At the risk of 'bugging the life out of people' (see Nicola Morgan's recent ABBA Post of the 24th below), I've got a new book coming out next week. February 2nd, in fact, and I'm going to mention it because having a book published is one of those things that doesn't happen all that often to me, although with so many books published it is obviously happening all the time to other people, who then bleet and tweet about it, to Nicola's annoyance. I suppose that's part of the problem. In her perceptive way has put her finger one of the profound contradictions of social networking, and publishing for that matter. To an individual author, a book being published is A Very Big Thing; to everyone else, it's another 'so what?'. Cursory glance only before we go on to our own tweet, Facebook page entry, blog or planning our Virtual Launch.
At the risk of bugging, I anticipate publication of This Is Not Forgiveness with the usual mix of feelings: pride and a sense of wonder that my name is on the cover, but also complex feelings of nostalgia and loss. When I turn the pages, it is like looking through a strange kind of diary. I remember where I was when I thought that, wrote that, added that detail. It happens over a summer and I wrote it over a summer, so the weather, the descriptions, are like snapshots of particular places at a particular time. And there is something perfect about a book that is about to be published, before it goes out into the world to be the object of scrutiny and criticism, before it has a chance to fail.
I have another reason for nostalgia. This Is Not Forgiveness is a topical thriller set in the present and this is seen as a bit of a departure for me. I'm now known mostly for writing historical fiction. If not those books, then the old Point Horror Unleashed titles - Blood Sinister and The Vanished. But my first book was a contemporary thriller for teenagers. Every Step You Take. It was published in 1993. So long ago, that when I went to get the rights back from the publisher, they claimed never to have heard of it. That, too, was a contemporary thriller, so in a way, I've come full circle, returning to my roots.
That book was published into a different world. I'm typing this blog on a laptop, it is going straight by WiFi onto the 'net. I'm uploading pictures to go with it. I typed Every Step on an electric typewriter. Laptop, WiFi, 'net, upload? Terms not coined yet. I sent it off as a paper manuscript by Special Delivery, posted at the local Post Office (now a cake shop) not by attachment as I would do now.
The Internet was in its infancy, so no e mails. Publishers sent you letters. All you had to do was open the envelope, read and file. Everyone sent you letters, so it was easy to keep track of things. No matter how hard I try to be organised, finding things in e mails is like sifting though spaghetti. As for publicity, it didn't take up any time at all because there wasn't any. My first school visit came randomly from a librarian wh
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By:
Linda Strachan,
on 8/13/2011
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Where can you find a Yurt and a Spiegeltent, comedy, politics, cuddly creatures, crime and all kinds of great writing?
Well, if you are in Edinburgh in the next two weeks or so there is one place you should not miss.
By the time you read this the 28th Edinburgh International Book Festival will have kicked off. Billed as the '
largest and most dynamic festival of its kind in the world'.
Now that is a huge claim to fame but for those of us who live in the vicinity - and the some 220,000 visitors it attracts- it is easy to see why.
Edinburgh at festival time is a completely different place than it is during rest of the year. It feels looks and even smells different!
Playing host to the The Book festival, the International Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, the Jazz Festival and several other festivals all at the same time, the city is converted into one huge venue, where even the streets become the stage and performers attract audiences in the most unlikely places.
In all this exciting cultural mayhem the Book festival is an oasis of calm. You enter Charlotte Square (which for the rest of the year is a leafy private garden) and immediately the bustle of the city is converted into an excited hush, a tranquil setting resounding with gentle roars when the audience in one of the tents begins to applaud.
Of course the Edinburgh weather can affect the Book festival as much as anywhere else and there have been a few years when the rain left delightful little ponds around the square- delightful for the little yellow plastic ducks that suddenly appeared! Their equally sudden disappearance gave rise to discussions about the possibility of a plastic crocodile..... ?
But each year they have added more solid walkways, then covered walkways to and from the event tents and the bookshop tents and finally even to the author's green room - the yurt.
