Once Upon a Time in a Far Off Land….

by Jennifer Young

Life on a desert island...you'll need a good book.
Photo by Indi Samarajiva (Wikimedia Commons)

The world is full of books. Too full, I sometimes think. And as I get older, rather than having more time to read them it seems that there are just more and more for me to read. The net result is that either the books I read get wiped from my memory so that I really can’t recall enough of them to claim I have read them (so sorry, Johns le Carre, Wyndham and Steinbeck, among others) or else the ones I meant to read get pushed so far down the list that I’ll probably never get to them.

 To address this, I’ve got a plan: I alternate new books with classics. So far I think the classics pile has been as mixed as the new pile – some lollipops (I’ll definitely revisit the extraordinarily modern plot of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) and some lemons (though I would recommend Moby Dick as a practical guide for insomniacs).  Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Robinson Crusoe.

I still don’t know what to make of it. If I hadn’t been so set on my plan I’d never have picked it up, let alone persevered through the heavy opening sections. One thing it doesn’t do is get straight to the action. Check that one off in your writers’ circle. “Brilliant plot, Daniel, but perhaps you should get to the interesting stuff a little more quickly?”

Then there are the characters. I won’t criticise his characterisation (I’m in a position of weakness) but it might have helped if any other than Crusoe and (eventually) Friday had names. It’s difficult to distinguish one sailor from another, the first of the Spaniards from the second, Crusoe’s patron from his benefactor and, indeed, any of the other old men and their sons who between them maintain his wealth for him as he spends the years marooned on his famous desert island.

Crusoe and Friday
(public domain: from Wikimedia Commons)

And another problem. Crusoe alone on the island for so many years (Friday turns up so far into the book that he’s more like a week on Friday) has no-one to talk to and no-one to talk to means a distinct absence of dialogue. Worse: it means dense pages of text and more than a little repetition as successful wheat crop follows successful wheat crop and, frankly, nothing happens. Until, writes Defoe, “I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore.”  

I was surprised too, even though I knew it would come. In my mind I ran with Robinson to hide in the woods, keeping watch while he set up his muskets to defend whatever he had against all comers. That’s why it’s a classic. Because for all its dated language and ponderous prose, for all the fact that it could do with a very heavy editor’s cut, it made me draw in my breath in that noooo! moment we all aspire to. Okay, it took pretty much half the book: but in the end it hooked me.

It would never be published today, of course – not just because of its slow pace, its over-heavy moralising on the superiority of the Christian over the savage and its unconscious but obvious racism (it is, after all, a book from the age of slavery). And if you do pick it up, don’t expect it to be a rip-roaring read.  But it illustrates something that’s always worth repeating: if you can make your readers sit up suddenly and straight, spilling their glass of wine into their box of chocolates…you’re a writer.

Jacks and Jills of all trades by Mary Smith

This blog post was supposed to be on The Next Big Thing, which is doing the round of writers’ blogs. I was tagged by Anne Stenhouse after she had blogged about her next big thing. This put me in a bit of a quandary as I am so far away from my next big thing being written, never mind published, no one would remember it when the time came. Anne thought it would be okay to blog about my current big thing although it’s a non-fiction book and not a novel.
The other problem was not being able to find three more writers to tag in turn. You’d think it would be easy, wouldn’t you? Not least because I know several writers who have new work coming out soon. However, they’d either already taken part or they would like to but don’t have a blog.
The idea behind it is to generate publicity for new work and each person who blogs about their next big thing links back to the person who tagged them. As I am not going to blog about my far distant next big thing I thought I should at least provide a link to Anne’s blog as she was kind enough to give me the chance for a bit of promotion for my book.
Anne Stenhouse’s next big thing is a historical romance called Mariah’s Marriage, published by MuseitUp. Her one sentence synopsis reads: “When Mariah is knocked over by a pig her world of service to education collides with the privileged world of aristocrat, Tobias, and nothing is the same thereafter.”  Sounds very intriguing. It comes out on May 3rd.
Here is the link to Anne’s Next Big Thing blog post where you can read more about Mariah’s Marriage.  What you won’t see there is the additional exciting news that it has been shortlisted for the RNA’s Joan Hessayon New Writers' Scheme Award and Anne will be off to the RNA’s summer party where the awards are announced.
You are probably wondering about the title of this post and what it has to do with anything I’ve written so far. Well, I first knew Anne Stenhouse as a playwright – and now she is also a novelist. It got me thinking about how many of us try our hands at different forms of writing.
I had to introduce myself recently at a writing course I was teaching with Margaret Elphinstone and felt I was a bit of a Jack (or Jill) of all trades. I also wasn’t sure how to introduce myself. Am I a journalist who also writes books? Am I a writer who also works as a journalist? As a writer do I class myself as a novelist or a non-fiction writer – or a poet?
Jenny Harper is now writing novels but has been a non-fiction writer, a journalist and an editor. Gill Stewart writes novellas for People’s Fried (as Gillian Villiers) but also writes full length contemporary romance and is working on young adult fiction. It is not only women writers who mix and match. Michael Malone is a poet who also writes crime novels and has had a non-fiction book published recently.
What makes us decide to have a go at a different form of writing? Does it stem from being readers of all kinds of writing? Or, is it just that as we practice the art and craft of putting words on the page we enjoy moulding those words into different forms? What do others think? Do some writers stick to one form above all others?

