Sunday 30 October 2016

How long should art last? - Lari Don

When I write a draft of a story, I am starting a process that I hope will result in a printed book, an object that will last forever. When I first start to tell a traditional tale out loud, I am developing a performance that I hope will become a long-term part of my repertoire of stories.

Sometimes a draft falls apart, sometimes a folktale or legend doesn’t grab the audience the way I hoped it would. So not all my time and effort and creativity goes into something that lasts. But I always start off hoping that it will. Except, it turns out, when I’m on holiday...

This summer, on holiday in Orkney, my family and I found a geo cutting into the coast of a small tidal island, which was filled with small stone sculptures.


We decided to join in with this community enterprise and use the flat and rounded stones lying on the shore to build our own sculptures.

Most passing sculptors had tried to find safe places to create their art. Far up the narrow beach, or high up the steep cliffs (a safe place for the stones, but surely not a safe place to build!). Somewhere that their creations would last, for at least a while.



But I walked right down to the water’s edge. I spent half an hour putting all my creativity and thought into selecting the perfect stones to build something that I expected, that I HOPED, would be knocked down by the first strong wave of the next high tide. I did this entirely deliberately. I tried to build something that was attractive and satisfying. But also unstable, and below the tide line.

Why?

Because I was on holiday, and I didn’t want to make anything permanent.

I wanted to let my brain create without worrying about audience or permanence, without trying to make it perfect for ever. I wanted to create something which was specifically designed to be temporary.

And that challenged me to think about the permanence of art, and whether caring about the longevity of the work you are doing stops you noticing the process of creating it and enjoying the moments of its present time because you are thinking too much about its future.

 And it forced me to consider whether ANY attempt to create permanent art is doomed to disappointment (the sun is going to burn out eventually, after all.) So my hope in the first line of this blog for books that last forever is probably naïve...


And it showed me that planned obsolesce is surprisingly difficult – it wasn’t easy to build something that wouldn’t fall down the moment I stepped away, but would fall down very soon.

And it amused me.

And it also freed me up.

But I wonder if I could have deliberately created something with no future, if I had been building with words...

(And I now realise that taking photos of the resulting temporary creation, means that it wasn’t temporary after all!  But it was my first time... )

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. 


Saturday 29 October 2016

Stories make everything better - Hilary Hawkes

(c) Karl Newson http://karlnewson.com/home/

I grew up knowing that stories made a difference.

As one of those children who loved the worlds my favourite authors created, I was rarely to be found without my head in a book, or just out of a book or about to drop into one. So my love affair with stories started young and has never left me. Stories you see, and I’m pretty sure you’ll agree, offer adventures, friendships, delightful time passing distractions, comfort and entertainment. 

My own children caught my love for books and I watched as they moved through phases in what they wanted to read – from stories that entertained and made them laugh out loud, to others that involved intricate adventures and make-belief, to those about young people just like them - and then sometimes not much like them - who were also discovering and finding their way in the world.

“Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are” said Mason Cooley. How wonderful are the books that enable young readers, in their imaginations, to step into the worlds and lives of fictional characters and discover all sorts of amazing things about others, the world and themselves as they do so.

But stories can do more than that. I truly believe in the power of story as a way to nurture, inspire and heal – especially for children needing encouragement and extra support at certain times in their lives.

Small children snuggling up with mum or dad to share a story have an important bonding and emotionally strengthening experience. The right story here, whether it’s about starting school when they feel afraid of doing so, or getting used to the new baby in the family when this is proving traumatic, can give the opportunity for talk, understanding and reassurance. And for older ones, reading a story where characters overcome a particular problem or find a good way to deal with something, can give children the opportunity to discover new ways of seeing or thinking.

I don't remember the title, but when I was eleven I read a special book about a girl who was the same age as me and had, just like me, an older learning disabled sister. I suddenly saw that there were lots of other families like ours - and sisters like mine!

Stories with subtle, quiet messages can have a  powerful effect and may help readers or listeners to feel less alone. This is what I call story therapy – the right book at the right time making a difference. And perhaps even making everything better.