There was one particular year when there was much comedy to be had watching the staff wielding large umbrellas to shelter celebrity authors in the dash across what seemed to be the only uncovered walkway- the first 2 metres as they stepped out of the yurt on their way to their events. Thankfully that was sorted the following year.
But when the sun shines the grassy centre of the book fe
I'd take a photo of the chaotic mess that is my study. I know it's in here somewhere, I just can't remember which pile it is under. As a writer, I'm as prone to rituals as the Lords of Groan and one of patterns that has emerged over the years is the Big Clear Out after a book is finished, a physical and mental de-clutter before the next project gets truly underway. That is one way of spinning it, the other is I just can't find anything: letters, tax forms, notes and print-outs, books, cameras, staplers, rulers, anything I actually need has disappeared.
The problem is twofold. I am naturally messy and find it difficult to throw things away. I have, for example, a great many books - not just on the two walls of shelves, but in piles on the floor, table, futon, chair, any flat surface, and I find it hard to part with them. This is not just sentimental. I never know when I might want them and I can guarantee the next time I think, 'I know I've got a book about that somewhere', that will be the book that's gone to Oxfam. I need more space (move house? Rent storage?) to put them and I need some kind of coherent cataloguing system (alphabetical? By subject? Dewey Decimal?) but I can never quite decide how to organise them (too many decisions) so that does not get done.
Then there are the foreign editions of my own books that publishers have kindly sent to me. It is wonderful to have foreign editions, but they do mount up. If I could find a good home for them, then I could use the storage space for other stuff. If anyone has any ideas for safe disposal, please let me know.
And then there are the notebooks. Like many writers, I love stationery and find it hard to resist the lure of The New Notebook. Consequently, I have many: big ones, small ones, hard back, soft back, posh, expensive, cheap spiral pads. Most of them have something written in them, so should they be retained, part of my 'archive'? Should I even have an archive, or is that just another excuse not to throw things away? More dilemmas...
Quite apart from all that, there are the box files of documents, notes, correspondence (archive again) - should I just throw the lot out, would I even notice? Going through everything is a big job, one I keep putting off because I've got better things to do (like writing books) but I can hardly move at the moment and I actually don't have a book to write, so I guess I've run out of excuses, except I've got a blog to write - now, where is that camera?
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The other day, a student asked me if I had any particular rituals associated with my writing. I was about to answer, 'No, not really,' in a lame kind of way, when I realised that I do, I just never thought of them that way, that's all. I collect things. Some objects are almost talismans, others are just fun - like the models that make up the interesting Pirates! tableau. I have witches in all sizes from big, to very small with flashing eyes, that belong to Witch Child; models of pirates, ships, flags, eye patches, pencil case, t shirts (Pirates! - what else?); a tricolour rosette I bought in Paris (Sovay) and various jesters for The Fool's Girl. I don't stop when the book is finished - the Lego pirate ship was free with last week's News of The World and I always give money to street performers because of Feste.
Perhaps the reason I go on collecting is because books are never really finished. The characters stay with you long after the book has been published. You've lived with them for a long time, they are part of you, like memories and people from your real life. I realised this when I re-visited Pirates! recently. This was a stand alone book, published in 2003, no sequel planned, so none written, but that didn't stop me wondering, speculating about what happened next, so when I was invited by a blogger, who was having a pirate month in May, to write a piece for her website, I thought, why not?
She wanted it to be called a The Brawl in Triton's Tavern. I've had stranger requests. I decided to write an episode from Pirates! 2, the phantom sequel. As soon as I began to write, the characters and their voices were back again. It was like visiting old friends. The result can be seen http://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/2011/05/tritons-tavern-brawl.html
It was fun. I might go back there again for a longer visit. Who knows? In these days of e books and kindle, we can write what we like, what we want to write, not what is asked of us by publishers.
