Dogs chase their tales, too – by Rowena House

Turns out, on reading back over the past year of ABBA blogs, I’ve said what I was going to say this month many times before.

The happy-clappy gist of which is: these posts are great self-help tools. By making me write something worth other people's time to read, they have built into a craft library of experiments and techniques that have got me (very slowly) about half-way through the seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress.

What is scary, though, is how much I forget what’s come before. How I repeat myself. Somewhere on ABBA, I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned that private creative journalling never appealed, a preference I put down to being an ex-journalist and liking deadlines. So what? It’s a brag, isn’t it? A way of reminding myself I used to be a professional writer. Look! I got paid once and everything.

These blogs are also lengthy self-justifications for procrastination. E.g., this is from a year ago:

“For plot purposes, in Act 2, Tom must go off on his own to investigate the evidence which led to the executions of eleven convicted witches. In the latest iteration of his motivation for this action, he doesn’t understand his own behaviour. It is his subconscious which manipulates his desire to defend his ‘tribe’ from accusations of corruption and rationalises his atypical action – going off alone.”

It’s all gone. Tom doesn’t go off alone. He doesn’t investigate anything. He makes stuff up. He’s a writer, not a do-er. So what was that all about, then?

If anything, she says, as the June rain settles into a steady drizzle outside the kitchen window, these posts read like a chronicle of someone rushing around, with tail-wagging enthusiasm, vanishing down yet another hole.

For a while this morning, re-reading these posts did feel like hands stretching out over time, passing along the message, Stop with the self-sabotage, woman! Yeah, sure, they said, writing fiction might be a self-indulgent time suck with opportunity costs strewn along the way and a bitter fight for publication at the end, with all its nonsense about money and marketing, but a work-in-progress is not just about the ‘book’. It’s about the journey.

Writing fiction is an opportunity to set aside time to study people – Others and Self – with the explicit intention of unearthing something original to say about them, based, however tangentially, on one’s own experiences. Writing fiction is about the chance to craft something dramatic, entertaining, and honest.

And maybe there is some truth in that. I dunno.

I think what’s going on here is the (navel-gazing) repercussions of news yesterday that a school which had been loyal to The Goose Road, my WW1 debut, as their summer read emailed to explain why they are dropping it. 

Apparently, they have a policy of building up their pupils’ personal and physical libraries; now they cannot find a supplier to fill a bulk order, that is the end of that. Eighty odd copies which would otherwise have been sold every year now won’t ever be sold again. Eighty young people who would have cried for Amandine and be glad for Angelique and Napoleon won’t ever know they ‘exist’.

Six years after publication, and ten years after I began researching that story, I hadn’t expected to care so much. But I did. I felt gutted. Silly, huh? It’s only a book. I was lucky it got published.

Before that email, I’d booked onto another online Arvon masterclass for today, the first in over a year. And you know what? It was fun, thanks to Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s passion for the subject of writing about fictional families, and the ‘deliciously chewy’ nature of relationships where love and antagonism reside side by side.

Did I waste two hours of my life sitting in front of the computer, imagining Beth’s family? Am I wasting time writing this now? I don’t think so. But then, I can’t help remembering what ‘they’ say about the ‘hero’ story we tell ourselves: how, really, we are in control of the events of our lives; how it all makes sense when we think about it...

A decent hero story, apparently, can stop us from going mad about the purposelessness of it all.

So, happy, heroic writing, everyone. Chin up. It’ll be worth it in the end. 

THE GOOSE ROAD, STILL AVAILABLE ON KINDLE (so there).

Private and Public by Sheena Wilkinson

What’s your typical day as a writer? is a question I’m often asked. And I always reply that there’s no such thing. Some days are spent dashing from school to school, or sighing at delays and eating rubbish in airports; others are spent peacefully at my desk with occasional forays into the outside world for exercise and sanity. When I’m travelling and doing events I crave solitude and peace; when I haven’t spoken to a human for two days I itch for company. 

The last two weeks illustrate the contrasts inherent in this life. I’ve just spent two weeks at The Hurst, Arvon’s Shropshire centre. It’s the longest I have been away from home for well over a decade, but I haven’t spent two weeks doing the same thing. It’s been a fortnight of two halves. 

