THE WRITING LIFE

Kit Wright

I doubt anyone is reading this any more as I have left readers in the lurch for so long.  Blame the creative juices.  This current module at Chichester MA in Creative Writing is something of a challenge and I don’t think I am only speaking for myself when I say that it has been the most difficult so far.  The subject is prose or poetry written in the genres of the uncanny, the magical, the ghostly, any style so long as it involves the use of great imagination and metaphor.  My reading has included work by Angela Carter, Kafka, Ian McEwan, Jeanette Winterson and could have taken in again Ishiguro, Joyce Carol Oates, I could go on and on.  When I began to write my story I worked for 4 hours to produce 400 words.  I have never worked so slowly before.  Now the story is 5000 words and my tutor’s parting message at the end of term was ‘You could cut it by about 1,500 words.’  He had helped me along the way but doing some of the cutting up already and handed me a plastic bag with bits of writing cut up!  It didn’t worry me.  Trained as a civil servant, I am used to having my work rejected and redrafted.  I follow in the paths of writers such as Trollop and PD James: the civil service was a great training in the art of writing.

I am on holiday now until after Christmas.  No writing, just reading and doing Sudokus.

And, of course, the writing of Christmas cards (done), the posting of cards (delegated) and the shopping for presents (pretty much done) and the wrapping of presents – right now all I have achieved is a glorious muddle in the spare room as I get out all the paper and tags left over from last year so that I can use it up before others arrive to use my paper!

Last week we attended the Ealing Leisure and Arts presentation for their recent poetry competition.  I had submitted a poem and, as I received an invite for the event and a drink or two, I hoped I had been short listed.  Not at all.  I dragged my husband to a very long and disorganised 3 hours of poetry, announcements, misplacing of lists of winners and, eventually, no drinks as by 9pm we were both too starving hungry to hang around any more.  If you think of ever going, the first hour of the children reading their poems is by far the best.  Apart, that is, for the judge, Kit Wright, a very tall and funny man (because his writing is amusing not because he is tall) wearing delightful pink cord trousers who has just published a new book of poems for children ‘The Magic Box’.  His poems are so amusing and good to read out loud I did something I do not normally do, I bought a copy there and then.

On the way out, I said to a man who had read his rather unsatisfactory poem, ‘I enjoyed your poem.’  He replied, ‘So have you bought my book then?’  I said I had not as I had spent all my money and he then said something I did not catch but suspected it was fairly rude.  That will teach me to lie to poets.

I am still waiting for the latest publication of Dark Tales to arrive.  The EDA has travelled from September through October to November.  It now must be in December but I am not going back onto the web site to find out – I’ll just wait.

Which I have been doing all morning for a delivery which has arrived.  All I have to do now is to find a fake Christmas tree. John Lewis has sold out but I’m told the best buys come from B & Q so the minute my husband comes back from Porlock – it seems I am married to the old man of Porlock these days – we will get ourselves over to B & Q to buy one.  If they have not sold out by then.

That’s the lot for today – if anything exciting happens I’ll write again.

Oh, and it’s stopped raining.  Wonder how long that will last.

A FESTIVAL VIRGIN

Lady Antonia Fraser

I was innocent of either Hay or Cheltenham or Oxford or any place where ‘they’ had a book/literary/writing festival before last weekend.  Either extraordinary for a person who writes and reads or just plain lazy.  Now I have been seduced – featherbedded by locality, how could I resist?

A couple of weeks ago or more I was wooed by posters announcing the Porlock Literary Festival and the Porlock Carnival.

The Carnival won and a splendid occasion it was with colourful and imaginative floats, recreating my childhood pleasure at the Whit Monday carnival organised in our village in the ‘50s and ‘60s.  My husband reported that the literary event seemed a low key affair by comparison.  I hope to be there next year.

However, I was here in Chiswick last weekend for the Chiswick Book Festival.

Again it was lower key than Greens Week in June which involved a fair and stalls on Acton Green and attracted hoards of visitors.  However, the three sessions of the Book Festival I enjoyed to were pretty much sold out with book-lovers packing into either the church or the hall upstairs.

