When lockdown unlocks writers

Last year I was one of many who wrote a guest blog post for Chantelle Atkins, an author, writing group teacher and mentor with a similar teaching background to mine. She was collecting articles on experiences of the first lockdown (how long ago that seems! Yet a rerun remains a distinct possibility given how poorly the Westminster government have managed the pandemic). Don’t groan, that’s not the theme today. Instead, this interview with Chantelle celebrates the creativity she, her fellow writers and mentees, child and adult, demonstrate in this anthology just published. Like me, she enjoys encouraging children’s writing and storytelling and links it with adults’ creativity too. As we emerge into a changed world, do enjoy this varied set of approaches and reactions.

Hi Chantelle. Please start by telling me how you planned the anthology.

The first three sections came about from posts I wrote for my personal blog. I then asked other writers and bloggers to join in and write under the same themes. It was in my head from early on that if I got enough content, we could put a book together under Chasing Driftwood. Lots of contributions came from the writing groups and clubs we run and via word of mouth. Many others were writers and bloggers I’d connected with previously and who wanted to participate.

Which is your favourite piece and why?

I think I have to say the poems on Hope written by the children. Not to say the adult poems aren’t amazing, because they are, but I felt like the hope theme really caught fire with the children and we had lots of wonderful entries. Each hope poem really made me smile and a few brought tears to my eyes. The children are also particularly proud and excited to be published for the first time!

Was putting “Stay Home” together an individual task or a team effort? Would you like to acknowledge any special help here?

We couldn’t have done it without the contributors so a huge thank you must go to every one of them for participating first in the blog posts and then allowing us to publish their work in the anthology. Myself and my business partner Sim did the work between us, putting it together, formatting the ebook and paperback, editing and proofreading. We were extremely lucky that a talented friend of Sim’s offered to do the front cover design for free! So we are very grateful for that.

It’s a great cover! Did it take the designer many attempts or come right straight away?

Law Baker is a friend of Sim’s and we gave him a bit of a brief, wanted something with a house and windows and different people gazing out. It was his own idea to add the nurse on the street which I think is absolutely perfect.

How will the proceeds will be used?

They will all go straight into the bank account of our Community Interest Company (CIC) and will be used to fund our next community writing projects which will benefit young writers. The company is called Chasing Driftwood. The name came when I had two old songs in my head one day when walking. Driftwood by Travis and Chasing Rainbows by Shed 7. I combined them for something unusual!

A community interest writing group? That sounds interesting…

I started as an adult writing group, adding children’s writing workshops in 2015. Because my youngest was only a baby at the time, I was limited to running workshops in school holidays but it started to take off and in 2017 I applied to become a CIC. Once my youngest started school I reached out to local schools about running writing clubs and they were very keen. The local home education community approached me two years ago for clubs to accommodate them, and Sim joined in 2019. It’s gone from strength to strength.

Describe a typical children’s and/or adults writing workshop. Are they online only?

With the clubs, four are online via Zoom and four are in person, within schools and libraries. Workshops can be online or in person. Adult workshops include sessions on developing characters, how to build an author platform, whether self-publishing is right for you and more. The children’s clubs and workshops cover many things! Poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, article writing, blogging, journaling, comic books, developing characters, how to plot, how to use literary devices and much more!

What’s the next project for you personally and/or for Chasing Driftwood?

I’m working on a four-book YA post-apocalyptic series, among other things! I’m also co-writing a YA series with Sim. As well as the many clubs and services we already offer, we’re hoping to launch a new Chasing Driftwood community writing project soon. I can’t say too much yet but it will involve putting together a climate and wildlife themed anthology written by young people, and will also involve another project that aims to connect children with nature through writing.

Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to play a part in Stay Home and to hear about Chasing Driftwood and your personal writing projects. Good luck with everything as 2022 approaches!

You can buy the ebook of Stay Home here and the paperback is here

Find Chasing Driftwood on facebook and Instagram

Find details of Chantelle’s books on her blog here or find her on Facebook or Instagram

And here are Sim’s Facebook page, Instagram and blog

News from the writing group

Some authors roam their keyboards alone, but many like the comfort of a writing group. I found mine when, after weeks critiquing each others’ work on a Writers & Artists course, four of us decided to continue.

When the world was normal we met in an art deco cocktail bar in Holborn. Sometimes we’d emailed extracts in advance, sometimes it was more ad hoc. Then in lockdown we read each others’ entire books and commented, raising our glasses on Zoom. It really has been invaluable.

One of us, Sofia Due, has just published an earlier novel. Ed and Lily is a cleverly constructed story of the dangers of “couple fatigue” – when you’ve developed a particular way of doing things and nothing’s really suiting either of you but you don’t realise the damage you’re sustaining along the mundane way. Lily, working in Cardiff, has ideals, Londoner Ed has ambition. Ed is organised, Lily is chaotic and spontaneous. On Christmas Eve Ed’s booked a romantic getaway to Iceland – but Lily’s working late and misses her train. The book unravels how they got to this point through flashbacks. The reader’s kept wondering if this is make or break to the very last page. All good fun but it deepens with Ed’s family background and Lily’s job for a frontline charity. Here’s what Sofia had to say about it:

As the privileged (I think) first blogger to interview you, I’ll ask the obvious. What inspired Ed and Lily?

I had this idea about a couple who meet quite young, and everything is perfect but it’s almost too much, too soon. They’re not yet ready to settle down, not where they want to be as individuals, but to achieve what they want, they might have to leave the other behind.  To make a relationship work, does one person always have to compromise and give up their dreams or can both succeed?

I started writing this in 2017 and about 20,000 words in, I saw ‘La La Land’ and thought, ‘Yes, exactly, that’s what I’m trying to say.’  There’s a wistfulness about the choices they made and what was right for them. Either way, to stay or go, would have been right – in different respects and with different outcomes.

