Nastasya Parker

Minding Our Language

This Week’s Bit of String: Favourite swears

When I was thirteen and my youngest sister eight, she asked me, her eyes alight and eager, ‘What’s your favourite swear? Is it the f…u…c…k one?’

Even during a slightly rebellious phase, I didn’t swear for fun. I tend to swear when events leave me little recourse. Like when an amazing piece doesn’t make a competition longlist.

Back when I fielded my sister’s question, NYPD Blue was newish on the air. Blazing TV Guide editorials argued whether its use of the f-word was an appropriate reflection of the setting, or a symptom of the nation’s damnation. One letter compared the language on NYPD Blue to the moment in Gone With the Wind when Rhett Butler used the d-word.

Now GWTW is controversial for glossing over slavery, normalising marital rape, and glorifying the roots of the KKK. Not because a protagonist commented that he didn’t ‘give a damn.’ To me, this discloses a long habit of obsessing over language when the actual subject matter should be the issue.

A Tale of Two Comedians

Fast forward about 25 years (sheesh, 25 years!) and comedian Samantha Bee uses the c-word on cable TV. Is this just the progression of opening language barriers, from d- to f- to c-words? Is this one truly more grievous than other oft-used derogatory names for women that reduce us to a single body part?

Many have highlighted false equivalencies between this incident and Roseanne Barr’s recent racist tweet–the one about Valerie Jarrett, as there seem to be a few to choose from. It’s quite partisan. For every Roseanne I name, you can accuse a Samantha Bee. For every time I want to call out Ted Nugent or Scott Biao, right wingers may cite a rapper or pop star who bad-mouthed conservatives.

Large letters spelling out Woman, above a label: The Word. — The Word, Stroud: Right up one of our main streets, it changes regularly. Last week it was fuck. Before that it was suck. I’m not sure the significance of the teapots, either.

Trump—Weinstein. Deplorable—Libtard. It’s like tennis, but (to borrow a phrase from Four Weddings and a Funeral) with much smaller balls.

Let’s call the whole thing off. We can’t call it even, because having someone who says a bad word on one side isn’t the same as having a number of white supremacists on the other. Still, can’t we admit human beings are prone to loss of temper and excesses of vulgarity? It’s not about saying there are ‘good people on both sides,’ but we need to remember there are, in fact, people on both sides and stop reducing political opponents to animals or lady parts. We need to weigh the substance of those people’s message rather than the language it’s couched in.

What’s in a [Rude] Name

It’s perhaps unexpected, a writer’s blog suggesting we ignore words. Of course we spend a lot of time finding the exact right ones, and I get quite dorky about which are correct and preferable.

For example, I checked out some of these terms on EtymOnline (oh, my poor browser history…) In the 1300s, the c-word was a medical term for female anatomy, thought to come from pre-Latin words meaning hollow place, slit, or sheath. Not very flattering, but I’m unconvinced it’s more insulting than less reviled terms.

What about the relatively uncensored word whore, you ask? Its roots are early German, meaning ‘one who desires.’ This jolted me when I read it, because I’m working on a novel about Eve. Part of her curse was to desire her husband, who would then have dominion over her. Eve is basically characterised in the Bible as One Who Desires, and as Western religion assumes all women inherit Eve’s curse, all women are whores. How convenient.

It gets worse, too. The word seems to have sharpened its meaning by taking in a later German masculine term for adultery, and then a middle English word for filth. If all that injustice makes you want to swear, I won’t judge.

These aren’t the only words people haven’t delved fully into. Idiot used to be a disparaging clinical term for the mentally challenged, and berk is short for the Cockney rhyming slang equating to the c-word itself—yet it’s used in completely different contexts, even popping up in the Harry Potter series.

Unless we all want to look properly at the words we use, there’s not much point assigning a random few so much importance in the media.