Friday evening saw Lady Antonia Fraser giving a spirited talk on the subject of her  biography, Mary Queen of Scots, (first published in 1969) followed by several personal amusing anecdotes.  Mary always was a favourite of mine when I was at school.  At fourteen I was fascinated by images of a sexy queen (we didn’t have much sex in school then) and my curiosity fired by earnest debates about whether Darnley died as a result of measles or syphilis.  OK, I know he was blown up but he was ill as well.  The book – bought as a very fat, purple covered paperback but seems to be re-packaged in a slimmer form – was my first purchase of non-fiction, taking me from the imagined world of those silver covered Penguin classics (eg Lord of the Flies) to whatever ‘reality’ a history writer chose to spin to us.  I still have the book although I see it is a hardback edition published in 1970 so not my original copy which must have fallen to bits through re-reading.

On Saturday afternoon I listened to four authors, including Katie Fforde who joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association the same year as I did (I am no longer a member).  Katie was splendid in flowing pink with matching nails far too long to type with. As usual she spoke with joyful enthusiasm for her craft and her support for her chosen genre.  The session was entitled ‘Chick Lit for the Thinking Woman’ which, (sorry if this offends some of you) I find a contradiction in terms.  I do not agree that Katie’s novels are chick lit but an extension of the now defunct genre Aga Sagas.  Although since Katie’s books are set in the country why not …       Never mind, as Katie so charmingly put it, a writer writes what she can to the best of her ability and hopes readers like it.  For her a winning formula.  Although to compare the work of any of the panel with that of Jane Austin was, I feel, pushing it somewhat.

Moving on to writing itself, the final session of the afternoon was to discuss the merit of Creative Writing MA’s.  Chaired by Celia Brayfield,

the chat did extend to various writing courses rather than concentrate on MA’s (possibly because neither of the 2 writers on the panel had actually taken an MA in Creative Writing) but it was generally informative and interesting.  The one bright spark in the session for me came from the agent Sarah Such. (I’d give you her web site if she had one but she doesn’t, it seems.  If anyone finds one please message me) Sarah was asked about results from MA courses and she confirmed that manuscripts sent to her by graduates were more professionally presented and more honed than the normal.  She didn’t, of course, say that she was more easily able to sell them to publishers but confirmed that the marketing men rule in publishing as in everything else.

So a fun and interesting weekend.  Also exhausting as we were Scottish dancing on Saturday evening and entertaining until 1am on Sunday evening.

Writing wise, this week has been pretty much a wash out, although I have written a page (!) following an exercise given to us at Chichester last week which will, eventually, go into New Novel; sent work to a colleague with whom I workshop and also sent Chapter One of the novel I intend to send out soon to another writer whose opinion I value.  Having now produced this I can switch of the machine and get ready to go down to Chichester.

The current module on the Metaphor and the Imagination is stimulating and exciting but you will have to wait to hear about it.

THE NEW TERM – OOPS – SEMESTER

At last it’s September.  The children in the family have started new schools, with new uniforms, new school bags and new routines.  In the case of one child, she goes in one door in the morning and comes out of another at the end of the afternoon.

Question: is this a deliberate ploy to make collecting grandmothers suspect they are developing dementia?

Bad morning – I fell down two of our stairs which are on their own, if you see what I mean.  They jumped up at me, got themselves muddled up in the hem of my pyjamas and send me spinning into my husband’s study.  Who is in Porlock again so no knight to the rescue.  No harm done.

Question: is it time for me to change to lavender and old lace nighties?

Last Wednesday evening saw us gathered at Chichester Uni for the start of the new semester.  NB we are MA students so we use academic words imported from the USA rather than the ones we all know.  Lots of good news.  We are only 14 in the group, so split up into 3′s or 4′s rather than 5′s or 6′s.  Much better.  Our tutor for this module (see I’ve mastered the lingo) is energetic, exciting and enthusiastic and it’s a ‘she’.   We are examining fantastic literature, magic realism, the uncanny and the clever use of metaphor.  At least I hope I am going to be clever about all this since this is the module which attracted me to the course.  This week for  ‘homework’  (we don’t have a trendy word for that)  we have to re-invent a metaphor as in ‘a bun in the oven’  plus my small group has to prepare a presentation on Ovid.  Help!     Last night I  read the stories I know and like but the rest of it really doesn’t excite me.   It’s not the fault of Ted Hughes.  Try reading Birthday Letters.  You can’t put the book down.

