Even when you’ve finished a story and put it away (especially if you’ve finished a story and put it away because no one has wanted to publish it) you can return afresh and ask these questions of it:

• Does it know its own ending?

• Does it have a satisfying internal rhythm?

• Does it relentlessly moved towards the conclusion?

• Have you asked ‘what if’ in the right way?

• Would it work if you swapped the beginning, end and middle around?

• Would it work if you ditched the first paragraph, or even the first page?

• Are the characters still in search of the right story for them?

• Can you ‘talk’ to yourself about this story – writing down a reflection of what is wrong with it, as if you are your own mentor or tutor?

I’m personally hopeless at juggling. Can’t keep balls in the air, let alone knives or chainsaws. But juggling words – characters – plots – themes – settings – the entire extent of storyland…that comes more easily. Maybe there really is a ‘storyland’ where lost and lonely characters are searching for the right setting, theme and plot. What writers need to become are sort of dating agencies, mixing and introducing until they get the perfect match.

I think this has to do with the 90% perspiration part of writing. The ‘brilliant idea’ does not flow out of even established writers like an endless, muse-controlled fountain. The secret trick that allows someone to finally come up with the ‘brilliant idea’ is knowing how to utilize what you’ve got – to look, think, go away and cogitate, then look again. I don’t think I am quite saying that every idea you have for a story is usable in some formt - that all you’ve got to do is search and find it - but I do believe that it’s worth trying, just in case.

MAKING A DRAMA OF IT: Tension in your Fiction.

2010-03-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

One of the most useful techniques writer can stuff under their belt is the ability to control tension and create drama in their story – regardless of whether it is a piece of micro-fiction or the length of Moby Dick (whale or book). The challenges are subtly different – in a novel it’s keeping the tension going sufficiently to entice the reader the less dramatic chapters, whilst in short stories, creating a balance between the peaks and the necessary lulls in a tight space can be a test of skill.
Some apprentice writers have trouble isolating the drama in their work and often miss all the tricks in cranking up tension. They assume that events in a story will come across as dramatic – a mugging, for instance, that’s got to be drama, right? But it is so easy to muffle the tension instead of enhance it. Here is a first draft extract of the children’s story I am writing at present – the ‘freewrite’ I scribbled down while the scene was fresh in my mind…

They were gaining on me. Each time I reached a corner, their footsteps were louder. I ran into a courtyard, hoping to lose them by twisting and turning. Instantly, I realized that I'd blown it. I was in a parking area at the back of some shops. There was only one way in - and out.
They stopped abruptly when they saw me, trapped and defeated. They began to spread out so that I had no chance of scooting around them. I stepped backwards as they moved in slowly. Then I realized I was doing what they wanted, I was backing into a wall. There'd be a moment when I could go no further, when they might pounce.
I gave it one last shot. I sprang forwards, taking them by surprise, head down, holding my skates in front of me like weapons, hurling myself between two of them. I felt hands reach out to grab me, snatch a bit of my sleeve, then one of them leapt at me, wrapping his arms round my legs in a rugby tackle. I put out my hands as the wet, glinting cobbles came up to meet me, but my nose and chin seemed to take most of the impact. The hot pain that comes when you lose a lot of skin swept over my face.
They were surrounding me. I closed my eyes as the first kick came, pulling my knees and folding my arms round my head. This was it, I thought. The very last of my bad luck. The very end of it.
A boot dug sharp into the back of my head…

As muggings go, this one is pretty mundane at the moment, but there is so much I can now do to heighten the tension and turn this into an extreme dramatic experience for character and reader alike.
Control your Reader
Some stories prefer to jog along at a steady pace until ‘bang!’ the tension is loosed like a cannon shot – often towards the end. Other stories build up tension slowly and steadily from the beginning, like tightening the elastic band on one of those little plastic aeroplanes. To help you understand how your drama functions, think about the affect you want to have on your reader. In fact focus right in on your reader’s stomach. When we read edgy, dramatic pages, our stomach knots up alongside the characters’. At first it might just be a butterfly flutter of worry. But as the tension takes hold, we begin to grip the cover tight and pant with anxiety. The writer achieves this affect by controlling what happens in the reader’s mind (and in his steadily knotting stomach) moment by moment within the narrative.
Once you have a first draft – at least in your own head or scribbled onto a plot outline –looking at how the way you tell the story will directly affect the knots in the reader’s stomach. This might mean presenting the ‘threat/mystery’ earlier in the story. Equally, it might mean holding off on the true mystery, while mini ‘subplot’ threats are seeded in.
The excerpt above is an early scene in the book – it sets the plot moving. So it should present an ‘explosion’ near the beginning that can set the blood racing and encourage the reader to then move through the next chapters - ones that burn slowly in comparison. I should let that explosion really rip. I might need to re-jig the sequence of events a bit and I should be careful not to race through it. I need to let the character (Brandon) tell his story at his own pace.
Get inside a head
Scenes should be described from inside the mind of the character most affected by any rise in tension and drama. If this isn’t possible – because your 1st person protagonist is watching the event, for instance – you must be sure that they are intensely affected by what they see – that they are able to empathize with the affected person. (Unless, of course, what you want to demonstrate is that your protagonist isn’t good at empathy, or doesn’t consider this a drama at all. If that is the case, the scene won’t be represented to the reader as drama – so be sure this is what you intended.)
Show, don’t tell will kick-start the process. Allow the character to register any physical reactions to the growth of tension inside him…my fists tightened…my heart was thumping against my ribs…my breath was coming in short, painful rasps…
Take all the time you need to make sure the reader is absolutely ‘there’ with the character(s). Don’t race through the action, or fail to report a single word spoken. Stop and use descriptive affects, ‘teasing’ your reader as unbearably as you can. Use strong verbs wherever possible to build tension. Avoid too many adjectives, but don’t avoid description…My fists tightened around the blades of my skates. They were cutting into my palms…My heart was thumping against my ribs but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the gang as my breath came in short painful rasps
Slowing Down
‘Take your time’ is one of my favourite phrases. I offer this advice to almost all my students, and so I guess I should take it myself. In the excerpt, I pummel along, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Brandon would be doing that, after all. I can’t stop the action – it is full pelt. But there are ways of holding it up while not actually stopping it. The simplest is to move into a short internal monologue. This is a renowned way of putting on the brakes at tense moments (some writers take terrible advantage of this, holding off their readers for pages, but that’s quite a risk). I must take as much time as I dare to express Brandon’s thoughts as he confronts the gang …They were gaining on me. Each time I reached a corner, their footsteps were louder – footsteps that rang on cobbled stones. I remember thinking, they're not wearing trainers.
I saw a turning ahead and swerved into it, hoping to lose them by twisting and turning. Instantly, I saw I'd blown it. I was in a parking area at the back of some shops. These were shops I'd been into, buying chocolate and chewing gum, millions of times. But now I was on the wrong side of them. There were no open doors and racks of sweeties. Just bricked up back walls…
You can see that I’m slowing the action down…writing into the gaps I left in my rush to get the words onto the page. Doing this increases tension. You wouldn’t think that would be so, but it is. The reader longs to be teased. They want to know the end of the story, the solution to the mystery, but when they reach the end they’re saddened. They wanted it to go on for ever. Otherwise Spielberg could have just spliced the first and last scenes in Jaws together and save everyone a whole evening’s viewing, or Bronte could have inscribed …reader, I married him…on the first page of Jane Eyre.
Make it Hard
Slowing down and holding back action works well to tighten the knots in the reader’s stomach. An equally good way is to make the action as difficult as possible. Make achieving a goal, even a small one, as hard as you convincingly can. Let terrible events draw out for as long as you dare, too…A boot dug sharp into the back of my head. There was a cry – I didn’t know if it was them or me. I tried to wriggle away. I felt a dead weight on my back. One of them had sat on me. The boot came again. My eyes filled with blood…
Atmosphere and Mood
These often ‘grab’ a reader and draw them in, making them feel as if they are ‘inside the story’, experiencing it physically. There is a subtle difference between these two terms:
• Atmosphere intrigues, excites, disturbs, beguiles…in other words it’s that ‘je ne sais quoi. It is often created from the setting…PJ James is good at this…or the dialogue…consider Raymond Chandler…or character description…think Dickens. To create atmosphere, let the ‘surroundings’ of each scene speak to the reader…. Just bricked up walls looming over me, black in the dark courtyard. Suddenly a security light flashed on, like we were on stage, caught in the spotlight.
• Mood is subtly different from atmosphere. It works like a perfume, subtly sensed as it further lifts the pace and atmosphere. It is usually dictated by the feelings of the protagonist or narrator... They began to spread out so that I had no chance of scooting around them. They whistled high, tuneless notes, like birds arguing over a worm. They were grinning. Their teeth glinted in the security light. They were grinning and whistling over a worm…..