Lots of us have had relationships like that, where to make the relationship work means changing direction, taking a chance, moving country and that will cause some difficulties. This is a story about whether you stick it out or go it alone.

It’s also about how we don’t talk about the important things in relationships, especially if things are going wrong. We’re scared and ignore the elephants in the room because once you start discussing things, you can’t be sure where it will lead. 

It’s a clever structure…

The structure was always like that, with alternate chapters from each point of view, to create a dialogue between Ed & Lily. The idea was the story started at the end, when the relationship was in trouble so it would be more detective story than romance, examining what went wrong, why, and whether it could be fixed.

Once I’d committed to this structure, it seemed like every book I picked up was doing the same. What I wanted was that with each chapter, the reader’s sympathies might change.

And how would you describe the genre?

I put this book through the new writers’ scheme at the romantic novelists’ association, twice. The second reader said it was more of a love story than romance as romance is supposed to do the ‘boy meets girl, something gets in the way, they get back together’ structure and this doesn’t. When I started, I was aiming for a simple love story but somehow, in my stories someone always ends up in a refugee camp!

Lily’s a vibrant, funny, realistically flawed character, based on anyone in particular?

I’m glad you think so, and no, not really. Aspects of her life and work are based on people I know but I’m surrounded by warm, competent, well-meaning women who over commit. She’s a bit scatty, but that’s what happens when you have too much on your mind, when you aren’t concentrating because you have a mental block about something else.

I found it harder to warm to Ed, although I cared so much about Lily it didn’t matter. Can you sell Ed to me?

Ed is kind and funny (I hope) but he lost his mother very young and is scared of more loss. The self-sufficiency and minimalist personal style is a defence; if he doesn’t have much, there isn’t much to lose! He’s liberal and open in his attitudes and appreciates that his rival for Lily isn’t someone else but her aspirations – which he supports. He’s shocked when he finds he might be wrong. He really loves Lily but he’s frightened of losing her by making demands and caging her. Without meaning to, that’s what he’s done. He needs to set himself free. As Lily says, ‘You were wearing a Hawaiian shirt when we met.’ He can change, although he doesn’t have to, just show he could.

That’s interesting. Other people have wondered how he puts up with Lily!

Lily works with refugees in war zones, a serious balance to the “boy meets girl” flavour of the main story. Is this based on your own experience?

To an extent. Refugees find their way into everything I do but although I worked with some children in the Calais jungle, most of my work is office-based. I’ve never done field work in a refugee camp. The camp in the book is fictional but based on places I’ve seen. The refugee stories like the woman walking for hours on a broken ankle or offering bracelets in exchange for help are real.

Why did you make Ed an architect?

Perhaps because when I started writing, we had building work and I was comparing the rubble with the computer drawings and thinking what I needed was a nice architect in my writing life to take my mind off the mess. It’s part of Ed’s conflict. He likes clean lines and open space but his loyalty to the people he loves means he’s surrounded by fusty antiques.

You started “Ed and Lily” written some years ago. What made you revisit it?

I finished it in 2017 and got a few requests for the full manuscript, but it wasn’t taken further. I worked with a mentor during 2019 to rework the timeline. Again there was interest, but it wasn’t taken up. Usually, I try and write something every day but during the first lockdown, I found it really difficult. I decided getting this book out would be my creative project for the year, to keep me looking forward. It’s been fun, I’ve had a lot of involvement in it. I also thought stylistically, it was now or never for this book. After the times we’ve been going through, who knows if realistic characters with ordinary problems will be what we want to read about!

Who would like this book for their birthday?

Perfect for people with birthdays in the next few months. They’ll get a chance to appreciate the timeline countdown to Christmas.

Buy links:

Ed & Lily eBook : Due, Sofia: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

The Book Guild Ltd

Ed & Lily by Sofia Due | Waterstones

Ed & Lily by Sofia Due | WHSmith

Ed & Lily : Sofia Due : 9781913913298 (bookdepository.com)

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Sofia_Due_Ed_Lily?id=6Es_EAAAQBAJ

The ebook will soon be available through other retailers, such as Apple, Barnes & Noble US, Kobo and OverDrive.

©Jessica Norrie & Sofia Due 2021

No signal

In last night’s disturbing dream my phone was useless and I couldn’t communicate. Partner said: “Good premise for a crime novel.” I don’t want to write a crime novel, but as always a title came straight to mind. No signal covers 1) my blog hiatus 2) the rural disadvantage of partner’s house 3) physical and metaphorical aspects of lockdown, and 4) the event that stopped me blogging much and writing at all.

In January a dear relation, not elderly, had a stroke clinicians labelled catastrophic, overnight losing independence and professional, social and cultural involvement to massive brain damage, semi paralysis, and total speech loss. For weeks she had “no signal”. Now she smiles, shrugs, raises her eyebrows, taps one hand, and cries.

For two months we could barely signal back. Covid allowed only three hospital visits, justified to management as therapeutic. Discharge was to an understaffed, pack-em-in uncare home with photos of forty Covid victims prominent in the foyer. At my first “visit”, I balanced on a steep grass bank and gurned through a closed double-glazed window, probably terrifying a confused, pain-racked, depressed, non-verbal Charlotte. After two weeks, strictly timed fifteen-minute visits were allowed, when she cried and cried. I have told the regulating authorities…

Finding urgent, pleasanter, safer care with no previous knowledge of the sector, was difficult. It’s a buyer’s market, nursing homes having lost so many residents, but judging suitability when you can’t go inside to witness staff and residents interact is tricky. There’s the selling agent’s word for it, pre-Covid inspection reports and glossy brochures with more chintz than people. You can tell a lot from the smell, mutters a district nurse friend. In normal times.