When No Other Word Will Do

I turned to Twitter to see if other writers might disagree and assign swears more power than I do. But like me, whether for or against using them, no one had feelings so pervasive they wished to convert anyone else. Here are a few answers:

If I believe the character would swear, the character swears. I like to think my characters dictate their language to me.—historian, writer and actor Christine Caccipuoti

Painted on a wall beneath tall office buildings — Deeds not Words, at the Bearpit in Bristol

Some characters would sound false (to me!) if they said ‘oh dear’ or ‘oh god’ or anything else… Who decided these words were bad anyway? —Jennifer Riddalls, copywriter and Writers Forum Flash Fiction winner 2017

What comes out of your mouth reveals what’s inside your heart / mind / soul, but I’m currently writing a story in which characters swear (a bit) because of who they are and the extremity of the situations.—Fantasy writer Marcus Bines, published in the Shadows of the Sea anthology

Even if I didn’t write YA I wouldn’t swear in my writing. I think it’s unnecessary but doesn’t bother me to read swear words in books. There are plenty of synonyms that work just fine—Kelsey Atkins, author of the YA fantasy series Finding the Light

I try to choose stronger words and rely on physical descriptions and reactions to convey strong emotions. —Literary fiction writer and Insecure Writers’ Supporter George R McNeese

I go by the same rule as I do for similes and metaphors. Once a page, tops, and only if you must. personally I find similes and metaphors far more offensive than a good swear…! —short story phenomenon and photographer Jason Jackson

In my current piece on William Morris in Iceland, the decision was already made for me: Morris was well known for his temper and swearing. —Laurie Garrison, Founder of the vital Women Writers School

I enjoy a well-timed swear myself. It’s part of the joy of language. —Alex Clark, Writers HQ rep and Cheltenham Flashers Club founder

Sometimes it’s more like a spoken punctuation rather than actual words —scifi and fantasy writer Mark Huntley-James

All words are permitted in proper context. Trust your reader.—Stephen Hines

Words are words and they are there to be used. However, on the page they can be a distraction and too many can ruin a good piece of writing. So I am selective but I use ALL of them.–Stephen Tuffin, flash fiction author and writing lecturer who’s been known to give students a class on ‘Choosing Your Fucks Carefully.’

I respect writers who try to use words other than curses. It sometimes feels like a cheat, doesn’t it, to use a single, often body function-related word to encompass a grave situation? On the other hand, there are a lot of characters who will swear. And to all of us, the characters are paramount, not the language they happen to use.

In the end, words are just tools to chisel our characters. They’re the clothes we dress a story in to send it out to the world. We mustn’t get distracted by them. Let’s mind immigrant children alone in detention centres, plastics going in our oceans, racism in our institutions, intolerance in universities, hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, social anxiety in our kids, and guns going into our schools. Let’s mind all that, and let the language go where it must.

Making Hay

This Week’s Bit of String: Do the books make the town or does the town make the books?

Murder and Mayhem bookshop, with a hound painted on the front. — Check out this crime story bookshop!

The bus wound past hills dripping buttercups into golden meadow pools at their feet, and past chomping sheep, unabashedly sheeplike and not the least bit sheepish. I disembarked beneath the castle ruins in Hay-on-Wye. As I made my way through busy, merry little streets, I saw at least one bookshop on each.

I camped on the other side of the Wye, about a mile from the festival site, so for each event I crossed through town. Guitar players lounged outside cafes and pubs, the queue for the sheep’s milk ice cream parlour outlined the market square,

Stand offering notebooks with covers salvaged from old hardbacks and record albums. — Rebound Books. I’d take them all!

and a man with his inebriated accomplice tried to sell anti-religion t-shirts to a polite elderly couple. The local Big Issue seller wore a scuba diving suit in the rain, and sheep-shagging costume in the hot sun.

Houses on the Brecon Road to the festival got in on the game, hiring vending trucks or just selling packages of biscuits and copies of the Guardian. One stand offered wonderful notebooks made from vintage hardcovers. A church set up a facepainting marquee and chatted to visitors about their stories, sending them off with free books about faith. Another stand offered poems and prints thereof for sale.

Flowers in one of the festival courtyards — At the festival

The festival itself was a network of baize walkways and shining white marquees around courtyards of sun loungers and fairy lights.

With all this scenery to take in, I barely wrote a word during my weekend away. It’s tricky to balance time spent absorbing writing material while actually striving to write it down…or is that just me?

Books for Activists, Activists for Books

The first talk I attended was about finance. Partly to challenge myself, but mostly because Marcus Brigstocke co-hosted it. His frank, laid-back humour was evident as he interviewed a professor on the financial industry. David Pitt-Watson reminded us the financial sector uses our money, and we should make our wishes known to it. He suggests write to pension funds and other companies we may be invested in, to insist our money is in ethical causes, such as green energy.

The Poetry Bookshop — I bought The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah here from his former agent who knows him well.