I was shocked, as I expect many who read this blog will have been, by the death of Diana Wynne Jones. I'm not a devoted fan, I will confess that now, so anyone who was planning to write their own obit. can feel free, but nevertheless, I mourn her loss. She was one of those writers that one simply thought would always be there, somewhere, a necessary presence, there to remind us of what fantasy should be like, can be like if you know enough, think enough, write hard enough, a reminder to fantasy writers of what they should be trying to attain. She was a writer of endless inventiveness, originality and imagination, an inspiration, acknowledged or not, to later generations of writers. She knew fantasy inside out and the mythos on which it is largely based, because of that, she knew how hard it is to be original. For me, originality is the hallmark of really great fantasy and Diana Wynne Jones had it in spades.
Taking a leaf from the
Bookwitch's blog and adopting a bit of serendipity, going off at a bit of a tangent, I'll admit to another shock this week, with the death of Elizabeth Taylor.
Again, I've never been a great fan of hers, but like Diana, I just always thought that she would
be there, somewhere, being impossibly beautiful and sultry, a last reminder of a lost world of Hollywood glamour when stars were stars. I read Camille Paglia's article in yesterday's Sunday Times, mourning the loss of 'Hollywood's last great goddess of erotic power' and found myself wondering with her at the contrast between Elizabeth Taylor, the '
pre-feminist woman', and the 'skeletal,
pilates-honed, anorexic silhouettes' of modern female stars, like Gwyneth
Paltrow,
Keira Knightley and most others that you could name. As though, somehow, Hollywood has rejected the depiction of real women in favour of androids.
I don't suppose that Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Wynne Jones will appear together anywhere else, but isn't that what ABBA is for? Nostalgia is probably just another word for getting old, but for me the world will be much the poorer for the loss of these two very different women.
By:
Celia Rees,
on 2/14/2011
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Lucy Coats has already blogged (Wednesday, 9th Feb) about the remarks that Martin Amis made when he was interviewed by Sebastian Faulks for the BBC 2 programme, Faulks on Fiction. Her blog has attracted 60 comments and the outrage felt has resonated as far as the national press and the Huffington Post. Martin Amis, as the Guardian on Saturday pointed out, is no stranger to controversy.
I, too, saw the programme and after the first dropping of the jaw, I thought that he actually had a point. Just in case anybody doesn't know, or does not want to scroll down the page and see his words in purple 18 point type, he said:
'People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say: "If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book."'
So far, so insulting. He then went on to say:
'The idea of being conscious of who you are directing the story to is anathema to me because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.'
Once I heard that, I could see where he was coming from. I did not think he was saying 'all children's writers have half a brain', that would be false logic. He was just explaining his own writing stance and he is entitled to do that. He writes literary fiction for adults, as such he sees it as his task to write to the top of his register and would not, could not accept any restraints on that.
The disregard for the reader that Amis expresses is just not possible when one is writing for children. Children's writers, and I include writers of Young Adult fiction, are ALWAYS aware of what their readers will and will not tolerate, or will or will not understand. Anyone who denies this is being disingenuous. Quite apart from the target readers themselves, there are other agencies involved. We have to worry about things that would not trouble writers of adult fiction in the least - see Leslie Wilson's blog below. How many writers for adults would feel the need to explain and justify their use of swear words or the incidence of sex in a novel? How much we take these factors into consideration, how much we allow them to limit our fiction, is up to us, but those limitations are there. We do not use our full palate, as Patrick Ness would say. How can we? We have to write at a lower register because we are adults and our readers are children.
There are other pressures on us, too. Pressures that have nothing to do with our writing but everything to do with the market place. In a squeezed market, there is more and more demand from publishers for novels that will sell. Books that fit into an obvious, popular genre - action, dark romance, whatever. A book that is perceived as 'too literary' is seen as problematic. The equivalent of the literary novel is a rare beast, and becoming more endangered by the minute. If one or two do sneak through, they usually turn out to have been written for adults in the first place and tweaked a bit in a bid to capture that holy grail, the crossover market.