Nor could we access the typically £82000 pa fees of a good home because Charlotte hadn’t appointed Lasting Power of Attorney (have YOU done this? It costs £80/£160 online and takes just a few weeks to come through). She couldn’t agree to LPA because she’d lost mental capacity so our only avenue was the Court of Protection. Even with an excellent solicitor this takes seven months and £4000+. So whatever your age please apply for LPA today, for your loved ones’ sakes! Without it, we can’t deal with Charlotte’s bank, maintain her house, access her phone or computer… or shut the bailiffs up. But hooray for the social worker who organised interim payment of home fees!

Identifying, informing, updating friends, navigating legal, financial and medical protocols takes hours. Though still without CoP status, a contradiction requires me to advocate for Charlotte as her Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard representative. Therein lies a moral minefield.

Amid the pandemic, all NHS staff dealt professionally and kindly with Charlotte, as far as we know. Yet it’s compartmentalised and random. Some individuals communicate with next-of-kin; others won’t until CoP is formalised. Doctors spent two days saving Charlotte’s life. Then she became the therapists’ responsibility. The excellent hospital team discharged her to the community team who visit rarely and tell me nothing. Emergency hospital admissions for IV treatment open communication black holes. True to form, our Etonian government guidelines for care homes are delayed, illogical and impractical. So Charlotte, who can currently be visited immediately during her frequent hospital stays, suffers ten lonely days of self-isolation whenever she returns “home” (which is a good and caring place, but, obviously, not the lovely house she can no longer access). Each time, the private speech therapy I’ve sourced is postponed and even on her birthday she couldn’t leave her room.

This prolonged whinge is my entirely selfish point of view. Writing from Charlotte’s would mean exploring the wrenching experience of a loved one more deeply than I can bear – it’s an imagined state of mind to be visited only in the small hours or small, safe stabs of trying-to-understand. So I divert my thoughts to all that must be done. To write her POV would also mean experimental language even more demanding than McGregor’s (below). There’d be pages of wailing pain, of being bypassed and misunderstood, occasional enjoyment of tastes (dysphagia permitting), embarrassment, exhaustion, depression – very common post stroke, frustration, boredom and loneliness and where’s the happy ending? Disabled readers might cancel it and they’d probably be right.

But this is a books and writing blog! Poignantly, my last chat with Charlotte was about a book review here. Stroke is common in life, less so in literature. The only one more physically serious than hers that I’ve read of is in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, also filmed. Dominique Bauby, in his forties, was riding a professional wave as editor-in-chief of Elle magazine when a stroke paralysed him almost completely. He could only dictate this memoir, letter by letter, by flicking his left eyelid. I could quote the whole thing… For obvious reasons it isn’t long, but it’s beautifully written/translated and extraordinary.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight is inspiring – see her TED talks on YouTube. This American brain scientist had a major stroke aged 37 and viewed her eight-year recovery as a unique research opportunity. She explains the medical jargon and her own psychology and cognition with clarity, humour and joie de vivre. A helpful checklist of carers’ dos and don’ts highlights the devastating damage stroke can cause. “Recovery was a decision I had to make a million times a day. Was I willing to put forth the effort to try?” If this exceptionally positive and informed young woman found it so exhausting, what hope is there for others? But at least our NHS, beleaguered though it may be, means a stroke victim needn’t try to remember which hospital her health insurance covers, mid-stroke.

In the UK the Stroke Association have cheap communications aids for recovering stroke victims, though little for Charlotte’s more severe condition. Bolte Taylor happily relearned from children’s books; others may feel patronised which is where the SA booklets come in.

I’ve reviewed Jon McGregor’s precise and moving writing before. In a happy coincidence for me, his latest novel, Lean Fall Stand provides the reassurance of finding my experience reflected in good fiction. I won’t name the stricken character as he’s introduced in a different role, the stroke a deus ex machina for the reader as well. Quoting McGregor’s language play would need more context than my space permits, but, never obscure, he has surprising fun with a victims’ conversation group, light relief (not parody) after the grimmer initial weeks. There’s sympathy for his carer’s reaction too, the weary, questioning love/unlove of a mostly absentee partner when sudden responsibility strikes hard at her own life.

Which is more or less where I started this post. As I write, the stroke related emails drift in… I hope that explains the recent absence of signals from me. Take care all.  

©Jessica Norrie 2021

Titles seek book

The Italian dramatist Pirandello wrote a play called Six Characters in Search of an Author, which is the best title ever. I’d make the bestseller charts if all a book needed was a title. I love titles. They come to me throughout the humdrum day and I think: Yes! Great! I forget many, but some stick. My problem is I haven’t written the stuff that comes next.

Trying to get through to the hairdresser reminds me I could channel Steig Larsson with The Girl with the Lockdown Hair. And another good phrase has rung through our house since March 2020. A glass or two of wine with olives and vegetable crisps saved the lockdown day with a semblance of structure. We knew we were drinking too much, so partner stopped referring to it specifically and substituted an invitation to The Things That Go With Wine (or on special occasions, The Things That Go With Fizz). These adapt easily. How about The Things That Go With Love or The Things That Go With Death? One Day I May Be Sorry for giving those away, but there’s no copyright on titles, so Be My Guest. Idioms make great titles.

Mrs Hellebore and Her Son Primrose sprung to mind on the first day of Spring. This will (or won’t) be humour – think The Diary of a Nobody and Lupin Pooter. Maybe Persephone will publish it when I’m a forgotten authoress. When? Who am I kidding?

Building without Dust came when I was mopping endless daily plaster residue from my keyboard during building work. I did once use it to head a review of Rachel Cusk’s work. Like Cusk, I love writing and reading about houses and homes, along with Kate Summerscale, Jane Christmas, Ann Patchett and hundreds of others. My eventual Building without Dust will be heavy on metaphor – tearing down the old to replace it with the new and then is the new any better? How long does the joy in it last? What’s the fallout from the process? It all sounds so grim I’d better just stick with the title.