 Hilary Hawkes









Friday 28 October 2016

Too soon? French YA books on the 2015 terrorist attacks - Clémentine Beauvais

This autumn, two YA books by very prominent authors are coming out in France, explicitly 'on the theme of' the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris:




Arnaud Cathrine's A la place du coeur (In place of the heart/ instead of the heart) takes place in a large provincial town. The story follows a group of friends, led by Caumes, who turns 17 on January 6th (my birthday too, incidentally, though I turned 26 on that day), and who begins to date a beautiful girl called Esther. The next day, the Charlie Hebdo shooting occurs. The novel maps the next few days in the lives of the group of friends, until Sunday, January 11th, when they - not all of them, for reasons I won't disclose here - head to Paris to take part in the huge march that took place on that day to protest the attacks and defend freedom of speech.

A la place du coeur shrewdly, and with great sensitivity, tackles terrorism from the viewpoint of teenagers who would normally have, to put it simply, other things on their minds than politics. Caumes is wrecked with guilt; is he allowed to love Esther, to experience his new romance, in a country that has come to a complete standstill? The political and the personal mingle, teenagers struggle to understand the situation, to have an opinion.

The diverse group of friends - Esther is Jewish, another boy is a non-practicing Muslim - suddenly find themselves having to reclaim identities that they never thought were important to them before. The students are keen, too, to talk to their teachers, who aren't too sure how to lead the conversations. Confusion and ambiguity dominate in those discussions, showing, non-didactically, that adults aren't wiser than teenagers in those disturbing days.

Vincent Villeminot's Samedi 14 novembre (Saturday, November 14th), as the name indicates, unfolds over one day, the Saturday directly following the November 13th massacre. The protagonist is a young man, first (un)identified as B., and later given a name, who has just lost his brother, shot dead next to him in one of the restaurants. B. spots someone who he is convinced is one of the terrorists, and stalks him, away from Paris, to a seaside town in the north of France, where the terrorist seeks shelter at his younger sister's. B., walking into the flat, takes the boy and his sister hostage.

The difference with A la place du coeur is obvious: B. is a direct victim of the terrorist attacks, Abdelkrim a direct perpetrator. Both novels are moving and violent in places, but Villeminot's is especially tense, some scenes very disturbing. The novel is organised like an ancient tragedy, with choral intervals in which the thoughts of many different people, fleeting narrators, adults, children, Parisians, provincials, are heard, adding breathing space and some polyphony to B.'s oppressive monologue.

Both Cathrine and Villeminot are superstar writers in France (Cathrine is also famous for his music), and those really are remarkable novels, beautifully and delicately written, impeccably structured and hugely interesting. There is no way either of those novels could be accused of sensationalism, or of voyeurism. Yet of course they were written, and came out, soon, very soon. Too soon? Last time I was in France, I asked many people what they thought about it. Here's a medley of replies I remember:

- A young male teenage blogger, 19 years old, who loved both: 'I needed those books - I was Caumes after Charlie Hebdo, we were all so confused and wondering what life was going to be like now. It's not too soon, because the teenagers who witnessed that in 2015 need books to bring them answers and solace now, not later.'

- A common response, I've found, in a number of 20-30+ female readers: 'It's too soon for me personally as a reader - I find it a real strain to read books on the subject, however well-written. It's just not what I need now.'

- Bookseller: 'It's useful to have those books for people who are specifically looking for books 'on' the attacks. But I'm not sure how to recommend them to people who just come for advice on their next read.'

And another bookseller, who, when I mentioned the two books, said, 'They won't be sold here in this shop.' Why not? I inquired. She pointed at another employee of the shop and told me, he was at the Bataclan that night. She then said the exact words, it's too soon.

It's difficult when, especially in Paris, everyone knows someone who. Last year, in Paris and elsewhere, over 200 people died horrifically, and yet those deaths could be so easily made theatrical, spectacular, dare I say - exciting, through fiction. It isn't what those two YA novels are doing. But it could be, and it's understandable, I think, that people are uncomfortable with the notion.

Both Villeminot and Cathrine told me they were seized with a similar thought after the attacks: I need to do something about this, I need to write about this - how can I do it well, sensitively, intelligently? Cathrine said, in a talk I did with him earlier this year: 'I want to write books that I know won't change the world, but that I know will not have been useless, either.' 

