Saturday 30 January 2016

New writers – a leg up and a helping hand... Lari Don

Earlier this week, I was privileged to attend the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Awards Showcase, where the winners of this SBT scheme read extracts from their startlingly good new writing, and where we were all given a lovely little book of their writing.

I can take a tiny bit of credit for how wonderful the evening was, because I was one of the panel who chose the two new Children's and Young Adult Fiction writers. (A process so wrapped in secrecy and cloaked in mystery that I can say NOTHING about it at all...)

But I can say that we chose Claire Squires and Michael Richardson, and I can also say that all the new writers were fantastic and all their new writing was great... it was a really inspiring evening. The awards they received were pretty impressive too – including mentoring, a week long retreat, and a grant to help with the costs of finding time to write. An amazing leg up and helping hand for anyone trying to work out how to be the best writer they can be.

And most people need a leg up of some kind at the start (or even in the middle...) of their writing career. For example, I got my start when I entered the Kelpies Prize with a draft of my first children’s novel, First Aid for Fairies. It didn’t win, but being shortlisted led to all sorts of other opportunities...

So well done to the organisers of initiatives like this, and best of luck to anyone entering competitions or awards to give them a bit of a leg up, a helping hand, and a bouncy friendly start to their writing career.

And especially well done to Claire Squires and Michael Richardson, both of whom I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about in the future, as they move from being new writers to published writers!

Lari Don is surprised to discover that she’s no longer a new writer – she’s now written more than 20 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
Lari’s website 
Lari’s own blog 
Lari on Twitter 
Lari on Facebook 

Friday 29 January 2016

Resolving to write - John Dougherty

The end of January is an odd time to talk about New Year’s Resolutions, isn’t it? By now most lie, forgotten, where they’ve fallen behind the sofa or been carelessly dropped on a road that’s paved with good intentions. And the rest have mostly been assimilated into everyday behaviour and no longer draw attention to themselves.
But actually, it feels to me like a good time to review, and since one of my resolutions was a writerly one, I thought I’d share that review with you.
The last few years haven’t been easy for me in many ways, and one of the difficult things has been simply finding time to focus on my work. What with all the admin of self-employment, the duties of parenthood, and - to be frank - the all-too frequent struggles with depression, there’ve been too many days and weeks when I haven’t felt like a writer; when I’ve got no writing done at all or have only managed a little, forced out at pen-point.
This couldn’t continue; so I decided that 2016 was going to be the year when I remembered that I really am a writer. And I decided that the best way to do that was to write. Every day. Away with the excuses; gone are the days and weeks of writing nothing because other things get in the way.
Of course, some days - for whatever reason - it really isn’t possible to do much; but I promised myself that even if all I could manage was a sentence, I would write that sentence. Proper writing, mind you - shopping lists don’t count. Work that fed into my writing would, though, such as spending the morning - as I did recently - watching Julius Caesar on DVD and making notes, prior to rewriting it for a reading scheme.
So - how’s it going? Really pretty good, actually. Days 1 & 2 of 2016 were ‘not much done’ days; they fell on a weekend when I had the kids, and of course there was all that recovering-from-New-Year’s-Eve business as well. So I only managed a sentence on day one, and a paragraph on day two. 
Then came January 3rd - the day when the kids went back to school, and writing started in earnest. Normally, the first proper writing day back after a break is difficult. Getting focused is tough. If I’m lucky, I might manage 500 words of the work-in-progress, but 250 wouldn’t be unusual.
Not this time. This time I managed 3,800. Before 2.00pm. Enough to get me to the end of the first draft I’d been working on before Christmas got in the way.
Not every day’s been like that, of course; in fact, that’s my highest word-count of the year. It may in fact be my highest word-count of all time, in a single day. But every day on which I’ve written - which is every day in the last 29 - I’ve felt like a writer. It’s changed my view of myself, and my work, and has put all those distractions into sharp relief. And I wish I’d thought of it years ago.
How are your writerly resolutions working out?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________














John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman, is published by OUP.


His new books in 2016 will include the next two Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face titles, his first poetry collection - Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Otter-Barry Books  - and several readers for schools.

Thursday 28 January 2016

Childfree adults in children's literature - Clémentine Beauvais



Recently, I’ve started paying attention, when reading children’s literature, to adult characters who don't have children. This started as I was rereading Matilda last year to write an article on it; it struck me that the Trunchbull and Miss Honey shared one characteristic: their childlessness. But while the formidable headteacher hates children, Miss Honey’s own narrative arc in the story sees her eventually adopting Matilda (spoiler alert) (oops, too late). While Miss Trunchbull is quite clearly childfree (childless by choice), Miss Honey’s happy resolution seemed to entail being finally ‘completed’ by a child. 
 
