EXTRACT FROM LIFE-WRITES: Thought & Form

We have to accept that whatever we write about often reflects our own personal philosophy, beliefs or morality. Because we feel strongly about something means that we can inject extra passion into dialogue and it can be a useful device in fiction to have one of your characters expound these ideas; conversely, in non-fiction it can bog down the text and turn it into the dreaded ‘opinion piece’. However we intend to use this device, it is essential that the narrative does not descend into megalomania either on the part of our characters, or on us as the writer.

Fictional characters can engage in polemic dialogue/discussion in order to make a point or set a scene, but confrontational nonfiction is generally only acceptable to an editor when submitted by celebrity writers. Outré social or political statements need to be riveting and convincing because a publisher or editor will rarely take a risk on a new writer dabbling in this field, unless there is some authentic background to support the research – whether fiction or non-fiction. A device I used in my novel, Whittlewood, was to allow one of the characters to make certain pertinent social statements by way of an interview that was being conducted as part of the story-line. This gave room for manoeuvre when the journalist queried or wanted to clarify a point.

To see how people put an opinion across in an interview, study how the points are made in those published in the weekend colour supplements to the broadsheets. The interviewer not only reports on responses to pertinent questions, but also comments on appearance, manner and body language to complete the picture. This is one of the best methods of painting pictures by people using economy of language, especially if trying to make a social or political statement without getting bogged down with description and narrative. A good journalist can convey these images in thumb-nail sketches, while not missing out on the essential point of the interview – a trick that most fiction writers would benefit from studying.

Many ideas begin life as personal memories and, although they are important to us as the individuals who have experienced them, unless we have already attained celebrity status, our personal memories and reflections are of little interest to others – particularly editors and publishers. The original idea might have its roots in fact but it may be more marketable to develop it into the form of a short story, or a poem, which can often provide a new dimension to what started out as a straight forward, real-life experience.

Already, the contents of our Ideas Book should be growing at a rapid rate as we discover new ways of expressing ideas, viewpoints and sentiments. This is why, unlike many writing tutorials, I ask you not to use my ideas but to substitute your own for the different categories of ‘things’ and exercises. I have been drawing on what I know (from experience, background, family, personal interest, reading, researching) and, to be a successful writer, you need to draw on what you know, whether on a conscious or subconscious level.

As we’ve already seen, writing about what we know, doesn’t mean restricting our subject matter. To ‘know’, according to the dictionary is: “To have a clear and certain perception of; to recognise from memory or description, to identify; to be convinced of the truth or reality of; to be acquainted with; to have personal experience of; to be familiar with; to be on intimate terms with; to be aware of; to understand from learning or study.” Which means we can also write about those things we care to acquire knowledge about in order to extend our personal viewpoint or perspective for the purpose of scene-setting.

Make a list of all the things you’d like to know more about in your Ideas Book – and start reading.

Handy Hint:

Always keep an eye open for reference books, particularly dictionaries, in charity shops, car boot and yard sales - especially any relating to your own developing fields of interest. These can be obtained at a fraction of the original cost and hasn’t made a dent in your pocket if you discard them at a later date.

Try This Exercise:

Think of several subjects that you would like to know more about and, using the mind mapping technique described earlier, explore areas of how you can use each of them in your own writing. For example, using Japan as the key-word, we might come up with a poem, article or short story based on a visiting Japanese exhibition. Or a kabuki performance. Or a season of Kurosawa films at the National Film Theatre. Or an object found at a car boot sale. Or watching a Japanese tourist on a visit London. Some degree of study or learning about Japan is, of course, necessary but it doesn’t mean that the piece needs to have an in-depth Japanese setting for us to be able to write about it.

• What subject would you choose?

Life-Writes, published by Moon Books is available from Amazon in paperback or e-book format

LATEST EXTRACT FROM LIFE-WRITES

Lost in Thought

Let’s go back to the famous adage of writing about what you know. Nearly everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical. That is, we draw on our own life experiences and turn them into fact or fiction. Think about it. Everyday we tell somebody a ‘story’ about something that has happened to

ourselves, or a friend, the dog, or a member of the family. We recreate the scene for dramatic effect, to make people laugh, gain sympathy, etc., while minimising or maximising our own personal involvement in the story. We do this for several reasons:

• we want to give a particular slant to the story

• the story needs livening up

• the story shows us in a favourable light

• the story doesn’t show us in a particularly favourable light

• we need to abdicate any responsibility for what happened

• we feel the need to appear more important

• we need to shift the blame

The older we are, the more experience and resources we have to draw on for story-telling. Although the media makes a great fuss of any bright, new talent that comes along, those who’ve passed the Big 4-0 have written a larger number of first novels. Of course, it pays to follow the general guideline of writing about what we know but the older we get the more opportunities we have had for observing the behaviour and life-styles of those different to ourselves over a wider passage of time. Even if we are only involved on the periphery of another way of life, the viewpoint of the uninformed observer can also be used to enhance a story-line.

