Creative empathy in a dangerous world – by Rowena House

What have witch trials and Donald Trump got in common?

Horrifically, I think it’s perfectly possible we’ll learn about a direct link via his so-called Christian supporters before his presidency is over. But short of that ghastly prospect, there have this past month been deeply uncomfortable parallels between fervent belief expressed in ‘alternative facts’ – e.g. whether the USA or Europe has given more to Ukraine – and seventeenth century English witch beliefs, which are the subject of my novel-in-progress.

Outside politics, which I don’t want to talk about here, there are also extraordinary parallels in terms of the psychology of belief, or more accurately disbelief, and how people – some people, anyway; let’s call them us – deal with unbelievable change, denial being one of our first ports of call.

As in, I can’t believe this is happening.

One of the best expressions I've read about how this manifests was in The Guardian last Monday, February 17th 2025. (Yup, that’s the kind of us I mean. Sorry if that offends).

In it, Zoe Williams discusses the paralysing shock that for her accompanied evidence of fascism within Trump’s Administration and her deep unwillingness to name it.

‘You’re dumbstruck for ages, not wanting to call the thing what it is. It starts off feeling like embarrassment or coyness – what kind of hysteric runs around shouting “fascist”? A very silly one, surely.’

For her, this feeling morphed ‘into something more superstitious – don’t call the thing what it is because that will only embolden the thing.’

I haven’t felt that superstition personally, but I do understand her sense of mental paralysis.

As she says, ‘If you can’t respond to the news, you can’t look at the news ... When you’re averting your eyes, you can’t even think your way into next month’ because that ‘feels like asking for trouble. Frozen feels preferable to adapting to a new reality.’

So, what has all this to do with writing fiction?

The connection is creative empathy and the use of extreme experiences as research into character – characters like us.

Firstly, with such horror in the world, a caveat.

I would say that the loss of post-WW2 certainties that the USA and Europe share fundamental values does count as an extreme event, one that causes deep psychological disturbance. It is nothing, nothing, nothing like the suffering in Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, DRC and Ukraine etc. But even listing those war-torn places illustrates how much suffering we are exposed to these days - all of which will be impacted by the altered reality of the world order implied by Trump.

For those of us off the front line, it is valid, I believe, to monitor how I, we, you (as in Zoe Williams) react to this change. Do we freeze. Deny. Look away. Have nightmares. Lose hope. Most of all, do we disbelieve?

For several years now, I have attempted to empathize creatively with a real person from seventeenth century London who believed in witchcraft in an effort to understand and recreate the (fictional) conditions in which he (actually) wrote about a series of witch trials as necessary and just.

It’s very hard at times to think positive thoughts about him. Instinctively I ask, how could he have been so irrational and cruel? How could he have been so gullible? 

Currently, I’m giving him a horrible shock to his profound Protestant faith when King James I/VI had his Catholic mother re-interred in Westminster Abbey, with an elegy claiming she and not Elizabeth I was the rightful heiress to the English throne. His reaction? Paralysis and disbelief.

But analysing ‘our’ reactions to comments by Trump and his Administration which totally contradict everything we ‘know for a fact’ – AKA our most profound beliefs – I am trying to find ways into my protagonist’s mindset that I couldn’t have explored without the existential threats from Trump.

Such creative empathy can also be turned on its head: Witch trials happened. James I/VI did that weird stuff. Trump and Vance are going to act on what they believe. The world just changed. Reality flipped. It ain’t about to flip back any time soon...

Cumulatively, I think this sort of thinking can help lessen the power of I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening and open us up to the reality of change.

As I’ve waffled about on ABBA before, neuroscience and behavioural psychology tells us that human minds aren’t very good at objectivity. We perceive what we expect to see. We map new information onto existing knowledge. We rely on experience. Hence, we feel lost when experience fails us as a guide.

Thus, if all fiction is at some level about human experience, reading it and writing it with imaginative empathy might/will/should help us adapt to altered realities.

Yay. Now back to hating on ‘them’. [Only kidding.]