The mood affects the pace, and the opposite can also be true. Atmosphere can match, shadow or underline the character’s moods. The Pathetic Fallacy can aid this, from time to time, using landscape, place/objects, climate/weather, events, etc. Truly absorbing, readable stories have braided all the effects in perfect measure.
Light and Shade…Adding Pace
It’s good for ‘light and shade’ to be added to writing. We do this even when talking, changing the tone, speed and timbre of our voice for effect. Pace…the ‘speed of the read’…is the best way to vary light with shade, and useful at encouraging dramatic tension to fluctuate in a narrative.
Pace should change regularly within a piece of writing. Of course, it’s fine to have a ‘favourite pace’ that you’ll use for the majority of the time. Particular paces attract particular readers. For instance, someone who loves the pace of a Virginia Wolfe novel, probably won’t like the pace of a Grisham, and vice versa. Pace can crawl, crush, accelerate, thrust or hurtle. We usually expect pace to be created from the action, but dialogue and even inner monologue can have pace, too. It’s used to advance the action, but can be cleverly used to delay the action – the ‘build-up’, which is often the place where the most tension lies. The pace you take your narrative at will depend on your readership, but don’t miss out on increasing the tension by varying pace at the important moments.
There are various technical ways to engender pace and so control the tension that arises, including some quite small, but important adjustments:
1a. To slow pace, use the present participle frequently.
1b. To speed it up, take them out (look for ‘ing’ endings)
2a. To slow pace, use longer words, longer speeches, words with a a smoother feel, longer sentences and longer paragraphs.
2b. To speed it up, use short, staccato words, lots of full stops and short paragraphs, snappy dialogue. Alliteration works well. Find a rhythm within the abruptness.
3a. To slow pace, use a little of the perfect tense (he had seen her) within the simple past. The passive form, although generally unwise, will slow pace. Abstract words slow pace because the reader has to ‘interpret’ them. Avoid unnecessary words such as seemed, then, also, quite, very, however, might.
3b. To speed it up, use the present tense, if possible within the context, and avoid the perfect tense, the passive form and abstract words.
4a. Look at presentation of images. To slow, give them a dreamy mood. Use all the techniques in ‘slowing down’, above.
4b. To speed up make images clear and precise, sharp sights & sounds. Don’t over describe, but metaphors and symbols can work as ‘shorthand description – sneak description into the action. Avoid adverbs like the plague. Avoid clichés, too!

In places, I need to speed my pace up. Here are the ways I utilized the ‘B’s above:
1. They howled into the courtyard…I hurled myself between two of them…
2. One last shot. I sprang forwards. My head was down. My skates were like weapons…
3. I took a step backwards. They paced forward. I stopped. I must not do what they wanted. I must not reach the wall. Once my back was against it, I was trapped.
4. The gang surrounded me. I was a worm. I was going to be squashed. Their boots scrape on the stones.

Once you have your reader’s stomach wound into a knot, it’s difficult to keep that buzz of attention when you know you need to drop the pace again. Try creating a break where the reader can take a breath – ending a scene or chapter on a ‘high’ is an accepted and common method of curtailing high tension moments. Just don’t do this until you’ve extracted every gram of possible stomach-knotting!
Flashbacks work very well at this point in a story, because they put everything completely on ‘hold’ and the reader understands that mechanism (that ‘trick’) and goes with it, taking the ‘mystery’ forward with them in the hope it will later be solved.
Interior monologue has a similar affect. Allow your character to ponder the dramatic moments or allow him to cogitate on a separate but vital issue.
Often, the moment is so dramatic that it needs to be resolved at once. I can’t leave Brandon lying helpless on the ground. Not in chapter three. I need to find a way of saving him so that he can live to tell us the rest of his story.
I’m a bit happier with this section now. It’s tighter and faster, but has variations in pace. I think I feel confident to show you the outcome…

They were gaining on me. Each time I reached a corner, their footsteps were louder – footsteps that rang on cobbled stones. They were not wearing trainers.
I saw a turning ahead and swerved into it, hoping to lose them with twists and turns. Instantly, I saw I'd blown it. I was at the back of some shops. These were shops I'd been into, buying chocolate and chewing gum, millions of times. But now I was on the wrong side of them. There were no open doors and racks of sweeties. Just bricked up walls looming over me, black in the dark courtyard as the gang from the ice rink howled in and stopped abruptly.
I took a step backwards. They paced forward. I stopped. I must not do what they wanted. I must not reach the wall. Once my back was up against it, I was trapped.
They would pounce.
My fists tightened around the blades of my skates. They were cutting into my palms. My heart was thumping against my ribs and my breath came in short painful rasps, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the gang..
I thought about scooting round them. No chance. They spread out across the courtyard, like they were playing rugby. Suddenly a security light flashed and we were on stage, caught in the spotlight. They didn’t care. They whistled high, tuneless notes, like birds arguing over a worm. They were grinning. Their teeth glinted in the beam of light. They were grinning and whistling over a worm.
They were well spread out. I could get between them. I sprang forwards, head down. My skates were like weapons. I hurled myself between two of them. I felt hands reach out to grab me, snatch a bit of my sleeve, hang on, lose it as I kept running. For a wonderful second, I was free.
One of them leapt at me from behind, wrapping his arms round my legs in a rugby tackle. I put out my hands. The cobbles came up to meet me. The hot pain that comes when you lose a lot of skin swept over my face.