Thursday 27 October 2016

Dreaded Lurgies! Lynn Huggins-Cooper


This will be a short blog post, as I have been ambushed by The Dreaded Lurgies. Full-on flu. It's filling my head with fluff, so my writing has ground to a halt. I have snuggled down by the fire, lit for the first time this year, today.

I have to get myself in gear though. I have a Halloween birthday and wedding anniversary to hopefully still enjoy - and then on 1st November, I have committed to NanoWrimo. I have been taking part for ten years now. In case you haven't heard of it, NanoWrimo is a special challenge, where participants undertake to write a novel in a month. 50,000 words. It sounds like a lot, but only breaks down into 1,677 words a day. That can be done in one chunk (I do this - getting up early and writing 'til it's done) but can also be shoe-horned into a day's activities - lunch and coffee breaks; in the evening - you get to choose.



Just think - by the time you read my next blog, we could both have a new novel in first draft. Are you with me? See you on the other side!




Wednesday 26 October 2016

Wells and Welsh - Eloise Williams


 
Thrilled, delighted and over the moon that my novel ‘Seaglass’, as yet unpublished (hint, hint), has come in as Runner-up in the Wells Festival of Literature Children’s Novel Competition this year.

Please do a happy dance for me.

Wow! You really do have the moves!

 


So, I went to Wells – beautiful City of extraordinary eateries and superlative shopping opportunities and shook Camilla’s hand. Yes, the Camilla. As you do.

Hello there, security people. Yes I AM coming into the marquee in the Bishop’s Palace Gardens thank you very much. And so is my mum.

 


Anyway, a lovely day was had by all and I am so chuffed that my story is so liked.

On that note – a bugbear. Time to get something off my chest.

Writers in Wales are often told not to make their stories too Welsh. Or, to put it another way, make them less Welsh.
 
 

Just because our stories are set in Wales and have Welsh characters populating them, it doesn’t mean that they won’t have Universal appeal. *Pulls extremely cross teacher type face*

‘Seaglass’ is a ghost story set on the Pembrokeshire Coast. It uses the local landscape and history as its setting and its main protagonist is a Welsh Gypsy. I specifically chose to write about the place because it is a place that I love with all my heart and is also where I am lucky enough to live. I chose for Scarlett to be a Welsh gypsy because that’s how she was born in my head.  

There are loads of brilliant writers setting their stories in Wales because it is interesting here! Even some writers who weren’t even born in Wales! Shock! Horror! *Picks self up from fainting position.*


I’m not saying that I will never set a story somewhere else – N.B. I probably won’t because there are all those procrastinational jobs to do – but I see absolutely zero reason why I shouldn’t write about the people and land where I live and still be relevant.

Eloise… can you make you make your stories a bit less Welsh?

Erm… No.
 

Will you make your stories a bit less Welsh?

Erm… No.

Perhaps if you could…

I’ll stop you there.
Erm…No.

And so to celebrate the success of ‘Seaglass’, I’m in a cabin in North Wales, overlooking the sea from the Llyn Peninsula, close to the mountains of Snowdonia, learning to siarad Cymraeg badly, discovering my next story and editing Gaslight, which is set in Cardiff and was written with support from Literature Wales.

Of course the Welsh word for Congratulations is Llongyfarchiadau. As you well know.

Llongyfarchiadau Seaglass! Da iawn.  

And just to get rid of the teacher face a spot more happy dancing if you please… I’ll just get put on some Tom of the Jones!
 
 

Tuesday 25 October 2016

Letting Go by Tamsyn Murray

So I have a new book out next week.
An important, pour-your-heart-and-soul-into-it book.
One it has taken four years to wrestle and nurture into something I am hugely proud of.
My first YA for over five years.
A story I have hated and cried tears of frustration over, because I thought I would never get it right.
THAT kind of book.

Naturally, my life during the last few weeks has morphed into some kind of authorly Bermuda Triangle as I bounce between terror, excitement and panic, with everything else sinking in the middle. You need to let go, I've told myself. You've done all you can, whatever happens next is out of your hands.

Yeah.