Stealing Winston is my cosy crime idea. “Where are you moving to?” asked the removal man giving an estimate. “Near the Winston Churchill statue,” I said. He gave a great sigh of satisfaction. “AH! That’s my favourite statue in all Essex. Solid bronze, it is. Can’t think why no-one’s nicked it.” I stopped packing to scribble ideas about ne’er-do-wells saddled with storing and selling a whopper of a statue wot they’d pinched one night for a larf. Ideas ARE copyright so if I see this in the bestseller lists in years to come, watch out. 

Hooray for poetic titles. A beauty came up recently in an article about either the Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo or the additional bits of Stonehenge they’ve found in Wales. Among the ancient remains were Traces of Ancient Sunlight. How lovely; sorry that’s the only trace of information I’ve retained.

Drinking in the Atrium/ Gin in the Atrium? The Counter Tenor in the Umpire’s Chair? Back to the Hammerklavier? What’s the genre? asks long-suffering agent. Well, it’s a bit niche…

• 

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The Infinity Pool was set in an alternative holiday settlement, whose management sold out in the minds of its eco guests by building a snazzy alternative to swimming among the local jellyfish. It also felt vaguely philosophical, giving my title a bit of extra heft. When we translated the title to French the philosophical side perhaps took too much precedence and the German translator added an explanatory sub-title. The Magic Carpet – which won’t be translated but would be easier – featured in one of the stories my child narrator drew inspiration from. Unfortunately feedback shows people think it’s a children’s book because of the title.

Thanks to Anete Lusina on Pexels.com for photo

In a recent thread in Book Connectors, my favourite Facebook group for bloggers, authors and readers, a writer complained her publishers always changed the titles she gives her books. If a commercial publisher took my books, they could call them what they like. They’d be entitled, for showing such faith in me. I just have to write the books first.

©Jessica Norrie 2021

Blogger wings it with wordplay

Last week I couldn’t be bloggered so must post now… Scrabbling for inspiration I see my blogger colleague (bloggeague?) Robbie Cheadle has a nice post on nursery rhymes where she quotes Lewis Carroll changing the words of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Any wordplay good enough for Alice in Wonderland is good enough for me too! I’m always changing the words of songs and do it almost automatically in response to feelings and events. As do others – here’s one doing the social media rounds, origin unknown. If we all sing along maybe he’ll get the hint:

Donald the President packed his Trump,

And said goodbye to the White House

As Robbie says, learning and adapting song lyrics is part of language and creativity development for young children (at the other end of the scale there are important benefits for the memory and well-being of dementia patients). Children often make endearing mistakes, which I learn from a fascinating article are called Mondegreens. In my childhood all primary schools whether denominational or not had a Christian hymn at daily assembly and misinterpretations were common among the pre-readers. A more recent one suitable for Covid hoarders is “Come, come ye saints! No toilet paper here!” I found the child who sang that here. I wonder if like many children she follows it with:

Our Father who art in Heaven. Harold be thy name…

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

Also hooray for the deliberate adaptions! We all know the shepherds were much too busy washing their socks to keep an eye on any sheep. My family left carols alone but they’d roar round the table at Christmas:

Hitler – has only got one ball

The other is in the Albert Hall

Himmler – has something similar

But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all!

You can find many versions of this surreal take on Captain Bogey’s March in an informative but completely po-faced Wikipedia article that describes this as “a World War II British song that mocks Nazi leaders using blue comedy in reference to their testicles…” I’ve searched for the copyright owner but found only: “There is no known attempt by anyone to claim or enforce a copyright on the lyrics.” Writers should always take care quoting song lyrics.

As a teacher, I used song a lot: as a memory or pronunciation aide, to explain simple concepts and just for good old fun. About ten years ago I had the job of teaching teachers who only spoke English to teach French (which I speak fluently) or Spanish (which I have a basic grasp of) or German and Modern Hebrew (which I don’t speak at all) to their classes – do keep up at the back. That tells you all you need to know about investment in expertise for British state education, except that it’s even worse now. It was uphill but entertaining work. One exercise was to get the teachers in groups to set some key vocabulary/phrases to a well-known tune – at the most basic level this might be the numbers 1-5 or a bit later on, classroom objects to the tune of Y Viva España. The first line was:

La regla, el lápiz, el libro y el papel

Ironically I’ve forgotten the rest but the end of each verse was great fun as we went emphatically down the scale:

(1)¡Y el bol-í-gra-fo! (2) ¡Y el peg-a-men-to!

Gracias to www.saveteachersundays.com for reminding me of the vocab.

I was on safer ground with French, so cocky I got my knuckles rapped by senior management when I jazzed up the boring compulsory housekeeping announcements at the beginning of each training session. To the tune of Tea for Two:

En cas de feu, vous descendez

Dans le parking, vous rassemblez

Les WC*, vous trouverez

Tout près…

*pronounced lay-vay-cay

Many resource producers were more adept than me and I’ll be forever grateful to the authors of Français, français for setting an action song about body parts to the Match of the Day theme tune. Even the stroppiest kids took notice when they heard that introduction.

Back to messing about with English. If cheerful songs lend themselves particularly well to pastiche (I’m forever blowing bubbles; Yellow Submarine) so do the most respectable of poems. The first lines of To be or not to be, that is the question… must have been casually adapted by most people at some stage in their lives, with or without apologies to Shakespeare. Browning did us all a favour when he wrote, O to be in England, now that April’s here.. It’s a great leveller when we commoners seize ownership of such classics.  Wikipedia may not crack a smile but the rest of us have fun.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

Blogger time, and the writing is easy

Words are flowing, and I’m seizing the day

I don’t earn much, and I’m hardly good-looking

But hush little blogger, it’s all okay!