In an interview in the Observer Review (13th February, 2011)) Nicole Krauss attests that the comment she heard most frequently on a U.S. book tour for her novel, The History of Love, was: 'this book is difficult'. Krauss worries that 'we are moving towards the end of effort'. Readers don't want to have to think too hard, it appears, whatever their age. That is the spectre that frightens me. In the hope of keeping that at bay, I actually want Martin Amis to write to the limit
At the end of his autobiographical memoir, Graham Greene says:
'For a writer, I argued, success is always temporary, success is only a delayed failure. A writer's ambition is not satisfied like the business man's by a comfortable income, although he sometimes boasts of it like a nouveau riche.
...
The writer has the braggart's excuse. Knowing the unreality of his success he shouts to keep his courage up. There are faults in his work which he alone detects...'
The real satisfaction lies in putting those things right, in other words in the writing itself.
Graham Greene was a great writer, one who understood not only how prose works, but the inner workings of those who produce it.
As I read this, I was struck by the truth of it. I'm sure there will be many who will deny it, but they know in their hearts that this is true. We ARE never satisfied. Once we are over the first great hurdle, that of getting our work published at all, then there are other goals to achieve: prizes, sales, money, fame, recognition. We need other people to recognise the worth of our work, and through that, ourselves. Even if we gain everything, prizes, fame, money, the whole works, then we still know that our star will inevitably fade. Success is fleeting, at best.
We now have more ways to shout, to keep our courage up. We can blog, tweet and twitter, post videos on YouTube. We can be out there, like barkers at some virtual literary fair, shouting out out wares, bidding readers to come see, come buy, know about us. I wonder what GG would think about all that?
Yesterday, I came across the wise words of another great writer: Margaret Atwood.
I was directed by Adele Geras to fictionbitch.blogspot.com where I found this quote from an interview in the Literary Review:
'...people are trying to pile stuff onto authors, like you have to blog, you have to have this, you have to have that. Various party tricks. You actually don't ... an author's job is to concentrate on the writing, and once the writing is finished what you essentially do is throw it into a bottle and heave it into the sea... There is still a voyage between the text and the unknown reader; the book will still arrive at the door of some readers who don't understand it - who don't like it. It will still find some readers who hopefully do...'
I guess people will say, she would say that, wouldn't she? Just as it is easy to dismiss Graham Greene's words - how much more successful can a writer be? But I don't think these observations come from self satisfaction and complacency. They come from the very things that make these two such successful writers: their powers of observation, depth of insight, honesty and courage to express thoughts that might be unpalatable, but are nonetheless true. The only real satisfation has to come from the words we put down on the page and the connection we make with readers, no matter how many, or how few.
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by Armadillo, the Online Independent Children's Book Magazine, to review a book for teenagers. I don't know if the review is up yet, but home is
http://www.armadillomagazine.com/ - for reviews, author interviews, and much, much more. If you don't already go there, you really should check it out. Anyway, the book arrived and I began to read.
SF/fantasy is not my favourite genre - so easy to do badly - and this seemed to be a kind of
Twilight with Aliens. It was sloppily written with every fantasy cliche jammed in there from Tolkien to, oh, anyone you like to think of, by way of Marvel Comics,
Star Trek and
Avatar. Suffice it to say, I didn't like it much. More than that, I
thought there was something wrong with it. It was as if I wasn't reading a novel, as much as a novelisation - a print version of a film, or a comic, or a video game. It was written under a
pseudonym,
purportedly that of an alien. It certainly read that way. It seemed destined for great things, however,
soon to be a major motion picture, a sticker said on the cover, the focus of an aggressive publicity campaign. Recently, I saw it has been picked out as a 'teen book of the year' in a major newspaper. So who am I to say? All I know was that it was not a book for me, and it didn't read quite right.
Some weeks later, I saw an article in the Guardian about bad boy American author, James Frey (the one who upset Oprah when she found out that his autobiography was, at least in part, fictional). He is in trouble again, it seems, for setting up a Fiction Factory, employing unknowns to churn out books to order - one of which is the one I read for Armadillo. I felt vindicated. I knew there was something wrong about it! He defends himself by citing artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons who come up with a concept and leave it to others to do the hard work. There seems to be a difference. Like these artists or not, the concept is often startling and original. The same cannot be said of the Fiction Factory, if the product that I sampled is anything to go by. And yet, and yet... major motion picture, ad campaign, reviews, Waterstone's placement, how many real writers of genuinely original fantasy fiction get that kind of treatment? Even more disconcerting is the idea of relays of energetic wannerbes churning out books one after another. How many writers of series fiction could keep up with that? And if writing style, storytelling ability and originality no longer matter, how long before we have e writers as well as e readers, cyberbots producing books at the click of a mouse?