Still on Twitter @HouseRowena

Still on Facebook Rowena House Author

Winter Inspiration by Claire Fayers

Since taking on an allotment, I’ve become far more aware of the passing seasons. Not just in gardening, but in writing. Winter is traditionally a fallow time, a time for the ground to rest, for roots to work their way invisibly until, just when you thought everything was dead, new shoots of inspiration appear. I’ve actually been fairly productive in writing recently. Copy-edits of book three, first draft of book four. But I’m always aware of the gaping void that lies beyond the current work in progress, that scary patch when I’m going to have to come up with new ideas. And, of course, with World Book Day looming, I’m getting ready for the perennial question “Where do you get your ideas from?”

I have a hundred different answers for that question. I keep changing my mind because there’s no one answer that feels right. Today, I thought I’d share a few moments of wintry inspiration.

I love snow. The way it covers everything, turning the ground into mashmallow and trees into Christmas ornaments. The way it squeaks underfoot like you’re walking on halloumi. And the rhythm of skiing. Those rare times when I swish along effortlessly feel almost like the moment when a first draft is going well.

My first book, Voyage to Magical North, saw my pirate crew sail to the top of the world in search of treasure and magic. I haven’t gone back to a cold climate since, but I’m thinking my next book should be icy.

This picture was hanging in our holiday apartment in snowy Trysil. It reminded me of the various folktales of women who marry wild animals and discover they are princes in disguise. It also brought to mind the gloriously weird German-made Singing Ringing Tree which I saw as a child and have never forgotten. 

I love the sense of mystery in this picture. We can’t see the princess’s face properly, but she seems peaceful. She’s holding something – a flower wreath, a ring of bread? It’s hard to tell, but it must be important.

This show had passed me by entirely while it was on the BBC, but various friends raved about it much I bought my husband the DVDs for Christmas so I could watch it. We took it away on holiday and binge-watched all nineteen episodes over six evenings. My friends were right as usual. It's beautifully scripted with subtle humour and a real kindness and respect for the characters. It would have been so easy to turn this into a parody, poking fun at people and their strange hobbies, instead we found that we genuinely cared about these characters. We wanted them to find their treasure (both actual and metaphorical.)

Come to think of it, buried treasure is quite an appealing subject in itself. I wonder if I can link it in to winter and a mysterious white bear…

Wishing you all many moments of inspiration.

Consulting Oracles - Heather Dyer

Oblique Strategies™ are the famous set of cards produced by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975. These cards were designed to be used as thought-provoking prompts that could suggest a course of action or assist in creative situations. They can be used to solve plot problems with novels, solve personal problems, or just inject some creativity into tasks or decision-making. If this feels a bit like consulting an oracle, it is. But the oracle here lies not outside us, but within. The oblique prompts are a means of consulting it.

'The Crystal Ball' by John William Waterhouse

Each card contains a prompt which can be used to achieve a new insight. Examples include:

• Use an old idea.
• State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
• Only one element of each kind.
• What would your closest friend do?
• What to increase? What to reduce?
• Are there sections? Consider transitions.
• Try faking it!
• Honor thy error as a hidden intention.
• Ask your body.
• Work at a different speed.
• Use unqualified people.
• Not building a wall but making a brick.
• If given a choice, do both.

The term ‘oblique’ refers to the way we approach our problems from behind – or from the side. We are sneaking up on them, catching them unawares so that any inklings we might have as to their solutions don’t fade away under the neon intensity of our direct attention.

The intelligence of our unconscious communicates in scenes and symbols. Approached directly, these scenes and symbols will only dissolve, or vanish like one of those Magic Eye stereograms hidden in abstract designs.

But by introducing our problem to our unconscious obliquely, we allow the two to meet - but not head-on. They say that when you want to introduce a second dog to your household, you should bring the two dogs together for the first time on neutral territory, as though meeting by chance while out for a wander one day. This is how a problem and your unconscious intelligence should meet - as though by happenstance they have intercepted on a street corner and from that point on, are inseparable.

Freewriting is another way to approach an idea in oblique ways. Freewriting is simply writing before we have time to think about what we’re going to say. It allows the images in the unconscious to rise to our pens before our bossy monologue of our conscious intentions. So, freewriting is a way to discover what we don’t yet know about a subject. By that, I don’t mean that we write to find out how little we know; we write to allow what we didn’t know we knew, to rise up into our consciousness through our pens.