The first week I spend at the Clockhouse, Arvon’s designated writing retreat in the grounds of the Hurst. I have my own three-roomed apartment, and share a kitchen and living room with three other writers, all strangers. It’s the ultimate retreat – apart from a little chat in the kitchen, and one walk in the company of a lovely graphic novelist/picture-book writer, I spend every moment alone apart from my characters. Alone with my novel inside my head. Alone on long walks through the miles of forest trails which radiate from the Hurst. The evenings are solitary, and sometimes a little long. Having worked all day, I’m too tired for more editing, yet too wired to sit down with a book. Still, it’s a marvellous week and it feeds the introvert writer in me. I leave with my work-in-progress nearly ready to send to my publisher, and a new novel roughly outlined. It's April but we have two days of heavy snow and then rain. 

Not a black and white photo: April snow in Shropshire last week 

On Monday I pack my bags and move up the lane to the big house. The rain gives way to spring sunshine. I leave my manuscript in my bag and take out my teaching notes and my resources. I doff my introvert-writer hat and don my Arvon tutor hat. I meet my co-tutor Anthony McGowan and we put the finishing touches to the course we’ve been planning over email and phone. By dinner-time they’ve all arrived – twelve aspiring YA writers, all at different stages of their projects. All lively and lovely and eager to write and talk. The dining room chimes with accents from all over England, Ireland and the United States. Days are long and busy, exhilarating and exhausting.  I teach; I join in with Anthony’s workshops; I meet students for one-to-one tutorials; I chat about writing over dinner; in the evenings there are readings from me and Anthony, from a guest writer and of course from the students. I still find time to walk in the woods every afternoon – luckily it’s light now until after dinnertime – but most of the time is spent being very much ‘on’. 

Up to the big house 

I love Arvon, and have often written about it for this blog. Over the last two weeks it’s reminded me of how strange the writing life is – with its sharp contrasts between the private and the public, the retreating and the meeting. 

Next week, back to real life. 

CLIPPA 2017, POETRY AND ME… by CHITRA SOUNDAR

On Friday, 14^th July 2017 I attended the Clippa as a guest. For those who haven’t heard about it, CLIPPA is the poetry award given by CLPE for published collections of poetry for children.

This year’s judge was Rachel Rooney, who herself won the CLIPPA in 2012 and was my Arvon tutor in 2015 when I dragged myself up to Yorkshire to immerse myself in the world of children’s poetry.

As a kid, I loved rhymes and still do. The songs and rhymes in Tamil which is my mother tongue were often rhyming ones. And the bulk of our popular music is from the movies – as you know most Indian cinema produces sing-alongs and musicals. Much of our poets make their living as lyricists for movies. As much as they publish poetry collections and recite poetry – the rice and lentils come from the movie industry.

Here is Vairamuthu - who writes amazing poetry in Tamil as well as being one of the most popular contemporary lyricists in the movie industry. I apologise ahead that this is in Tamil and of course would not make any sense if you don't speak the language. But I just wanted to demonstrate a little bit. This is his poem about his mother. 

So most of the songs I know growing up, and most of our poetic references to life, philosophy, friendships and heartbreaks are lyrics of movie songs not unlike the pop music lines folks in Britain quote to me (which I should admit goes over my head).

So it was no surprise that my first attempt at writing was poems that rhymed. I was eight I think, when the regional radio came for some recording in our children’s club – Mum had arranged all of us to perform something and as a 8-year old with an entourage of two – my sister and the sister of my neighbour – two 4 year olds were put on the spot. I made up a 4-line song (rhyming  of course) and they recited it with me and we were on radio! I still know the song and sing it for my nephews much to the amusement of my family.

Then when I was 13, I read a poem in a textbook and loved it. I ended up visiting the poet –literally landing on his doorstep and being inspired to write my own poems. You can read that story here. 

So I wrote all sorts of poems. Perhaps influenced by popular culture, I even wrote love poems even before I knew what love was. I still write love poems every time someone breaks my heart or makes it flutter. But I don’t usually share it with the world.

I still write poetry all the time but I rarely call myself a poet. I’m not sure whether that’s because I write more rhymes than not. I read a lot of poetry for sure – more now than before. I enjoy listening to spoken word performances but I never claim I’m a poet. For a while I wrote 1000s of haikus – I loved putting nature and life lessons together.

I had abandoned writing in my mother-tongue long before – I was more proficient in English than I was in my own language. The problem with rhymes for me was that they didn’t work when I wrote them especially in English.

It took me years to figure out that my stress, my accent and my pronunciation was not how native English speakers speak. And therefore what I thought rhymed didn’t rhyme or fit the beat for others.  Anyway many people kindly and often in an unkindly way pointed out that my rhymes don’t work. I wrote free verse, sent them out and even got a couple published here and there. But most came back.

And for a while I wrote poetry only in my notebook and focussed on picture books.  Which is a different kind of poetry anyway.

