New Sightings of Granny, by Saviour Pirotta

My July post about Granny's Exploding Toilet got a lot of hits and some really nice comments, so I thought I'd keep you all up to date with Granny Josephine's progress through Theatreland.  The play has now been cast and the actors contracted.  There's been a read-through of the script. The actors loved it and I only had to change a few words here and there (I wrote three versions of the script before I felt confident to show it to the SJT.) I also ditched some jokes that worked well on paper but didn't translate to the stage.

The number of songs in the play increased from three to seven to ten, which makes the show practically a musical. I'd never written a song before, so I wasn't sure I could do it, but Granny must be showering me with blessings from that great high-security jail in the sky. I enjoyed writing lyrics and the composer is setting them to music as we speak.

This morning I met Julia Wray, the set designer. I loved her maquette of Granny's Street, which reminded me of Staithes, the little fishing village outside Scarborough. I have spent some happy weekends there. The painter Dame Laura Knight lived there for a while as part of the Staithes Group. The local women used to ply her with tragic stories of their husbands' demise at sea and she, in turn, would ply them with expensive brandy to calm them down. I don't think she ever found out the stories where all made up. Those women were kindred spirits of my own granny who, I'm sure, would have hoodwinked Laura Knight out of her entire wine cellar.

The main set changes to show a haunted cinema, a disused pub, a prison laundry and a public loo where the climatic scene happens.  (yup, the title of the piece is literal; you have been warned.)

Writing a book is collaborative. The author works with the editor, the designer, the illustrator and finally with the people in the publisher's pr department. Writing for theatre takes collaboration to a whole new level, though. Once the director has set out her vision and the designers, lighting people, actors and musicians bring their own particular skills to the project, the work becomes very much an ensemble project. It's so exciting seeing it take on a life of its own, growing in ways I could never even envisage. The story of Grandma's Exploding Toilet remains mine, of course, mine and Nanna Josephine (Guzeppa in her native language). Let's hope she's not smoking in the loo up there. 

GRANNY'S EXPLODING TOILET premieres at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on the 29th of October and runs till the 2nd November. Book your tickets here. 

Read my first post about Granny here.

Saviour's latest book, The Stolen Spear is out now. His The Golden Horsemen of Baghdad is nominated for the Lancashire Fabulous Book Awards 2019/2020 and shortlisted for the North Somerset Teachers' Book Award.

Follow Saviour on Twitter @spirotta.

Nature writing at Ty Newydd, by Sue Purkiss

A version of this post first appeared on my own blog, A Fool on a Hill, a few weeks ago - apologies if you've already seen it! 


In early August, I was on a writing course in North Wales, at Ty Newydd, not far from Criccieth. People in the writing world will have heard of it; it's the Welsh equivalent of the Arvon writing centres in England, and Moniack Mhor in Scotland. The centres all provide courses with a similar structure on a variety of writing forms - script-writing, memoir, fiction, children's writing and so on. 

Ty Newydd, once the home of Lloyd George, now the Welsh Writing Centre.

At Ty Newydd, you arrive on the Monday in time for dinner and introductions, and leave on Saturday after breakfast. There are two tutors, and often a guest speaker on Wednesday evenings: the mornings are taken up by workshops, the afternoons are free for you to write, to have one-to-one sessions with the tutors or to go for a walk down to the sea or the River Dwyfor. All meals are provided by a cook called Tony, who somehow remains completely calm while delivering a clear and entertaining commentary on what he's doing (everyone helps with clearing up and preparation one evening during the week) and producing amazing food. I was lucky enough to have a spacious room in a newly refurbished cottage; through one window trees shifted restlessly in the wind, while through the other, sheep grazed on the other side of a stone wall.

Workshop session with Mark in the garden...

...and with Kathleen inside.

Horatio Clare - a brilliant speaker - and rather a lot of feet.

The course was on nature writing, and the tutors were Scottish poet and prose writer Kathleen Jamie, and naturalist, broadcaster and writer Mark Cocker. The mid-week speaker was Horatio Clare, journalist, writer, lecturer in creative writing, and brilliant speaker. I've probably missed out some of the things they do: they are all fizzing with talent, energy and enthusiasm for the craft of writing in a variety of different forms, and they were generous with their time, their expertise and their encouragement - Mark, incredibly knowledgeable about nature and passionate about how special and unique this planet of ours is: Kathleen, quiet, deeply thoughtful, intensely focused not only on poetry, but on how writers should react to the current climate emergency. This was not about lyrical descriptions of beautiful views - though that certainly came into it. Although everyone really wanted a break from politics, they were inescapable: dark shadows massing around the castle walls.