Orwell's rules by Jenny Harper

George Orwell

I've said before that I find editing easier than writing. I love cutting out the superfluous scenes (even though it pains me to think about all the hours I've wasted writing them) and polishing my efforts for a crisp, clean finish.

Recently, I've found George Orwell's rules extremely helpful, and I think all writers should think about them. Going through my own work, I've found if I follow these rules, I really do get that extra sparkle.

If you don't know them, here they are:

1.  Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. This one forces you to really think about bringing something as fresh as a daisy to your writing. Oops, sorry, that's a bit of a cliché, isn't it? Seen that one before. What could I use instead? As fresh as a newly-laundered handkerchief? As fresh as ... well, you fill in the blank.

2.            Never use a long word where a short one will do. I'm a bit of a culprit about this. Going back through my work, I can usually find quite a few places where I can sound less pompous!

3.            If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. This is about over-indulging in those descriptions. Briefer is usually better, especially when it comes to adjectives.

4.            Never use the passive where you can use the active. This gives much more immediacy to your writing. Not 'the ball was kicked into touch', but 'he felt the ball slap hard against his foot. The kick went exactly where he aimed it.'

5.          Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. I used to work in the corporate world, where I frequently found the story I had written in what I'd hoped was a clear, interesting way came back from the managers who had to approve it littered with jargon. I think they thought it made them sound more important, but they seldom thought about the poor people down the line who had to wade through this stuff and almost certainly wouldn't have understood it. Certainly, they wouldn't have found it engaging. Simple is best.

That's it really. Oh - he had one more:

6.             Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Go for it!

CHANGE OF A DRESS

So, we're going to write our story - be that short fiction or long. We know our heroine's (and our hero's, of course, but I'm talking dresses here) character and we've written a little biog about her education and family. We know where she grew up and how it affected her. We know who her friends are. We know her problem at the start of our story and how she is going to resolve it, with and without help from others. We might even know how she takes her coffee and if she loves chocolate or not. But what does she wear? I have just read a novel in which - not once - did I read a description of how the heroine was dressed. It was, I have to say, a very good book - lots of emotion, lots to make me think. By the time I'd finished the book I knew what the heroine's house was like and all the things in it. I knew how the grass felt against her legs as she walked through the meadow. But I didn't have a clue how she was dressed. I'm guessing she wore a dress in the bit where she walked through the long grass in the meadow. Or maybe shorts. I would have liked to have known actually. Clothes can immediately give us an idea of the period in which a book is set. Although not always. I've written stories around fancy dress parties - twist in the tale ones where I fooled (or tried to) my reader into thinking they were back in the Regency era or whatever. There are fiction genres in which clothes do play a big part - mostly the taking off of same by the hero. Slinky satins and slippery silk. The word 'cashmere' conjours up luxury and softness and warmth in our minds, does it not? So, why am I going all girlie with this post? Well, you see, in Waterstones my book happens to be placed between a novel of Nancy Mitford's and Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind'. This is entirely because I had the good sense (foresight?) to marry a man with the surname Mitchelmore. But a happy accident nonetheless. And it was that placing that got me thinking about clothes. Think Mitford sisters and we all think class and elegance and dresses. Think Gone with the Wind and I bet we can all see Scarlett O'Hara in fancy frocks. I took a look through some of my own work to see how I had 'dressed' my heroine's - or if I did at all; if I'd left it to my readers' imaginations to clothe the heroine for her/himself. I seem to have a penchant for green in all its myriad shades. Chartreuse seems to be a favourite, but it seems I am also fond of opal and lime. I haven't a clue why because it is a colour I rarely ware. Perverse or what? I'm wondering, then, if 'dressing' our heroines is something we all do. If we think as carefully about the dressed image of our heroines as we do about her character and her story. So, to get you thinking, I leave you with a picture that needs no introduction really....:)

