23 Comments on Writing On The Tides, last added: 4/10/2012
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By: malrostan,
on 1/31/2012
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
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A couple of months into myRLF Fellowship at the London College of Fashion, I mentioned to a friend howmuch I was enjoying it. It reminded me of how much I love teaching – the chanceto make a difference in a pupil or student’s life, to share in their learningand help them reach their full potential. Teaching, I declared, was myvocation. She was surprised. To be honest, I surprised myself. Where does mywriting fit into this? Is it just a job; another career I’ve moved into or isit something else entirely? I’ve been thinking about the answer to thisquestion – a lot.
As a bossy little girl,press-ganging my friends into an audience to listen to the poems and stories I’dwritten, I was often told by adults that I would probably grow up to be ateacher. There was certainly never any mention that I might grow up to be awriter. I don’t think that early ‘encouragement’ pushed me towards a teachingcareer, but I did train and work as a teacher for many years. The genuine encouragementcame from a careers advice teacher at the FE college where I was hurtlingtowards a job as a shorthand-typist or, at best, a private secretary. She stoodover me while I filled in the university clearing house forms and – by happy accident– found my vocation as well as a fulfilling and relatively well-paid careerwith great holidays. She was everything a good teacher should be – inspiring,challenging, supportive – and she made a huge impact on my life. I owe her ahuge debt of gratitude, although to my sadness and shame, I no longer rememberher name.
At the risk of soundingconceited, I believe I was a good teacher too. I honed my bossiness into theability to encourage – OK, push – my students to be the best they could be andI hope some of them remember me positively. I remained in education until I was eventuallypromoted to a job for which I was not suited and which I loathed. Budgetmanagement just wasn’t my thing – and I bolted.
By: Ruth Symes,
on 12/12/2011
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
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ByRuth Symes / Megan Rix
Thereare so many lovely gifts for writers out there, from extremely cheap tolavishly expensive. We must be the easiest people to buy for! Here’s my top 12 Christmaslist:
1.Journals and notebooks and paper: You can never have too many or too much, in myopinion, (recycled paper best if poss). A4 books for getting down to someserious writing. Smaller notebooks for stuffing in a handbag or pocket, alongwith a pen, for when inspiration strikes!
When walking on the beach this spring I even found a waterproof notebook that you could use in the rain or in the bath.
2.Yearly Planner Wall-chart: I love being able to put a daily sticker(occasionally two) on my yearly wall-chart to mark off each 1000 words written.The best part is coming to the end year of the year and having a wall-chartcovered in them - very satisfying.
Once upon a time, there were two poets. For the sake of anonymity, we will call one Emily and the other Sylvia. They were both extremely good writers - modern yet accessible, challenging yet mellifluous, edgy yet musical. They each kept a wary professional eye on the other’s successes and failures. Because they were decent human beings, they tried to rejoice at the former and not to rejoice at the latter. Sometimes they managed this better than other times, but still, they tried. For many years their areas of special interest did not overlap, so they did not tend to be up for the same awards or invited to the same festivals. Emily focussed largely on urban subjects; Sylvia’s work was strictly metaphysical. But then – an example of convergent evolution – both Sylvia and Emily became interested in birds. Perhaps they both received literature from the RSPB during the same mailing campaign. Perhaps they both were given bird feeders as Christmas presents by totally unrelated relatives. Whatever the reason, both writers began to produce reams of poems about our feathered friends … … until the inevitable happened. They were both short-listed for the RSPB Bird Poet of the Year Award. On learning that one has been short-listed for anything, a writer’s invariable first thought is, What shall I wear? This is because they are not normally dressy people. Pyjamas, baggy track tops, elderly jeans – these make up the usual uniform of work-from-home writers. The two poets hadn’t a thing in their wardrobes appropriate for such an occasion. So, after thinking, What shall I wear? Emily went out in search of an outfit that would be as beautiful as the subjects of her poems. Something feathery, colourful, suggestive of wings and flight. After thinking, What shall I wear? Sylvia also went out in search of an outfit that would be as beautiful as the subjects of her poems. Something suggestive of flight and wings, colourful, feathery ... On the fateful evening, they arrived at the award ceremony, both a little late, just in time to go onto the stage and be introduced to the audience. They were dressed identically. Sylvia turned to Emily. “Nice dress,” she said. “Thank you,” Emily replied. “So’s yours.” “Symbolic?” asked Sylvia. “Absolutely,” said Emily with a cautious smile. “The old form and content thing.” “Where would we be without metaphor, eh?” “Damn straight.” There was a short pause. Then Emily crooked her arm, inviting Sylvia to link up with her. “The grand entrance?” she murmured. “As if we’d planned it?”
10 Comments on A Common Dilemma - Joan Lennon, last added: 11/22/2011
Do you want to be understood? As an author, I mean, though possibly as a person, too.
I imagine you probably do - as an author, at least, in the sense of wanting to write clearly and cogently and to bring your fictional world alive to your readers. And I think most of us want to feel understood as individuals, at least by our loved ones, at least some of the time.