Question: was it a mistake to spend my school  lessons on Greek Myths mucking about in the back row?

Yesterday I went to the South Bank for another workshoppping session with two of the Pitch the Word people – see blog for 16 June, New Lease of Life.  It was a good session and I came away with valuable comments.

Question: did I give the same?

On Tuesday I am to meet up with a fellow student plus one other writer for a workshopping session.  Question: what to take?

So at the moment I have on the go – old novel with Spread the Word group; new novel pending; last module’s play for the BBC to be revised; new short story up to 3rd draft; something to be written/resurrected for Tuesday; an exercise on re-inventing the word for Wednesdayand stories from the classics to discover.  When I say ‘on the go’ I mean, of course, lying in heaps on the floor of my study.

Right now I just want to go back to bed with another cup of tea and the  Sunday paper.

Observation: impossible, our corner shop doesn’t deliver the papers.

It’s almost nine thirty so must stop this twittering and GET ON.

With more tea of course.

AND AT LAST THE NEWS …

Monday 24 August

Spent last week on a motor boat on the Thames with my husband, my brother and his wife.  This time not much reading done in spite of the bag of books I took with me.  I had imagined hours of lying on deck (or rather the seats on the deck), reading studiously as the river flowed by, always the same and inevitably rather dull.  Not a bit of it.  Apart from all those locks (am now good with ropes – always under the rail and not over); cheery and chatty lock keepers and instructions from husband to hold the boat steady as water poured in from either above or below, there were boats of all sizes (sailing, motor or rowing); swans, geese, ducks and dogs; barges decorated with flowers (painted and growing); people of all sorts to be gazed at;  moorings to be found and sometimes argued over; meals to be cooked and tea to be made.  Always, always, I had the kettle on when the cry went up from above stairs  ‘Lock coming up’ so off went the kettle and the generator and on went my deck shoes as I responded to the call of  ‘all crew on deck’.  I am making  five days on the Thames sound like an excerpt from a Conrad novel but it was reminiscent of Swall0ws and Amazons (all right I know that was sailing but still) a series of books I loathed as a child as I had no empathy at all with boats.  So I am please and gratified that I have learned new skills and found a new interest at the ripe old age of whatever it is.  We reached Abingdon Lock and I look forward to boating again next summer.

Back at home, alone again since husband in Porlock -

I can recount a couple of bits of news on the literary front.

My submission for my last module at Chichester Uni came winging back to me with a Pass Grade.  OK, I was disappointed not to gain a distinction but I didn’t really expect it since I had submitted the first ever radio play I have written.  The play itself won encouraging and flattering comments; my commentary less so.  I’ll probably never quite get the hand of commentary writing which is perhaps a disadvantage of following a creative writing MA without achieving the BA first but there it is.  The BBC Writers’ Room www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/  is full of advice for wanna-be script writers so, after a ‘settling down’  space of time, I must redraft the script according to the comments of the assessor and submit it.

Better news from The Literary Consultancy- www.literaryconsultancy.com

You’ll probably not remember but I won a TLC assessment of the synopsis plus the first 50 pages of a novel as a result of entering a competition run by Spread the Word – www.spreadtheword.org.uk

The TLC report came to me via email and was full of encouragement and useful comments, particularly on the synopsis.  Immediately I abandoned reading for the next module at Chi Uni and began on redrafting said novel.  My method for this is to:

1. Abandon chapters because I find I get too hung up on word length

2. Separate existing chapters into sections or scenes, spread them out on the floor of my room and re-organise the order to make the plot line read more smoothly

3. Take TLC’s comments and suggestions into account where necessary

4. Rewrite link passages where necessary.

Which is where I am at the moment: the floor covered with cut up and stapled sections of the novel waiting for order to be re-established.

Some of us who won a prize from Spread the Word are meeting in September to workshop on our novels.  The last workshop was fun and rewarding.  Must decide on 2000 word extract for next session.

Before that, my group from the last semester at Uni are meeting for lunch and chatter on Friday.  Now that is the kind of ladies who lunch I like – no hats but plenty of opinions about books.

On holiday I met up with two friends one of whom wants to run a writing course in France, the other is organising a literary festival in south-west England.  I promised to send information to both of them.  Better get on with it all.