Which, of course, brings us back to the subject of writing about what we know. Here again, we must look at perspective and viewpoint and, if we want to be pedantic, define the meaning of the word ‘know’ in writer’s jargon. Most writing tutorials insist on us sticking to what we ‘know’ and yes, it does give an aura of credibility to the text, but does this mean we can never step outside the world of which we have first-hand experience?

Let’s look at Janice … and Rosie

Janice has had over twenty year’s nursing experience, specialising in midwifery, but she doesn’t want to restrict her writing to hospital romances and articles for nursing journals – she wants to be a science fiction writer. She’s lost count of the times she’s been told that she should ‘stick to what she knows’ and write about nursing, even though she’s fed up with it. What does she do?

Firstly: Janice already has had a couple of articles published in the professional journals and has now been encouraged to try a slightly different angle with some of the weekly women’s magazines. Even though she’s lost interest in nursing as a fulltime career, it can still provide her with that necessary ‘shot in the arm’ that all writers get from seeing their work in print while she works on her fiction. A modest portfolio of non-fiction successes will support the proposal for her novel when she sends it out, because she will be viewed in a more sympathetic light than an absolute beginner. She wouldn’t be the first freelance writer to subsidise novel writing from a successful career in non-fiction.

Secondly: After a rather intense brain-storming session at her local writers’ group, she came up with the core idea of a medical crew aboard a spaceship being sent to investigate why all the new-born babies of the inter-galactic colonists were mysteriously dying. Since human biology was unlikely to alter much in the sf-future, her personal experience added weight to the reality of the explanations to non-medical characters and the dialogue between the medical team. Once she had gotten over her antipathy  towards the inclusion of medicine in the plot, she became really enthusiastic about the idea.

Science fiction writer Rose Oliver, however, highlights the difficulties involved in writing about an unfamiliar world. “I think, for example, that science fiction writing demands more creativity than other genres because while other writers can draw on the past and present for background, plots etc., sf writers have nothing like this to grab hold of from the future. In my story, ‘Cold Pressure’, published in Jupiter magazine the underwater scene was a humdinger to pull together. My protagonists were in a cave’s air pocket. What would they see? Oops! No light. Enter stage right, phosphorescent plankton. The protagonists needed oxygen. Now where would that come from? Then I discovered some seaweed had oxygen-filled bladders. O.K. Let’s make them bigger and popping. Even better, their popping movement would make the plankton light up and grow. The seaweed would then feed off the dead plankton. Yippee! Got a miniworld. Next came drinking water. In a sea? Impossible. Give up on story. A while later, husband mentioned fresh water could be pressed out of fish. Back to story…”

Obviously Rosie Oliver isn’t writing about a world she knows, and even her characters have to be moulded by the science and society of their time. “In the novel I am rewriting, the heroine has been born and brought up under a much higher gravity than those she lives and works with. She has to be more careful not to break things, forcing her to act in a more deliberate manner. It makes her more precise in both thought and action. This, in turn, means she survives dangerous situations with split second judgement when her colleagues cannot. When we first meet her, she has already left a trail of dead partners who did ‘not make the grade’. And as for the bedroom… She is nicknamed ‘The Ice’ for very good reasons. Putting such an unusual rounded character together from a background detail takes quite a bit of time and brainwork!”

Imagine the extra work necessary to evolve a plot from an innovative premise; build the background world from scratch; and align characters with their unusual world. But as we can see, writing about what we know doesn’t necessarily mean placing restrictions on what we can write about. It means utilising personal knowledge, background, interests and experience and moving it into another dimension, if necessary. As with life in general, we have to understand why the rules are there and what purpose they serve before we set our story in ancient Egypt, feudal Japan or the distant future.

Creative energy fuels creativity, so immerse yourself with creative images and stimulating art forms to give fresh ideas and ignite the creative flame.

Secret Step Five is tapping into whatever can unleash creative energy.