It will be fiction, Jim, but not as we know it...
'Gove's new curriculum: Dangerous Book for Boys', so read a headline on the front of The Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago. Nice sound bite, but the underlying sexism of the Secretary of Education's remark made me shudder. I leaf on through the paper to find a fresh faced young man in shorts - Gareth Malone - who has a new TV series designed to get boys to read. No mention of getting girls to read, but a quick perusal of the article shows that won't be necessary because girls like nothing more than to be sitting down reading a book, while boys are 'restless and won't want to sit down as much as girls,' according to Professor Stephen Scott of King's College, London. Now, I'm all for schemes for getting children to read, and read more, but was struck by the irony that Michael Rosen, when he was Children's Laureate, also had a series on BBC 4, called Just Read, where he transformed the reading culture of a school in Cardiff and sparked the Just Read Campaign, but it would never have occurred to Michael to work with just the boys. For him, it was, and is, supremely important for ALL children to read, regardless of gender.
I find this renewed emphasis on gender alarming. It seems to be a reaction to a perceived gap in attainment. Boys are falling behind and this is a reason for a full blown moral panic. No-one thinks to congratulate girls for their levels of attainment, for actually gaining parity and pulling ahead for the first time in history. The thinking seems to be, girls are OK because they like sitting down and learning stuff, but boys have to be taught differently because they are restless creatures who can't sit down, etc. etc. - was this true of Michel Gove himself, one wonders? Or of David Cameron and George Osborne and the rest of their cohort at Eton? Or the Miliband brothers at Haverstock Comprehensive School? Hmm, probably not. I bet they were all busy learning their lessons and sitting still as still.
The thing is, I don't like genderisation. Never have. I don't like it in education and I don't like it in books. I don't like the classification of books into girls' books and boys' books. It seems to me to be every bit as pernicious as age ranging. It also means I get classified as a writer, which I don't like, either. Over the last few years, I've noted a marked increase in questions like: 'Why do you always write books for girls?' The answer is: I don't. Even if the main character is a girl, it doesn't mean that the book is specifically for girls. I write for everyone, anyone. I don't discriminate along the lines of age or gender. I'm like Philip Pullman's storyteller in the market place. There for whoever wants to stop and listen. The riposte is often: 'Why do you have girls on the cover, then?' Again, why not? 'Because boys won't read it, stupid!' Really? There's a girl on the cover of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and sales figures would suggest that men are reading that book.
I've got news - from the same newspaper. Men and women are not wired differently. Their brains are the same. All these supposed 'differences' are created by social conditioning and environment. There is no Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus divide. So no more girls are from Planet Pink, Boys from Planet Zarg. Genderisation in literature coarsens the appetite while restricting the fare on offer. Maybe it's time for Children's Books to ditch genderisation and grow up.
I'm not superstitious. I walk under ladders, I stroke black cats when they cross my path. No, I'm not superstitious except when it comes to my writing. I carry amulets, I get very upset if they disappear. I don't tempt fate with loose talk about what I'm doing and I believe in serendipity. I have this in common with my friend, Linda Newbery. Her book,
Lob, is on the Guardian children's fiction prize longlist, and richly deserves its place. She explains in an interview: Following the Walking Man, guardian.co.uk 9th August, 2010, how this book was inspired by seeing a man walking the roads between her home in Northampton and Oxford where she was working. He appeared at different points in the book's life: on the day she proposed the idea to her editor, the day after she handed in her typescript, her last sighting of him was at a bus stop in London. She called him Lob. I remember talking to her about this before the book was published and telling her that I used to see the same man, or one of his tribe, walking the main road between Birmingham and Coventry. I said I'd look out for him. Linda keeps a look out, too. She carries a signed copy in the glove compartment of her car, ready to give to him when she sees him again.