The gang was all round me. I was a worm. I was going to be squashed. Their boots scrape on the stones. I closed my eyes as the first kick came, pulled my knees up as high and folded my arms round my head. This was it, I thought. The last of my bad luck. The very end of it.
A boot dug sharp into the back of my head. There was a cry – I didn’t know if it was them or me. I tried to wriggle away. There was a dead weight on my back. One of them had sat on me. The boot came again. My eyes filled with blood. Least, that's what I thought the redness was. Then I heard the sound of an engine through the fuzz. Smelt the exhaust. A car was rolling into the courtyard.

Okay, you can unknot your stomach now…

The Long List is a Long Shot...in the Arm

2010-02-27T00:58:00.000-08:00

I've just heard from the FISH PRIZE - the Irish short story award that is almost as glittering over there as Bridport is here - that my entry is on their long list. They had almost 2000 entries and the LL is hundreds of stories long. So why did my esteem, my confidence, my mood for the day and even my motivation to write whoop upwards towards the clouds when I heard? I dunno, it's just lovely to be given a bit of a boost. So, even if you don't win the competitions you enter, it might be worthwhile sending in a copy - just make sure you follow all the guidelines and take the chance to revise it prior to sending out. Here are two short extracts from the story...

CLEAN ROUND THE BEND

PAGE ONE
When I was tiny, my grandmother’s winter windows had an early morning frosting of leaves and stars, skeletal, tough as diamonds. It hurt the inside of your nail to scratch at it.

My back door window has a Jack Frost pattern of leaves and stars, so realistic you think it will be icy to touch. My cheek is so close to the glass, I expect it to chill. It feels cool, but that’s all. It’s only glass.

Oscar scratches at the pattern now, with his nails. He is outside. I am a centimetre away, inside. I examine the snowflake edge of each leaf. I try not to imagine that Oscar will hurt the insides of his nails.

‘Mummy…’

I can hear my breath, louder even than his toddler cry.

Above his head, Petra knocks on the pane. Her knuckles are raining tiny blows that resemble the sound of a glockenspiel. Her cry holds far more punch than her fist.

‘I want my Daddeee!’

I turn away. The garden is a safe place for them. Safer, much safer than the house.

PAGE FIVE
On Saturdays, Adrian always goes to rugby practice. He rises late, messes up the bathroom then wants breakfast long after the rest of us had finished.

I didn’t used to mind, but that was before my routine. I wanted to make the bed and hoover under it. I wanted to shut up the kitchen and start on the bathroom.

‘When are you going?’ I asked as I grilled bacon.

‘I always go at the same time and you always ask me the same question.’ Adrian had his back to me. He was doing something at the kitchen table. I left the bacon to investigate. He was picking out dried mud from between the studs of his rugby boots with a bread knife. Tiny cakes of mud fell from the table to the floor. I think I cried out. The children disappeared like lizards beneath rocks.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Aid. ‘I’ll clear it up. Just show me where the dustpan is.’

Previously, I would have welcomed this response as something of a breakthrough. Adrian knew very well he did nothing round the house, the argument being that when the children went to school, I’d get myself a job and we’d share the chores more evenly. But now, with my routine to consider, I fetched the dustpan and swept the floor myself. It was easier that way. Safer.

The bacon had cooked to a frazzle. Adrian pushed it round his plate, but said nothing. He seemed perplexed. He watched me as I ironed Petra’s little socks.

Oscar appeared at his father’s side. Adrian looked down at him with adoration. Oscar picked a rasher from the plate and sat under the table with it.

‘Don’t let him do that. Aid.’

‘What’s wrong now?’

‘You’re teaching him bad table manners.’

Adrian pushed back his chair and stuffed his kit into his sports bag. ‘And what are you teaching them both?’ he asked, without looking at me. ‘Nowadays?’

I went on ironing, smoothing out a shirt of Adrian’s, the cream one with the pattern of tiny six-legged crosses inside vertical stripes. A drift of snowflakes down his back. In the very centre of one cross, was a dot of green felt-tip. I touched it with the tip of a finger. It hadn’t come out in the wash. When I looked up again, Adrian was gone and Petra was standing before me, awkwardly clutching her box of toys. Plastic people littered the floor. Below the table, Oscar was surrounded by blackened bacon bits.

I laid the iron gently against the tip of the finger that had touched the green felt-tip. The pain was very real.

Suddenly, I was afraid of the iron. I switched it off and put it at the back of the cooker.

Walking Through Stories

2010-01-28T03:51:00.000-08:00

Many writers walk to invent their stories. Dickens apparently wrote most mornings and walked every afternoon. I think his characters and their senarios walked with him, ready for their creation by pen the following morning.

I've used this method for years. It doesn't matter if the surrounds are urban or rural, but naturally it's nicer if there are trees and birds. The most important thing is that I am on my own. When you walk with others, you're bound to chatter. When you walk alone, you chatter to your characters, and they chatter back. In this way, stories develop through your feet. I've walked my way through dialogue, scene-building, description, interior monologue, action, development of plot. Holding it in your head is the hard part - I've been known to race back on the home stretch, my hands itching for the keyboard.

A more recent development has been to walk with Joe (my walking buddy) to explore actual sites for events to happen. As I'm now writing crime fiction, we laughingly call these 'murder walks'. On them we search out the best place to dispose of bodies, the best place to commit the crime, the best place to hide from the cops...whatever is required, really. Actually seeing the landscape enhances the final descriptions from guesswork to atmospheric reality and the 'blocking out' process of making sure things can really happen - all the hows, whys, thens and theres - becomes accurate and simplified.

As we walk, we chat about the interweavings of plot and character with landscape, throw ideas at each other and iron out problems. Such a walking buddy has to be trustworthy...and a bit of a writer themselves, if possible, but mostly any good friend with a pair of lace-up boots would do.

In this way, we've marched through forests, along coastlines, past power stations, been blown off mountains and squelched into bogs. I once walked all around a Killarney lake and ended up with a love song which, foolishly pen and paperless, I had to hold in my head until I returned to my friend's house.

I'd be interested to know if other people do this, and if they feel it's worthwhile...at least for the waistline!
also read this at http://www.weareoca.com/?p=112

Writing the Short Story

2010-01-22T02:18:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder why I write short stories. Nobody bothers to read them – at least not many people on this side of the Atlantic. Short stories are becoming increasingly rare in magazines, and anthologies only interest a tiny section of the book-buying public – mostly wannabe writers looking for markets. There is no section for short stories in libraries, and in the large Watersons in the centre of my city, they are housed on a floor-level shelf in a forgotten corner at the end of the wall lined with novels.

You have to wonder why. Surely the short story is the most convenient variety of fiction for this century, easily transported, quickly read – it can fill a single train journey or the wait for your dental check up. Sadly, it is hoisted on its own petard; a good short story ends all too quickly, a bad one is easily thrown aside – no chance of reading on just to see if it gets better in a few chapters – and by its very nature tends to be rather slight – it does not fulfill that longing to become intimate with a set of characters and solve the puzzle of a longer plot.

At the beginning of the twentieth Century, like so much of humanity in the Old World, it emigrated to the US as a new-born infant and, it might be argued, got raised as fine, strong American citizen. In the New World, the short story is loved, the short story writer revered – many have won the Pulitzer for their anthologies. It is to the American short story writer that I turn when I want read the very best examples, when I want to be widely entertained, and particularly when I want to read the most sparkling of dialogue…

‘Jane Harrah got fired,’ Brenda said.

