Writing what we need to write by Lynne Benton

 First, here are the answers to the Easter quiz in my April blog:

1What animal is most associated with Easter? Rabbit 2What did this animal carry in "Alice in Wonderland"? Pocket watch 3Who wrote "The Tale of Peter Rabbit"?  Beatrix Potter 4Can you name all three of his siblings? Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail 5What was the title of the book about rabbits by Richard Adams? Watership Down  6In which Disney film did the rabbit Thumper appear? Bambi 7What was the name of Warner Brothers cartoon rabbit? Bugs Bunny 8Who originally recorded the song "Run Rabbit Run"? Flanagan and Allen 9What meat is traditionally eaten at Easter? Lamb 10What do most children enjoy eating at Easter? Easter Eggs 11What is Simnel cake topped with? Marzipan 12What dried fruit is in Hot Cross Buns? Raisins  13Complete this saying:  "Don't put all your eggs in one ..."? Basket 14How is the date of Easter decided? It’s the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. 15What name is given to the Sunday before Easter Sunday? Palm Sunday  16In which ocean is Easter Island? Pacific 17Which famous jewellery firm is renowned for its jewel-encrusted eggs? Fabergé 18Which headware item is traditionally associated with Easter Parades? Bonnet 19Complete this line from an Easter hymn: T i a green h f a  There is a green hill far away 20Complete this line from a famous poem:  a h of g d  A host of golden daffodils.

So much for the light-hearted stuff.  I hope some of you found it interesting, or at least distracting from everything that is going on in the world at the moment.

And now for today’s blog, which is not going to be easy. Previous blogs this month, especially Dawn Finch’s on the 7^th and Anne Rooney’s on the 9^th, have expressed their thoughts so well about the current prospects for writers that it’s hard to know how to follow them.

As things are at the moment I can’t help feeling it’s almost self-indulgent to spend my time writing upbeat, optimistic fiction for children. Should I instead be writing something worthy, serious and thought-provoking for adults – something that could come to the attention of certain world leaders, and make them take notice and act to do the right thing for the world/mankind?  If I did, would it do any good?  I suppose if writing such things were my strength, and if I were really famous, it’s just about possible – though I doubt it.

And in any case, writers can only write what they want/need to write, and if it happens to be cheerful fiction for young children, well, that could be important too.  When I see footage on the news of all those children in Ukraine trying to escape from the bombs raining down on them and their homes, seeing things no child should ever have to see, shattering their security, I wonder how they can ever recover.  Maybe in time they will need something happy to read, to remind them of how life should be.  After all, maybe when they grow up they will be the ones responsible for helping to put the world right again.

Maybe all writers can help after all.

Website: lynnebenton.com

Latest book: Billy and the Queen (available from Amazon.co.uk)

Just a quick note... from Sue Purkiss

 At the moment, the 5th doesn't have a regular inhabitant - so I thought I would slip in very briefly, mostly to commend to you yesterday's thought-provoking post from Ciaran Murtagh. In it, he considers how writing stories for children - stories which embody values such as hope, kindness, empathy: stories in which good people ultimately win - can be balanced against the horrific events we see being rolled out in Ukraine. How can we insist that Right will always prevail over Might, when we are getting constant evidence via our phones and television screens that the reverse is, at the moment, true?

In the comments on Ciaran's piece, Anne Booth provides a link to an article by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer of the marvellous and uplifting opening sequence to the 2012 Olympics, in which he discusses the role of the arts in the context of that inclusive, joyous and exuberant portrayal of Britain, and of the very different Britain which came to the fore in the Brexit referendum. He cites a Roma woman, brought up in a series of orphanages in Switzerland, who overcame very difficult circumstances to lead a happy and successful life. 

She had grown up in Switzerland where - shockingly - Roma children were taken away from their parents on the thinnest of pretexts, then brought up in institutions where, supposedly, they would have a better chance of becoming valuable Swiss citizens. Mariella had been in thirteen different institutions, narrowly missed a lobotomy and had her own child confiscated. Yet when I met her she was an articulate, charming, outward-looking politically active, distinguished writer. I asked her about all that rebellion, the repeated expulsions … I asked her … how did you know there was something to rebel for? How did you know - growing up in this regimented institution where you were defined entirely by race - how did you know you were worth more? And she said said something I have never forgotten … it’s the thing that made me want to be a children’s writer … she said, I read Heidi.

There's so much in this article that struck a chord with me. If, as must surely be inevitable, you are feeling downcast at the moment, I would strongly recommend it. If I had to pick out one gem, it would be this: A book is not a learning resource. It's the knife that picks the lock of your isolation. It's a box of delights. Justification enough to keep on writing, even if, at the moment, in the shadow of what is happening, it seems like fiddling while Rome burns. It's not. It's really not.

Here's a link to the article, and thanks to Ciaran and Anne.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Also_admitted_2014-04-10_23-25.jpg

Happy Endings - by Ciaran Murtagh

This week I've been struggling to write stories. When you write for children, characters act in good faith, bad actors can be turned around with a kind word and everyone gets a happy ending. It's how stories work. But when they're juxtaposed with real world events as monumentally tragic as the war in Ukraine, it becomes harder to affirm those reassuring messages. 

In my stories good triumphs over evil, the school bully can be won round, and everyone ends up happy. They're the values we try to reinforce in children through the stories we make for them. But when the real world comes crashing in it becomes harder to knuckle down and repeat those reassuring moral tales. In my stories  adversity is only ever temporary; and being kind, friendly and warm hearted will usually get you everywhere -  but it's not true is it? Not really... 