I have to report a sighting. The day after I read her interview I saw him walking up Putney High Street, swathed about with bags of different sorts, pushing a trolley, making his way between the shoppers and the buggies. Putney High Street was the old road to Portsmouth and that was the way he was heading, out of the bustle of the town, up onto the ancient heath. I hope it's a good sign for Linda.
I have my own examples, which is why I could identify so closely with Linda and her walking man. My latest novel,
The Fool's Girl, was inspired by Shakespeare's play,
Twelfth Night, and has Feste as a character, the Fool of the title, The first time I had to talk about the book in public, in Cambridge on a warm spring day, I saw this street performer on the way to the venue. My own serendipity. I can't pass a street performer now without giving him or her some money. Feste would never forgive me.
I'm hoping that serendipity is still working for me. On the day I was thinking about writing this blog, I went to the library and on the notice board there, I saw a flyer for something that was a clear message about the book that I plan to write next. I'm not going to say what it is, because that would be tempting fate.
By:
Susan Price,
on 1/15/2009
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I was on the cross-trainer at the gym, listening to music on my little zen-stone, when a song prompted a short story to drop into my head.
I find it's like that with short stories. Putting a novel together takes an age. You research the background, come up with characters, name them (always difficult), invent histories for them, thrash out a plot, change the plot, change the characters, start again... A novel, for me anyway, is constructed over months, even years – bashed together from odd bits and pieces. I always think of a full length book as being 'under construction' or 'up on the stocks'.
A short story tends to arrive almost complete. I suppose that's because it's short. Often there's no need even to name the characters. I may not know the exact words I'm going to frame it in, but I have the whole span of the story, its mood, its imagery, sometimes even the way it's going to be told – in the first person, say, or in a series of short, disconnected scenes.
I'm usually aware of a novel putting itself together. I remember the initial idea, I know when I decided to include this character, and that incident. I remember deciding to drop that whole section, and the reasons why. But a short story often seems to have come from nowhere. One moment I'm sweating on the cross-trainer, thinking of nothing in particular – the next second, there's a story. And it does seem as if some inner light-bulb has illuminated the inside of my head.
When I sit down to write the story, there's a lot of hard concentration and revision – this isn't automatic writing I'm talking about – but the work focusses on the arrangement of words in a sentence, or to what degree I can pare the narrative down before it becomes incomprehensible. With a novel the work covers a far wider range – research, say, or the sheer logistics of getting character B to a particular place, at a particular time, so s/he can encounter character D.
I suppose I'm saying that, for me, a novel is about plotting and a short story is about language. (I keep saying 'for me' because I'm very aware that it might be different for another writer).
I can clearly remember the arrival of some stories. I was watching the film 'Silent Tongue', in which a simpleton boy, played by River Phoenix, is mourning his dead wife, an Indian squaw. Her body, wrapped in a blanket, has been lodged in a tree, for the birds to pick clean. The boy, unable to understand that she is dead, sits under the tree, on guard, driving the birds away with shots from his rifle. The woman's ghost appears to him, haranguing him for keeping her tied to her body – she can't travel on to the other world until her body has disappeared.
My head is so stuffed with old stories and songs that they leak out of my ears. As I watched this part of the film, the words of the old ballad leaped into my head: 'Who lies weeping on my grave and will not let me sleep?' I was seized with the idea of writing my own version of this old song. I pared it down to almost nothing but dialogue, and then realised that I could make the title work as well. I called it 'Overheard In A Graveyard', and so was able to cut all description or even mention of the setting. The finished story is told entirely in dialogue. The two voices aren't even given genders – they could be male and female, or both male, or both female. You decide.
OVERHEARD IN A GRAVEYARD
'What is Longing made of, that it never wears out?
Bone breaks. Rock wears away to sand. In this dark rain, hard iron falls to rust.