‘That’s too bad. Who is she?’

‘She does big campaigns. Ross wants me to take her place.’

‘Great.’

‘I’m not sure if I want to, she said, lazily.

‘Why not?’

‘She was sleeping with him.’

‘And she got fired?’

‘Doesn’t say much for him, does it?’

‘Doesn’t say much for her.’

‘That’s just like a man. God.’ (American Express by James Salter)

I’m often asked at writing workshops, ‘how do you define ‘short story?’. If you check in the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, you’ll see that it suggests a short story is…too short to be published as a volume on its own…but that is rubbish – all sorts of chapbooks exist which contain only one short story, including the excellent Leaf series and Penguin’s attempt to publish little books for just £1 a few years ago. More accurate to my way of thinking is the question – can it be read at one sitting? If the train journey is long enough (or mercy on us, the wait for the dentist), ten thousand words can be consumed between coffees. At the other end of the scale, micro-stories can be a few hundred, even fifty words in length. Ernest Hemingway made a bit for the briefest story ever…For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn…(actually the Arvon Foundation have a competition for six word stories at the moment; the prize is one of their wonderful workshops).

So, length, as they say, isn’t everything. What I like about the short story’s tiny form is that it can ‘illuminate a moment’ A good short story is like viewing a plant cell through a microscope; perfect in miniature. V. S. Pritchett thinks that it is…something glimpsed from the corner of the eye in passing. E.A. Poe suggested that…the soul of the reader is at the writer’s control. For the writer, that is a daunting thought. Not easy, to illuminate an entire life through a single symbol in a few thousand words, as John Cheever does in The Swimmer, or contain the drama of an overwhelming experience, as Joyce Carol Oats does in Upon the Sweeping Flood.

The best – at least, the easiest way of achieving the above, is not to try too hard. Aim for a few pages of pleasure, drama or laughter. Almost incidentally, you probably will ‘glimpse the world’ or ‘illuminate the soul’. Myra Goldberg’s story, Going for the Orange Julius is a wonderfully perverse study of influence of one generation over another. Raymond Carver’s Whoever was Using this Bed leaves you asking questions about mortality. Tim O’Brien encapsulates the horror of being a soldier at war in The Things They Carried by listing exactly that. Some stories are succinct; Pretty Ice, by Mary Robison is a treat in a few pages. Others ramble on, sketching out a picture then filling it in with glorious colour. In Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower, a shocking depiction of a Viking raid is narrated by a man who goes along for the pillaging despite the fact that he’d much rather stay at home with his wife. Towers uses a style more commonly found at the counter of a small town bar to take you to this ancient world, and pulls it off with panache.

Right from the start, there has been a dichotomy in short story writing. Some early stories aimed at ‘atmosphere’ that concentrates on the glory of the writer’s ‘voice’, reveling in description or a turn of phrase, with perhaps an ‘epiphany’ to bring it to a satisfying close. Writers like Kafka and Chekhov were less concerned with plot. Instead they took the opportunity to explore metaphor, or ‘stand and gaze’ at common items or experiences. I call this careful crafting of words ‘zoning in’. The American writer loves to take time glorying at anything and everything…So we drove along between the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood. These streets hadn’t changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea…(James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues).

This form of short story has blossomed – at times it blossomed right up its own backside, becoming unreadable. It is easy, in a piece of short fiction, to allow the story to almost drift past characters and plot towards a vague ending. But being petite does give it the chance to experiment, especially with forms such as writing in the 2nd Person or using stream of consciousness, that are very difficult to sustain over thirty chapters. This is possibly why many writers begin with the form before moving on to create a novel, despite the fact that a short story is quite as difficult to get right, there being no room at all for mistakes. If you read James Joyce’s early short stories, you can watch the development from orthodoxy to ground-breaking originality. I love the crazy imagination of people like Donald Barthelme (The Indian Uprising is one of his more accessible works), and the disturbing story Axolotl by Julio Cortazar, where subtly he changes the point of view of the narrator from human to amphibian.

Indeed, trying to squeeze too a complex plot into so small a vessel can be a recipe for disaster. Back at the birth of the short story, they were called ‘tales’, and writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Poe created densely plotted works filled with astounding characters and events. When these work well, they feel like mini novels. When they work badly they become hackneyed, implausible and unintentionally comic. Not that plotting is always a logical process. One of my favourite authors, Flannery O’Connor, described how she came upon her story Good Country People…I didn’t know that there was going to be a PhD with a wooden leg in it…then I brought in the bible salesman, but I had no idea what I was going to do with him. I didn’t know he was going to steal that wooden leg…

Although I appreciate the high literary intellect of writers who can make you puzzle and gasp over their writing innovations, I do love a modern short story that can still claim to be ‘a tale’. The sort that, by the end of the first page, encourages you to tuck your legs under you on the sofa, in anticipation of entertainment…when I was playing with Bill Connell, the sergeant-major’s son, and saw my grandmother steering up the path with the jug of porter sticking out from beneath her shawl I was mortified. I made excuses not to let him come into the house, because I could never be sure what she would be up to when we went in…(Frank O’Connor, First Confession).

You might already have spotted that I haven’t quoted a single short story by a writer from the British Mainland (although I did quote V.S. Pritchett himself, and he is the most prodigious writer of short stories Britain has produced). I thought it might be good to throw the question open to readers of this post…which British short stories do you love? I look forward to being showered with responses. However, thinking back to what I’ve said above, I’ll be surprised if anyone can remember the last time they read a short story.

I’m prepared to be disappointed, so go on, surprise me with your enthusiasm.