Late that evening I came to Benjamin Zephaniah’s talk about his new autobiography. He exuded utter delight, dreadlocks swishing as he gifted us his rhymes. He says he created many of his poems out of anger, at racism and poverty. But he didn’t seem angry in the slightest. Maybe just for that night, because he was there at Hay with an enormous, rightly appreciative audience. Or maybe creating those poems helped dispel the anger somewhat while still adding fuel to his activism.

Hearing Voices

After a stormy night, I hiked various paths between England and Wales, coming to shelter from the downpour under a town centre marquee where a group of men sang sea shanties. Back at the festival in the afternoon, I got the most delicious smoothie of my life and attended an Ian McEwan interview. On getting story ideas, Mr. McEwan says, ‘I’ll hear an inner voice, and like the cadence of it, and want to find out who’s speaking.’

Dresses and flowers made of book pages and sheet music — A charity shop reflects the bookish theme with its page art.

I wonder if he ever finds the voices are giving a brief diatribe or vignette rather than a full story. That happens to me sometimes. Do I need to be more intrepid in tracking them?

Still, the incredibly successful novelist’s passion for finding out about characters was reflected, somewhat askew, in Jim Broadbent’s interview later. Intriguingly, the actor devised a plot for a graphic novel called Dull Margaret, based on a painting by Bruegel the Elder. This was recently brought to life by Dix, an illustrator for the Guardian. I was struck by Mr. Broadbent’s relaxed approach to story-writing, paraphrased here:

Big screen surrounded by cutouts of leaves and plants in an event marquee. — One of the busy festival venues

Audience member: So is the need for love, is that the message of the book?
Jim Broadbent: Message? Yes, I suppose it might be. It’s just the story, you know.
Another Audience member: Graphic novels are popular with young adults. Are they your target audience, or who is the ideal reader you had in mind?
Jim Broadbent: (Smiling) Well, me. I was ready to read it.

He was obviously very taken with his character, a mistreated woman who tries to get her own back. If only that passion for character were enough to get the rest of us published. Or are we just not quite sufficiently mad about ours?

Defining Poets

I went to Simon Armitage’s lecture on Bob Dylan’s Nobel for ‘creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.’ He assessed Dylan’s lyrics as less-than-spectacular poetry. But perhaps, he suggested,

Brick house on the Wye River — Would I get more writing done in this house, or would the river lure me constantly away?

Dylan’s ability to reinvent himself, his individual language and spontaneity, were a liberating influence. ‘The problem with sticking it to the man,’ Armitage remarked, ‘is that the more successful you become at it, the more you are the man.’

For the final evening in Hay I listened to a reading of WWI poet Wilfred Owen’s letters and work, stunningly presented by festival founder Peter Florence. I had no idea how raw and ahead-of-his time these were. And Owen underwent such a transformation. Initially he wrote to his mother that he didn’t wish to go to war, that he could serve the country better alive than dead, thanks to the spring of verse welling within. In the end he insisted he return to the front even after a head injury because the war made him a true poet.

Grand facade of the Richard Booth bookshop — Books from around the world! I bought a maths one to bring home to my son, about ancient counting systems and the concept of infinity.

It’s sad in a way, that he was right, that he is known as a ‘War Poet.’ But it was an incredibly important role. It makes me wonder what makes us artists. Is it our art’s substance (which largely is foisted upon us; the residue of past experience or that ‘inner voice’ appearing from nowhere) or the form we work to give it?

Look at Hay, though. A beautiful, hill-guarded town with lots of old streets intact and the Wye alongside it—yet it’s reinvented itself as a book and festival town, and that’s what brings most of us there. I seriously recommend it.

Writing in the Wild

This Week’s Bit of String: Faux cave paintings and hilltop views

“So what sorts of things do you write?”

Do you dread this question like I do? I’ve learned to summarise individual novels I’m writing, to develop extra-short hooks and elevator pitches. But describing my entire work, from plays to novels to flash fiction, from speculative fiction to mythology-based to contemporary settings—that’s hard.

I find myself saying, “Oh, I sort of focus on people, family relationships… life, really.”

Paintings and pages and sketches laid out over the tables at the Arts Centre — All our work on display at the Arts Centre

Last Friday I joined an Art-Making Walk around the nearby town of Wotton-Under-Edge, kindly invited by the sculptor Martin Clarke, co-chair of Under the Edge Arts. Three miles in the hills, 6 stops along the way. At each stop, participants got fifteen minutes to create a piece of art.