I didn’t have a post but now I’ve winged it, albeit to a fairly random audience which could include writers, readers, singers, teachers, and humans. Also I just uploaded two illustrations from the free selection rather than adding lots of my own (but that may be a good thing). All those silly songs have released something in me and I think I’ll enter some writing competitions next. Which songs and poems get your creative juices going?

©Jessica Norrie 2020

Eureka!

I googled “inspiration” because you deserve a positive blog post after Recent Rant 1 and Recent Rant 2. The Oxford Languages Dictionary says inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do…something creative and/or a sudden brilliant or timely idea. It’s my pleasure to bring you this overview of some forms the mental stimulation may take, with a pretty picture to help you through the gate to fruitful productivity.

Inspiration may seep in over time, from a writer’s familiarity with places, people or themes, or it may come suddenly from something specific. The first kind, described here, inspired The Infinity Pool. But The Magic Carpet sparked all-of-a-sudden in my classroom, with a 6 year-old pupil’s suggestion to his friend: “Why don’t we write everything in capital letters? Then Ms Norrie won’t tell us off for not using them.” (I awarded merit points for chutzpah.) In the finished novel, it’s become Mandeep’s idea on page 91. Novel Three started with an extraordinary signpost I saw on holiday. All will be revealed when (if) a publisher takes the same punt I did and invests in my story of a community deeply affected by the visual image in their midst. I’ve achieved 40 pages of Novel Four inspired by a scene in a play. So my inspiration comes from another writer’s inspiration.

Poetry or rhetoric is often deliberately written to inspire, but what’s everyday to some speakers can provide unexpected inspiration too. As our builders discuss the cellar stairs, I’m hearing of risers, winders, bull noses, dog legs, a suggested pig’s ear handrail but not balustrades or spindles (it’s just an ordinary staircase, honest). They assume I understand – builders always add the word obviously to anything they’re explaining. Their jargon reveals an undiscovered world for my future characters to root about in, obviously.

Strip specialised language to its bare bones and it can still conjure a story. In a Physics exam when I was thirteen, I forgot the correct wording of the Archimedes Principle, but got one mark for writing: “Archimedes got in his bath. He noticed the water level go up and yelled ‘Eureka!’ ” My description’s unscientific, but it opens the way for imagining the bathroom (if any), the servant who’d heated the water jumping at the sudden shout, whether modesty and privacy were important, whether Archimedes was routinely fastidious or perhaps preparing for a special date? So was he late because he stopped to write down his new principle? Did his date cast him off forever or come round to see why they’d been stood up? Then what? Tracy Chevalier or Robert Harris would have half that novel written already.

If I wrote cosy crime or comedy, a local walk might provide inspiration. I’d wonder what led to this resident’s sign about her cat?

And will Winston Churchill ever catch that bus?

Although lock down provides lots of writing time, it’s a disadvantage not being able to get out and about for inspiration. These Welsh rooftops, taken in Abergavenny, could frame an epic spanning eight centuries, of lives lived under the copper roofed church tower, new and weathered slates, Velux windows and solar panels, all nestling in the protection of the ruined castle walls?

I don’t think I’d ever again set a story somewhere I can’t revisit easily for research, but I’ve bottled the feelings that came from visiting the Vienna flat where Schubert died, or watching the artist painting in (yes, in) the river at Kyoto. They can be transferred to other stories.

Never ignore a sensation that gives rise to unexpected, surging emotion. As any therapist knows, stories often lie behind apparently illogical anger or fear and the triggers to tears represent a deeper loss. Last week we went to our first live concert since February. Paul Lewis walked on stage, and without a word began to play. I welled up at the first notes. Comparing notes afterwards, my partner had the same reaction. Underlying our pleasure and relief at hearing live music again were compassion for all who’ve lost loved ones, jobs or homes through this pandemic and sorrow at seeing our families so little. We felt for Paul Lewis too, only allowed an audience of 80 in a normally packed theatre.

If you derive a story from a piece of music you’ll be in highly respectable literary company: Julian Barnes, Rose Tremain, Murakami. Proust started it, exploring a musical phrase after moving on from the taste of a madeleine that took him back to childhood teatimes. But any writing, in any genre at any period can develop from the senses; the novel Perfume is almost literally inspired by smell. If you write a scene where one sense is missing, it will – counter-intuitively – make you more aware of it. The difficulties blind people have social distancing are a recent grim example, and Proust, a noted hypochondriac, might never have got past page 1 if Covid had removed his sense of taste and smell.

So keep your ears/eyes/noses/tongue/fingertips peeled. “Everyone’s in agreement we won’t tell Mick his son fell through the roof, then?” I overheard, passing a high garden wall. Suppose Mick’s son had hidden internal injuries that would only manifest later, or suppose someone spotted where they’d patched up the hole in the priceless fresco on the ceiling below? Suppose he wasn’t really Mick’s son! 

There’s no mystery to inspiration. I’ve considered the five senses, going outside, travelling (even just in the mind), people’s conversations, history, and other people’s art, music and writing. You’ll have your own ideas which I hope you’ll share in the comments below. Everyone has their eureka moment somewhere, just waiting to be discovered. Good luck!

© Jessica Norrie 2020

“New normal” fiction

When a plot includes a pregnancy going to term or religious festivals that move around the lunar calendar it’s important to be precise with the timescale. I fine tuned my first two novels as I went along. Novel 3, currently under submission, is a response to a specific event, and ends at a point when the issues first raised begin to be resolved. All three books are “contemporary”, taking place not long before the projected year of publication.