A winterwonderland walk with no pictures

2010-01-06T12:36:00.000-08:00

Apparently, CCTV has almost had its day, with the introduction of Mission Impossible type spectacles which record whatever you see as you wear them. This news item forced me to ponder…when will we watch these reruns of our day, and will we bother to notice anything that is around us any more, in the knowledge that it’s all on film?
Today, with inches of blustering snow, even in the Bristol area, I went for a two hour walk. I headed towards my local nature reserve across the parkland, nipped over the style at the far side and returned home on a wide circular route. Snow fell, stinging my eyes and tasting icy on my tongue. Children shrieked and pummelled snowballs at each other. As I walked through the wonderland that my locality had suddenly become, the thought passed through my head…should’ve brought a camera…but then I thought – no – not good – nowadays we spend our lives seeing our lives through a lens. I was glad I had no way of recording the exhilaration of my walk, except with my eyes and my memory. It made my awareness of my surroundings more vivid, more memorable.
Some years ago, in Hawaii, I went to the top of Haleakala, the volcano on Mauwi, to watch the sun rise. I was not alone – even though it happens every morning you have to book way in advance to be part of the spectacle, way above the clouds at sunrise. It’s not a fast experience, either. It takes almost an hour (in subzero temperatures), from the first gloriously tantalizing moments as the rays peak above the horizon, to the final eye-blowing experience of full sun. And yet almost every tourist spent most of that hour behind the viewfinder of their camera. I took pictures, too, but I was horrified by the way people were not witnessing the experience at all…they were waiting to view the photos and impress their friends. The same thing happened on the way down the mountain. The coach driver stopped because a very rare Hawiian goose was crossing his path. Every person stood up and began to snap the goose through the windows of the bus. All except me. By the time I’d’ve found my camera and got the bird in the centre of the viewfinder, it would’ve been in thick cover. So I just watched as the goose crossed the road, presumably to get to the ganderary side. Actually, it looked very much like any other goose – especially, I imagine, on those holiday snaps back home.
A few years later, we went to Kintyre for an autumn holiday. It wasn’t until we unpacked that we realized we’d forgotten our camera. We decided to just try to take pictures in our minds. We bought a few postcards, but otherwise, we had to remember that holiday without the usual holiday snaps. I recall the week in Kintyre vividly – the little bay where the seals swam, calling to each other and (I truly believe) listening to my early morning beach song – the fantastic faery-moss wood we walked through – the ‘designer’ stone circles on Aran (more than ten of them, all so different, within a few mile’s radius) – the cup and spiral markings on Neolithic stones – the boar carved on a hillside from the time of the Irish invasions – the boat trip with Jessie our dog (wet through and ponging) – the marvelous meal in a fine hotel where we were the only guests – the ancient yew in the grounds where we were staying. Maybe if we’d taken a camera, I’d have to see the photos now, to remember any of it. Of course, I’m not decrying taking pictures. It is amazing how a holiday snap brings memories back. But it is sad to spend your holiday behind a block of plastic. Not exactly ‘living in the now’, is it?
By the time I reached the stile halfway along my walk, the snow wasn’t falling gently anymore. I was in a mini-blizzard and I began to storm my way home, almost unable to see in front of me. But I will not forget the things I didn’t take a picture of today…the amber fronds of a bare weeping willow, like horse’s tails…the way the snow followed the lines of branches, boughs and twigs in an avenue of poplars, white on black…the treacherous wonder of the drifts and the deep, King Wenceslas footprints I made as I struggled through woodland…the site of the Bowl, which I fought to save from development a few years ago, speckled with snow, birds wheeling overhead…the tobogganing children, their cheeks glowing with a red hue usually only seen on Christmas cards…the twenty-seven-and-a-half snowmen (is there a Northern holiday destination for uncompleted snowmen?). Oddly, the very best snowman was waiting for me at the top of my road – scarf, gloves on sticky arms, complete with walking stick, smiley vegetable face and a crown of greenery.
I almost went back with the camera to take a photo.

But I didn’t.

A Chilling Murder at Arvon

2009-12-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

My dearest Agatha,

I do hope you are well, and that the London scene continues to amuse.

I’ve just returned from a house party in Devon, don’t you know. I was hoping to see you at Totleigh Barton, we both agree that Ollie and Claire usually hold such spiffing house parties, don’t we? However, I did wonder if you hadn’t heard a rumour, because all was not as it usually is at Totleigh: not the usual hunting and shooting set at all, my dear.

I arrived fashionably late, of course, to find the most rum crowd rattling around under the thatch. Ollie’s set is usually such jolly fun, but these were new to my acquaintance and didn’t seem quite up to the ticket, if you understand my meaning.

And it soon become clear that all was not as it should be at all. I began to hear whisperings in corners and and frankly my dear, just the oddest things happening all the way round. I heard a woman mutter about her twin, whom she apparently pushed through the ice last winter simply because he had been kind enough to play with her as a child. And another, quite pleasant dowager type had, it transpired, murdered her own grandchild! A gentleman left scribbled notes fluttering in the drawing room to the effect of witnessing what could only be described, with the best will in the world, as bloody carnage – heads blown off in every room. One chappie, a schoolmaster would you credit it, told a very rum story about teachers and pupils – certainly not sending young Reginald to that school – it’s Eton or be damned.

There were a few good eggs among the soufflé, as it were. One jolly chap, Simon, did take my concerns a little more seriously. He promised to get the police on the blower…an Inspector Waterloo…but the fellow was not forthcoming. I don’t know if that is because you just can’t trust the police force nowadays…have you noticed how they are becoming frightfully middle class…or because he didn’t actually telephone them at all. He kept telling me I was from Argentina, which is plainly not the case, so who knows?

Things perked up halfway through the house party, when a very decent fellow called Mark arrived, he was a great wit and made me want to polish up my own repartee. But he didn’t stay long, despite the offer to take my own bed, should he need it. In fact he was off pretty sharpish, in the end.

I think the final straw was being asked to ‘lend a hand in the Kitchens’ because it was cook’s day off! Well really. Jolly good job I’d been perusing my Mrs Beeton.

Mind you, I did enjoy the company of one guest, and I do hope we see each other at some do or another. Frances was a delight, far more…shall we say…crystal cut…than the others. I know you would have approved. She finally let me into a little secret…all these very dubious sorts were, apparently crime writers! Have you ever heard such a thing, Agatha? Well, I have news for you. It’s the latest craze. Everyone is scribbling away at some crime novel or other. All you have to do is bang the manuscript off to something called a publishing house and Bingo! The world can read it! Well, I can certainly tell you who I would go about murdering literarily…most of the guests at Ollie’s!

Anyway, I do believe that’s all my news. When are we going to see you again, Aggie? You’ve been shut up in that study of yours for months now, coping with that overload of correspondence. Come and have tea at Claridges with me, my dear. Their new trifle is delicious.

Warmly yours,

Lady Nina Hare.

In the Dublin Museum

2009-11-11T02:24:00.001-08:00

In the Dublin Museum,
Among the cornucopia of treasures,
The late Neolithic spear-head,
Honed to perfection,
Carved with utmost care.
Each flint dislodged to form
Lethal edges of symmetrical
Beauty
And a polished point
Bitter as a needle.
When the knapper stood back
To examine his work…
Elegance combined with utility,
Speed combined with precision…
Did he fear the first beads of molten ore
As they ran together and set hard?
Did he long to own the newest feats of engineering –
The golden torc,
The bronze axe –
Or did he lament the passing of this craft
As the relentless pulse of technology move on.
Did he joint with others of his trade
And protest the disappearance of their trade?
When did the last apprentice graduate
In the benign skill of
Knapping flint?

A Voice Rising Above Snarls and Mumbles

2009-10-15T01:50:00.001-07:00

I was leaving my house (the one I don’t live in), when I noticed a pile of books in the wrong place.

Now I live with Georgie (in the other house), I’m far more susceptible to things out of place. These were offending my eye, but as I moved them, I noticed the one on the top of the pile…Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.

‘Have you read this?’ I asked my son.

‘Yes, when it first came out.’

‘Is it any good?’

‘Well, let’s put it like this,’ said Joe. ‘He can string a sentence together, which is more than you can say for the previous incumbent. You can borrow it if you want.’

Suddenly, I’m reading non-fiction by the barrowload. I’ve never gone for it before…never enjoyed autobiography, narrative non-fiction, personal essays, very rarely picked up a biography. And I still maintain that you can’t beat a novel if you want your reader to remember what you want to tell them and be moved at the same time. But I’m learning more about American politics from this book than I probably previously cared to know, and at every turn of page, I am both informed and moved.