PLAYING THE GAME by Gill Stewart

As an avid watcher (but less avid participator) in sport, it struck me over the weekend how many similarities there are in a good game or competition and a good novel.  I was following the Women’s World Curling Championships in Riga (obscure, I know, but younger son is a keen curler so I end up watching an awful lot of curling).  The competition was won by the Scottish rink, skipped by young and very photogenic Eve Muirhead – see picture.

At the beginning of the completion, the Scottish girls were doing well – winning 9 out of 10 ‘round robin’ matches.  The only match they lost was against Sweden.  So interest was running along nicely, ‘my’ team were doing well and all looked good for the finals. 

Then Scotland lost the play off (also against Sweden).  This meant they had to play Canada.  If they lost to Canada they wouldn’t get Gold or Silver, might not even get Bronze.  All through the Canada game they were losing, tension was high – and then they won it on the last stone.  Jubiliation! 

Now to play Sweden again, this time for the Gold or Silver medal.  Surely, having lost to Sweden, twice, they had no hope?  Or was it going to be 3^rd time lucky?  It was – a win again on the last stone!

Now all that might not be of much interest to the non-curlers or non-sports-enthusiasts among you, but it was the way the event progressed that made it so fascinating.  The generally positive start, the set back, the almost-failure, then the winning against apparently insuperable odds.  Doesn’t that sound like the plot of a novel that draws you in, infuriates you, but has you engaged to the last page?

Unsurprisingly, I have more than once had the idea to set a novel against a sporting backdrop, with the hero and heroine not necessarily being the sports stars but the events of a tournament – say Wimbledon – being the setting and providing a parallel story.  As I’ve said before, I need any help I can get to up the emotion in my writing.  I haven’t done anything with this idea so far, but if Andy Murray wins Wimbledon this year, with the guaranteed highs and lows along the way, maybe that will be the time?

Andy Murray showing emotion

Breaking Down Stereotypes: A Hymn to Tim

By Jennifer Young



Need a hero? (Photo by Michelle Ward)

It was my fellow blogger Mary who first got me thinking with her post on ‘What’s in a Name?’ (4 February).  Then it was Jenny, in a comment on her own post: “Will Self believes that the name Tim is a serious handicap in life, apparently. Tim the nightclub bouncer? Somehow, it doesn't seem to work!”

This is the reason for a spontaneous and totally appropriate burst of public laughter from my good self the other week. I was standing watching a school rugby match, a mud-stained slugfest between 30 boys-just-turned-men on a miserable morning. As one youth cannoned into another sending him to earth so hard that I’ll swear the ground shook, a voice from the sidelines cried out “Great tackle, Tim!” And I laughed.

Once I had recovered from the scowls around me and clapped politely (because it was indeed an excellent tackle), I took stock. Tim, on closer inspection, turned out not to look like a man handicapped by a girly moniker: indeed, in 15 years or so, given a brush of stubble and a line or two on his face to hint at an interesting past, I’d say he’s a certain graduate from half back to heartbreaker. 

Rugby-playing Tims aren’t news, as it happens. Currently Scotland regularly unleash their own man-mountain, Tim Visser, on terrified opposition. And yet, in the face of the evidence in front of me, I know Jenny and Will Self to be right. A rugby player called Tim, your reader will say, shaking her (or his) head? Really?

No-one wants a mousy heroine

At this point I should confess to something of a bee in my bonnet about stereotypes. I’ve never quite recovered from a long-ago critique in which I was told that my novel would never be published because my heroine wasn’t feisty and my hero insufficiently manly. The fact that the plot required this quiet and unassuming pair to go through hell for one another and come out of it as a couple who each achieved fantastic and fearless things for the sake of the other was irrelevant. They may have ended up as heroic – but they didn’t start that way.