The walkers were primarily artists, rendering scenes in pencil or paint, a couple venturing into brief verse. The first person I met was local artist Nicky Hill, who’s come out with her own illustrated children’s book boasting loads of vibrant animal characters. Check out her page to see her wonderful paintings.

For this event, I didn’t trust my brain to kick into gear six separate times inventing new scenarios for each location. So I’d invented a character, devised some backstory, and brought her along with me. It would be easier, surely, to make each stop an episode in her story.

Sign commemorating the trees on Wotton Hill. — Site 1: Wotton Hill

Our first location was a windy hill crowned by a fenced cluster of trees—the originals were planted to commemorate Waterloo. We all found those first fifteen minutes too quick. For me, I barely got my characters started. But the limitations forced us to be efficient.

En route to the next stop, an older lady with a felt flower on her hat posed The Question to me. I embellished my standard answer with, “Some of my stories are more far-fetched than others.”

Charcoal sketches of sun and wild animals on the rock face — Quarry art: Site 2

“Well, people are quite far-fetched,” she observed. “So of course their stories will be.”

Clearly I was in the right sort of crowd.

The second stop was a quarry, one of the only sites I’d seen before. Quarry visitors, probably youths, had used charred sticks to decorate the rock face, not just with the usual pentagrams and melodramatic song lyrics, but also with cave painting-style art. I pictured one loner, maybe a somewhat dorky teen separating herself from the pack to create them. That previously gained image was instrumental in forming my character ahead of time.

Wild garlic lining the woodland path — Trekking to Site 3.

We hiked through the woods, surrounded by wild garlic blooms like fallen stars, to our third site. That’s where the fifteen-minute stops, surprisingly, started to get too long. I would jot down the bare bones of my character’s encounter or revelation for that setting, and have a few minutes left, so I’d keep waffling, wishing instead it was enough time to properly edit what I’d done.

The third stop was also where I met Edna. She was perhaps the eldest of our group, with the most difficulty walking—which only proved she was the most determined. She was very self-critical, but I liked her painting of the forest trees; their straight dark trunks criss-crossed with dashes of green leaves.

Materials arranged for work during our session in the clearing — Site 3: Coneygres

“I like how you captured the haphazardness of it,” I said.

She was pleased. “It’s encouraging when someone recognises what I’m trying to do. And it is haphazard, the springtime, isn’t it? That’s a good word. I think it’s absolutely delicious, all these greens.”

Delicious. I thought she’d hit on rather a good word, too. We journeyed to a new hillside lookout for our fourth stop, above a slope still bearing the terraces where monks tended vineyards centuries ago. Now, velvety-looking black cows and calves amble there.

Terraced hillsides — Site 4: Coombe Hill

One group member was primarily a photographer. I asked her how she got on at this stop. “Well,” she replied, “We’ve already done hilltop views, so I decided to take pictures of snails on cowpats, since it’s not something we usually think of.”

Makes sense to me.

Old stone house with rows of hedge garden — Site 5: Coombe House

Our fifth stop was a fine stone home with gardens in ‘shelves,’ as its artist owner described it. I sat with Edna and she asked, “What’s your story about? Is it sad?”

“It’s got sad bits, but it’s not all sad. It’s about life, you know?”

“Yeah.” The old woman nodded wisely. “It’s shit, isn’t it?”

I thought I must have misheard, but she clarified. “I mean, even if you’re filthy rich, I reckon life is a bit shit.”

There’s an excuse for “dark” writing, if anyone needs one.

Our final stop brought us to a picnicking area with neighbouring ponies sulky for attention. My character’s journey ended with the walk. I’d thought of a pivotal moment for each stop, taking my protagonist from preschool, to teen years (at the Quarry, of course), to university, engagement, the failing health of a parent, and then motherhood. The story might not be worth polishing, but it did make a complete first draft with a few salvageable parts.

Display of paintings and pages — Final installment of today’s story

I’d like to try the same sort of thing with maybe a better backstory or character; visiting select locations to represent different points in the plot. It’s a useful device, and I recommend it.

The writing, in the end, was rather like how we’d described people and spring and life throughout the day: sometimes far-fetched, sometimes haphazard and sad, and sometimes, yes, a bit shit. It’s not just me, is it?

Joys of a ‘Little’ Festival

This Week’s Bit of String: Voices from the back of the bus

When I’m late for the more pleasant 65 bus home from work, I have to take the 61. Along with having a less scenic route, the 61 tends to attract drunk men. It’s a popular mode of transport with students as well, which doesn’t bother me—but seems to offend the aforementioned drunk men.