‘Childfree’ adults denounce the degree to which adults, in society, are seen as incomplete when they don’t have children; to them, it isn't the case that any adult in possession of a good mortgage must be in want of a child. Children’s books, in this respect, seem to me in general to perpetuate the idea that adults need children. Worse, they often appear to imply that childless adults have a problem that needs to be rectified (= they need a child), and childfree adults, meanwhile, should be either completely in the service of children, or suspicious, monstrous, or dangerous.

Here’s a vague taxonomy of childless and childfree adults I’ve been playing around with in my head. Feel free to add, criticise and nuance! Children’s literature seems to me to categorise childless and childfree adults broadly according to those lines:

The childfree (childless by choice):
 
- The monstrous and the murderous: Dahl’s Witches, Carroll’s Red Queen, Barrie’s Captain Hook. Ogres and giants. They hate children. But they are also clearly obsessed with children. Their whole raison d’ĂȘtre is to kill a lot of them.

- Cool uncles and aunts, nice godmothers: Those childfree adults are equally obsessed with children, but devote so much time to children who are not their own that presumably they don't need their own; in fact, that would probably come in the way of the affection that the protagonist needs exclusively. Basically, they're surrogate parents, but allow for the necessary fifty shades of authority that are germane to children's books. Godmothers in fairy tales, Rowling’s Sirius Black, Dahl’s BFG, Jules Verne’s many travelling uncles, and my own Sesame Seade’s lazy student boss Jeremy.

- Anthropomorphic animals and picturebook adults: This category of adults who are basically children doing adult jobs, and who mostly appear as protagonists in literature for the very young. Those adults by definition cannot have children, since they are essentially placeholders for children themselves.

The childless: (not by choice)

- Those who are mourning a child, or mourning never having had a child: melancholy figures who, explicitly or implicitly, appear sad to not be parents; or have lost their child, or a child very close to them, and are generally on their own path of mourning and grief. Often, this translates as some emotional investment in the child protagonist of the story. E.g. Lois Lowry’s Giver, Ma Costa in His Dark Materials, and even Dumbledore who lost his younger sister. They are, I think, a sad or more profound variation on the childfree 'in loco parentis' adult described above. 



- Those for whom being childless is fairly unproblematic, but who end up looking for a child for various reasons: E.g. Miss Honey, as mentioned earlier, but also for instance the bizarre Willy Wonka, whose name implies that there might be something wonky with his reproductive organ, leading him, at the age of I have no idea how many years, to have to look for an heir.


Blurry zone: Teachers

Teachers are an interesting, huge category of childfree/ childless adults in children’s literature. To my knowledge, no Hogwarts teacher has children. In fact, many teachers in children’s literature seem mysteriously to have no kids at all. Whether it’s by choice or not, teachers seem to devote their whole time to other people's children. I wonder if it's because teachers' children (who do exist in children's books, but not that many) would distract from the total absorption that child protagonists require from their teachers. It mirrors the narcissistic impossibility, as a young child, to imagine that one's teacher might have a private life, or - horror!- other children than us to look after.


It seems to me that children's literature shows a lot more empathy for the childless than for the childfree; and presents the childfree as being still very invested in children, whether nefariously or positively. In other words, children's literature doesn't really let adults, at least in leading or secondary roles, be indifferent to children.
Of course, indifference towards children couldn't be very frequent among adults in children’s literature, because of clear narrative and generic reasons: this type of text, obviously, is rather centred on children, so adults in children’s literature need to work within that narrative. But as a result, of course, we grow up thinking that adults must be interested in children, by nature and by necessity; and if not, it makes them suspicious. 

Please add your own thoughts! This is a very quick and not very deeply thought-out taxonomy, and I'm sure I've forgotten lots.
 
_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.


Wednesday 27 January 2016

Multi-tasking with Lynn Huggins-Cooper

Sometimes, I worry that I am writing too many things at once. I wonder if I would write better books if I stuck to one project at a time. The problem is, I’m not sure I know how to do that.