Obama’s voice takes my breath away…

But the years take have also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older, I suppose, for if you are paying attention, each successive year will make you more intimately acquainted with all of your flaws – the blind spots, the recurring habits of thought that may be genetic or may be environmental, but that will almost certainly worsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip. In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me. It’s a flaw that is endemic to modern life, I think – endemic, too, in the American character – and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics. Whether politics actually encourages the trait or simply attracts those who possess it is unclear. Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else…

This is a powerful voice…confident, intimate, distinct. It makes me feel, not that I’m reading the words, but that two easy chairs have been pulled close, one for me, one for the writer, and coffee (or maybe in this case bourbon), is served. In my mind, I am engrossed in a conversation. I’m leaning in close, responding with my eyes. I can answer back; take the argument and run with it Non-fiction narrative this absorbing takes you into a new moment, just as fiction does.

In Imaginative Non-fiction, (or whatever the Open College of the Arts will finally call this new course) I emphasize two aspects of writing that can be shared by all creating non-fiction writers. I’m telling students these two aspects will uphold their work and pull it together, because these aspects are at the core of grabbing a reader. The combination of these two skills can get the new writer a contract quicker than almost anything else.

Narrative trajectory (telling a story and taking your reader with you as you do so) underpins the structure and ‘plot’. Voice is, of course, the buzzword on the writers’ street. This give heart and personality to your writing – Obama’s…hitch in your walk…both practically and metaphorically.

Narrative trajectory is all about how you tell your story. Cast your eye over some recently published books. A cross-section will show you just how many stories are out there to be told –subjects of major importance and trivial significance. Subjects rehashed or completely skewed. None of these will be readable unless the story moves in the right direction for its content, allowing the reader to step out onto a sort of boat and sail off into water already charted by the writer. A reader will keep reading if they feel the confidence of the narrator, as pilot of their story. I want the students to understand about knowing the chart of their voyage, and how to keep a steady hand on the tiller. (Sorry –these boating metaphors are probably due to my daughter’s recent success in the Fastnet Race…I prefer to keep my feet on firm terra firma.)

Voice is the balance to a strongly led narrative journey, but it needs a similar quality…confidence…in the writer. I tell my students that their ‘voice’ should be a representation of how their mind works. We all think in an entirely unique way. If a writer can get a strong feeling of ‘thoughts pouring forth’, transferred onto the page, they will lure the reader as successfully as a Siren, because of that intimate connection; the writer saying…here I am, believe in me…

The knack is to be natural, yourself, to have confidence that the way your mind works can interest other people. I try to remember, whenever this sort of audacity threatens to halt the flow of my writing, that people do actually seem to enjoy talking to me, even when I’m sure I’m being quite boring. Okay, not everyone in the world fits that category, but that would be true of even the most popular books of the market…no style attracts every reader. Attracting a small audience is a great beginning.

This sort of approach takes writing courage, although possibly not as much as Obama has shown over the last years. Becoming the USA’s first black president and writing scintillating personal essays…now that is audacious.

And hopeful.

City of Derby Short Story Competition

2009-09-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

I was delighted to hear that I had been placed in the City of Derby Short Story Competition and invited to attend the prize giving. I can’t wait, because the two judges are women very much in my mind at the moment…the poet Pat Borthwick, who I recently met, and Novelist Sara Maitland, who wrote the original version of the coursework I’m now revising…I-Lines (Imaginative Non-Fiction) I look forward to connecting with both of them. Meanwhile, here is a short excerpt from the story…

THE TOMB-BUILDERS’ TOMBS

You are cheated.

Ishmael swung round. He had barely entered the tomb, and already she was getting at him.

‘Who?’ Ishmael hissed. ‘Who is cheating me?’

There was no one behind him, of course. Just a wall washed in yellow ochre, a sunshine backdrop to the depictions of ancient gods worked with meticulous esteem from nature’s paints and sealed with a still glinting layer of egg white – Osiris, Maat, Ptah and Isis – each in totally unspoiled profile. You never saw the fullness of their faces. They were painted so they could gaze at each other, across the line of the wall. Ishmael knew this was because the Ancient Egyptians hadn’t grasped the concept of perspective, but knowing didn’t stop the secret longing that one day he’d find a tomb painting where the faces looked directly at him.

But here, in the tomb of Sennedjem the tomb builder, Isis was looking right at him. She had not moved her head, but he could tell that her eye was on him, that she was looking at him from above, because he’d just heard her voice. As Ishmael gazed at her image, the goddess curved the single corner of her profiled mouth and smiled.

A shudder moved from his ears to his feet, but he didn’t take his gaze from her. He was pulled into her image as lighting is pulled towards copper.

You are cheated, Ishmael.

A tourist brushed past him and the link was broken. Isis slid into the painting; still, silent, two-dimensional and over 3000 years old.

Ishmael knew her well, knew every line and turn of her image, her history in this place and the story of her origins. He saw it as his job to know her intimately, but now, rigid at the door of the tomb, he wondered if his obsession with the ancient history of his country was sending him mad. Or was it the hours he put in to each of his days? His schoolmates called him ‘plugger’ and ‘teacher-pleaser’, because they considered him too hard-working.

But Isis had called him ‘cheated’. Where had that come from? His own mind?

Ishmael put his hands over his ears. He turned his back on the goddess and stormed from the tomb, up the uneven steps carved millennia ago, past the guards who let him slip through to earn an honest piastre in the first place, into the sudden blaze of light, the heat of Egyptian summer.

No one looked at him. Tombs and temples were filled with unofficial guides, hopeful for a moment’s work. Ishmael sometimes got noticed because he was young and full of enthusiasm, but today was quiet, and everyone was arriving with their own guide. He sat outside and lit a cigarette.

A week or so ago, she’d winked at him. He’d been at full throttle at the time, information spurting from his lips, and the punters, a Japanese couple hardly taller than him, had begun to nod methodically. He’d been describing the tomb goods that had been found here. Discovered in eighteen eighty-six, he was telling them, and nothing missing, not a scarab, you can see it all in the Cairo Museum. At any moment, their hands would go to their pockets, and he would be rewarded. They were close to the door, on their way out, when Ishmael had glanced at Isis and seen her one eyelid move – up and down, just once. He’d stopped dead, his mouth gaping. After a few long seconds, the tourists had disappeared, muttering in their clipped language to each other, and Ishmael’s look of amazement turned to something close to anger. He’d lost a tip. No one’s fault but his own. He could hardly blame a wall painting.

Who was cheating him? He shook his head, blowing smoke in a waving arc. The punters, of course. Tourists were rich, every Egyptian knew that. They brought millions of dollars into this country and handed most of them over to the already rich…the tourist trade, the government. The voice had been his own head, telling him what he already knew. The poor always got the shitty deal.

Ishmael walked down the track a little, so that he could grind out his filter stub a decent distance away from the tomb. He thought about his uncles. They were cheating him, no doubt about that. But Ishmael could never quite put his finger on how. They had offered Ishmael and his two sisters a home when they lost their father. They made sure the girls went off to school just the same as he did. Uncle Alaa paid him a small sum to work in the camel stable after school. And Uncle Mahmoud let him pocket the extra money Ishmael made from haggling with tourists at his market stall. They were being fair. But he did feel cheated, all the same.

Ishmael took a final drag and ground the stub into the white dust of the path.