With this in mind, take a problematic scene or situation in your story – or your life - and approach the problem obliquely by freewriting for three or four minutes on the following prompts:

• What do you see that's new in the situation? What do you see now that you’ve never noticed before? Keep searching for novelty. 
• If this situation/problem was a dessert (or a building, or a story, etc.) what would it be? Write a paragraph explaining why. Is there anything it needs?
• What if the elements in this situation were characters in a play? What would they say? Write a few lines of dialogue.
• Freewrite on what the solution is not. 
• Do you have a favourite hobby or interest? What principles does it adhere to? How might these principles be applied to the current situation or problem? 
• Is this the wrong question? Sit with your eyes closed for several minutes, paying attention to your breathing. At intervals, ask gently: “What do I want to know?” See what arises. 
• Freewrite on what you want the solution to be. Might your underlying desires be limiting in any way? 
• What if you changed one aspect of this situation/problem? What if you changed the colour? The material? The method? The place? What can be made larger? Smaller? Divided? Rearranged? 
• Draw the problem. What does the drawing say about the situation? What does it say about you? 
• Draw a circle around this situation. What’s outside the circle? 
• Write a paragraph describing the situation from a different perspective. How does it look from outside? From above? From the point of view of an object, or a forgotten voice?
• What do you remain curious about? Write a paragraph exploring it.
• What if you fail? What then? Where would you go next? How might what comes next relate to the initial situation? 

I suspect that, for a lot of people, the value of the ‘divination’ properties of oblique strategy cards, newspaper horoscopes, tarot cards or even the I Ching, lies in the way that when we ‘read’ these oracles we are approaching whatever question or problem we have on our minds (or in our unconscious) obliquely. I met a writer last week who has even published a book of short stories called Sixty-Four Chance Pieces, each inspired by one of the 64 hexegrams of the I Ching.

The way we interpret these 'omens' might say more about the hidden cravings and aversions in our  psyches than it does the stars. But the insights revealed may have arisen from an equally wise and all-knowing source. The more spiritual among us might even say, ‘the same source’.

If anyone tries any of the above prompts I'd love to hear about it. Did it reveal an answer that your unconscious already knew? Did it make you see your question in a new light?

Heather Dyer, Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow

http://rlfconsultants.com/consultants/heather-dyer/

www.heatherdyer.co.uk

Smells out of Memory, Sounds out of Time - by Ruth Hatfield

I was asked to think again recently about the topic of inspiration, or ‘where do you get your ideas from?’. It’s a faintly terrifying question for me, and I suspect for a lot of other writers, mainly because it’s so hard to summarise. A lot of us can’t be very specific about where, exactly, we get our ideas from, possibly because a) we don’t always notice and b) it’s not really that important to us – it’s what we do with them that counts. 

When I’m asked the question about ideas, I always get the feeling that I’m being asked for the secret of the magic trick, which none of my answers can really adequately explain – there’s no real equivalent to mirrors and fake legs in a writer’s world. As far as magic tricks go, the truth is that neither the trick nor the magic really tend to come from the original ideas themselves. The brilliance of books lies mostly, in my opinion, in their execution – in the skill and craft of the crafter, not in their stunning originality. But I digress.

Where do I get my ideas from? The best way to answer is with specific examples. This week I’ve been thinking about two particular ideas:

Why does the little bathroom at the back of my kitchen smell exactly like my grandparents’ garage? To the extent that every time I go in there it is as if I have plummeted down the black hole back into childhood, at the end of those long journeys up north, when we would get out of the car late at night, smell the clear, cool Northumberland air and walk through that dark garage into their well-lit kitchen. This is a memory of an event that happened many times, but hasn’t happened for many years, and yet that single smell conjures up the door to a brightly-lit, vanished world that I can just step into, any time I like.

And also: I live in a normal city street – the houses at my end are semi-detached 1930s council houses. I always sense that quite a few groups of households know each other, but I’m sure most of us wouldn’t be able to name more than 5 of our neighbours. Last Friday as I was at the park with my daughter, I heard the sound of horses’ hoofbeats. I can’t tell you how strange it was: here, on my narrow, car-lined city street in 2017, it is an impossible sound. It just doesn’t happen.

I grabbed my daughter and raced out of the park to look. A white carriage pulled by two grey horses complete with nodding white ostrich plumes plodded up the street. The driver, top-hatted, in black tailcoat, pulled up outside a house. There was some faffing around. Within five minutes people were pouring out of their houses, running up the street to knock on neighbours’ doors, gathering in crowds to take selfies and chat to the driver and groom, or just standing back admiringly. And talking to each other.