But on what level do I want my books to be understood? Given all the above... I would still hate it if someone - child or adult - finished one of my books and thought: 'Oh, I see. I get it now. I've sussed her out. I understand what that story was about, what I was supposed to get from it, what the author was trying to say...'
Urrrggghhh. That is not what I want at all.
All this was prompted by an email exchange I had yesterday with a longstanding writer friend - someone who, if anyone does, appreciates my work and has given me lots of good advice and help. She admitted that she had never 'really understood' my first novel, Charity's Child. Good, I said - you weren't meant to. Enjoy it, yes. I hope you found my story interesting and that it perhaps raised a few questions in your mind. But 'understand' it - please God, no!
I don't understand it myself. And I don't think that novels are written to be understood any more than people are born to be understood. Glimpses of comprehension, yes. Sudden insights, and those wonderful moments when a reader points out something about one of your characters that you hadn't seen yourself, or finds a 'theme' in your book that you certainly never intended putting there. That's OK. What's not OK is someone feeling that they've successfully and thoroughly deconstructed you, your work, the whole caboodle. If it were true, it would be somehow demeaning. And I don't believe it ever is true, anyway. If a novel can be deconstructed in that way - if that's all there is to it - then it's not a novel at all but something else.
As a reader, my favourite works of fiction are the ones that leave me satisfied in one sense but, in another, not quite sure. What exactly was going on there? Yes, the plot was tight and well-constructed, the characters were alive and real, the story plausible (if it was meant to be) - the whole thing worked... and yet... I think that's one reason I hated the stuff we did at school. 'What were Hamlet's motives for a, b, c...?' Did Shakespeare know? Are we really meant to know? I'm pretty bad at working out my own motives, let alone anyone else's.
I think, ideally, I would like to be one of those disappearing authors like J. D. Salinger and Harper Lee, who wrote their books and then ducked out of sight. No explanations, and certainly no apologies, if any were needed. I don't like the idea of trying to explain myself as a writer, or of trying to explain my work. (So why am I blogging? Good question, I suppose...)
Answer: I'm a realist, who knows t
When I was about eight, I decided I was going to be a poet when I grew up. This decision was justified with some early publishing success. At age nine, my poem, Jinx’s Shop, was printed in the local newspaper. A fact I am still so proud of that I carry the battered paper around with me whenever I do school talks – even if I do have to explain that yes, human beings had already inhabited the planet as long ago as 1976.
 | | My early publishing success, and creative peak for about 25 years |
In my teenage years, after I’d got bored of getting caught smoking and skiving lessons, I fell in love with poetry again. I immersed myself in ee cummings, John Clare, Louis Macneice and many, many others, believing the poets were the only ones who really understood the truth, and told it. I still wrote it, too. The tortured, unrequited, angst-filled poetry that only a 17-year-old can write. And then I read something in the newspaper that changed everything. Apparently, poets were twenty times more likely to go mad than anyone else. Suddenly, I wasn’t quite so sure of my long-term career plans. I didn’t really like the idea of throwing myself into something that promised me a lifetime of mental instability. So I became a teacher instead. And then a journalist, and then a combination of the two. The poet quietly sloped away without making a fuss. But whatever I did, the writer was always there in the background. Finally, about ten years ago, I left everything else behind and put myself on the line. I was a writer, and damn it, I was going to make a living being one. But that statistic never went away. Even though I wasn’t writing poetry, I was writing – and surely all writing is a form of poetry anyway? Perhaps I wasn’t twenty times more likely to suffer mental illness than everyone else if I was writing full pages at a time rather than rhyming couplets. But I was pretty sure the odds were still fairly strong. And sure enough, over ten years of writing, my mental health has felt a bit ropey at times. Nothing too awful – although there have been some bad times. But I am definitely prone to high levels of anxiety, insecurity, even panic attacks, and I worry about everything. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. A writer buddy and I have this joke about our mental state. We call it Writer’s Brain Tumour. OK, so maybe that doesn’t sound such a great joke. But the idea is that whilst ‘normal’ folk will get a little twinge of a headache and pop a couple of paracetamol and get on with their day without thinking about it, we are instantly consumed with thoughts of bleeds inside our brain. A tiny itch to most people means they’ve brushed a nettle. To us, it can only mean the most dramatic of tropical diseases. Even if we’ve never been anywhere tropical. It is impossible for us to have a minor ailment without escalating it in our minds to catastrophic levels. But it’s not our fault. Making huge leaps of imagination, upping the stakes, thinking of the most unlikely and unusual scenario - this is our day job! This is how our minds need to work in order to do our jobs properly. If we sat down and wrote about a girl who accidentally walked into some nettles and got a rash, no one would be interested. But give her a tropical disease and a mystery person who gave her the disease, and an exciting adventure that she has to g
What was the first story you fell in love with? The one that you insisted grown-ups read for you again and again and again? Or the book that you stayed up with late into the night, snuggled under your bedcovers with a torch?
What book gave you a lightbulb moment of understanding about yourself or the world around you - helped you understand something new about humanity?
And when was the moment you realised you wanted to ‘be’ a writer? When did you start filling a notebook with scribbled thoughts, crazy and wild?
When was the first time you finished writing something, and felt that excited heart-pound because it might actually be quite good?