Currently, I am working on a craft book, a novel for adults, a YA coming of age story and a MG ghost story. I have always done this. I think it may be due to the way I started out as a writer – fitting it in around other things. Back in 1997 when I was first published, I was teaching full time and had young children. Writing was something I did after the marking and lesson planning was done; after dinner was eaten; everyone was bathed and in bed.

Eventually, writing took over as a job. I was earning enough money to pay my bills and so I wrote full time. Instead of doing one project at a time, I wrote strands of things – educational series, non-fiction books and picture books at the same time. It wasn’t confusing, because each project was different. Having different things to write at the same time meant I never got bored; I have never suffered from ‘writer’s block,’ and I think this is partly due to all the ‘changing gear’ that goes on in my head with the variety of projects that I do.

If I grind to a halt on one project, I slip into another. I think this helps me not to ‘over-think’ and force writing, and when I return to the first project I am usually refreshed and can start anew. I know that the ideas keep sifting and composting for each project and not looking at them directly – seeing them in my ‘peripheral writing vision’, if you like – helps problems evaporate. Sometimes one project is dominant in my head and I work furiously on that one for a while and the others fade into the background. It does make me fumble a little when people ask me what I am currently writing though!

Anyway – off to get writing. I have a needle felting craft book about woodland creatures, dryads and faeries to write. Oh – and a story about a Rom girl who is finding it hard to accept her heritage…and a funny book about a woman who accidentally falls in love with a much younger man…and a story about ghosts on the tube…which will bubble up to the surface first?


Tuesday 26 January 2016

Sea Stories


This is my very first Blog piece for ABBA so firstly, and most importantly, hello! How are you? It’s very good to meet you. You look lovely today. I do hope 2016 is treating you well so far? Oh, that's good to hear. 

Right, now we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way I’m going to talk to you about writing and books because I am completely obsessed with stories.

 
People always say to me – where DO you get your ideas from?
 
Now, I know lots of writers say ‘Well I just have hundreds of them floating around in my head’ or ‘I’ll see something interesting in the street like a man with nostril hair that reaches his toes or a window with KEEP OUT- CRIME SCENE on it and I’ll think - what happened here? What’s this story?’

I am not one of these types of writers.
Nor am I one of those Inspiration Strikes types either.
I’m more of a tear your hair out, eat your computer, search for cake type writer.

 

BUT there is one place I can (almost) guarantee I will find a story and luckily enough I live right next to it. The Sea! Or more accurately the sea and the land near to the sea.
I am enormously fortunate that I get to take my dog Watson Jones to the beach every day and I find so much inspiration there.

 


 

I collect this stuff by the bucketful.

 


 

And, guess what? I’m working on a YA novel called…*Long Dramatic Drum Roll*… ‘Seaglass’.

 

 

I found this Victorian boot washed up on the shore. At first I thought it was a replica but the sole is made of metal and held on by tacks and people, who are much cleverer than I’ll ever be, have verified that it is indeed the real thing. When I found it I’d been working on a YA called ‘Gaslight’ which takes place in Victorian Cardiff and is largely set in the docks so I see this boot as a sign from The Great Ocean God Of Writing that I’m on the right path!

My first published book came out on World Book Day last year. It’s called ‘Elen’s Island’. I bet you can’t guess where it’s set? Or who the main protagonist is? Answers on a postcard to ‘Obvious, Wales’ if you please.

 
 

 

I’m not the only person to take inspiration from the sea – shame really, it would do wonders for my book sales – nor even the only person to take inspiration from the beach outside my garden.

Sharon Tregenza’s brilliant MG mystery ‘The Shiver Stone’ takes place in Saundersfoot (the lovely town where I live) and as well as being a tip top read the cover practically shows my house!

  

 

There are also superbly ace and cool books about surfing dudes and dudesses that I would never be able to write in a million years because I am so far away from cool I can’t even see it in the distance. If you want that sort of YA brilliance try ‘Blue’ and ‘Air’ by Lisa Glass.

 


 

 

Or if you like the magical, compelling mystery kind of YA then I thoroughly recommend ‘Deep Water’ by Lu Hersey which won the Mslexia Children’s Novel Writing Award. It’s a fantastic read and I love it BIG TIME!
 

 

Anyway that's where I get my ideas and it seems that lots of others do too but more importantly, if YOU write, where do you get yours? 

Are you inspired by the sea? What’s your favourite sea story? There are so many different types out there! What sort of story would you write about it?
Perhaps your sea story will be the next one on the shelves. I certainly hope so. I could do with another good sea story to read! Hopefully while I'm lying on a beach next to this kind of gorgeousness! Ah - remember the sun?
 