Generally, here, the only people you see spending any length of time on the street are either having late-night domestics or parking wars, and I suddenly saw it as it might have been, fifty years ago, when there weren’t such good home entertainments and more people must have spent more time hanging around outside their houses, talking to each other. And all it took was the impossible sound of horses’ hooves on a sunny evening to make something now almost completely lost flare up again, just for a moment.

copyright: acorncarriagehire.com

Two ideas. They feel like big ones to me. The question is – what do I do with them?

Time for the magic tricks…

Creative Insight - Heather Dyer

©Nevit Dilmen

If only we could summon creative insights at will. Then we could solve our plot problems - and our life problems, too. But insights tend to surprise us when we least expect them: when we’re stepping off a bus or getting out of the shower or dropping off to sleep.

There’s a reason for this. Creative insight requires that we momentarily let go of thinking, of clinging to what we already know - and even of caring about the outcome - so that the brain’s unconscious processes can make new connections. The mind needs to be open and exploring freely, without judgement and without attachment to a set goal.

©Nevit Dilmen

Creativity, therefore, requires a mindful state of mind. Ellen Langer has written more about the parallels between creativity and mindfulness in her book On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity. In fact, Langer is of the opinion that mindfulness and creativity are the same thing.

But there’s a quick way to trick the mind into a mindful (or creative) attitude: freewriting. Freewriting is writing steadily without stopping and without knowing where you’re going. I recently trialed some freewriting exercises with a group of fellow writers at a Royal Literary Fund conference, with interesting results.

I describe some of the prompts I used on the RLF consultant fellows’ blog today. (If you aren’t already familiar with the RLF, their website and blog are really useful resources created by and for writers.)

Try the exercises yourself – or with students, if you’re a teacher. Failing this, you could always take an 8-week mindfulness course. I highly recommend it, both for writing and for life. I frequently receive insights or remember things I’ve got to do when I’m supposed to be meditating …

Heather Dyer, Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow

http://rlfconsultants.com/consultants/heather-dyer/

Holiday time! By Cecilia Busby

As you read this, I will be (hopefully) sunning myself on a beach in Brittany. (Or possibly, hiding in a tent while the rain pours down!) Whichever it is, I am sure to be happy. I will be surrounded by my family (grumpy or otherwise), I will have no computer, I will have no obligations, I won't have to tidy the house or put some washing on - all I will have to worry about its whether to wander down the road and buy some croissants nor alternatively put the kettle on for some tea and carry on reading my book....

I am planning to take my latest Work in Progress and a small notebook. My latest Work in Progress was actually, not so long ago, a Finished Draft. But, in that way that can happen, the Finished Draft was obviously not quite finished - it received a sadly lukewarm response from publishers and now requires a little bit of reviving. I'm not planning to do any serious writing, but I am planning to let the story roll around in my head a bit, and keep a notebook handy, for any inspiration that comes. Who knows whether I can give the story enough of a kiss of life to make it fly, but I'll see. And where better to do a little creative day-dreaming?

Holidays are time out from the everyday. They take you sideways, off the path of 'onward progress' and into the wilderness of 'shilly-shallying around'. They force you to live in the moment, because there's no point thinking about 'getting on' with anything, you are away - your email has an auto-reply - you are ELSEWHERE.

Which reminds me of Diana Wynne Jones's brilliant Fire and Hemlock and the vases which are carved with the words NOWHERE - or is it NOW HERE?

On holiday you are both 'nowhere' and 'now here' - right here, right now, on the beach, or in the tent, or eating that croissant, breathing in the air, watching the birds wheel above, feasting your eyes (and it's a good phrase for it, because it feels exactly like taking in glorious quantities of food) on new sights, new colours, new places. It's exactly the sort of time and place for a little gentle playing with ideas.

I'm hoping that in that dreaminess that holidays bring, I will find exactly the right way to tell my story anew, and make it fresh and exciting. But if I don't, that's fine too. Because I will have had a chance to just stop for a while and drift; to let the moments run through my fingers like sand and not worry that they are disappearing, but instead just enjoy each one. I will have had a chance to practise my rusty French and laugh about how terrible it is; to climb rocks and paddle in pools as if I were ten all over again; to poke around among the shells and stones and pick out the most beautiful ones, and then forget them on the sand.