When I took the Arvon course taught by Rachel and Roger McGough in 2015, Rachel was not only patient with me, she even encouraged me to write both free verse and rhyme – except for rhyme of course I needed more work, more persistence, and perhaps another person to help. And she still remembers the poem about EATING SOAP that I wrote. 

Yes persistence does help. I can now proudly say that I’ve placed ONE poem in an anthology that’s coming out in 2018 and I have a rhyming picture book come out in 2018 too. So there’s no holding back anymore – I’m going to be writing poetry for a long time to come. But I doubt I would ever call myself a poet. At least not yet.

I digress. The reason I was at the Clippa was because Rachel had kindly invited her Arvon students to the ceremony. And what a lovely treat it was. The readings from the poets, the children’s performances and of course Chris Riddell live drawing the event – it was all brilliant. And I got to meet so many friends and made new friends too.

So to celebrate the Clippa and to encourage most of us to read poetry, here is a selection. 

Some of my favourite poems are simple, yet full of wisdom.

Here is one that’s so evocative. And every time I read it, it invokes perhaps a new meaning.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45032/fog-56d2245d7b36c

I also love the Thought Fox by Ted Hughes.

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/thought-fox

One of my favourite novel in verse is LOVE THAT DOG by Sharon Creech.

 From India, I’ve just started discovering many poets who write for adults. But for children, I love Ruskin Bond for sure. Read some of my recommendations here. 

Many of my friends are poets and a group of them showcase their work here. Do check them out. 

The list of contemporary poets I love is too long to list here. I have perhaps read all modern poets who write for children especially. Both from the UK and America. So instead of listing them I thought I’d share less than 10% of my list of poetry books I own.

Back to Clippa though! The winner of this year’s award is Moon Juice by Kate Wakeling, illustrated by Elīna Brasliņa and published by Emma Press.

If you have not read it yet, check it out!

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Find out more about Chitra Soundar at www.chitrasoundar.com or Follow her on Twitter @csoundar

May the circle be unbroken by Sheena Wilkinson

Thirteenth of the month, and I’m at Arvon for the thirteenth time. Spooky! 

I’ve written about Arvon for this blog before, and it’s possible I will again, because it’s such a big part of my writing life. This time, for the fourth time, I’m here (Totleigh Barton) with the group of young writers I run in Belfast. There are fifteen of them, from nine different schools or colleges, ranging in age from 15 -21. They are all committed writers who attend my monthly workshops and this week is the highlight of our writing year together. We’re so grateful that Arvon, through the generosity of the Harvey McGrath Trust, continue to support the group. The young writers are raring to go, just as I was exactly ten years ago when I first went to Arvon as a student.

Totleigh Barton

In 2007 I was unpublished, full of nerves and hope and bad habits (writing habits, not the other kind, for which I haven’t the time or energy.) If I’d known then that ten years later I’d be writing fulltime, bringing young people to Arvon and sometimes tutoring there myself, I’d have been thrilled. I didn’t know; I only hoped, and that first week at Arvon, with Lee Weatherly and Malorie Blackman as tutors, was the first time I dared to hope a bit harder.

I’ve just come back from the Scattered Authors summer retreat at Charney Manor, which, for the third year, I co-organised with that same Lee Weatherly. And Lee herself has twice tutored my young writers here at Totleigh. It all feels very – circular and right. One of the tutors, Louise Wallwein, and mid-week guest Catherine Johnson, are writers I have got to know through Arvon too.

And of course books are part of the circle, not just people. I’m typing this post at the same desk where, just over three years ago, I typed the first chapter of Street Song. I hadn’t intended to: I thought I wasn’t ready to start, but Arvon had other ideas.

started at Arvon!

This time a year ago, here as a student, I was sent my cover for Street Song. You have to walk for some time to get a wee bit of 3G signal, so the picture downloaded very…very…slowly. My heart was in my mouth as I saw the cover unfold – luckily I loved it. Today I have a copy of the book to give to the library here, in recognition of the part Arvon played in the book’s creation.

And today, very, very slowly, the cover for my next novel, Star By Star, downloaded unto my phone. How neat and fitting, especially as it was here last year, daydreaming lazily after finishing the short radio play I was here to write, that the story for that very novel seemed to download itself – much faster than the picture – into my mind. 

A great place to daydream a story into existence

I don’t have anything very pithy to end with. I just feel very much, here in this beautiful place and at this particular time, that the last ten years have given me so much, and Arvon has been a huge part of it. Another writer at Charney last week spoke of the importance of being grateful, and I’m very, very grateful for Arvon.

I have a new notebook with me, labelled New Novel Plans. I can't think of a better place to begin...