I write for children, so why, you may ask, was I on a course in nature writing? (To be fair, I think that was something the tutors wondered too, and probably some of the other participants - who were mainly poets, and it seemed to me wonderfully good ones.)

Well, I can only say that when I was browsing through the courses on offer earlier on in the summer, there was something about this one that just sounded right. It was as if a light came on, or a trumpet sounded, or a signpost appeared. I wasn't entirely certain why, but I knew that this was something I really wanted to do.

I do not have a burning desire to become a nature writer - whatever that is - or a poet. I write the occasional poem, when a thought comes to me that won't work any other way, but to be honest, my poems are more like prose that's just been chopped about a bit. But place is very important to me. My books have often been inspired and I think enriched by the landscapes in which they are set. The Willow Man is set in Bridgwater, but suffused by the atmosphere of the nearby Somerset levels; and a climactic scene takes place on - and was shaped by - Brean Down, the spur of the Mendips which juts out into the chocolatey waters of the Bristol Channel. Warrior King, about Alfred the Great, had for its birthplace Athelney, also on the levels, once the island surrounded by marshes where Alfred took shelter from the Danes - and not so very different now, over a thousand years later. I visited the places where Alfred fought - near Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire and above Eddington, which used to be Ethandun, in Wiltshire. In all these places, it was so easy to imagine the events that took place there so long ago: they all had in common a powerful sense of the distant past - and of something very close to magic, which also found its way into the book.

And so on. 

The river. Now how, exactly, do you convey in words what you see here?

The sea, looking towards Criccieth.

But there was something else, too. It's always good to hone your craft, whatever that craft is. And listening to the poets and the tutors focusing closely on language, on finding exactly the right word or image, was really humbling. If you get a group of children's writers together, the discussion will be fascinating. But I think it's fair to say that it will in general centre on story, voice and character, rather than on the nuts and bolts of language. Please note: I am NOT AT ALL saying that children's writers are not good writers or stylists - just that they tend to have different priorities. If you're writing for children, you need to make them want to turn the page: too much description will make them scowl, though you certainly need enough to set the scene, to create the world.

Anyway, from the exercises we did, and the way the poets and non-fiction writers talked about their craft, I gradually realised that I have sometimes been coasting: that sometimes I reach for the easy word instead of the right word, even - horrors! - for a seductively available cliché. (Though, resistant to the last, I would still tentatively suggest that sometimes the first thought and the easy word is the right one.)

It became obvious during the week and particularly during my tutorial with Mark that even when I was trying specifically to write about nature, a story or a character would come pushing its way through. Accepting this, and following up on a suggestion of Mark's, I wrote the beginning of a new story. In fact it almost wrote itself, and it's such a joy when that happens.

Hydrangeas in the garden. You can see a tiny bit of sea, if you look very hard!

On top of all that, I had the pleasure of being in a very special place with a very interesting group of writers. The garden was filled with bees humming among the lavender, and it was a twenty minute walk down to the sea, or a ten minute walk down to the restless River Dwyfor. And the team who run the centre are efficient, friendly and welcoming.

Writing Retreats - Heather Dyer

Hawthornden Castle

I’ve applied for a grant to buy time to write. This might sound odd, since I’m a freelancer and already spend most of my time writing. But writing at home isn’t the same as writing at a dedicated writing retreat.

A writing retreat is the most effective way I can think of for converting money into creative output. I once spent five days at retreat at Ty Newydd, and wrote 10,000 words. At another retreat I conceived a whole new structure and voice for a long-term project.

Ty Newydd

Still, spending six days at somewhere like Retreats for You would normally be beyond my reach. I suppose I could try and manufacture a retreat at home. I could turn off my phone and router, send the dog to kennels, tell everyone I’ve gone on holiday, take down my calendar and hide all reminders of my freelance work, prepare all my meals in advance. But it wouldn’t be the same. I’d still be thinking about the cleaning or the laundry or getting up to sign for a delivery.