 

Monday 25 January 2016

Unsuitable for Boys - Tamsyn Murray

I read a book about football last year. It was called Whatever Happened to Billy Parks by Gareth Roberts and I enjoyed it immensely. The main character was male. There were a lot of other male characters. There was a lot of football detail but that was OK, because I like football. The story was engaging, the writing rich and gorgeous and evocative. I closed the book at the end with a happy sigh and immediately passed it on to a friend. And then another. I recommended it to a few people too. You get the idea: I loved the book.

Now imagine someone had told me that book wasn't meant for me. "That's a book for men," they might have said. "You won't like it."

I like to think I would have told them to stick their gender preconceptions somewhere uncomfortable and read the book regardless. But what if I'd been less confident in my tastes and more swayed by the opinions of others? What if the person who said it to me was someone I should respect and listen to? What then? I might have put the book down and read something else...something safe and expected. And I would have missed out on the fabulous story and great writing. I would have missed that experience.

Now onto a less hypothetical situation. I had an enquiry about a school visit recently. It didn't come directly from a school but via a third party (who shall remain anonymous) and they wanted to know if I was free to visit a school. 'Sure,' I said, and gave some possible dates. A few days passed and I heard back from the very embarrassed third party: the school didn't want me. They wanted an author who was more suitable for boys.

I don't consider either myself or my writing to be unsuitable for boys. The Stunt Bunny series (featuring a female rabbit and her female owner) are popular with boys and girls. My events are (all modesty aside) a smash hit with boys and girls - they love hearing about my (girl) rabbits and the inspiration behind the Completely Cassidy books (my Powerpoint involves photos of my female dog and my daughter). My events are interactive - the kids get up and help me to tell the stories behind my books: they hula-hoop and plate spin and pretend to be rabbits and spiders and out-of-breath authors. And let me tell you, the boys are just as keen as the girls. Blimey, are they keen.

Occasionally, I get asked (usually by a boy) whether I will write a book with a male main character so that they can read it. I always feel sorry for the asker of this question, mostly because they are about to get something they probably didn't expect: a fiery lecture about how books are simply BOOKS, not gender-specific. I try to rein it in a bit - it's not the asker's fault, after all. Kids have always been taught that there are books for girls and books for boys. Thankfully, this is changing but it's definitely still a thing. I know girls will read books with boy MCs more readily than boys will read about girls but I think it's more because people tell boys they won't like books that feature girls. Several authors have told me stories about experiences similar to mine with the school booking (and there were worse stories too) so I know it's not an isolated experience. And I'm not bleating about a lost booking or missed income - I'm sad for the kids at that school. I'm worried that they are missing out on lots of fabulous books because some of the adults around them still think there are books for boys and books for girls. If books allow us to slip into someone else's shoes for a short time, what kind of message does that send - that it's OK for girls to pretend to be boys but heaven forfend boys should pretend to be girls?

When the fabulous Mary Hoffman heard what had happened to me, she said in my situation she would get a t-shirt made up that read 'Unsuitable for Boys'. So I've done exactly that and look forward to wearing it at every available opportunity. And then people will ask me about it. I can't wait to tell them what it means.




Sunday 24 January 2016

It’s Not About the Price Tag…Or Is It? - Liz Kessler

If you are tuned into the world of the UK writing community, you’ll probably know there has been a lot of talk about money recently.

The thorny issue of authors being paid to do events at literary festivals was put firmly in the limelight by Philip Pullman when he resigned from the Oxford Literary Festival in protest against their policy of not paying authors.

There has also been talk amongst bloggers about whether they should be paid for the work they do to help promote books for authors and publishers.

I don’t want to get into the ins and outs of those arguments. There are many places where you can read about them, including fantastic blogs by Lucy Coats and Lucy Powrie amongst others. Do take a look.

The thing that has occupied my mind in all of this is the issue of the blurry lines between our passions and hobbies and our jobs and financial standing, and how, somewhere amongst all of this, we find the hooks on which we hang a lot of our sense of identity and status.