But where do those ideas come from?

Roots & Memories

Most of us would say that we come from very ordinary backgrounds. That is, before we start reminiscing and going over the family history and realise that there’s an awful lot of material there from which to draw. This doesn’t mean sitting down and writing a family saga, but it does offer the opportunity to scatter little cameos throughout our writing based on factual or anecdotal family stories. It also encourages us to follow the tangled skeins and discover new information about our own heritage. Look how popular the television series, Who Do You Think You Are? has become – and what remarkable stories have been revealed about very ordinary people.

For example: when leafing through A Dictionary of English Surnames, I came across the entry for ‘Slaymaker div. A weaver’s reed or shuttle. Always a rare name. Formerly more common but now apparently extinct’. Now Slaymaker was my maternal great-grandmother’s maiden name and our relations still lived on the family farm in the village until the late 1970s when the elder son died in a farming accident and the younger son moved away after the father hung himself in the barn. There’s got to be a ‘cameo’ in there somewhere … along with the grandfather who was awarded the Scouting’s Medal of Merit by Lord Baden Powell … a great aunt who claimed to have been a music-hall entertainer although we all suspected her occupation was something far less respectable! … another great aunt who served as a nurse with Edith Cavell. My maternal grandmother was head cook at a Derbyshire country estate that played host to the then Prince of Wales for a shooting party; she could remember talk about the sinking of the Titanic, and below-stairs gossip of the time that linked the Duke of Clarence with Jack the Ripper long before popular television raised the question.

Most families have a ‘sheep fold’ where all the black sheep have been consigned over the years – and very few of us come from pure Celtic or Anglo-Saxon stock. There’s all sorts of mixes in our blood-lines that account for family feuds that go on for generations. Even if we are an ‘only child’, in our immediate family we have four different strains from each of our grandparents. And what about all those ‘uncles and aunts’ that hover about on the periphery, who are no relation at all and yet have always been considered part of the extended family. My father had one such ‘Uncle Jack’ who’d been a military doctor during the Zulu wars and who had brought home a shield and assegai from Rourke’s Drift, having arrived at the site after the battle to treat the wounded. Then there are the internecine squabbles that drive families apart through lies and deceit – not to mention the tales of missing jewellery after the funeral, and the Birthday Book!

Never under estimate your family connections, dead or alive they can provide rich pickings for many years to come, so long as you treat each one like a little gem and not squander them wantonly. As Jeff Heffron writes in The Writer’s Idea Book: “Use heritage – ethnic and familial – as material for your writing. It’s probably the richest source you possess.” And remember, you don’t have to cast them in their own period; you can move them around in time and space, wherever you choose.

Our roots, or family background, often give a personal insight into why we behave towards certain people in a particular manner. Did someone, or something, have a control or influence over us that was either rewarding, or detrimental to our development? My mother could remember living in fear of getting a clout across the back of the legs from her grandmother’s walking stick, which the old girl used to administer when neither of her parents were looking. She never dared tell them because it wasn’t the done thing to report such matters.

It’s not just family who can provide us with background information and character-cameos for our writing. Every place we visit, every passing stranger is grist for our respective writing mill as we observe, catalogue and file away snippets of ‘life’ to be recycled and examined as and when the need arises. What about the old chap whom you wave to every morning as he sits by his window day after day? You haven’t a clue who he is, or why he sits there, but there’s a short story, article and poem in there if you think about it hard enough.

As we sit in cafes, or wander around the museum, there are dozens of ‘invisible’ people all with a story to tell.

LIFE-WRITES EXTRACT

Character Building

It’s been said that ‘we are what we eat’, and food can also play an important part in fiction writing as a device to give insight into a character’s background and personality. How and what we eat can speak volumes about a person and their lifestyle. If we wish to convey wealth then our characters will consume copious amount of champagne; poverty can be summed up with bread and dripping. Lavish banquets can set the scene in historical fiction, while wartime rationing gives a sense of camaraderie in coupon sharing. Food fads are also a sign of the times and our characters will need to reflect what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’, especially if the fiction is a period piece.

Consider that every part of the world has its own instantly recognisable style of preparing and offering food, and can help set the scene for readers; to jog memories and draw them into your story. How many of these scenes can you ‘see’ just from a brief mention of the food?

