writing

A (Very) Tardy T to Z

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Yes I know it’s late. But I hate to leave a thing unfinished, so…

T ‘is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language’ Wikipedia.  And of course, according to the rest of the world it’s what us Mad Dogs and Englishmen drink all the time! Seriously though, tea has a fascinating history and you could do worse than watch the Victoria Wood documentary Victoria’s Empire to appreciate the impact that humble beverage has had on the world. Truly amazing.

U – the first word that occurred to me was underdog. An internet search bought up multiple companies offering to fight for your accident and injury compensation, and a film starring James Belushi (and a dog). I think this says a lot about today’s world…

V – varnish. Apparently this is not just a wood-preserving finish but also the name of an HTTP accelerator. This word also makes me think of the cliche ‘unvarnished truth’, which for some reason I love – but, being a writer, I am therefore forbidden to use it Except Occasionally In Dialogue.

W – woad. Because I love the word and blue is my favourite colour. Woad is a blue dye made from the flowering plant Isatis tinctoria, and has a history stretching back millenia.

X – a silly non-letter that’s normally said as Z. I refuse to discuss it 😉

Y – yak. Sorry, but once it had pinged into my brain, that was it. I had to go and see which area they’re indigenous too, as I wasn’t sure. Himalayan plateau, apparently. What was rather more disturbing was this:

ARE YOU TOUGH ENOUGH?
  • OVER 400KM OF THE MOST BRUTAL MOUNTAIN BIKING TRAILS ON EARTH!
  • NEARLY ALL FORMER COMPETITORS CALLED IT THE TOUGHEST EVENT THEY EVER DID!
  • IT DESTROYS BIKES, DEVOURS BODIES AND BREAKS MIND!
  • IN 4 YEARS ONLY 8 INTERNATIONAL RIDERS HAVE FINISHED WITHOUT ASSISTANCE!
  • OVER 11000M OF CLIMBING, PEAKING AT 5,416M!
  • IT’S MOUNTAIN BIKING IN THE HIMALAYA

    ITS YAK ATTACK!!!

If this sounds like your bag, man (or woman), then I suggest you visit this webiste and sign yourself up immediately…

Z is for zombies. Can’t get away from the bloomin things these days, they’re everywhere – and you could be forgiven for being sick of the sight of them (yes, cliche alert, but this is a blog, not a novel. I must admit to enjoying the zombie mini-series Dead Set, which was set in the Big Brother house. Davina McCall was worryingly authentic. Charlie Higson’s The Enemy  is also brill, and I’m waiting to read the next one; it’s been a long wait for me, as I was lucky enough to read the first one a lot earlier than most mere mortals.

So here we are. We got to Z in the end. And as I have a glut of unused cliches, what can I say but Better Late Than Never, Good Things Come To Those Who Wait, Nothing Ventured – Nothing Gained, Better late than Late, and, of course:

All Good Things Must Come To An End.

Adieu, A to Z Challenge. Or is it only Au Revoir…

K is for Kidnapping Characters

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I was quite tempted to take up Sylvia Ney’s ‘k sound writing challenge’, which I urge you to take a stab at, but since I already had this blog post in mind I stuck with it. I was determined to bring you all over to the Dark Side. To make you walk the Path of Criminality. To make you Dabble in the Depths of Depravity. To-

Ok, that’s quite enough of that. Though I am here to encourage you to kidnap someone. But that someone has to be fictional.

Perhaps you already know a character you want to kidnap – a character who didn’t act in a convincing way (you could have written it better); a character who you wanted to see more of (you knew exactly what happened to them next – why didn’t the author?) or perhaps a character you love so much that you’re keen to give them some new adventures.

So go on – kidnap a character. And now give them either a challenge made up entirely by you, or a challenge from another character’s story. Perhaps even another character in the same book.

How would Lydia Bennet have handled Mr.Darcy?

How would Lyra (Northern Lights/Golden Compass) have dealt with Long John Silver?

The Pevensie children have gone through the back of the wardrobe and met some good-looking vampires…what happens next?

Artemis Fowl is Number Four. Lemony Snicket found the One Ring.

You get the idea. How would these characters react in these situations, or ones you can make up for them? How would that change the outcomes of the original plots?

How would Will Burrows (Tunnels) react if he was in an aeroplane about to crash?
What if the doctors in Sebastian Faulk’s Human Traces had been trapped underground?
How would these characters cope:

Hermione  – with her parents getting divorced
Ron – on discovering one of his brothers was gay
Harry – discovering he had a long lost sister
Miss Havisham – given the chance to travel backwards in time
Christopher Boone (Curious Incident) – breaking his leg? Trapped in a lift?
Robert Langdon – given the chance to travel forwards in time
Rincewind – given a super-power
Henry DeTamble (The TT’s Wife) – winning the lottery? Being trapped in a mine?

Hopefully by now your brain’s already working on one of these. Or one of your own. While I’m not suggesting you should steal a character wholesale (although consider the publicity surrounding Pride, Prejudice and Zombies – perhaps honesty might serve you well!), this kind of shake-up could give you ideas for a best-selling novel of your own.