Below him, toiling up the hill from the houses of the tomb builders, were two women. Faces glowing with heat, one protected by a cheap market scarf of bright pink muslin, the other by a white floppy hat. Both around forty years of age, they carried litre water bottles and wore walking boots lined with woollen socks. With a practiced eye he judged them. Northern European – English speakers. But a rarity, for all that. They were independent travellers, which meant they were probably obsessed with Egypt’s wonders and possibly as poor as river rats – at least within the standards of tourists. None of them were ever as poor as the river rats of Egypt.

Ishmael positioned himself by the side of the path waiting for them to reach him. They were golden punters. They would pay well. Their obsession with all things Egyptian meant that they longed to talk to real Egyptians, and their poverty, in some perverse equation he’d never worked out, meant that they would pay him double, even triple what he usually earned at the tombs. He would not be cheated here.

‘Madams,’ he began, as they neared him. ‘Welcome to Deir El Medina. You will be glad to hear that the tombs of the tomb builders are cool and refreshing inside.’

The older one pulled off her white hat and wiped her face with it. ‘Thank God.’

FIRST VICTIM

2009-09-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

D I Buckley arrived at the site riding pillion behind a rookie female officer. Not the coolest, or even safest way to travel. He slid off the back and tested the squelching ground with his heel.

Abbot walked towards him. ‘Not sure what’s going on sir. White male out there, alone, suspicious behaviour.’

‘What’s he been up to?’

‘Take a look, sir.’

Abbott handed Buckley a pair of night-vision binoculars. He slotted them to his eyes and adjusted them until he had a sharp picture of the scene.

A single figure stood inside the makeshift compound, a tall man with an almost adolescent angularity to his limbs that was echoed by the generous staff he leaned on. His neck was swathed in scarves and he’d pushed long fingers into woollen gloves. After dark the wind whipped across these boggy spaces, especially the mad winds of early March, but he looked well protected from its bite. He was staring at the sad depression filled with water. The marshlands were taking over the shallow grave, but the blue and white police tape still flapped in the wind like alien birds.

‘What have we got here, then?’ asked Buckley.

‘Ghoul,’ said the rookie, unbidden, wrinkling her pretty nose.

Buckley lowered the glasses. ‘Have you attempted to question him?’

‘Can’t question a ghoul,’ said Abbott, as if hoping to impress the girl.

‘That’s no ghoul,’ said Buckley. ‘Ghouls don’t come prepared with walking sticks and warm clothing. They don’t come after dark.’ He felt, rather than saw, a movement in the taped area and raised the glasses once more. ‘Ghouls don’t carry knives.’

The suspect had taken a clasp knife from his coat pocket. He turned away from the centre of the site. He seemed to be heading directly for the forest of bulrushes standing proud in the deepest part of the bog, where surface water glistened. They were the natural uprights in this world, standing fast and tall, unlike the metal spikes holding up the police tape, which were already bending to the inevitability of sinking peat. The knife glimmered in the light from the stars. The man was trying to sever a bulrush.

‘Knife?’ came Abbott’s voice. ‘Okay, he has a weapon. I say let Reece go straight in.’

‘Who is Reece?’ asked Buckley, but before he received an answer he saw the German Shepherd, almost black-haired, leap upon the man, fastening wolf-teeth through the layers of his sleeve. Buckley heard the snarl and the following cry, high with fright. Man and beast topple into the reed bed. Mud oozed around them, sucking them down.

Buckley snatched the glasses from his eyes. ‘Who said you could bring a fucking dog? What’re you playing at?’

‘He could be dangerous, boss.’

‘He’s fucking drowning in shit, at the moment.’

The handler was already whistling his dog away. Three of the officers dragged the suspect free, but it took over a minute to clear his airways. He was babbling incoherently as they brought him to firmer ground. He clung to the bulrush like a talisman.

‘Can you tell me your name, sir?’ Abbott managed to give an emphasis to the word ‘sir’ which just fell short of derision. Buckley let it go.

The man took a bubbling breath. ‘Cliff…Houghton.’

‘Okay, Mr Houghton, you are under arrest.’

They levered him into the car. Abbott, who could never resist the big gesture, leaned in and snatched the bulrush.

‘Bloody poof,’ he said.

Buckley watched the reed sail through the misty night like a lance. He swallowed the urge to tell Houghton that Abbott called everyone a poof. The guy had looked sublime for a moment, walking on the water in this dark place. Close up, with greasy strands of hair lying across the bulk of the scarves, and eyes layered with terror, Cliff Houghton only seemed rather sad.

Just a ghoul, probably.

reel-to-reel desert island

2009-09-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

When I was quite small, my half brother emigrated to Oz. His two children wer more or less my age and at first we wrote letters to them, but they were not very good at replying. Then, out of the blue, a reel of audio tape arrived in the post. Clearly, we were supposed to play this. My mother went straight out and bought a reel-to-reel player and we listened to Harold, Mel, Stuart and wife Pat talking to us all the way from the other side of the world. Now we could also record our voices and send reels back. But even this trailed off...very soon we weren't communicating. So, at the time I was just beginning to listen to pop music, I had total control of the tape recorder. I spend untold happy hours listening to Radio One and recording the hits of the time. I made it my business to try to get the entire top twenty for each week - quite an obsession. After a bit, though, old reels began to hold really treasured recordings that I didn't tape over in my quest for the new top twenties. Quite recently, I tried to remember what these were. I'm still catching up, but I'm sure they included....

The night has a thousand eyes - Bobby Vee
Hey Jude - the Beatles - well, anything by the Beatles
Feel me, touch me - The Who
McCartha Park (who was this?)
Whiter shade of Pale – procol harem

Woodstock Crossby stills and Nash
Bohemian Rhapsody Queen/don't stop me now - well, anything by Queen
YMCA villagte people
American Pie – don Maclean
I’m not in Love 10CC
25 or 6 to 4 – Chicago
Spinning Wheel- blood Sweat and Tears
Matchstick men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs Brian and Michael
Midnight by the Oasis Maria Muldaur
Dancing in the street Martha and the Vandellas
Space Oddity = David Bowie
Saturday Night’s alright for Fighting – Elton John
Dancing in the Moonlight King Harvest
It’s raining Men – the Weather Girls
OKAY, by the time some of these were released, there were no more reel-to-reel recorders in the shops, but you get the idea...
BE INTERESTED TO HEAR OTHER PEOPLES FAVOURITE MEMORY TUNES

irreplaceable moments

2009-09-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

August burns bright. At seven months pregnant I lurch up the hill towards home with a sumo tread and a boiled beet face. My tote bag is full of drinks for the cooler. Lunchtime, but I’m not hungry. I haven’t enjoyed food or sleep in long days. The sun arrives every morning before anyone is awake, like a bright child at play. There hasn’t been a cloud to mask its perpetual yellow globe since July and people who were moaning then about the lack of summer are now moaning over heat rashes, eyestrain, having to wear flip flops to work and other people’s body odour. On the telly, they’re talking of the mother of all summers. I’m certainly having the pregnancy to end all pregnancies.