• Freshly baked bagels from a Jewish Sunday morning bakery;

• Traditional fish ‘n chips in an English seaside resort;

• Christmas cake baking in grandma’s kitchen;

• A trucker’s breakfast from an old fashioned ‘greasy spoon’;

• Roast lamb in a Greek taverna;

• The distinctive aroma of a Parisian street café;

• The spice market in Istanbul;

• Toffee apples from a visiting fair;

To make them come alive, our characters need these evocative settings and what better device than using food as a backdrop. But don’t do as one budding novelist did. Her male lead was a bit of a ‘foodie’ and whenever he and the heroine got together there was a complete menu offered up at every encounter, complete with a vintage wine! By chapter six I was feeling distinctly queasy and by the end of the book both characters would have weighed in at least 20 stone! Not ‘over-egging the pudding’ is a culinary hint worth remembering in fiction writing.

When writing period pieces, it’s also worth studying books of etiquette for the period, which can provide hours of entertainment and offer all sorts of ideas for domestic incidents that will make the characters more convincing. The newly-wed wife who entertains her in-laws for the first time; a young man’s first formal ball; covering up a servant’s mistake; the ordeal of the ballroom. There are still old books on etiquette to be found through second-hand booksellers that give advice on such

matters. Such as: The Book of Etiquette by Lady Troubridge. First published in 1926 and remained in print until the 6th impression in 1976. Etiquette for Gentlemen and Etiquette for Ladies from Ward

Lock. Not dated so probably a much earlier version than the above. The Gentlemen warns that ‘a man may forgive you for breaking his daughter’s heart, but never for breaking his hunter’s neck!’

Etiquette by Emily Post (1922) for the American version of acceptable manners, which vary slightly from the English and often more draconian. The books also contain valuable information on what to serve and when … ‘Second helpings are not offered at dinner-parties’ … as well as suggested menus for afternoon tea, informal luncheons, batchelor dinners, etc., and more importantly how to eat them.

Food can add splashes of colour to a story. Did you know, for example that although bread, ale, meat and fish were the staple diet of medieval England, fish often came from as far away as

Iceland, and as early as 1480 over 100,000 oranges were being imported? Where did this snippet come from? Food & Feast in Medieval England by Peter Hammond, who is author on several

academic books of the period. Imagine a romantic interlude whereby the heroine tastes her first orange; or meets the stranger who accompanies the Icelandic catch …

Another Sutton title, Memory, Wisdom & Healing: The History of Domestic Plant Medicine by Gabrielle Hatfield, chronicles the historic use of plants by ordinary people for coughs and colds,

cuts and bruises, burns and other everyday ills. The author is an Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens whose research on domestic plant remedies won her the Michaelis-Jena Ratcliff Prize for Folklore. Imagine how this sort of information on domestic plant medicine could enrich a story – past or present.

Similarly, Dutch Egyptologist Lise Manniche gives us An Ancient Egyptian Herbal and Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt. The first title includes the use of plants in the garden, home and kitchen, as well as those used in medicine; the second focuses on the importance of perfumes and cosmetics. Imagine your ancient Egyptian heroine experimenting with a new cosmetic … in just the same way as a 2012 teenager trying out a new Boots’ eye shadow.

While kicking all these ideas around in our head, let’s think for a moment about the run-away foodie success of Joanne Harris’s novel, Chocolat, that reflected the not so subtle conflict between the ‘solemnity of the church’ in provincial France, and a pagan hedonistic delight of chocolate. A whole novel woven around the wicked little cocoa bean!  A writer’s characters can’t live by bread alone!

Handy Hint:

Don’t be afraid of using academic books for source material. You’ll often come across information not generally available to add zest to your story. You’ll also find that academics are more generous with their time and less precious about their copyright than commercial authors. If you require further information or clarification of a particular point, an emeritus professor of history will generally be more than happy to provide the material you require.

Try This Exercise:

In Chapter One we casually mentioned the idea of creating a ‘sports luncheon’ for the ladies while the men are glued to the television, participating in, or off watching the event. Try creating an article or short story featuring a lunch to coincide with a major sporting event – Ryder Cup (golf); Cheltenham Gold Cup (racing); Grand Prix (motor racing); Test Match (cricket); Cup Final (football); Twickenham (rugby) – that you might offer to a women’s magazine or a sporting publication.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The next extract form Life-Writes: Where do writers get their ideas from …

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I have an impressive collection of cookery books – some belonged to my mother and grandmother, others collected by myself over the years. There are regional and foreign cook books; several Mrs Beeton’s from the early and mid 1900s; an ancient copy of the French classic Larousse Gastronomique; farmhouse cookery and wild food from the hedgerows … not to mention a dozen of the basic how-to variety including a complete set of the collectable week-by-week magazine, Supercook, from the early 1970s.