Anyway, during my frequent late-night worry sessions, I got to thinking about how we (creators) might protect ourselves from feeling this way. The obvious answer is that once our work reaches a certain level of perfection (and I use that term loosely because who has ever created something artistic that they considered perfect? Not me...) or completion, then we need to love it in spite of its faults and learn to let go. If you can manage to detach yourself from your work enough, then maybe you will see its future and performance objectively. The trouble is, of course, that writing (and other art) is often so personal, which makes it harder to let go. And there are often practical reasons for not being able to let go - you need the work to do well so that publishers will find you an attractive business proposition in future, perhaps so that you can continue to feed your children. I cannot let go of Instructions for a Second-hand Heart because I feel it is my very best writing; it's intrinsically linked into my own confidence. So if it does not sell, that will impact on my perception of myself, as well as disappointing a lot of other people. Then I realised that I don't want to not care about this book: it IS important and I can't let it go. All I can do is hope that I have done enough.

Unless any of you have some tried-and-tested routes for escaping (or entirely avoiding) the Bermuda Triangle of Fear? Do you manage to let your work go? Or are you worse than me?


Instructions for a Second-hand Heart is out on 1st November 2016. I really love the cover.


Monday 24 October 2016

Books, beer, belly laughs and bunk beds. Doing a book festival Cornish style - Liz Kessler

I’ve been to lots of book festivals in my years as an author. Generally speaking, they are absolutely wonderful affairs. But then, as an author, how could a gathering of writers and readers, brought together in a lovely place and surrounded by a passion for books not be a wonderful affair?

However, even in that context, the North Cornwall Book Festival was one of the loveliest events I have attended in years.


This festival began five years ago and is headed up by the rather wonderful Patrick Gale. I’ve never met Patrick before, but had heard of him, both – of course – as an author, and also by virtue of the fact that he is a fellow Cornwall-dweller.


Our first real-life meeting took place on Thursday evening. I was due to meet him and other authors and festival volunteers in a pub. Having managed to accidentally kill my car on the way there, our first meeting took place late in the evening, and halfway through the meal.

I had filled my car with petrol on the way to the festival. Sadly, two minutes after filling it, as I ground to a halt in the middle of a busy road, I remembered it’s a diesel car. After being rescued by guardian angel/AA man Martin, I finally arrived in the pub, two hours late, bedraggled and slightly stressed. Within seconds, I was given a chair, a beer and a menu, and made to feel like one of the family. The whole weekend continued in this way.

Accommodation was…interesting. I wasn’t sure if I felt like I was in a little cabin on the Paddington – Penzance night train, a prison cell or a boarding school dormitory, but it made for the cosiest experience of a book festival I’ve ever had. (Even with the intermittent snoring from a nearby bunk, no names mentioned.) And I have to say, there is no better way to bond with your fellow authors than having breakfast together in your PJs.

My events were on the ‘schools day’. This is where Cornwall schools are invited to bring groups of students in to listen to talks, attend workshops and meet some of their favourite authors. I met some fantastic young people who made me laugh, asked lots of great questions and bought loads of books!

The day ended with a brilliant marquee-filling talk from the wonderful Francesca Simon, and was rounded off with one of the most atmospheric musical performances I’ve ever been to. If you have ever walked through a sky so dark and clear that you can see the milky way spread out across thousands of stars, and crept across a spookily-lit graveyard to watch a Senegalese band performing inside a beautiful church – you’ll know what I mean!


If you like the idea of this, do check out Amadou Diagne and his Group Yakar.

Another high point of my weekend was meeting a novelist and poet who I have admired for many years but have never had the chance to sit down and have a good chinwag with. Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay is as wonderful in real life as she is in the lines of her poetry. Although, word of advice, if she challenges you to a bet - beware. Her bargaining power is irresistible, and you'll probably lose.


All in all, this festival was utterly magical. From the technicians who supported my event perfectly, to the volunteers who took me on an evening excursion to the co-op as we’d run out of beer and an early morning run to the station when I had to leave; from the chef who made amazing meals for us, to the photographer who not only took wonderful photos but promised to spend a day teaching me some camera techniques when I’m next in London (and who took all the pics on this blog) from the beautiful surroundings to the belly laughs that accompanied every bit of it – this festival is a triumph.