About fifteen years ago, I left a permanent job in order to free up enough time to commit myself to writing a novel. I spent the next couple of years working in a part-time capacity as a teacher and editorial advisor, whilst attending an MA in Creative Writing. During that time, I wrote a YA novel which would take fifteen years to get published, and the first book in a series which would go on to sell in more than twenty countries across the world. I wasn’t being paid to write. I was being paid to teach, and to work on people’s manuscripts. This meant that when I met someone new and they asked the question that we so often ask, ‘What do you do?’ I felt stuck. I wanted to say I was a writer, but that felt fraudulent. How could I say this was what I ‘was’ when no one was paying me to do it? So instead, I would describe myself in terms of the thing I did to pay my way, rather than the thing that fuelled my passion, filled my thoughts and occupied every life goal I had.

My home town is full of people who make their living in the tourist industry, managing bars, waiting on tables, cleaning holiday homes. Many of these people also paint beautiful pictures, create gorgeous jewellery, take stunning photographs. If you ask them, ‘What do you do?’ many will find it hard to answer, ‘I make necklaces,’ or ‘I paint sunsets’, instead falling back on, ‘Oh, I just work in a cafĂ©.’

Beautiful St Ives, where many talented artists 'just work in a cafĂ©' 

And I’m wondering if this is OK. If this is right. If this is how it should be. And I think the answers are no, no and no.

For some of us, we are lucky enough that our passion and our jobs overlap. I think that seeking this overlap is partly what is behind the recent campaigns in the book world. Authors are generally delighted to be asked to take part in festivals, and perhaps many of us see it as such a pleasure and an honour that it makes it easy for those running them to get away with not offering a fee. Book bloggers generally get into doing what they do because of their passion for reading – but does this mean that we should expect them to devote hours of their time to promoting people’s books without any financial acknowledgement of their work and their time?

I think there’s a tipping point. There is a moment when, ‘I do this because I love it, and will fit it into my life in any way I can’ becomes, ‘I do this because I love it, and I wonder if there’s some way of making money doing it, so I can afford to put even more time into it,’ which eventually merges into, ‘I do this because I love it, but it is taking up so much of my time, and people are now making demands of me, and it’s about time I was properly acknowledged and paid for my time.’

Of course we all need a roof over our head and bread on the table, but I believe that the aspiration to be paid for our time is also about a natural desire that we have for acknowledgement, for status, for a recognition of who we are, what we are doing, the difference we might be making in the world. Money is society’s way of saying, ‘You are appreciated for this.’

Earlier this week, I received a letter that filled my heart, from a girl who had just read my YA novel about a girl coming out. Read Me Like A Book was published last year, after a very long road to publication. I have always said that my biggest hope with this book would be that someone might read it who really needed it, and that it would help them to feel they weren’t alone in what they were going through. This letter was that person.

The lines that stopped me in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes were these: “I felt that I could relate to a lot of Ash’s experiences in the book and that’s really helped me to feel a lot more, for want of a much better word, normal and happier and more accepting of myself. Thank you, thank you, thank you again and again and again!”

This letter tells me that what I am doing has value. That I have a place in the world, that the thing I put my time and my passion into is worthwhile. This letter says, ‘You are appreciated for this.’ Putting aside the need to eat, have shelter, be warm – this letter, frankly, is why I am a writer.

And yes, the fact that writing books is my job does mean it’s easier for me to say ‘I’m a writer’. But my argument is that we should be able to say that regardless.

My other passion is photography. I spend almost as much time on this as writing – but I have never made any money from it. Even so, when people ask what I do, I often want to mention it. My Twitter profile, for example, now includes ‘Keen photographer,’ and it feels important to me that I do this – that we do this.

The kind of thing that gets me up and out of the house early in the mornings
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that we should all be happy to know that we’re doing something creative and not try to get paid for it. Not at all. I am fully behind all attempts to receive financial reward for the things we put our time and efforts into – whatever they are and however we feel about them. What I am saying is that we, as a society, should rate people’s passions and dreams as highly as we rate their method of paying the bills.

So, try it. Next time someone asks ‘What do you do?’ try saying, ‘I review books,’ ‘I crochet mermaids,’ ‘I take disabled people horse riding,’ ‘I help save lives out at sea,’ ‘I write, take photographs and surf.’

Perhaps if we all do it, then as a society we might one day come to value the contribution that people make to their communities and to the lives of those around them as much as we value the hunk of metal they drive to their day job and the size of the building they live in.