For a long time now, cookery books have been regularly listed high on the bestseller lists. We have recipes from Victorian kitchens, cottage kitchens, summer picnics, afternoon teas, Christmas feasts, seasonal and regional suggestions, foreign food ... cooking for students and singles, catering on a budget ... in fact, you name it and there’s probably a cookery book in print to cater for it. Not to mention the ‘how to write about food’ guides.

And you don’t have to have a cordon bleu diploma or be a ‘kitchen goddess’ to write about food or cookery. There is an extremely large and lucrative market place for the cookery writer and whether you are a blossoming master chef, or simply wanted to share the recipes from your great-grandmother’s handwritten note book, there are lots of opportunities for entering the world of food publishing in the form of books and articles.

The next time you visit any large bookshop, take a look at the number and variety of the cookery books on sale - and make a note of the publishers. Next consider the large number of women’s magazines that feature a cookery page and study the depth of detail that goes into each article. But it doesn’t stop at the women’s magazines … there is often a seasonal recipe included in Home Farmer, Farmer’s Weekly, or game recipes in The Shooting Times. Any of the field sporting magazines would probably be interested in a simple recipe showing what to do with ‘it’ once you’ve caught it! Then there are hundreds of different local recipes for the multitude of regional magazines …

Without going any further for the moment, we can see the tremendous amount of potential outlets in this field of writing, not to mention restaurant and book reviews. If you can realise the potential and see yourself fitting in to this area of creative writing, invest in a couple of how-to books on the subject and add them to your reference shelf. Unfortunately most of the ‘food writing’ books listed on Amazon don’t include basic how-to advice but the following might help: Janet Lawrence was cookery correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and in The Craft of Food & Cookery Writing, she tackles that all-important question of how to identify a winning formula for a cookery book, and explores the possibilities for selling food. Drawing on her experience as an author of numerous cookery books, and an experienced writer of food and cookery articles for many different publications, the guide covers everything the aspiring food and cookery writer needs to know.

The Recipe Writer’s Handbook. Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Janet Baker are experienced food editors who know that writing recipes is a tricky business. To achieve success a recipe must be written with impeccable accuracy and unambiguous clarity and this book offers a wide range of information for both the novice and seasoned cookery writer. Will Write For Food by Dianne Jacob is a complete guide to cook books, blogs and reviews for anyone wanting to be a food writer. It focuses on the American market rather than the UK but has a lot of sound information for those wishing to branch out in this direction.

Like Faust with his madeleines, food can be extremely evocative - as this extract from a nostalgic article from The Countryman shows:

The men have been out in the fields since dawn and will be looking forward to the supper spread out on the kitchen table. Although it’s school tomorrow, we have been allowed to stay up late to take part in the feast. No standing on ceremony here. The scrubbed boards provide the only backdrop for the huge ham waiting for carving, with its thick outer layer of white fat and breadcrumbs. It’s our father’s last job for the day and everyone is quickly served with a generous helping of the succulent, home-cooked meat. Bowls of crisp salad and juicy tomatoes straight from the garden, and buttered new potatoes lifted just that morning, sprinkled with parsley. Hard-boiled eggs from the hen house, and home-made pickles; fresh bread with rich butter and cheese complete the meal …

I can still taste that supper and when I sent a copy of the magazine in which the piece was published to a childhood friend, she immediately remembered those hay-making suppers, which took us both back to being about eight-years old again … We fidget from the hayseeds and dried grass that have crept under our clothes and into our shoes, but we don’t want to move and break the spell…

Articles don’t necessarily have to be about food to be enriched by the subject. I recently read a travel piece that offered some tantalising cameos of the cuisine served aboard a French river cruise ship. There, tucked away in the wealth of detail about people and places were some succulent morsels of the daily fare for the passengers – and resulted in the article being filed away for future reference when a holiday moment occurs! In fact, everywhere we go – both home and abroad – most of us will find a local culinary moment that is worth storing away to share with a readership at some later stage. Such as a wonderful (and colourful) buffet lunch at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; or the fabulous fresh sea-food platter served in a restaurant behind the ramparts at St Malo.  Remember that no one can access the same experiences and memories, and that offers you the opportunity to generate unique responses to those situations.

