What you learn in tents - Lari Don

It’s nearly the end of the Edinburgh Book Festival – a wonderful opportunity for booklovers to gather and get rained on in Charlotte Square in Edinburgh.

I live in Edinburgh, so as well as being fortunate enough to do author events at the festival (this year, I did an event on my new book Serpents & Werewolves, and one on the gorgeously illustrated Tale of Tam Linn) I also spend a lot of time enjoying other authors’ events.

I learnt a lot about writing from the book festival when I was starting out, both from writers’ workshops and from asking questions at the end of authors’ events.

Do I still learn about writing from the events? Yes of course, though not in the waterfall way I learnt years ago, when I had no sense of who I was as a writer. I still listen and learn, but I no longer scribble frantically the whole way through events.

But writing isn’t the only part of being a writer. Author events, readings, workshops and Q&As are just as much part of my job nowadays as imagining and inventing and editing. So, having learnt how to be a writer by haunting the EIBF 15 years ago, is it now possible for me to learn how to do author events by watching what other authors do?

I mix going to see authors I already love to read and authors I’ve never heard of. I learn a little bit from all of them, from their writing process and their inspiration. But I also learn from watching them do their events. From their readings, dressing up, musical accompaniment, audience participation, powerpoint presentations, debates and discussion with other authors, and all the other things authors do at festivals. And the main thing I learn is - the most successful events are the most honest ones, the ones which genuinely reflect the author’s work. There is no point in trying to do the same event as another author, because the most important thing to do in an event is be honest and open about your writing process and your book.

I may love listening to Patrick Ness or Marina Warner, but I can’t copy the way they present their events any more than I can (or should!) copy their books. Whether talking to 300 kids in a tent in Edinburgh, or 15 kids in a library in Ayrshire, all I can ever do is share with my audience what I do and why I love it. (This is why I very rarely do an event without telling one of myths or legends or folktales that inspire my fiction.)

So, I learnt to write my own way from workshops all those years ago in Charlotte Square, and now I’m learning to talk about writing in my own way too.

But the tents will come down next week. And we’ll all need to stop talking about writing, get our heads down and start writing again!

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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Marvels, mystery and the chilling world of the Nursery Rhyme – Dianne Hofmeyr

‘Marvels mix with the day-to-day and banality meets mystery in the nursery rhyme’ says Marina Warner, short story writer, historian and mythographer, known for her books on feminism and myth.

A few years ago I wrote a book on modern printmaking for GCSE level. I’m not about to go into a detailed description of the etching process, but one of the artists I discussed was Paula Rego. Anyone who has been to the Sainsbury Wing Restaurant at the National Gallery will know her huge mural, Crivelli’s Garden. Of her work, she says ‘I paint to give fear a face.’ And in her series on Nursery Rhyme she has introduced a dreamlike quality that manipulates scale and stirs up disturbing feelings and a certain potency in perfectly innocent scenes.

 

Take her etching of Hey Diddle Diddle with its carnival like gaiety… the little girl skipping, the dog laughing, the cow floating dreamily against a starry sky. But look again. The sharp points of the moon direct us back to the girl and we see she is skipping backwards towards the edge of a cliff that drops into space. And now the tall, muscular, grimacing cat takes on a more menacing role as he purposefully steps forward and the dog’s laughter seems more hysterical and the cow seems to have a knowing ‘I told you so’ smile while the dish is faceless as she scuttles off to hide.

And what about Baa Baa Black Sheep? Was there ever anything more menacing than this girl in the arms of the powerful ram? And is she waving to the curious boy down the lane or calling for help?

And in Three Blind Mice, the unseen moonlight catches the blade of the carving knife and focuses on the woman’s arm, face and blouse and also on the blank eyes of the mice. It’s as if Rego has drawn invisible lines between them. Yes… we know who blinded the mice.

In another example, from a series called The Pendle Witches (not part of the Nursery Rhyme series) Rego has illustrated a poem by Blake Morrison of the witches put on trial during the rule of King James I. The woman is sitting awkwardly in a tub in an etching entitled The Flood. The swirling water, the sharp stabs of rain, the flotsam and jetsam give a sense of doom yet the woman makes no attempt to save herself and seems to have withdrawn from the chaos around her. And what if she drowns? When we look closer at the water there’s a sense of nightmarish disaster looming from beneath it.

Rock a bye baby… what could be more innocent? But not in the hands of Paula Rego. The fragile sleeping baby is in a boxlike cradle (symbol for a coffin?) and against the background of stars (or is that snow?) one can see they are really high up in a prickly fir tree. There's almost the sense that the branches exactly under the cradle are too weak. The baby is too close to the edge. With a slightest shift the cradle will go over into the abyss. Although the woman in under-dressed we sense the icy coldness of the night. She’s looking over her shoulder as she grips the cradle. Is she looking to see if someone has seen her? Or is her expression one of utter desperation? Whatever it is, we know what she’s contemplating.

Read those nursery rhymes with care! 

www.diannehofmeyr.com