Do you still have that?
When did it become about daily word counts? When could you more easily retell your latest submission letter than the story itself? All those brown-envelopes...
Where did the romance go?
Let's remember to love the process! You don’t have to write (other than in that compulsive sense of yes I do, I absolutely HAVE to do write!) What I mean is, you do it because you choose to. Because you love it. Remember?
Don’t take your love for writing for granted. Don’t let it slip into drudgery and mechanics.
I met someone completely embittered that he’d nev
Well, yes, of course it is. Those of us who write full time know that. But there are people who question it, sometimes to our faces, and I met one the other day. I managed to stay polite throughout our conversation. Just. But it made me think. What if I had to write a job description? What would I say? How would I describe exactly what I do in terms that 'real world' corporate denizens (yes, that's what he was) would understand? So...let's see
Job description: Self-employed Writer
 I am allowed to choose my own working hours, and since I have no employees at home, to dress how I like when I am working 'at the office'. (This annoys lots of people, and seems to make them jealous.) Working in pyjamas, or in bed to keep warm (as I often do) is somehow seen as not proper work. Interestingly, my new accountant says that the bedroom is a valid working area for a writer. Bless her. The fact that I often work far longer hours than a person in a regular office seems not to count. But anyone self-employed who works at home can choose their own hours. A writer is no different from, say, a graphic designer or a computer game programmmer in that respect. Or, indeed, an architect, a potter, a sculptor, an artist, a researcher, a freelance anything - and a list of other 'work at homers' as long as your arm. Would you question whether those jobs were 'real'? No. Didn't think so. Aims of job: Producing a saleable product The problem lies with the fact that the product is not, in the beginning, physical, although in the end, with the help of agent and publisher it will become so. My primary products are ideas and creativity, which eventually result in a book. In the 'real world', almost every product we buy in the shops starts with a creative idea - sometimes big, sometimes small. Without James Dyson's creative and inventive mind, we would have no bagless vacuum cleaner. Without some nameless genius's creative input, we would have no Cadbury's Fruit and Nut Chocolate. You see where I'm going with this? Everything, yes everything, starts with an idea. Some work, some don't. That's why every writer will have a drawer (or, nowadays, computer folder) full of manuscripts that will never see the light of day. Let's put those under the 'real world' department called Research and Development. Some books take years of R & D, especially if there is history or a specialised subject involved. R & D is an investment of time and energy which may not pay off every time, but which still has to be done in the interests of accuracy and veracity. A writer will hope for a contract before they commit to this, but it doesn't always happen nowadays. Not everything I have written in t
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 2/7/2010
Blog: Beth Kephart Books
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 "A writer must have a place to love and be irritated with. One must experience the local blights, hear the proverbs, endure the radio commercials, through the close study of a place, its people and character, its crops, paranoias, dialects, and failures, we come closer to our own reality... Location is where we start."
— Louise Erdrich, quoted in A Jury of Her Peers, by Elaine Showalter
Outside my window at this hour the smoke billows up from the neighbor's chimney and the pink sky goes sweet blue, toward black.
This is my home, my view, my slice of somewhere, and again and again, it appears in my books.
I write about suburban Philadelphia because as a teen I lived here and as an adult I returned here. I write about Juarez because once, in 2005, I took a trip across the El Paso border that changed my life. I write about a cortijo in southern Spain because I've been there, because once a man tall as royalty took me out into his dusty hectares in an open-to-the-sky jeep and said, Might I introduce you to my fighting bulls? I conjure a secret poet at Radnor High School because I once was one of those, and I story ghosts through a garden much like Chanticleer, down the road, because I spent two years walking through, week after week, and because a stone I had made for my mother rests there, beneath the katsura trees, and because I don't know where I'd be without seeds and all they beget.
I write where I've been, who I've been, what feels like mine. I have this place that I love. I begin here.
 I've started on something new, very different, perhaps risky. I remember how whirligig beginnings are. You could be anywhere, but you are not there. You can almost see there, but you cannot write it. An idea is an idea: It's big. A story lies in the details; they are small, and they take time. Turn around it. Hammer it in. Hope that it coheres.
Just a quick rendering for a quick job done quickly. Not much detail but it got the job done!
This is for Denver weekly newspaper Westword. Each year they put out a "Best of" edition and I got to illustrate the sports section. I did several illustrations but each section gets a lead-in page with the artist's name and personal illustration. This is mine. I went for old school sports. Something a little different. I may have gone overboard with the textures but I wanted this first illo busy:
Like Mr. Allan Lorde, I too designed a playing cards for Gigposters' Deck #3. This was a fun project and I am glad the way this turned out. Simple but fun:
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Often I start my story journey with one or more characters, but not always. It might be a scene that suggests a question..such as 'what happened here? or what happens next?
Sometimes the ideas that come to mind are anything but calm.
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23 Comments on Writing On The Tides, last added: 4/10/2012
With the snow outside my window and a grey sky gathering for a second snowfall, your first photo is an invitation to somewhere warm.
Though a holiday with too much time to think can also be dangerous, can't it?
Definitely, Penny. Although the sun is tempting, the imagination can run riot!