Have a look at Liz's Photos
Follow Liz on Twitter
Join Liz's Facebook page
Check out Liz's Website


Saturday 23 January 2016

Intent To Tell by Steve Gladwin


Many years ago, when I first came to Wales, I got into conversation with a storyteller friend about repertoire. What would and wouldn’t we tell? My friend surprised me by saying that she preferred to stick to the tales - of her ‘homeland’, ie of northern Europe. When it came to stories outside that area and those of those of ‘native peoples’ in particular, she didn’t feel  comfortable telling the ‘sacred tales of other people’. I couldn’t agree with her but then I couldn’t exactly disagree either. In the intervening years I’ve often wondered whether she changed her mind about this. Recently I’ve had reason to consider this issue again and whether there is a particular ‘way’ which we should tell stories.

In November I picked up from my bookshelf one of the many books of traditional tales which have been stacked there for the entire time I have lived here in Wales. (And before!) The book in question was one which I had never got on with. Faded, but still magnificent, I found myself thumbing once again through 'American Indian Myths and Legends' by Erdoes and Ortiz. I’ve owned it for as long as I can remember and just before I left Somerset, I added to my collection their 'American Indian Trickster Tales'. This slimmer volume contains such stories as 'Monster Skunk Farting Everything To Death', (I”m not making this up!). However, although I confess to having read that one once or twice, I had never read either of the actual books.
The books which stayed on the shelf!



But there I was sitting down with it in November - and dear reader - I found myself completely entranced and captivated. If there is such a thing as finding the right time for the right book, surely I had done so. There were I admit, some tales I found complicated, but there were far more which were powerful, vital and often visceral. Almost uniquely in my reading of such volumes I found myself feeling that not only the stories of the people, but also their lives and history were really being captured. More often than not the tales had been recorded from actual sources rather than simply retold. I remember years ago having a similar reaction while reading Neil Philip’s collection of English Folk Tales, a great many of which are also in dialect. But would I tell any of Erdoes and Ortiz’s tales as a storyteller? Why ever not? 

Long before I came to live in Wales I spent a week here on a writers retreat in Lampeter with my then partner and two poets. The retreat turned out to be as much about drinking as writing but that need not concern us here! Besides drinking, I spent most of that week reading my way through Joseph Jacobs Celtic Tales. I was introduced, along with their delicate line drawings, to many tales which would become favourites later.The one which completely hooked me however was called Powell, Prince of Dyfed. Notwithstanding the change of spelling, it comes from the first branch of the collection of Welsh tales called The Mabinogion.


The first appearance of Rhiannon from Joseph Jacobs Powell, Prince Of Dyfed with illustration by John D. Batten.


In October 2014 my first book The Seven was published, concluding a process which had first begun with that early reading of the first ‘branch’, as the four tales are collected. The Seven’s antecedents are firmly in the second ‘branch’, Branwen, Daughter of Lir, as well as other Welsh tales. In The Seven I take a number of liberties with this story. As a writer with an obsession which has lasted for years I never much questioned my right to do so.

My point however is that as a storyteller I would have felt almost bound to question doing that and would therefore have been a great deal more cautious. After all, when you are giving a live performance in Wales, it’s best not to invite the unwelcome attentions of any Mabinafia. I’m sure this applies equally to any country where the audience feel they have a right to hear those tales unblemished or ‘mucked about with’.

I have always felt that what you do as a storyteller depends on your intent in the first place. If you set out to improve without altering the balance, add to without compromising the message, then surely this is permissible. 

Do we always do this as writers? I must confess that I’m not sure. Whereas I would have balked at messing about with the story of Branwen in front of a people for whom it was an essential part of their culture, I’m sure I didn’t question it half as much as a writer adapting a tale to attract an often Welsh readership. My concerns as a writer were all about how I might make the idea work. My editor here in Wales, shared the same concerns.. At no stage did she say to me, ‘You can’t do that with the story of Branwen.’

Several years ago Seren Books in Wales commissioned a number of Welsh writers and poets to write new versions of the Mabinogi stories. I have read only a couple of them including White Ravens by Owen Shears. I felt that while retaining some essence of the original, I also enjoyed his treatment because it went its own way. That is surely how it should be. Another storyteller friend disagreed. She felt that he’d lost the essence of Branwen altogether.


One of the series of Mabinogion retellings by Seren Books.


Whatever the truth, it’s the intent that matters. I feel as I have always done both as a writer and a storyteller. If we set out to do justice to the tales we are telling when we ‘adapt’ them, surely the story gods will be with us. More often than not, we are also old and wise enough to judge when we are doing right or wrong by them and the story.