Regional food can also be dove-tailed to provide endless topics for articles, both regionally and nationally, and in a wide variety of publications. Here we can draw on family background, nostalgia, memories (and not necessarily our own), as I did when writing another Countryman piece on my partner’s memory of cherry picking in the Kent orchards:

We break for a hasty lunch of thick salad sandwiches of fresh-picked tomatoes, crisp lettuce and the sharp tang of spring onions, all pulled straight from the garden earlier that morning. There’s homemade lemonade and ginger beer for us children, while our mother pours a thick brew of tea from her battered cream thermos flask …

Bringing it up to date with my own ‘four penny worth’ …  A quick and economical supper that his mother often made from any leftover fruit was a cherry batter served with ice cream or custard. I recently found a similar recipe in a 1930s edition of The Woman’s Treasury for Home & Garden, discovered at a local car boot sale. “The cherries were placed in a greased baking dish and sprinkled with caster sugar. They were then covered with batter (the kind used for Yorkshire pudding, but sweetened) and baked in the oven for 40 mins.” Just add the ice cream and step back in time …

Here are a few more possibilities to consider that could earn a few bob as mini-features, readers’ letters or handy kitchen hints:

• Local magazines and newspapers are always interested in the wide range of produce on offer at farmer’s markets, particularly when this involves a local family. Include a seasonal recipe featuring an item of produce.

• Recommended mart breakfasts can often find a place in farming publications such as Farmer’s Weekly. There are some amazing little places tucked away in the corners of some of our traditional market halls. Make sure your ‘menu’ is mouth-watering, not swimming in grease!

• Home Farmer magazine ran a series featuring recipes from around the UK – ‘North West Nosebag’ included simple ones from the Lake District and Liverpool; while ‘Emerald Isle Cuisine’ included farm house kitchen ideas not forgetting the Saturday morning must-have – the Irish breakfast or Ulster Fry!

• Simple snacks and inexpensive ideas are always popular – for example: ‘Warming Toast Toppers’ – but do make sure that you include something for everybody. I get quite excited about new ideas but this enthusiasm quickly evaporates because nearly all the recipes contain cheese and I have a serious cheese allergy.

• Growing food with no garden – you would be surprised exactly how much food you can produce on an average sized patio and these ideas could earn prizes from the readers’ letters pages in a wide variety of publications.

And what about those wonderful 1950s home-from-school treats of cheese and potato pie made with butter and half a pint of cream (or full milk); bubble and squeak (or bubble and squelch as it’s called in some areas) and ‘eggy bread’. The ideas might give the food police heart failure but on a cold winter’s day an editor might just think it’s a tastier alternative to beans on toast.

Old fashioned remedies and household hints are also popular but these need to have an unusual or unexpected spin to bring them up to date. For example, it’s a well-known fact that onions are a magnet for bacteria and that they’ve been used in sick rooms to ‘draw’ the germs for generations. We’ve known of cut onions being used in racing kennels to prevent kennel sickness. This was normal operating procedure in 150-dog kennel when there was sickness about and none of the greyhounds ever came down with it.

Remember:  For the writer, everything is food for thought.

NEXT EXTRACT FROM LIFE-WRITES:

STUCK IN THE MUD

Whenever a group of writers get together, sooner or later the subject of writer’s block will be introduced into the equation. In most cases this is an over-milked excuse for not starting or completing a typescript. As I’ve said before, a professional writer can’t afford to employ such a plea for sympathy, although they do recognise the need for regular stimulation to generate ideas.

If an idea isn’t working and there isn’t a dead-line to meet, the professional will leave it alone and do something else – read a book, do some gardening, take the dog for a walk, or attend to the pile of research material that needs filing. Even the most seasoned writer will ‘dry up’ from time to time but they don’t stop working, they turn their attention to something else for a while. Dead-lines are probably the most effective means of beating the dreaded blockage since they ‘concentrate the mind wonderfully’, wrote the late Nancy Smith when she was asked for a comment when I was compiling From An Editor’s Desk.

“If a professional writer is commissioned to write a piece by a specific date, it’s rare for them not to finish it by then. Writer’s block does exist but the main cause is probably due to lack of planning, so far as the novel is concerned, at least. It may be that the story-line isn’t strong enough and needs to be abandoned, or it may be that they should leave it for a while, and start on something else until their enthusiasm is re-kindled.”