Retreats for You

So, I Google writing retreats like others might Google luxury holidays or houses. I lust after their empty rooms, furnished with just a single bed, chair, desk and view. I love reading about the healthy local food they serve, the picnic baskets they leave outside your door at lunchtime. I imagine myself walking in the grounds lost in thought, or sitting on veranda with my notebook on my lap. It feels like a luxury to be able to do nothing but think and work as hard as I can.

But it’s not just the extra time a retreat gives you – it’s the extra headspace. In filling out the application, I reflected on why exactly retreats are so productive. Here are the reasons I gave:

1. Not having to prepare food or do any other routine tasks allows me to function on autopilot. Because I don’t have to drag myself back to the real world to think about what I’m going to make for dinner, or do the dishes, or walk the dog, I can remain preoccupied by my work 24/7. It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I do before going to bed. I can wander about lost in thought, and make notes at the dinner table.
2. This uninterrupted focus deepens my immersion in the material, which allows unconscious connections to rise to the surface and results in new insights.
3. Shutting down all other mental ‘bandwidths’ relieves stress, and this also helps create an expansive, creative mindset. Until I’m on retreat, I don't realize how much ‘noise’ is going on inside my head, keeping me distracted.
4. I set out-of-office/voicemail messages as though I’m on vacation, which helps me feel detached, and sustain an inward focus. Immediately, it’s as though the real world and my real life have been whisked away, and all I’m left with is the material I brought to work on.
5. Knowing that time on retreat is limited makes me feel justified – and obliged – to give my creative work priority. Usually, the opposite is true. Even though writing is always my priority, there are a million smaller, less important things that are more urgent. So they take precedence. Working on ‘my own stuff’ begins to feel like a guilty pleasure. Every moment on retreat is precious, because here you are a writer above all else.
6. Being around other writers is motivating and inspiring – both chatting with them and just knowing they’re behind the walls, also working. There’s a lovely kind of understanding that happens, where you can go about lost in thought, and everyone understands. Or, there are people to talk to about writing who really understand.
7. The progress made during a retreat generates momentum that continues for months afterwards, so it’s easier to continue building on this progress in smaller chunks of time.

But you don't have to be a writer to have a working retreat. You could have a workation, at a centre dedicated to working stays, set up with superfast wifi, social areas and restaurants. With the rise in people working remotely, more and more people are working on the move. I’ve heard of other people attending spiritual or religious retreats to work, too, in the peace and quiet.

Have you been to any retreats you’d recommend? Has anyone made retreating-at-home work for them?

Heather Dyer is a consultant in writing for children. She provides editorial and publishing advice through The Literary Consultancy, The Writers' Advice Centre for Children's Books, and privately. For feedback on your work-in-progress contact Heather at heatherdyerbooks@gmail.com. 

Heather’s children’s novel The Girl with the Broken Wing was one of Richard and Judy’s book club picks, and The Boy in the Biscuit Tin was nominated for a Galaxy Best British Children’s Book award. Heather also teaches creative writing for the University of the Creative Arts, and facilitates workshops in creative thinking techniques for creatives and academics.

When creative anxiety strikes by Anne Booth

When Creative Anxiety Strikes

I must admit I am feeling a bit stressed at this very moment, as I had forgotten it was my blog post tomorrow!

But I have also been rather anxious anyway recently because of various things, and I have been trying to do things to help myself. I was very impressed, when I was on a recent wonderful Orange Beak Illustration Retreat , to hear about their work to help promote good mental health for creatives. I was looking for a link but could only find this, but it gives you a taste of what illustrators are sharing about keeping in good emotional and mental health, and may inspire writers reading this.

https://tiktogram.com/tag/orangebeakbewellworkwell

I also follow @silverpebble, the writer Emma Mitchell, on twitter and find what she says very helpful. She has written this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wild-Remedy-Nature-Mends-Diary/dp/1789290422 and often talks about how getting out in nature helps lessen anxiety and depression.