I also disagree that there is only one set way to tell a story. Or the idea that they can only be told with a certain rhyme, rhythm and cadence. The Kalevala chanted to suitable musical accompaniment might make for a thrilling experience, but few of us are linguistically equipped well enough to understand it. Once a story leaves the oral tradition, or its natural land, something of its power may is lost. Should that however prevent us from trying to recapture it with the abilities we have. More often than not nowadays, that recapturing is done by writers as much as storytellers.


Should there then be different responsibilities for an 'oral' storyteller, to those of us who are 'retelling' a story it as a writer? How concerned should we be with having the right intent?
Lastly is there any right or wrong way to tell a story? I'd love to hear your thoughts.


Native American Myths and Legends and Native American Trickster Tales, (which includes Monster Skunk Farting Everything To Death) are published by Pantheon Books.

Getting hold of a complete volume of Joseph Jacobs Celtic Fairy Tales doesn't appear to be easy but Pook Press do a nice selection with an arresting cover and the John Batten illustrations.

Seren Books have commissioned all of the retellings of The Mabinogion, with often very interesting results.

Storyteller Fiona Collins wonderful retelling Pryderi, for The History Press in her Ancient tales Retold series, tells the story of the one character whose life spans the entire four branches.
http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/ancient-legends-retold-the-legend-of-pryderi-24046.html

My own offshoot The Seven - a retelling of Branwen amongst other things is available from Pont Books.












  



Friday 22 January 2016

The day I forgot my phone and opened my eyes: Sue Purkiss

Every few months, I have the privilege of going into Bristol Central Library for an afternoon to help any member of the public who cares to use the service with something they need to write. It's a scheme organised by the very wonderful Royal Literary Fund. You may have heard about their Fellowship Scheme, which puts writers into universities to help students write better essays. The library scheme is for writers who have been Fellows, as I have, in the south west.(You can find more information about the RLF, and about the Fellowship Scheme, here)

My last session was on 4th January. As it was so early in the new year, I suspected that there might not be many customers, so I had taken along a notebook.

What I hadn't taken along was my phone. I realised about ten minutes away from home that I'd left it charging. I felt a little pang of anxiety. What if I broke down? What if someone suddenly needed to get hold of me because something awful had happened? What if Steven Spielberg wanted to get in touch to talk about a film option?  

I gave myself a stern talking to. What about the old days, when you didn't have a phone? Did anything dreadful happen, that a phone would have sorted out? Not that I could recall. What about dipping into Facebook, or checking my emails and messages? Facebook would probably survive without me - and to be honest, the likelihood of any really urgent messages was only just north of zero. Anyway, there was no time to go home. I would just have to learn to deal with the sense of vulnerability. I would have to cope.



The library, as you can see from the picture above, is a large and rather lovely building near the cathedral. You go up an imposing staircase - it's like being in a stately home - and along wide corridors to reach the reference library; usually, we are in a perfectly pleasant, perfectly ordinary modern little room round to the left. But today this wasn't available - and so began my treat.

I was ushered through a door behind the desk - and into an immensely tall room, furnished with huge bookcases made of dark oak and stacked with massive ledgers and leather-bound volumes - you couldn't call them books, they had far too much dignity for such a short word. At the far end of the room was an enormous carved mantelpiece with a portrait of someone in 18th or early 19th century dress at its centre. I've read somewhere since that it was carved by Grinling Gibbons. I hardly had time to take all this in when I was shown into a much smaller room behind it, with a large leather-topped table in the middle and built in book-cases up to about waist height on each wall.

My first customer arrived almost immediately, but then there was over an hour before the next one was due. Normally, I would have fished out my phone and spent some time communing with it, but as we know, I didn't have it with me. So I looked - and prowled - around. The book-cases held a strange mixture of books; law records, boxed, rather beautiful sets of Trollope and Dorothy L Sayers, and 19th century science books from Bristol Grammar School, bound in tan, gold-tooled leather. There was a desk with an ink stand that wouldn't have looked out of place in Scrooge's office, and large portraits of long-dead Bristol dignitaries.

And there was another portrait. This one was in an oval frame. It showed a bewitchingly pretty girl in mid-Victorian dress, with a heart-shaped face, large dark eyes, and dark hair parted in the centre and arranged in bunches of short ringlets. The label underneath said that she was 'Emma Marshall, prolific Bristol authoress: 1830-99'.