And all this will gradually re-inflate me, in the magical way a cup of water does when you have a slightly droopy pot plant. And in the end, I am sure it will find its way out into some kind of creativity, if not for this story, then for another one.


Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Heart? Head? heart? Head? - by Nicola Morgan

Both, is my answer. Only if we’re (exceptionally) lucky can we earn a living following only our heart. If we’re sensible, we keep our head firmly where it’s supposed to be, checking that the heart doesn’t get out of control.

Stephen King, in On Writing, talks of writing the first draft with the door closed, listening to no one but our own heart (I paraphrase) and the second draft with the door open, listening to our professional knowledge of what needs to be in the book in order for it to be published and for people to buy it.

So, balancing head and heart and not letting one get out of control for too long (though a bit of wildness is allowed!) seems a valid way for a writer to go about the business of being a writer.

But there’s another eminently right-headed way of being a creative person: to do some projects where you mostly follow your heart and others where you get your head down and do stuff that people want to pay for, even if your heart sits in a huff in the corner of the room, ignored and pissed off.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, not least during a discussion on Facebook after I'd praised this piece by Andrew Crofts, provocatively titled, Struggling as an author? Stop writing only what you want to write. Now, I didn’t enjoy all of it but what I do agree with are these ideas that I took from it: that the world does not owe us publication just because we want to write something; that we owe a great deal to readers and sometimes we ought to compromise in order to give them at least something of what they want; and that it is perfectly legitimate and sensible to write some things for purely commercial reasons and others for the heartsong.

Last week, something happened to my family which provides an example. Some of you know what’s coming. A couple of years ago, my younger daughter and a friend, Caroline Bartleet, who were working for a film production company, decided to crowdfund and create a short film, from an idea of Caroline's, inspired by her hearing a 999 call while researching for her day job.. Caroline would be the writer and director; Rebecca would be the producer. They got a team together, all in the industry, many of them working for love or favours; they raised the money they needed through Kickstarter; and, after months and countless hours of planning, filmed it over one weekend last year. The resulting short film was Operator.

Meanwhile, of course, they carried on working in their jobs. Because you have to pay your bills. Operator went into post-production and was ready last summer. They started submitting to festivals, with no expectation of anything.

It was picked up by many festivals, most excitingly the London Film Festival, where it had its UK premiere. Just before the news of LFF came, Rebecca went freelance, with a leap of faith and bravery.

Then, astonishingly, it was nominated for a BAFTA. We knew it was good, because we’d seen it and we’d seen it with other audiences and witnessed their reaction. But a BAFTA??

Incredibly, they won. An actual BAFTA. She has her very heavy golden trophy to prove it. (She's on the left in the pic.) Personally, I think it should stay in our house – so much safer. I would polish it, too. 

They followed their hearts, gambled with their time and immense effort, and the generous help of all their Kickstarter supporters, and they won. Beyond their dreams. Huge luck, of course, but nothing venture, nothing gain, and that was down to hard work and skill.

(The link to their website, with a clip, is here. They haven’t had time to update the news yet! There's a Skype interview here. And the official You-Tube clip and interview with Zoe Ball. Matt Damon may feature...)

My point is only this: that sometimes you must follow your heart. Sometimes that’s how to feel alive. And sometimes you have to follow your head, because that’s the only way to eat - and stay alive. So, Rebecca is back at her uncertain freelance jobs, where she may be a BAFTA-winning Producer but she’s still at the coalface doing jobs that may be below producer level, jobs that she hasn’t initiated, jobs where her heart may not always be. But it's still film production, just as ghost-writing (etc) is still writing. Heart and head.

I know other young people who have started bands, for example, with just the same mentality: this is where our hearts are; the heads are paying the bills. And maybe one day the two will come together.

Do what you can, do what you have to, do what you want, do what works. Just say yes. Head, heart, head, heart? Whichever you can. Just don’t feel demeaned on those occasions when you follow your head instead of your heart. Heads are good. But they don’t work without hearts. And vice versa.

Nicola Morgan still needs to practise what she preaches. One day. Oh yes, one day.