Thank you so much Lisa, Patrick and all the team for letting me be part of it. I hope you’ll have me back next year. 

I’ll stock up on ear plugs, beer and diesel, just in case.


Find out more about the North Cornwall Book Festival




Sunday 23 October 2016

Chaos, According to Plan by Steve Gladwin


For as long as I can remember I have had to think about an audience. I don ‘t mean I was followed around by one as Alan Titchmarsh clearly was by that brass band for most of the nineties, but because dear reader ,of my life in theatre and drama teaching. Whether it was my first appearance as Jemmy Twitcher in the Beggar’s Opera at the age of whatever, or my three years at Bretton Hall, or writing and directing productions for countless NNEB, A level Theatre Studies and BTEC Performing Arts groups, running my own theatre and storytelling companies and being a jobbing storyteller, the worry about that pesky audience has never been far away. Now as a writer on top of everything else, the audience is constantly on my mind and none more so than at the moment.

Years ago, when I had to start teaching A Level Theatre Studies from scratch, my experienced colleague started with a particular bit of advice, which was to teach the two great theatre practitioners Brecht and Stanislavski as if they were two great polar opposites and allow the rest to slot in between. It turned out to be wise advice.

Now never can there have been two more opposite approaches to theatre. On the one hand you have the serious and seriously rich Konstantin and the rather more casual and outrageous Bertolt, who hid his expensive silk shirts under a hair shirt exterior so that people thought he was at one with the peasant class. Where Stanislavski was all about analysis and intensity and the authentic and believable recreation of a real moment, Brecht didn’t give a toss about the real moment and did his best whenever he could to destroy any illusion of it, with placards, constant interruptions and good old fashioned storytelling.

So yes as a storyteller, give me Brecht’s epic theatre over Stanislavski’s realism any day. Of course for years Stanislavski - more than most - was mistranslated and changed his ideas and approaches far more than people gave him credit for.


Was it something Brecht said?


I still have great respect for Stanislavski, and much of what he suggested, but my admiration for Brecht  - outrageous rogue and con artist as he might have been – remains boundless, for it was Brecht more than anyone who brought storytelling into the 20th century theatre. It was Brecht who allowed people to say, ‘this is a story and I am telling it.’ I differ from Brecht in the actual thinking however because what he meant by that was to say, ‘don’t believe this – it’s all a story, all illusion and I can destroy it any time that I want. Look. I’ve stopped it.’

I on the other hand see storytelling far more in an ‘Let me take you far, far, away, and when you return, things will maybe never seem quite the same again,’ sense.

And Brecht in his own curious way, had far more respect for his audience than Stanislavski ever did, (who at his most extreme had actors imagine the fourth wall to block them out) – no matter how grudging that might have been – and maybe that’s one of the reasons his ideas have stayed with me.

One of the first influential books on Brecht was John Fuegi’s ‘Chaos According To Plan.’ A great title, because Brecht created what seemed like chaos, but he actually planned deliberately to ‘disrupt the spectacle’, to make people sit up, and challenge them.


Brecht plans more chaos!


And isn’t it fun to be able to do that and play our part as the enfant terrible of our particular profession, (or perhaps too often just the little boy peeing in the fountain!)

But how often can we do that as writers? Too often we have to follow an accepted formula, which has either worked for us before, or is the sort of thing that agents and publishers are ‘clearly looking for’. In extreme cases, if we dare to change our style, we end up being ‘hobbled’, not so much literally - in the sort of terrifying ‘dirty bird’ Misery scenario we would clearly care to avoid, but by losing precious stars on Amazon and being given scathing reviews in all manner of media.

In the last few weeks I’ve been working on something where the response of the audience is almost the only thing that matters. We recently completed a book called The Raven’s Call. This seeks to find a new way of dealing with loss and challenging change through the old ‘eightfold’ cycle of the year and the elements.


Did someone mention eyeballs!


At the same time, I am developing a series of workshops on the same theme for users and staff in mental health. And of late - as explained in my September blog - my life has become all about change and how I and those closest to me are able to respond to it.