Well, I went back and sat down opposite her, wondering what sort of books she wrote, what her life was like - why I'd never heard of her, if she was so prolific. If I'd had my phone, I would have looked her up, but I didn't, so I couldn't. I sat there, staring at her. Then it struck me that she must have been around when the ss Great Britain was launched. I once wrote a book set on the ship*, and I've visited it a number of times. I knew the launch was a great occasion - Prince Albert was there, as well as Brunel, of course - but I couldn't remember the date. Never mind. I began to write. I imagined an observant, interested, strong-minded girl, who saw the ship and imagined all the journeys she would make, all the places she would go to... perhaps Emma would even meet Brunel. And eventually she would realise that perhaps she couldn't go to all these places in fact - but she could in fiction. And so the stories would begin...

Then my next customer arrived. We worked on the important letter he needed to write, and then we talked about this very special room we were in. We both wanted to know more, so we went out and asked the librarian. She told us that all the massive bookcases and the fireplace came from the previous library building - which surprised me, because I thought this one was quite old. No, she said; it was only built in 1906. I looked round. How books must have been valued then, for them to be given such a splendid home! Then my customer showed me one of his favourite things in the building - the lights you can see here. And we agreed that in oh so many ways, the library is a wonderful thing.


I wish I could show you the picture of Emma Marshall, but of course, I didn't have my phone with me, so I couldn't take a picture of her picture. And the only one I can find online is of her as a much older woman, and of course, she looks quite different. But I can still see the young Emma, in my mind's eye. And I feel as if I have made a connection with her, across and down the years. So I'm glad I forgot my phone, and used the time to use my eyes.

I have found out more about her since, She was a remarkable woman. But that, as they say, is another story. 

*Emily's Surprising Voyage

Nicola Morgan will be back next month.

Thursday 21 January 2016

The Burger Test by Anne Booth

The Burger test


The Vicar who used to be in our village moved parish to a town, and the school in his new parish has a very different demographic from the one in our village. Most of the students do not come from homes where there are lots of books, or where reading is necessarily valued as a fun activity.
When my and Samuel Usher’s picture book ‘Refuge’ was published, he bought a copy for each class in the school in his parish, and he asked if I would come in and speak at assembly about it, and then go and work with a year 4 class. So I went to visit them, and we talked about the experience of refugees, and I was given some very important reminders about writing.
I decided that we would write poems together using three verses - one about being happy at home, then about having to run away, and then finding refuge and hoping for home again. 
We talked about the sort of things we hear and smell and touch in our every day lives and how we take them for granted, and how we would think and feel about them if we were forced to run away from them. So, as an example, I gave the fact that every morning when I am downstairs, I hear the sound of one of my teenagers upstairs banging on the bathroom door and shouting to a sibling to ‘hurry up!’. I said that it isn’t a particularly beautiful sound, but if we were refugees and looking back on our lives I would miss that sound of banging on a door as a reminder of everyday life and routine. I would miss hearing my children’s voices and the fact that  we once had a house and a bathroom door to bang on. Then we talked about how the sound of banging could be frightening if it was being done by soldiers who were after you, and then we talked about how in the last verse, reaching a destination and  banging on the door of a home, seeing the door open and someone welcoming you, is a very different experience.

We started the first verse with ‘I used to...’, the the second ‘Then I...’  and finished ‘Now I.’

I don’t have the poems in front of me. The teacher is going to take photos of them and when my website gets underway soon I want to include them so the children can say they were all published authors online - but I remember being so moved by the honesty of the children’s images. They really worked hard, they  didn’t try to come up with something ‘literary’ and the poems were all the more powerful for that. Then they illustrated each poem with images around the side of the page. I will share them as soon as I can, but I will leave you with one which I want to remind myself of when I am writing. I want that honesty and immediacy in my own writing. This was by an eight year old boy.

I am paraphrasing, and it was longer than this, but basically, it said:

 ‘I used to smell burgers and smoke from barbecues. Then I ran away and smelt smoke from bombs. Now I am safe and I smell burgers again.’

I loved the empathy shown  and the normality of the images in this poem. He is imagining a refugee boy to be a boy like himself. I found Tess's post in December here 'Voices from Syria: The Refugee's Tale' to be incredibly moving - and I loved the way she asked for details about normal life in Syria - the fact that there were Sponge Bob or Barbie birthday cakes. I can't wait to read her novel about a Syrian girls' journey, and, thinking back to my time with my young writers, I'm going to try to apply 'The Burger Test' to all my writing now!


Sorry there are no pictures - I am having problems with my computer. Please just imagine something - I know you can do it!