I want children to believe that it's true. I want to live in a world where it's true. I want children to see those values modelled and then try and exemplify those values in their own behaviour. But when the grown ups repeatedly prove that it's actually the amount of money you have and the size of the gun in your pocket that gets you where you want - what's the point? Am I actually doing a disservice to children in reinforcing the kind of positive behaviour that so often triumphs in stories but so rarely does in real life? Let's face it, if Harry Potter were a real story Voldemort would win every time. 

As I watch the news coverage of the war in Ukraine I see familiar story patterns being used again and again to couch a very real narrative in almost fictional terms. We have goodies and baddies, hourly plot twists on 24/7 news coverage, I 've learned the names of people and places I've never heard of before, I've learned more about the movements of a 40 mile convoy of Russian tanks than I ever wanted to.  

This morning, while listening to the news, it sounded like the news reader was actually frustrated that the convoy hadn't moved for days, as if they couldn't wait for the next horrific plot twist, as if this was all happening in some sort of bingeworthy Netflix drama rather than a terrible reality, as if they needed the script writers to hurry up the plot and cut to the action. 

The news is being couched as a story. The Ukranians are plucky underdogs standing up to a big bad bully. In reality they're a population living through hell. Why do we have to turn reality into a narrative like this? Does couching this conflict in story terms make the horror easier to digest? Does it make it feel one stage removed from our lives? This isn't happening to people like us, it's happening to characters we know and are familiar with - the poor victim, the mean bully, the plucky resistance fighter...

Does it make us believe that 'everything will be all right in the end'? And if it does is that really the best message to be giving people? We should be facing this horror, collectively, as grown ups in all it's calamitous barbarism, rather than viewing it as the 'all is lost' moment in a Marvel franchise, the moment just before the heroes save the day by being the good guys. 

In every story I've ever written, at this moment, the underdog would rally and they would win. It's what should happen.  Through creating stories where it repeatedly does, have we nurtured a population who believe it will, regardless of the reality of the situation, because that's how stories work and this war is being reported as one. It's not helpful. 

At a time where I am finding it harder to tell stories, the news seems determined to turn reality into one. We all love a happy ending, we all expect a happy ending,  the news wants us to believe it might just happen, but we all know the truth, time to treat us like grown ups. 

In the meantime if you have anything to spare that may help those suffering please donate here:

https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/ukraine-crisis-appeal

Geopolitics: Lily Hyde

(Due to unforeseen circumstances, Lily was unable to post this month. So I've re-posted something she wrote in July. I've done this because I found this a very moving and resonant piece, and I'm glad to be able to give it another airing. Sue Purkiss)

This time last year I wrote a cheerful ABBA post from high in the Carpathian mountains in west Ukraine. I’d been listening to sad and fascinating family stories that are not just stories, from the woman who is and is not Lesya, and thinking I should write them down somehow. 

They were not just stories, although they felt like it to me a year ago. This now is not exactly a story either. 

I went to the village market early, down by the bridge where the icy river rushes along its bed of pale pebbles. The bridge was still in the shade, the sun not yet clear of the pine-green, copper-green mountains. 

The woman who sells there glass jars of bilberries sat as always in her faded apron, her daughter at her side – and this morning the woman was weeping and wailing, her salty tears running down into the jars. The little girl fiddled with the apron strings with fingers berry-stained blue, and said sternly, stop crying, Mama. Stop it. 

There was no need to ask why she was crying. But in the Russian she learned at school, peppered with words from Ukrainian, Hungarian, Slovak and Romanian, the woman told me anyway. 

Yesterday she was out on the polyana, the high Carpathian mountain pasture where the village sheep flocks wander all summer. She looked up from the bilberry bushes and watched the animals feeding on the steep slopes, like a handful of white and brown beads scattering from a broken string. 

This was what her great-grandfather saw each summer, here on these same mountains, before he was taken off to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army in 1914 and never came back. This is what her grandfather saw, before he was mobilised in 1938 by the Czechoslovak army, and what, via Hungarian, German and Soviet armies, he at last came home to. 

This is what she grew up with, this woman I’ll call Lesya. Her husband grew up with it; their daughter will grow up with it, maybe, although this traditional way of life is dying out at last and anyway Lesya wants something better for their daughter: Europe, travel, civilization, not smelly sheep on high pastures and a hard struggle for existence that hasn’t changed for centuries. 

That doesn’t stop Lesya thinking it’s the most beautiful and precious thing in the world; it is her world, her country, these sheep strung out over the green mountainside, the crystal air flush with their bleating and their ringing collar bells.    

She watched the sheep, and then she turned back to picking bilberries because her husband’s pay as a mobilised soldier in the Ukrainian army isn’t much. As well as jar-fulls at the market she can sell berries by the kilo to traders, who haul them off in refrigerated lorries to far-away Kyiv, maybe even to where her husband is now in further-away east Ukraine, a world she’s never seen though it is part of her country too, apparently. 

You already know how the rest of this story goes. While Lesya was picking bilberries, her husband was killed yesterday in that far-off East Ukraine war. She came home in the evening down the familiar paths to the village, when the news was already old. Early this morning she walked to market to sell those berries she was picking at the time her husband died, because what else can she do? 

And I bought them, because what else could I do? I bought the glass jar they were in too, for much more money than it is worth. I hold it in my hands now, full of tears stained berry blue, as I listen to that stern little girl’s voice saying, stop crying, stop it. 

www.lilyhyde.com