Many of the techniques discussed in Life-Writes are designed to push both our conscious and subconscious minds to extremes, even when we’re relaxing. We soon come to realise that some of our best ideas have occurred when we’re away from the computer and not thinking about anything remotely connected with writing. An author of my acquaintance recently admitted that she had an astounding flash of creative insight while she was in the middle of cleaning out the cat’s litter tray!

Hopefully Life-Writes will provide more pleasant ways of clearing any blockage because it illustrates that there are more facets to creative writing than sitting at the key board for hours on end, churning out mere words. By taking a break from writing, and under the right conditions/atmosphere/exercises, we can often achieve far more with an hour’s relaxation than by forcing ourselves to carry on typing.

Although we need to remain focused on the job in hand, there should be plenty of time allowed for the unconscious mind to put in its own four-penny worth. Thinking side-ways means allowing those right-brain influences to come through even if we happen to be in the middle of writing something else, because those new ideas might make the piece even better.

Who said you could only have one good idea at a time?

Next extract from Life-Writes: Life’s like that!

For our next mental exercise we will choose another simple subject that can have many meanings. It would be tempting to go for ‘Love’ because Roget’s Thesaurus has something like 33 entries, while the opposite, ‘Hate’ only has nine! This means we’re going to have to work harder and delve deeper.

Firstly, we need to define what we mean by ‘hate’ because it is a word that is over-used today. We may say we ‘hate spiders’ but do we really? We may feel frightened, repulsed or nauseated by them – but hate? The dictionary definition of hate is: “Extreme dislike or aversion; detestation; to abhor or detest; enmity or ill-will; loathing”, while the on-line Wikipedia has hatred (or hate) as an intense feeling of dislike. “It may occur in a wide variety of contexts, from hatred of inanimate objects or animals, to hatred of oneself or other people, entire groups of people, people in general, existence, or everything.”

The depth of expression is largely dependant on the person making the declaration, or the circumstances under which the declaration is made. A trivial person will ‘hate’ anything and everything that they don’t like, from cabbage to an unimaginative wedding present. Someone else may actively hate racial inequality or social injustice, but on the other side of the coin in living memory we have had Holocaust that resulted from Nazi hatred of the Jews. Of the fictional variety, the character of

Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo gives us an epic tale of hatred and revenge. Very few of us would, if we were completely honest, have ever really experienced the true emotion of hatred but there are nine category listed in the Polti Theory that could be fuelled by hatred:

·         Crime pursued by vengeance

·         Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred

·         Revolt

·         Enmity of kinsmen

·         Murderous adultery

·         Madness

·         Discovery of the dishonour of a loved one

·         Mistaken jealousy

·         Erroneous judgement

Using the same lateral thinking, what, for example, would you consider to be the greatest love story ever written? After careful consideration, my choices (and for totally different reasons) would be a toss-up between Wuthering Heights and The Lord of the Rings. In terms of romantic love, the destructive tide of passion that drives both Catherine and Heathcliffe, renders all other fictional lovers superfluous. The type of love contained within The Lord of the Rings is the bond or spark that exists between the ‘Fellowship’ and is expressed in terms of loyalty and comradeship against over-whelming odds. The actual romantic interlude pales into insignificance beside the heroic deeds of those fighting together against Mordor. On a purely personal level, both novels can still produce that gut-churning, throat-tightening feeling no matter how many times I read them, and yet neither would qualify as ‘love stories’ in the traditional sense of the word.

When we refer to ‘love’ in our own writing, we are going to use it in the context of the storyline to give the work ‘reader appeal’. We can use it in the bitter, destructive context of the television series, Mother Love, which starred Diana Rigg in the title role. Or the desperate variety of Bridget Jones’ Diary. Or the escapism of Shirley Valentine. Love does not necessarily mean ‘romance’ in Mills & Boon mould and although we might couch it in different terms, it still makes the world go round. Love and hate are highly emotive subjects, so handle with care!

Secret Step Three reveals that no matter how mundane and/or familiar a scene, there are countless different angles from which to view it. Emotions are the very life-blood of creative writing whether we are utilising them in fiction, non-fiction or poetry. Described as ‘the various phenomena of the mind’

(including anger, joy, fear, sorrow, etc), we also use them to arouse those emotions in our readers – to make them care about what they read. Emotions are also extremely complex and we can weave a tangled web of intense feeling within our writing to force our readers to suffer along with our characters, article content or poem.