Now, writing in New Normal times, the dates of the story are even more crucial. If the events I’m beginning to explore for Novel 4 take place before December 2019 the pandemic needn’t figure. Any story set later than that must now include the effects of Covid-19 on timing and location, wherever they belong on a scale from wispy background rumours to overwhelming. Otherwise it would be like setting a book in 1916 and not mentioning World War 1. So many political, physical and local variables govern the viral load infecting my story that I must factor them in from the start, or my timeline may be wrong, my characters unlikely and my events impossible for their setting and situations. I’ll sound as confused as our Prime Minister.

Guardian

newspaper

headlines

week

ending

10.5.20

Although my chosen theme could work either side of the pandemic, so many of the story props around it will change that I can’t put off the decision. And, unlike for a book set during the Spanish flu epidemic, or during the worst of HIV infection, the number of victims is still unknown and the consequences and effects of lockdown haven’t been objectively measured. If I start my contemporary novel NOW, by the time it’s published my assumptions for how it progresses and ends could seem ridiculous.

Where have all the

people gone?

Perhaps they’re on Zoom…

In my case I’ll probably cop out and either not write at all or set the story well before bells ring in the new year 2020. (The many writers of Brexit novels couldn’t see they had the same problem, although the agents and publishers who rejected them did. Nor did they realise readers might be bored or repulsed by the subject matter, or, if interested, would by the time of publication know more about it than the author.)

Are writers in other genres any better off?

There are some great possibilities for crime writers. Smuggling and doctored vaccines come to mind, although it would be hard to better The Third Man. But plots can’t include: empty domestic property (though lots of empty workplaces); meetings, rallies, parties, institutional education, entertainment, non domestic accommodation, public events or sports venues. There’ll be no unobtrusive shadowing people through crowded streets or detectives interviewing ancient relations in care homes. Characters can’t travel far from home, let alone internationally, or use public transport without sticking out like a sore thumb; and they’re unlikely to go to hospital unless they have Covid-19. The public, bored at their windows, will denounce anything out of the ordinary for the sheer fun of it before the plot can develop; hunches will be hard to follow up and helpful contacts go awol; the criminal fraternity will be preoccupied looking after number one.

Romance is online only. Strangers can’t find love in bars, theatres, parks or at dinner parties. Physical contact is ill-advised even if they do meet. Attractiveness, let alone kissing, is just not the same with everyone in face masks. The media and a vigilante public hamper running secret affairs. Office romances don’t work from home and young nurses are too haggard and stressed to catch the eye of hardworking doctors. Lady Chatterley is indoors social isolating with her vulnerable husband and even Mrs Bennett reluctantly recognises now is not the time for matchmaking. Blood vows and pacts, balls, weddings, or christenings? Certainly not! Whether cops or lovers, characters will have little change in routine or conversation to propel the narrative forward. No chance meetings, few coincidences, most of their time spent staring at screens. Today’s idea of a giddy whirl is solving a Sudoku while the lockdown beer loaf bakes, and optimism means hoping the Patience will work out.

It’s easier for some authors. In the Fantasy genre anything can happen. (That’s why I tend not to read fantasy; I prefer the tension of limited possibilities – though not as limited as currently.) History is already over, so barring differences of interpretation and fact selection, fictionalising events involves the same storytelling skills it always did. As for Horror, Science Fiction and Dystopia – well. That’s what we’re in now, isn’t it? I predict most 2020 novels will fall into these categories.

A week is a long time in pandemics so having had the idea for this post, I’m not waiting till my usual Friday to publish. It might be out of date by then. I also wanted to remind you that The Magic Carpet is on promotion at only 99p until the end of May, if you’d like to visit an unfashionable London suburb between early September – 14th October 2016. Bizarrely, it’s currently selling better in Germany than the UK, but those pre-virus, post Brexit referendum days, just after Eid 2016 and still pre-Trump, may now hold a strange kind of charm and they’re still just about contemporary.

Stay well everyone, and alert, although that’s not the word I’d have chosen.

©Jessica Norrie 2020

 

Bookplay

Still determinedly sticking to the positives about this p**ndemic, the creativity it’s brought out in some people is amazing. Have you seen the tableaux of famous art made in response to the Getty Art Museum Challenge? And last week this clever storytelling game appeared online (read the titles on the spines in order). If anyone can tell me  which clever librarians created this, I’ll happily credit them.

Of course I rushed off to see what I could come up with. I found myself immediately in sinister realms – by the way it helps if you add punctuation:

Missing, presumed a matter for the jury, invisible women vanish in an instant. Snap!

Some titles are easier to play with than others. Anything with that begins with “The” is tricky, but Invisible Women could have made multiple contributions, and I’m keeping an eye open for titles to go with, well, Keeping an Eye Open by Julian Barnes. You don’t have to stick to books you have in the house. Swipe a few covers from Goodreads and away you go. It’s surprising how often the final title could just as easily go at the beginning.

Keeping an eye open

for whom the bell tolls

last orders,

in the springtime of the year.

A different, easier game is to find as many titles as you can containing, say, colours, places or people’s names.

Looking for titles with women’s names in them, I chose this cover of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie because I thought it was absolutely lovely.

The prime of Miss Jean Brodiebrodie

It’s a peaceful game, choosing the best cover – on Goodreads search for a book by title, click on “Other editions” on the picture of the cover and enlarge them to see which you like best. There were some strong contenders here; the book clearly inspired many designers.

As a household you could find titles with numbers in them and put them in order. How strict you are depends on your family – do you include ordinals and cardinals and can two or four include too, to, second, for, forth and fourth? The nerds among us might wish to print the covers and display them, or at least write out the titles…

…all the way up to… well, you could set a limit or be open ended. As my daughter’s friend boasted when she was about six: “I can count higher than you! I can count up to infinity!” 