I’m off to write about what happened to Jack Sparrow when, curious chappie that he is, he prodded open the door of a certain blue police box… 😀

J is also for joy – yay! SHE LIKED IT!

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Yesterday evening I got unexpectedly early feedback on my 1000 word novel excerpt (plus commentary detailing where I am so far, how it’s changed etc).

And Yaaaay! My sci-fi/fantasy-loathing tutor liked it!

‘The strengths of this piece include a definite hook’

‘I loved it’

‘Okay, going to give you a big compliment here: I was actually briefly disappointed not to have more. In a marking situation, that is rare’

Just had to share the joy, really. She gave some really good feedback on potential editing/revising to make it better, so I’ve come away confident that I can improve the beginning and go on to submit a really good 4000 word start for the examinable piece (which is worth 50% of this year’s course mark, so the fate of my Diploma pretty much rests on that).

Woo-hoo!

I for Inspiration, J for joke

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What inspires you?

It’s a big question.

Some of us can rattle on for hours about what inspires us, whether it be the source for our religion, our art, or our parenting style we’re describing – there are plenty of things, it seems, that people might need, or find, inspiration for.

But for some writers – and artists and musicians as well – it can be hard to ‘categorise’ your inspiration. And the whole subject can feel woolly or pretentious. Those of us with basically lower-class roots can still feel a little self-conscious about starting a sentence with ‘what inspires me is…’ or ‘the inspiration for my novel was….’ It’s not always easy to specify what your inspiration was anyway; sometimes it’s a subconscious thing,  or the interaction of several influences that sparks something. Even then it can be a glowing ember, gradually catching the material around it alight, or an instant explosion of sparks – a real eureka moment. Sometimes we forget what our inspiration was – we just find a few notes we jotted down one day and perhaps we spin them, years later, into a coherent story thread or an idea for a piece of art.

I don’t think there are many people, then, who could give one stock answer to the inspiration question. I’m sure that like me, most of them could name a whole host of things. Sometimes it’s music or a lyric; a film; a phrase in someone else’s story; overheard dialogue; a photo; the view fromthe car window; someone else’s experience or point of view; the label on my cardigan; my past, my future, history, a dog, a cat, a tree, my job, blah blah blah.

Sometimes it’s even a Joke.
For ‘Pop’, my story that’s due to be published in the 100 Stories For Queensland book, the inspiration was a situation-comedy-kind-of-joke – a scene with a speech bubble and caption on the front of a birthday card.

The characters were there. The twist was there. Even a snippet of dialogue was there. It was just asking to be turned into a story! And this is often what it feels like. I wish I could remember who it was that described writing and rewriting as being like sculpting – the perfect work of art is inside the rough stone all the time, you just have to chisel the stone away patiently until you’re left with what you were looking for.

Inspiration often feels the same to me. It’s there all the time. But sometimes we’re just not looking – or listening in the right direction.

So what inspires you? Or is it too hard to talk about? 😀

H is for Hundred, as in 100 Stories for Queensland

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Yay! After some hold-ups due to the cyclone that followed Queensland’s flooding, this brilliant anthology to raise money for the Queensland relief effort is nearing publication. And this is what the front cover looks like!

100 Stories for Queensland

So get your wallets, purses, debit cards or credit cards ready for Tuesday 3rd May!

Details of how you can grab yourself a copy will be coming to a blog post near you, soon.

And I’m not just saying it’s brilliant because it contains one of my stories, ‘Pop’.

Honest.

F is for Fun

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And fun is something (contrary to the popular saying) that you can never have enough of.

Last year I went to a conference for Equality & Diversity Named Co-ordinators (because I am one. Not because I snuck in at the back for the free sarnies and fruit salad). There were some general talks & activities, and a choice of four workshops from which we could select two.

For some strange reason (!) I chose Storytelling with the inspirational Marion Leeper and Drama with Chris Manville, who trained and worked as an actor  on stage and screen before training in Early Years.

Both sessions were great, but during Chris’s session he discussed an idea that sounds obvious yet is really very profound – that when we are children we do creative things as and when we want to. We don’t worry about whether we’re any good at them; if we enjoy taking part in the activity, or find pleasure in the end result, we do it. So why is it as adults, we tend to think that it’s silly to do something unless you’re good at it?

How many adults paint or write without the notion – however misplaced it might be! – that they’re at least passably talented at it? How many adults do something creative JUST FOR FUN?

Not very many. So my challenge to you – this week, doing something you have enjoyed, secretly enjoy, or have always fancied having a go at. And if you enjoy it – Carry On Doing It. Just For Fun. Even if your cross-stitch teddy looks like a dog, your story makes no sense, your twisted-leg table looks like an accident in a B&Q power-tool demo or your watercolour inspires someone to remark sympathetically, ‘oh, what a shame you water pot spilled over it!’ No matter. Carry on anyway.

Of course, sometimes a surprise can be fun. That’s why this weekend we’re taking the children to-

Ah, sorry. If I told you I’d have to kill you. 🙂