Razors blunt. But Longing's edge still cuts deep... '
Published by Hodder in my book, 'NightComers'
The whole story can be read on my website at www.susanprice.org.uk
I used a similar title for 'Overheard In A Museum', (unpublished as yet) which came when I fulfilled a childhood ambition to visit the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, and stood beside the Gokstad ship. The museum is within sight and sound of the Oslo Fjord, where the ship must once have sailed:
'When the doors of the hall open, I smell the sea. I hear it. The pulse of the long-felled oak runs through me, and I feel the sea rush past and under me, and I surge forward to climb the wave. But I never move. I shall never more move...
The most surprising arrival of a story was during the SAS conference last year. My colleague Katherine Roberts (author of I AM THE GREAT HORSE), headed a collage workshop. Under Katherine's instruction, we first had to fix in our minds the kind of story we wanted to write, or the writing problem we wanted to solve. Then we whiffled quickly, at random, through a pile of magazines and, without thinking, ripped out any image or words that caught our attention. After a few minutes of this, we had to look through our bits of paper, and arrange them on a larger sheet to form a collage.
There were about ten professional writers in that room, with glue and paper, and tongues sticking out between teeth. It was, for an SAS conference, a rare few minutes of intense, absorbed silence.
Collages finished, we each had to speak about our own for a few minutes. I had known from the outset that I wanted to write a ghost story. I had chosen a large photograph of a wild moorland area. Over it I had glued a headline that had grabbed my eye: 'Buried in an Unmarked Grave'. There was a photo of a street of old terraced houses, and a dark, dirty flight of steps. But when I had to talk about the collage, I couldn't say much. I said I felt that the flight of steps led down into the underworld, and that someone was buried 'in an unmarked grave' on the moorland, and 'nane shall ken whaur they have gane'. Another colleague, Celia Rees (author of SOVAY), said that it reminded her of a famous murder case.
And then we went for lunch. My room was near where we'd been working, and I tossed the collage on my bed, and sped off to the refectory, for an hour or so of the usual lively SAS chat. I forgot all about the collage, but when I came back to my room at the end of the afternoon, there it was on the bed. The instant I looked at it, Celia's comment and my own thoughts came together and the story 'Carla' was in my head – the characters, the incidents, the mood, the way I would tell it.
I wrote the story about four months ago, and am still tinkering with it, but on the whole, it pleases me well enough. It's unpublished, but I've added it to a collection of new stories that I'm slowly building up, and which may be published one day. (I met my agent today and she told me to send her my stories, as she has a possible sale in mind).
I'll add this latest story to it, when I've written it, if it's any good at all. The song I was listening to on the cross-trainer? 'Cruel Mother' by June Tabor -
She leaned her back against a thorn
All alone and so lonely
And there she has her babies borne
All in the green woods of ivy
She took a knife both long and sharp
All alone and so lonely
And pierced it through each tender heart...
All in the green woods of ivy...
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I have a shed - brick built, with a flat, leaking concrete roof, full of spiders and junk. I shan't be cleaning it out. And I have a room of my own - so full of clutter I'm resistant to tidying that I've been forced out. I only use it when I need the printer. I write on my laptop in a corner of the sofa. I don't have any shed-envy - but then, I don't have to share my house. I can imagine there would be trouble and strife if I did.
What an enjoyable and beautifully illustrated piece. Francis is now left with a completely bare concrete base - a tabula rasa if eve I saw one. Meanwhile we have discovered (or been discovered by) the website shedworking which you may well wish to visit yourself - eye-candy for shedfreaks. Personally I plan to return to my attic, as soon as F vacates. http://www.shedworking.co.uk/2012/05/francis-wheens-shed-disaster.html
Oh I would love a shed - or even just a real space of my own. I actually have a whole working life in a corner of my bedroom. It is NOT a good idea but there is nowhere else.
I do think though that one should keep a copy of things in a safe and separate place.