I know that readers are looking for a certain something and that’s what writers have to give them, but I don’t believe that those readers have to be – or want to be – spoon-fed. Out here in the real world there aren’t enough heroes to go round: people have to fall in love with Mr I-Suppose-He’ll-Do – and, astonishingly enough, they make it into a happy ever after.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we reject the stereotypes altogether: after all you can argue that a stereotype is what underpins genre. But I do think we can nibble away at the edges and at least make our stereotypes interesting.

So I’m going to set you a challenge. Next time you’re scratching around for a name for your muscle-bound hunk of heartbreaker, think of me – and call him Tim.

 

Open To Interpretation by Mary Smith

A few incidents recently have got me thinking about how the words we write are understood (or misunderstood) by others. It has brought home to me that, once our poems, stories or novels are out there in the public domain, we cannot control how our readers interpret what we have written.

One example is from a review of my poetry collection – a very lovely, pleasing review in fact. However, the reviewer commented on a poem which he said was about the gradual decline of ‘her hospitalised father’ which puzzled me as I have not written about my father being in hospital. The poem in question is called Remembering Papa. I think it is possibly a peculiarly Scottish thing to call our maternal grandfather Papa: pronounced with equal emphasis on each syllable – unlike the French for father with its emphasis on the first syllable.

Should I have called it Remembering Grandpa to avoid any confusion? But, he was my Papa and never known as Grandpa. Besides, the reviewer was not confused; sure I was writing about my father. The poem is about not wanting to remember the person I saw in the hospital bed and goes on to remember happy times spent as a child with my Papa. My, and I suspect most people’s, relationships with their father and grandfather are quite different. Does it make a difference to people’s understanding of the poem if they think I am writing about my father rather than my grandfather? Does it matter – as long as the poem is read with enjoyment?

I attended Hidden East, an event in Glasgow organised by conFAB which provided a launch platform for my book Drunk Chickens and Burnt Macaroni: Real Stories of Afghan Women and poet Bashabi Fraser’s Ragas and Reels. Three poets, A.C. Clarke, Sheila Templeton and Tracey Patrick were commissioned to write a joint poem for the event. They chose to write their poem based on Al Khatoon, a legendary character from Hazara Jat in Central Afghanistan who features in my book. She’s a sort of siren-figure, very beautiful with long black hair who lures men then smothers them with her enormous breasts – oh, and her feet point backwards.

It is an excellent poem, which I hope they will publish so others can read it. Their portrayal of Al Khatoon was of a powerful feminist figure, which surprised me but I could see how they came to interpret her in this way from what I’d written. When I sent the poem to friends in Afghanistan they were stunned and, although they enjoyed the poem, said this Al Khatoon bore no resemblance to what they knew of her. It seems in some places she has evil intent against women during the time of labour and delivery – not a very sisterly characteristic! Three Scottish poets have interpreted my account, which it seems tells only part of the story, of a legendary figure and bemused my Afghan friends. Does it matter? Will people reading it here change an aspect of Afghan culture? Perhaps if they change the name from Al Khatoon they would have created an entirely new legend.

Finally, while I was doing a reading this week I was heckled by a member of the audience. I have often been asked searching, sometimes difficult to answer questions, but this guy was constantly interrupting with observations. He told me about the fields of poppies grown in Afghanistan, flatly refusing to believe there were none in the area in which I worked. When the predominantly female audience rocked with laughter about the women in my health class in Afghanistan giggling and blowing up condoms as though they were balloons he told me it was wrong to write a book which made fun of people, depicting them as backward and ignorant.

I was cross, though remained calm (though I rather felt like slapping him) and said I took exception to such remarks as nowhere in the book (which he hasn’t read) do I make disparaging comments or say the people about whom I am writing are backward. I wrote the book as much as anything to provide an insight into ordinary every-day life in Afghanistan, to try to dispel some of the myths about women’s lives fed to us by the media. The laughter of the women in the audience was a sign of recognition of shared experiences, not laughter at the women’s expense. They could feel the threads that link us together – perhaps it is a gender thing?

Maybe my heckler didn’t like having his ‘knowledge’ of Afghanistan challenged. For him, it is a lawless country of warlords, Kalashnikovs, opium – and women knowing their place.

Has anyone else experienced their writing being interpreted in a way they didn’t expect?