So today, I felt a sudden dip in my mood and a rise in anxiety, and before I could go further down, I took my little dog out and went for a walk for one hour and twenty minutes, and slowly, I felt my mood get better and my anxiety and negative, worried  thoughts lessen. It was so lovely. The colour green soaked away my bad thoughts. I could see and hear birds, and the trees, and the light shining though them and the shadows on the path, were so beautiful 

Here is where it went a little wrong, and I got lost. I do not have a good sense of direction and  Ben, my dog, is gorgeous, but disappointingly does not have the ability that many dogs have in children's books, to get us out of tricky situations and find our way home. He just likes sniffing around and wagging his tail.  So getting lost didn't help my anxiety and I had to resist ridiculous visions of us wandering around until dark and NEVER BEING FOUND.  Bear in mind that I was probably only about 25 minutes away from home and it was only about 4 pm and I had definitely been in that place before with my daughter on a walk. I just could not remember how we had got home from there. I  would not make a very good lone woman explorer. On the other hand, I hope my over imagination means I can understand the emotions of those who are genuine explorers and lost in the wilderness. What writer needs to actually go to the trouble to travel miles away and be an explorer when they can save time and money and get  panicked and disorientated so near home? Come to think of it, a real explorer lost in the wilderness would probably feel calmer.

ANYWAY. Eventually , as Ben was no help,  and I felt rather responsible for him, I calmed down and hit on the brilliant plan of going back the way we came, turning round and going back through the wood until I recognised where I was. 

Anyone who lives near me and recognises these views will wonder what on earth I was getting so anxious about. These places are SO NEAR to each other. But anxiety is without logic. 

Anyway, I walked home a much longer way than necessary, in grateful relief, Ben walking on the lead in front of me, though I don't think he had a clue where he was going really.

I saw a tree which made me smile. I think the way the leaves were trimmed made me think of a back to school haircut.

And here are another two beauties which lifted my spirits.

I felt helped by the greenness all around me, and lifted by the blue sky,  I wish I could share the noise of the wind in all the trees. The sound was so soothing.  I felt sshed and calmed and supported by each tree as I walked past them, and by the time I got back I felt so much better. 

I realise I am very lucky to have had a little dog to walk with today, and have such a beautiful locality to walk in.  It is amazing however, even for those living near to such beauty,  how hard it still is, when we feel bad about ourselves, to move and do what is good for us. When I feel paralysed by anxiety again,  I must remember how much it helped me today to get out of the house- and I hope, if you feel anxious , that you can get out too and have some healing contact with trees and greenness. I don't know what the trees were whispering to me and Ben today, but whatever  it was, it was very encouraging and kind.


P.S. If your anxiety is eased by listening to the sea, then this facebook post from Lindisfarne posted by The Lindisfarne Scriptorium may help.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2662340427134375

National Gibberish Day (Revisited) - Joan Lennon

There was a suggestion a while ago that it was all right, from time to time, to re-post favourites from ABBA's long and full-of-favourites past, and I would like to do just that - here is my post for 20 Sept. 2017 on the delights of gibberish, on this annual celebration of gobbledy-gook.  I wish you a

HAPPY NATIONAL GIBBERISH DAY!

Yes, you heard me correctly.  20 September is National Gibberish* Day.  Why?  Who decides these things?  He gnews?  Jet Pum!**  And to celebrate I give you ...

Jabberwocky!

Not just the words, but two performances that make me chortle in joy:

and

So, readers and writers and ABBAers of every description, here's to gibberish - and, if you possibly can, shove some into a conversation today.  Fo jensonsicaxar!  Vaxako Rowis Caxallerr pleud!!*** 

* aka Jibber-Jabber

** Who knows?  Not I!  (translations courtesy of My Big Monkey Gibberish Translator - hours of entertainment!)

*** Be nonsensical!  Make Lewis Carroll proud!


P.S.  I love the way the Muppets drew on John Tenniel's original 1871 illustrations for Jabberwocky - so bizarre - so clever!

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Walking Mountain.

Equinox with TS Eliot - by Lu Hersey

Somehow September seems to be passing at record speed, and we're nearly at the autumn equinox - the day the hours of daylight and dark are of equal length. As we head towards the shorter days and longer nights of winter, this is my attempt to explain how I feel about this particular time of year, and why it always makes me think of TS Eliot's Four Quartets (even if I never really entirely understood them).

Traditionally the mid point of the harvest, in Avalon (which translates as the Isle of Apples) the orchards are heavy with fruit. The equinox is mostly celebrated here as the pagan festival of Mabon, one of the eight annual Celtic fire festivals, supposedly a time to take stock and enjoy feasting before the winter sets in. Of course in Glastonbury this presents an excuse for an army of pagans to drum for much of the night up on the tor and blast their blooming horns of Gondor (or worse, play bagpipes) at dawn. Fortunately I have emergency earplugs.