I drop the bag. Upstairs seems a long way. Is it worth the climb? Nothing keeps my bursting body cool, not fans, not showers not sticking my head in the freezer. But I long to strip. I drag myself and the baby inside me into the bedroom and peel off my cotton dress, already wet and smelly, my knickers and my big-girl bra. The effect is minimal because the room is as hot and airless as I am.

I flop onto the bed, a cross between a starfish and a whale. I can hear my heart and I’m wondering if the baby minds overheated amniotic fluid, when a miracle happens. The net curtains stir. A lightness trips into the room, a swirl of fresh air, and on it I can smell something wonderful…rain.

I feel as if I called the wind. I could believe it heard my plea for some relief and stirred into action because of my summons. The ancients had names for the four winds and it is Zephyr, the west wind from the Gulf, that has answered me. My skin responds to the ecstasy of chill. I don’t move a muscle for what seems hours, while clouds edge across the piercing sun. The smell of sulphur becomes overpowering in my nostrils. Fat drops are falling, hissing as they hit the pavement. Without raising my head I can watch as they shoot like stars, glistening with the sunlight that is still strong on the horizon. After a bit, I hear voices through the window. People are opening their front doors, stepping into the street, witnessing the marvel of wind and rain.

It is an experience like no other, a unique memory. I remember it with such clarity, and, as the years passed, longed to experience such a moment again. But I know I never will, because I’ll never again be pregnant during a century-beating hot summer or lie on a bed (defiantly never that bed in that room) to be cooled by the sudden onset of a surprise change in the weather front. I’ve given up hoping I will, although perhaps not absolutely.

I realize that I have a little cache of these reminiscences; things unrepeatable. At first, when I try to list them, I get stuck on the momentous occasions…a trip in a glider, the sight of the pyramids…that sort of thing. But when I hit on that moment on the bed, the culmination of coincidence…the swollen body, the tropical heat, the removal of every stitch of clothing just before the wind turns…I know I have found an exact definition of an exquisitely irreplaceable experience.

This feels like a new discovery, but I’ve actually known this all my life. I can remember being very tiny…tiny enough to fall flat if there wasn’t something in easy grabbing distance as I tottered from one point to the next. I can remember crying out, as toddlers do, yelling screams blended with hiccoughing sobs. My mother put cream on the scratch – Germaline probably, as she swore by it. I watched the salmon pink smear over my skin and said, ‘I love you Mummy.’ I’d had a recent falling out with my mother over what I was allowed to play with and her sudden tenderness had surprised me.

She said ‘We’re friends again, that’s wonderful,’ and kissed my head.

Wonderful, I remember thinking…friends again, Mummy and me. So the next time I cried, got Germaline on a scratch, I said, ‘I love you, Mummy.’

I can’t remember what she said, but it wasn’t, friends again, that’s wonderful. I was sorely disappointed. I could see she’d forgotten the earlier moment, which had remained so significant in my mind, and I’m sure I knew, even then, I’d never revisit that original format.

The really sad thing about these moments is that I didn’t know they’d be irreplaceable until I’d lost them, so I blew the first chance only half aware this was an experience at all, let alone one that would never be relived. So I’ve reached a decision. I’m compiling a list. The only way to return to these moments is to register each one for what it is and accept the only way to get back there is in one mind’s eye.

I needed a template – a rule that would show me which experiences should be on the list. It took me a while to hit on the exact solution, but I’m sure I’ve got it now. When you are in an unrepeatable moment, you don’t think about anything else. Your mind doesn’t wander. It’s absolutely present in the situation. For me, with my butterfly, airbrain mind, that happens so rarely, it’s almost a dead cert – if I’m ‘in the now’ I’ll want to drop down into the wonder of it again and again.

Maybe this is pitiable of me. Maybe I should turn my back on my remembrance and go out to search for newly minted moments. But the list is comforting, part of the bittersweet journey of life. When I cast my burning, swollen body onto that bed, and wait for the rise of the wind, the memory is unique to me.

The books that made me

2009-09-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

I think I have been a writer since the age of five.

My infant school teacher Mrs Marsden read a story to the class. It might have been the fable 'The Mouse and the Lion', but I can't really remember.

It was when Mrs Marsden asked the class to write a stor that I had my early epiphany. I was dumfounded. For the first time I realized that the books I loved had actually been written by real human beings. Before that, I believe they must have fallen from some sort of story heaven. It was a revelation. I haven't looked back.

I wrote my first novel at the age of fifteen. Well, okay I started to write a novel which I never finished. Writing by longhand was a distinct brake on my creativity, so I asked my friend to type it out. She was doing exams in typing at the time, so she was quite pleased.

I wrote in one corner of the room, while she typed. Blissful silence until Maggie looked up and said, 'it is a bit old-fashioned, but it's really nice.'

'Thanks,' I simpered. I'm hoping people will enjoy it.'

'Nina,' she said, 'I was talking about my new dress. I've been talking about my new dress for the last five minutes.'

I do believe I've got better since then, both at writing and listening to criticism!

As a children’s writer, I am bound to be influenced by the books I read as a child, but when I look back, the strangest, most obscure books have left the biggest impression.

My earliest memory is a book called Unicorn Island, which my father read to me when I was three or four and I reread a million times afterwards. A coastal village of disparate animals live in fear of the offshore island, where white flashes of the dangerous unicorn can be seen circumnavigating the mountain.When the hero’s little brother falls dangerously ill, he and his friends take it upon themselves to brave the island and come back with the healing herb. They discover all manner of wonderful things there, and the unicorn turns out to be the most marvellous of all. There is a slightly sinister atmosphere to the story and a gravity you don’t often find in picture books now…a precursor (but with a far longer story) of Where the Wild things Are.

Because I was often in bed with asthma, there were books I’d return to as a small child. The Adventures of Manly Mouse was one – Manly lived in a world where mice who went about their human endeavours in a little mousy town. He was a deliciously flawed character, often losing his job or breaking with good friends. He drove a dilapidated car and was easily duped by more suave mice. A phrase our family uses to this day came from the lips of one of Manly’s posh employers (who turned out to be a poor mouse in scam disguise)…and when I say shine, I don’t mean shine, I mean gleam. I when I say gleam, I don’t mean gleam, I mean glitter!

Some books I read too young. I can recall devouring Mary Poppins, which I was handed by Mrs Marsden in reception class with the words, ‘you’re past all these baby books,’ but when I read it aloud to my children thirty years later, the only things that rang a bell was the marvellously flavoured medicine and a strange man on a ceiling.

I can’t pretend I didn’t grow up on Enid Blyton, but the works that made the most impression were the magical Narnia stories and Anne of Green Gables. I loved the way Anne hurtled through life. Her ‘modular’ way of learning (by making every mistake in the book – literally) suits me to this day. But, as the books watched her grow into a woman, I also (creep!) loved her commitment to duty and her attitude to life, which reminds me of that quote from Man for all Seasons, when Richard Rich asks… 'If I was, (a teacher) who would know it?' And Thomas Moore replies…'You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that…'

In some ways, the books I read made me the person I am. They were probably more influential than my textbooks or my teachers…or even my parents. I’ve even tried to rewrite some of their ideas into my own work, although that has rarely worked, and most of those early stories were never published. They were my apprenticeship, I guess, and although almost all of them are gone from my hands, I will never forget their stories and characters.