The Raven’s Call was a wonderful collaboration between a few like-minded people, and much to my surprise I’ve found myself involved in a similar project over the last month, taking the ideas of one book and one age group and making them accessible for a completely different audience.But looking at the idea for Swallow Tales demanded that I ask very specific questions of my potential audience.

In 2009 I did an arts council funded pilot scheme in several primary schools in North Powys, to introduce the idea of change and loss to years 5 and 6, and in the case of that project, to literally move from having a laugh for half of the day to moving on to something more serious for the rest of it.

I used three tales in the afternoon session, all of them in some way about loss. The third tale was Kevin Crossley Holland’s wonderful adaptation of the very strange Norfolk tale of the Green Children. There comes a point halfway through the tale - where the two green children who have come out of the ground from a distant green land - react very differently to being away from their home. Whereas the older girl has eventually learnt to cope, her younger brother dwindles. Kevin’s adaptation has a very spare and raw way of expressing it, wonderful for the storyteller.

‘One day’, he says, ‘the green boy threw up his hands and died.’

And in every school there was the same reaction – a gasp of mixed shock and sadness from all who heard it, children and staff alike. For me it was one of the most magical and special moments in my life as a storyteller and performer. It felt as if somehow in that moment, both Kevin and I, had grasped a tiny essence of grief and held it there with the audience for just a while. And in school after school it happened, even the one where the head seemed not at all interested and just wanted me to be over, so they could go back to a normal school programme.

The project, ‘Are You Having A Laugh?’ very deliberately left it at just the stories. We talked briefly about the day we’d spent and the contrast between the two halves of it. We mentioned that these last three stories had been sad and very different from the ones in the morning. The children were encouraged to write and draw pictures about one of the stories. Everything else was left to the teachers and head for follow-up in assembly and elsewhere.


Was this the spot where the Green Children emerged?


Now, seven years later, I am creating a book which confronts the change and in many cases the sadness head on. Of my eight stories the first and last are actually about a death, gravitating from one about the loss of a pet at Halloween, to the loss of a grandfather the following autumn. And of course the losses of childhood, (which we would always pray were few) come in many forms. and not always in those that parents or teachers would readily understand. The friend - who we see every day - moving far away, can be just as much of a wrench, and in some cases might feel more of a bereavement than the loss of a relative we see once a week, or when we fall out with our best friend, or we find out are parents are going to separate.

In Swallow Tales, as in The Raven’s Call, we use the old farming calendar as our route-map through the year, as well as animals as our guides. So the sadness of a last family holiday in August before an inevitable separation is accompanied by the lonely Selkie, the seal wife who in the end had no choice but to leave her husband and children behind to return to the sea,  and the new and unwanted, (by the older sister) baby comes at the same time as Easter and the hare which of course is the real bunny.


The Wheel of the Year by Rose Foran from The Raven's Call


There are clues and wisdom in all of the season and strengths too, but there also has to be sensitivity. The book no longer leaves it to the teachers to introduce the topics gently, this is the real thing, where reactions - particularly from children going through one or more of these changes - have to be both anticipated and gentled into, while at the same time not being afraid to tackle the topic head on.  

I began this blog by talking about the very different theatrical approaches of Stanislavski and Brecht, and particularly of how they related to storytelling. Their ways of introducing the topic of death in particular were equally powerful in different ways, despite how Brecht might have sought to distance us from an emotional engagement with the subject, and Stanislavski to draw us as close to an emotional engagement as possible or a related memory to it. It is for example the writer's very lack of engagement with the tragedy of all three of Mother Courage's three children, that leads us to feel that tragedy even more. In  other words the same spare and matter of fact way that the death of the Green Boy is also dealt with.

As a writer, storyteller and director, if there's one thing I've been sure of, it's that less so often does mean more. Sometimes you need only to set down the cold facts and leave them to speak for themselves. In an age where the media continually tries to manipulate our responses, surely it is even more important to have good old fashioned storytelling where it is the facts and the honesty of a first reaction which count.

If you'e interested in The Raven's Call - a new way of exploring loss and change in peope's lives, you'll find more details below. Thanks




http://www.stevegladwin.co.uk/