Other ideas for children could include finding covers with animals on them, or little girls or boys; stories about buildings or stories set in the past or “abroad” or somewhere magical. Or all the covers they can find that are mainly red, or have circles on them, or include the letter z somewhere in the title or the author’s name. If you don’t have many books available, try browsing online bookshops. Your children could use your books as well as theirs, with bonus points for putting them back exactly where they found them (adds the alphabetical nerd within).

Book title dominoes is harder, probably not so good for children. You can only build on to the list using the first or last word of a title, although different forms of the same root are allowed, eg animal/animals; farm/farmer/farming. I think for this you’ll have to search beyond what you have at home. See how long you can keep the thread going.

My family and other ANIMALS

ANIMAL FARM

FARMER BOY

BOY; tales of CHILDHOOD

I can’t continue to the left because I’m hard pressed to think of a title that ends in “my” – although perhaps there’s a board book for toddlers called “Mine!” and if there isn’t I’ll write it. But as I’ve discovered in the past it’s fun to see the juxtapositions you get…

Childhood’s end

End of Watch

Watching you

…and there I had to stop because it was surprisingly hard to find books with titles beginning with You or even U (partly because one of my personal rules is it has to be books I’ve either read or would like to read now I’ve discovered them. That Lisa Jewell looks great). An easier version is titles that contain the same word but don’t necessarily match the first or last, or alternating opposites. Archetypal words work well here, eg love, nation, adventure, birth, world…

A ghoulish friend has come up with It’s not the books in your life, it’s the lives in your books. The idea is to replace real death rates with fictional ones on a daily or weekly news bulletin, depending how fast you read, tallying them up as you go and perhaps racing a friend towards a target score. Fortunately in my case Hilary Mantel provides a useful cast list you could use for this while reading The Mirror and the Light. If you decide to play, I don’t recommend choosing this time to bone up on Hamlet….

£17.97

…but a good stack of children’s books should do wonders for morale. 

Finally, over on the TripFiction blog there’s a very cheerful post about books published with predominantly yellow covers. I don’t want to pinch their photos but do drop by and see for yourselves – or make your own. If you can perch an Easter chick or a daffodil on top (if not too late for that where you are) it makes it even prettier.

You know what, soon we’ll all be enjoying ourselves so much we’ll wish lock down would never end! Who needs charades? But I finished my jigsaw and here are the Elmers I said I’d make last time with pride of place on the piano I am no longer playing enough.

 

Stay safe, everyone.

©Jessica Norrie 2020

 

Striking the right note…

I’ve heard there’s this nasty bug going around… No, that’s too trivialising. EVERYONE’S GOING TO DIE! Alarmist, untrue. All things must pass: cliched but almost certainly correct. How are you all, blog followers (unless you’ve dropped out for which I wouldn’t blame you)? I haven’t posted for months, partly due to a second glaucoma operation (fitted in just in time) and partly now due to, well, this bug that’s going around. It’s high time I checked you’re all ok out there, and shared some positives from how I’m passing the locked down time.

This is normally a books and writing blog. Reading does help, it’s true. I’ve finished the latest Philip Pullman – very entertaining, very dark, perhaps a few too many meetings of the Magisterium to hold my interest and I’m not sure he’s quite as secure writing the young woman Lyra as he was writing the child – but as always brilliantly inventive, perceptive, unpatronising, chilling. I needed a complete change after that, so am in the middle of Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women. Just as chilling, in its way. Women are 47% more likely to die in car accidents, because safety trials use male dummies as default. Female pianists are 87% more likely to suffer from RSI due to the size of a standard keyboard. A male investor, faced with a business plan for an  innovative breast pump that outclassed the commonly used standard US models, recoiled in disgust. It’s wittily written, informative, and just as you’re despairing, it has messages of hope. Then when I’m ready to return to fiction, my pile is not for the faint-hearted. Just as well we’re in lockdown.

I finished the 3rd edit of Novel 3 and sent it back to Agent X. Agent X expressed irritation the other day because authors were clamouring along the lines of “you must have loads of time for reading now”. So I won’t nag Agent X, but y’know, if I don’t have a publishing deal by midsummer, I’ll…I’ll…well, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Still with an eye to words and writing, I signed up for the Curtis Brown Creative Weekly Writing Workout, if only because I have absolutely no idea how to follow Novel 3 and some of their ideas may help. I’m playing online Scrabble with old friends and relations – this site is marvellous because you can swap tiles, use outlandish dictionaries no one else has ever heard of, search for bingos and definitions…It’s more about placement and less about your own skill than the traditional board game, and there are no adverts to distract you, with unlimited games, languages and combinations all for $15 a year.

Every day we go for a walk. Sometimes in countryside within walking distance, sometimes through streets. We seem to be noticing more, and valuing it. Here is a garden in the next road, complete with sculptures and cowslips. On our walks I surreptitiously break off cuttings of overhanging plants, as I was all set to order for empty spaces in our garden when what one choirmaster calls “The Great Adjournment” began.

The ex infant teacher in me is lapping up the online ideas posted to help (or pressurise) parents trying to homeschool their children. As soon as we finish the next plastic milk carton, I’m going to make an Elmer. I don’t happen to have a stock of coloured tissue paper, but there’s wrapping paper, old magazines to cut up, my partner’s clothes…I may unearth my neglected mosaics kit, perhaps when I’ve exhausted the puzzle I bought in Kyoto art gallery (those were the days). Simple pleasures: a jigsaw, a good cup of coffee, and Jenni Murray’s rich, reassuring voice on BBC Woman’s Hour.

Credit for the Elmer design goes to Amy Trow from https://www.facebook.com/groups/houseboundwithkids/

The days start with my home made version of yoga and stretches and then I practise my piano, fortuitously delivered just before lockdown. That means it hasn’t had its inaugural tune, but the friend with whom I swap 5 minute recordings of what we’ve managed today hasn’t complained so far. I’m not posting a recording here as I do have some pride, but the regular, extra time will surely result in a better technique and wider repertoire by the time lockdown ends – won’t it?