The equinox is a significant time in other cultures too. Japan marks it (both spring and autumn) with a time they call Ohigan, or O-higan. At the equinoxes the sun sets directly in the west, in Buddhist tradition seen as the way to the land of the afterlife, so these times are associated with transitions of life and death. People visit the graves of their ancestors, leave flowers, meditate, and feast with the living. In China and Vietnam, people celebrate the full moon nearest the equinox as the Moon Festival, a time to gaze at the moon and eat moon cakes. The same festival in Korea is known as Chuseok.

The Christian festival of Michaelmas, probably a replacement for earlier pagan celebrations (as many festivals in the Christian calendar tend to be), is also around this time, on 29th September. Michaelmas marks the feast of the archangel Michael, but somehow still gets mixed in with the celebration of harvest - and you'd be wise not to eat blackberries after Michaelmas as apparently they then belong to the devil. Or so my grandmother told me...

So whether they're creating an altar covered in autumn leaves and seasonal apples (many traditions regard the apple as a sacred fruit, probably because of the magical, five pointed star that appears when you cut the fruit horizontally), going to a harvest festival, or eating moon cakes and visiting ancestors, it seems many of us still celebrate the equinox.

I've found my own (bagpipe free) way of marking this special time of the year. If possible, I go to the sea, timing the visit to coincide with either high tide or low tide (depending on daylight hours and the journey time it takes to get there). When the tide is either right out, or right in, there's usually a patch of relative calm, like a breathing space when the world stops for a moment, before the tide turns. And even if the poem is about something completely different, I think of Burnt Norton in Eliot's Four Quartets.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I sit by the shore and try to empty my mind of all the noise and clutter for a while. It doesn't really matter what I'm writing, or trying to write back home - or what I will write in future or have written previously. Just for a few precious moments I don't worry about any of it.

And that's how I spend the equinox with TS Eliot. It's really worth finding a tiny bit of calm away from the madding crowds, even if it's only for a short time, twice a year. I really recommend it.

Lu Hersey
t: @LuWrites
w: luhersey.com 

An analogue author in a digital world - Tracy Darnton

Technology has conspired against me this month so, with apologies to all for the lack of a long blog of interest, I have smuggled this alternative message past my laptop.

I am an analogue person.
I like books, notebooks, fountain pens.
I have inky fingers.
I choose to sharpen my pencils and flick the shavings in the wastepaper basket.
I have a selection of fine pencil cases.

I write appointments in a tiny diary.
I like sending postcards. Even notelets.

My clocks have faces and hands and tick reassuringly.
I have beautiful hourglasses to time my writing.

Baking involves painstaking weighing of ingredients in balance scales and the juggling of tiny weights. Like a doll's grocers.

My car has wind-up windows.
I have a dog-eared roadmap and no SatNav.

I am happier as an analogue person.

I don't know the lingo - I may have completely misunderstood the nature of my opening line.

I don't like my laptop.
There, I said it.
I don't like my constantly crashing laptop which daily has some new horror:
display not loading,
Word not responding,
Google not responding.

All against the backdrop of holding my unbacked-up work ransom.
It knows there is no room left on my OneDrive - a concept which I only vaguely understand.

And it's switched to American spelling again.
It likes me to hunt for the @ key.

My laptop has taken offence at the large monitor I prefer to its tiny screen. It refuses to send any signal however much I change the HDMI cable and ask it nicely. I am reduced again to peering at one paragraph at a time.

I should have been a writer in times gone by - preferably a rich one, with a secretary in tweed in the corner. I could dictate my novel or hand over notebooks of scribbles and crossings-out.

Or maybe my little typewriter could be pressed into action.
If it weren't for the lack of a delete button.
If it weren't for the fact I'd be zonked out with Tippex fumes before the day was over. (Is Tippex still a thing?)

I shall have to bribe my IT department (teenager) to help again with a packet of Twirl bites.
My IT department takes a dim view of my whispering that the laptop is doing it deliberately.
But I know it is.

I shall of course apologise to the laptop and see if it is in the mood to forgive me.

I am an analogue author in a scary, digital world.
I just want to write.

Normal service shall be resumed next month.

Tracy Darnton is the author of The Truth About Lies, shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2019. She has an MA in Writing for Young People. It is a minor miracle that she manages to publish this blog online.

You can follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDarnton and on Instagram tracydarnton