This is going to fuel your shed-envy, Celia, but.... This very apt for me at the moment, since at this VERY minute I am waiting for an electrician to arrive to connect electricity to my glorious shed which was installed last week. It's hyper-insulated, incredibly light (east and south facing walls are glass) and all i can see from it are trees and plants (currently rhodies and azaleas in full flower) and I can't wait to write in it! Mostly I am looking for to actually *going* to work, like a proper person.
This is a wonderful post and it was lovely to see all those sheds. Dylan's is superb and I love your artist pal's pictures of it. I have no shed envy whatsoever, though they are super! Happy to work in my study at home. A back bedroom looking out on to the garden. My desk faces the wall, not the window and I have bookshelves all around me and knick nacks of various kinds on the desk. I sometimes move my laptop to the kitchen but not often. Particularly sad to think of poor Francis Wheen, whom I know a little. That is a disaster of huge proportions and I can't begin to think how I'd feel if all my books etc went up in smoke. YOUR space, Celia, looks very good to me! And the main thing is: it produces your work, so you have no complaints! Nor should any other Sassie...if it ain't broke, etc.
Yes, I try to visit every time I am in Wales, I love the crumpled pieces of paper on the floor as though he has just left.
Excellent piece of writing. I have added it to the Dylan Thomas Boathouse facebook page, linked below. Hope that's ok! Good to meet you the other week. Jon
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dylan-Thomas-Boathouse-Tea-Room/227795500585636
Loved this! Wonderful all those pictures of sheds. I am now suffering from a serious case of shed envy... a condition probably suffered only by writers and gardeners.
A lovely post - and I do like Julia Griffitht-Jones' drawings! All this has made me nostalgic for my own rather lovely ex-shed. I would like to think that someone else will use it for writing one day. Though I must say there are advantages to being in the house - especially in freezing weather!
Nicola has fuelled my shed envy and I'm sorry if I triggered a bout of nostalgia, Linda. I'm so excited about the Boathouse having it's own Facebook Page - I've gone off and liked it straight away, I'm glad you liked the piece, Jon. Thanks for the inspiration and the bara brith. Everyone who has heard of Francis' shed disaster, Julia, is full of sorrow and sympathy. Only writers, or artists can know what a loss it must have been. I know it doesn't really matter where we write, but to lose ones things, one's books, above all, one's work must be devastating.
I must be very greedy because I now have shed envy even though I have a delightful study with an extensive attached roof garden overlooking garden and field for working on sunny days. Table and wifi on the roof, too. But I'd still like a Dahlesque shed.
I once saw a wonderful gypsy-style caravan with wood-burning stove that you could have installed in the garden as an office and wanted it desperately, but it was £10,000 and really very unnecessary...
I must be very greedy because I now have shed envy even though I have a delightful study with an extensive attached roof garden overlooking garden and field for working on sunny days. Table and wifi on the roof, too. But I'd still like a Dahlesque shed.
I once saw a wonderful gypsy-style caravan with wood-burning stove that you could have installed in the garden as an office and wanted it desperately, but it was £10,000 and really very unnecessary...
I have a shed/summerhouse which I use sometimes, but will be able to use much more once all my children are at school... just isn't possible to lock myself away in there with 3 and 2 year olds in tow :)
Lovely post, Celia.
It is fascinating to see other people's sheds and the things they keep in them to surround them when they are writing.
I love my shed. It's called 'Tuscany' and it is amazing how different it feels being inside the shed rather than writing anywhere else. There is a sense of quiet that makes it easy to write, even when the writing is being difficult!
You can see it on a previous ABBA blog here http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/collaborating-or-flying-solo-linda.html
Bit late - but this is such a lovely post, Celia. I love all the shed pics, and love thinking of Dylan Thomas's shed filled with lists of his words. WOW!
I do suffer a little bit from shed envy. There's something so romantic about the idea. However, I have a beautiful attic room with views of the sea for my study, and I adore it so probably wouldn't swap!
Oh, no! I've got attic envy now! Thanks to everyone who responded to this post. It's fascinating to hear about where others write and impossible not to envy some people, but ultimately it's what gets written that matters.