Finished for now and it is still only 7.35 am – but then I was up at 5 this morning.  Early birds and all that …

… but I am so tired – breakfast in bed, perhaps? 

SO GLAD TO BE HOME

Tuesday 11 August

The date rings a bell but then I remember that 9 August was my father-in-law’s birthday.  He was killed in a car accident on the M4 leaving me with an irrational fear of motorway journeys so I am glad to report that we are all back from our various stays in two countries and three houses.  I am mixture of refreshed and exhausted but so glad to be home.

SOMETHING FOR THE SUMMER

Although I have no intention of writing about politics on this blog there are times when the big picture makes waves into our small lives and, for me, the war in Iraq was one of those times.  With news of government inquires and new TV drama about the war, memories are freshened into yesterday’s shadows.

I am off to holiday in Italy and France, to read for my next module of the Chi Uni course, to notebook, to chat and to revive old friendships.  On my page New Writing, I have posted a short story about one incident of the Iraq War which I hope you will enjoy reading, although it might bring more than a tear to your eye.  Maybe you will read it more than once.

Be in touch in due course.

NEW LEASE OF LIFE AND NEW KNICKERS

Hurrah, just for half a day I climbed out of the slough of summer laziness and dusty domesticity into the pleasure of writing and discussing writing.  Not that my extended family does not do discussion.  One section, ie a family unit, has just abolished our usual  ‘let’s have everyone, never mind the work, the mayhem, the quarrels and the fall-out’  Christmas Day in favour of a  ‘only grown-ups, relaxed and civilized conversation’ Christmas.  Come November, when the news spreads,  there will be plenty of intense, adult discussion about that.

In the meantime, it’s still only June and already I am contradicting myself (see About page) and wanting to get away from the commercial fairs and charity fetes on the common; the midnight boozers and 2am racers of cars through west London.  OK, moan over, what offered me release from my grumpiness?  The Terrace Restaurant at the Royal Festival Hall and a table of four writers with coffee, pencils, notebooks and drafts.

We were four of the six finalists in the recent Spread the Word Novel Pitch competition, who had agreed to meet up and workshop 2K words of our novel in progress.  We were an interesting group, if I say so myself.   Two are English, one from India and one from Nigeria.  Two are young women, I have a few more years than either of them and our male escort (no, not that!)  is somewhere in the middle.  Three of us have followed writing classes of various kinds; we all have the confidence given to us by Spread the Word and we instinctively trust each other’s advice and judgement.  We read variously and were able to recommend novels to each other but we approach our work in different ways.  M. is analytical and picks up details, asking questions and wanting precise answers (so makes us really think what it is we want to say in our writing); F is enthusiastic and generous in her compliments (which we all need even if we do not admit it) but also has a list of queries; P is a good leader of discussion, has experience of workshopping and has already completed one novel (so knows to look for the overall plan and tone of a piece of work) and J (that’s me) has finished her novel being workshopped (so is approaching the morning as an opportunity to listen to fresh readers’ comments).

We are all doing that lonely thing of writing a novel.  We talked and made notes for 3 hours.  We went away enlightened, encouraged and energised.  We are meeting up again in September.  We have a spin-off from entering the S. the W. competiton we had not expected and we now are in touch with three writers who know our work and who are prepared to listen and help.  Sorry if I sound a little smug but I can only say, go for it, put your work about and reap the results.

So back to the summer months.  I do not expect to receive my manuscript back from The Literary Consultancy before I go away so intend to spend the time reading for the next module of my Chi. Uni. course; making notes on metaphor and the imagination; keeping my journal and, of course, catching up with old (in both senses of the word) friends.

My recent haul of books (from one of those charity fetes so I take back my grumps) includes Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (right subject for next module) The Private Parts of Women by Lesley Glaister (one of my favourite writers) Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd (a thick book promising hours of reading) Dreaming Beasts edited by Hugh Dunkerley and Dave Swann (both tutors on the Chichester Uni MA Creative Writing Course) and a thin novel called Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood with a quote from Sir John Betjamin ‘Powerfully malicious’ which I will keep in the car in case we break down!  A good start to my collection.

Now off to shop for new knickers as cannot hang tatty old things on the washing line for fellow holiday makers to see as they wander over to the swimming pool.

Is this a touch of realism or more than a touch of fantasy?