I’m very sad there’ll be no Wimbledon and no Dartington this year. I’m apprehensive about catching the virus. I’m concerned for people who were vulnerable before any of this even started – refugees, domestic violence victims, the mentally ill and the disabled. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to see my children, friends and Hackney Singers in real life rather than on Zoom, but otherwise the simple life is rather appealing to me. I’m hoping we’ll all reset our values and habits as a result of this episode. Perhaps we’ll value home cooking more, and fashion that lasts, the company of our partners and our own company. Perhaps wildlife will thrive with less polluting traffic, and have you seen how clear the sky is without aircraft? Maybe our government will at last resource our NHS as it deserves and recognise how much low paid and low prestige workers contribute to society. In the West, at least, some of us had become decadent and spoilt. Perhaps as a species we’ll learn some timely lessons.

I don’t underestimate the difficulties, and I do sincerely hope you all come through unscathed. Take care, wash your hands, stay at home, count your blessings, and if you are a key worker of any kind, I particularly thank you and wish you well.

©Jessica Norrie 2020

 

To Be Read in Twenty Twenty

Sometimes I feel I don’t plan my writing career seriously enough. Although Novel 3 has gone to the agent, Novel 4 doesn’t exist yet, even as an idea, a germ of an idea or anything less tangible than that. An email from a list I should have unsubscribed from popped up today with details of a free short story competition and I thought I’d try a quick story based on an amusing episode over Christmas. There’s a 2000 word limit but who says you have to make it that long? I wrote the amusing episode down and filled it out a bit. I was only on 200 words and the amusing episode had been milked for all it was worth, plus I was having qualms about making hay from people who’d shown me nothing but goodwill. Short stories are hard to get right and one reason is wrongly viewing them as something you can dash off in answer to random competitions in an inbox. So sod the short stories (again). I was given several books for Christmas and my just-before-it birthday and if I read enough of other people’s writing craft perhaps I’ll be guided towards the place where Novel 4 lies in wait.

Of these nine books, I’d asked for five. I’ve already finished one, although I read it as slowly and with as much care as I could. Elizabeth Strout is one of my favourite authors. There’s a slow cooking and slow eating movement, and there are mindfulness and internet-free days and reading Elizabeth Strout comes into a similar category, ideal for the limbo time between Christmas and New Year, probably less suited to commuting. She observes ordinary people in an ordinary place doing pretty ordinary things and she makes them extraordinary and universal. Olive, Again is an older Olive Kitteridge, which I’m now rereading to remind myself of her back story and those of other residents of Crosby, Maine. Olive is now on and beyond a second marriage. She has mellowed but her go-to judgement is still “phooey to you”. She’s kept her marbles (which she dreads losing) and she’s keeping her temper better than she was. The endearing, human thing about Olive and those around her is that they’re all still learning how to live and they know it. They’re by no means perfect and neither are their partners and at times they’re deeply intolerant of each other. Olive’s son, Christopher, is horrid to her and this may or may not be because she was a bad mother. Fortunately moments of humour and love redeem all this and Olive has a wonderful capacity for compassion and understanding when you’d least expect it. But even the meanest Strout character has the capacity to recognise their mistakes and try co-existing more helpfully. “It came to him then that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect.”

I also asked for A Single Thread, by Tracy Chevalier. If this is half as good as Girl with a Pearl Earring or The Lady and the Unicorn I’m in for a treat. I shall save it for after my next eye operation in mid February because in the lovely hardback edition the font is a generous size. I’m not sure whether to read Joanna Cannon‘s Breaking and Mending account of life as an NHS junior doctor before or after that – the care I’ve had from the overworked but always patient, expert, and caring staff at Moorfields Hospital has been excellent and although I asked for Cannon’s book it may not give me the sweetest of dreams as I trust myself to their care again. Another request was Edna O’Brien’s Girl, a fictionalised account of the experiences of the Nigerian girls abducted by Boko Haram. I found her last book, The Little Red Chairs, almost impossible to read because what it described was so awful. But I can’t fail to respect an author who at nearly 90 years of age is still confronting injustice and violence against women with such uncompromising bravery, and who still crafts every word with such angry care. On a lighter note, I wanted The Binding by Bridget Collins because I’m a sucker for that sort of cover – I call them Paisley covers and there have been a spate of them recently. (It doesn’t look as though the contents are very light-hearted though, and reader opinion appears divided.) My partner coupled it with Jessie Burton’s newest novel The Confession, which I’m hoping will be as good as her first and better than her second. Another lovely cover anyway!

My ex husband and I still give each other books every Christmas and birthday. He’s a Harper Lee fan, and rightly guessed I wouldn’t yet have got around to Go Set a Watchman. (When my first novel came out it briefly whizzed past this in the Australian bestseller lists, a moment of author glory you must forgive me for harpering on about as there haven’t been many more.) He also gave me The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer, which has a plug on the back from Rose Tremain. Well, if it’s good enough for her…

And finally who wouldn’t want a David Nicholls Sweet Sorrow to look forward to? Bittersweet, poignant, coming of age… it sounds as though it will be much like the others but they’re all so well written and delivered. It will, I hope, be a comfort akin to watching afternoon TV when I was kept home from school as a child with a cold.

Finally, I’ve been an increasingly laid back gardener since reading Richard Mabey’s Weeds last spring. Knowing this, my partner found Wonderful Weeds by Madeline Harley. Next year we’ll (mabey) eat nettle soup and make nettle linctus for the compost, nurture the last remaining bees on dandelion nectar and feast on foraged forest fruits.

So what with operations and all the reading and stewing nettles, Novel 4 may not be along for a while. Phooey to that, as Olive Kitteridge would say.

©Jessica Norrie 2020