Neither can emotion (or the reason behind it) be cast in stone. We can be angry – but anger is rarely generated by one single action. It has usually been compounded by numerous smaller, insignificant happenings. We need to create these multi-layers in our writing, especially when creating characters for a novel, because without them the finished piece will lack depth. There was a popular method of encouraging lateral thinking in business management training back in the 1970s called ‘mind mapping’. It was an idea-generating technique that breaks down linear thinking – thinking in straight lines – and encourages the mind to work laterally by accessing our ‘zip-files’ in the right-brain. Instead of running ideas in a straightforward top-to-bottom list, start by placing the key word in the centre of the page and circle it. As word-association triggers off other ideas, write them down and circle them, linking them to the key word and each other with connecting lines.

For this exercise we start with the key-word = fear. As the circles move outwards, we can travel a long way from that original key-word. We may find we’ve thrown in things that would never have occurred to us when using lists to flesh out a story or article. Mapping is also a useful technique for developing plots and characters and can be included in your Ideas Book when you are stuck for ideas, or don’t know where to go next.

Whenever you feel the urge to make a list of ideas, use this mapping technique instead. You may find that it can even replace doodling when you’re on the telephone.

Extract from Life-Writes:

Innermost Thoughts

“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does or music.  If you are born knowing them, fine.  If not, learn them.  Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”  

                                                                                                                                  Truman Capote.

It was Marcel Proust who said that the voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes with which to view them.  It was a former tutor of mine, Bob Clay-Egerton, who introduced the concept of the ‘mystical mug’ into his teachings to demonstrate how we ‘see’ things:

Pick up an ordinary drinking mug.  Imagine that the mug is floating in front of you at eye level, the handle standing out to the left.  Imagine now that you are describing exactly what you see to a blind person. What do you actually see?   Assume you have never seen a mug before; it is a strange and wonderful phenomena.  You would have to say you saw a roughly square or rectangular object but perhaps tapering slightly towards the base.  It appears to be convex towards you.  Standing out to the left is a curved projection, joining the main body just below the top and about two thirds of the way down the body.  You describe the colour and decorative pattern if any. Sex?  If it has any it must be male, because of the projection.

The blind person then has the mug described to him by someone seeing it from 90 degrees to the right of the first observer.  Same general shape, colour, texture and pattern but no projection.  It must be similar but not the same.  Sex?  No projection, so it can’t be male.  No hollows, so it can’t be female.  It might, therefore, be neuter. The next description comes from someone viewing the mug directly from above.  The basic shape is now circular, either tubular or cylindrical, and flat at the end.  A single stem projection juts out from the main body as the top of the handle covers the rest from view.  Same colour but no decorative pattern.  It cannot be related to the first or second object at all.  Sex? Projection indicates male, hollow cylinder indicates female; might be hermaphroditic. 

If several people viewing the mug from the top, bottom and four sides (let alone at oblique angles) gave a description, the blind person would assume they were all seeing different objects, some of which may, or may not be related.  If each viewer described what he saw to an outsider who had not seen the mug, none of them would believe the others had only described a different view of the same object.  Someone familiar with a mug might realise what it was, but even then, the description, if it could be evaluated by those who had never seen one, would not convey what it was made from, how it was constructed, fired, decorated, glazed — or even what its purpose was.

We use for this example of selective angles of viewpoint - a simple mug.   Imagine how complicated it would have been to describe, from different angles, an old-fashioned typewriter!   The more complex the subject, the harder it is to imagine its nature and purpose.  Yet many writers (and some tutors) approach writing from a limited standpoint … that black is black, and white is white. Never stopping to think that there might be forty shades of grey in between the various different ways a subject might be viewed or written about.  There are innumerable planes of existence on different levels, in many dimensions of time and space.   Mankind exists, physically, in one dimension … mentally he can penetrate other levels … spiritually he can reach even more … it’s all a matter of perspective.

So … in all aspects of our writing we need to develop the ability to see things from all angles.  The successful writer ‘sees’ everything from every angle and viewpoint, and weighs this in the balance before committing themselves to action.  For the purpose of Life-Writes, we will substitute our readers for the blind person of the exercise.   They can only ‘see’ from our writing what we want them to see.  If our characterisation (in terms of empathy and/or human interest) gives the opposite impression to what we originally intended, then the picture has become distorted and the creative dynamic of the plot or narrative is lost.  And if a writer complains that an editor or competition judges has ‘missed the point’ of a story, then it’s probably because it wasn’t made clear in the first place. 

Ø  Always keep the lesson of the ‘mystical mug’ in mind!