One evening on the 61, I read my book while the young adults from the special needs college laughed loudly and exchanged jibes in the back. Suddenly the man in front of me, so drenched in spirits he smelled medicinal, started shouting at them.

‘Shut your mouths! Didn’t your mums teach you to keep quiet on buses?’

I can’t imagine what he expected quiet for; it was five in the afternoon, not exactly bedtime, and he didn’t appear to be revising for a PhD or anything. The kids were subdued and rather frightened by his tirade, and I guess I was too, because I couldn’t bring myself to say anything in their defence. No one else did either.

Fast forward a month, add the resurgence of an old middle-of-the-night idea, and my turbulent brain managed to toss ashore a short story about a similar bus incident, this time witnessed by a retired woman who then recruits her friends to counteract such unmannerly behaviour using surprising and rather humorous methods.

The nice thing about being a writer is that even though we have shy and retiring moments, our voices surface later. And sometimes, eventually, they even get heard. I had fortunately been invited by John Holland, curator of Stroud Short Stories, to participate in a short story panel at the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival on the 21st of April. It would be the perfect opportunity to remedy (if in a delayed and fictional sense) my shameful silence on the 61.

Giving Voice

Chalk directions into the schoolhouse for the Festival. — I loved the chalk signs welcoming us to the Festival.

Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival—known as HULitFest—is remarkable for recognising voices which other Festivals brush over. For example, last year its founder, Debbie Young, hosted a super-relevant talk on writing about disability and illness, by people with firsthand experience. I blogged about it here.

This year, I attended more panels, populated by independent and self-published authors who might be ignored at larger events. One was ‘Writing Your Passion,’ made up of six writers on subject matter unyielding to broader market demands. Yet their devotion to their work and the originality of their concepts had me pretty convinced.

Peter Lay cowrote a book on life lessons and philosophy, with a Chinese friend. The beautiful book they created is printed with English and Chinese on each page. Bill Fairney has written several volumes on his varied but very specific interests. One example is his fabulously titled Fifty Shades of Yarg, the story of the Cornish cheese (written as Will Fenn). Lynne Pardoe’s books are based on her unique experiences as a social worker. She was determined to show the happy endings she got to see as well as the hard realities. Jann Tracy wrote a painstakingly researched biography of Marie Corelli, a bestselling 19th century novelist who was pivotal in preserving Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon—but is largely forgotten now.

Books purchased from Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival. — Haul from HULitFest–so far! More to be purchased in time. Love the bags they give out, too.

The final member of this panel, Jacci Gooding, writes primarily horror stories, which isn’t usually my genre, but she spoke with such fantastic wit that I became an instant fan. She observed, ‘People are weird. We like weird. Takes us out of our day jobs.’

For me, these quirky stories make HULitFest special. There’s no charge for the talks or readings; they want you to buy the authors’ books instead. Not many festivals or bookshops offer stories about cheese, about forgotten female figures, or from authors like Gooding who describes inspiration for one of her scary book covers thus: ‘I was looking at my hen, and I thought, “If I lay down in front of her, she’d eat me.”’

Really, other booksellers should give all these a go. What’s not to like?

Showcasing the Whole Writer

Another unique strength of HULitFest is its art exhibit. Most of the pieces displayed in the town’s Methodist Church as part of the Festival were drawn, stitched, photographed or otherwise created by the very authors featured in the talks and selling their books in the school gymnasium.

Stained glass window in a wedge of ceiling — Window in the Methodist Church, where the Art Exhibit is held.

In addition to showcasing formidable talents, the art exhibit gives festival goers additional insight to the writing mind. What inspires, calms, or haunts the authors, conveyed here in different form. Ellie Stevenson, another writer on the short story panel, displayed gorgeous photographs. Not surprising, perhaps, that the author of such original tales as ‘Watching Charlotte Bronte Die’ has a great eye for snapshots. But it is an aspect we don’t always get to see about writers.

Finally, the smaller (but popular and growing!) size of HULitFest allows festivalgoers to mingle with the authors; while we buy their books, picnic together, wander the town. If you have timid moments as I sometimes do, it’s quite motivating to experience this accessibility. And I did enjoy airing my tale that originated on the 61 bus, and seeing the audience enjoy the imaginary outcome. Maybe next time I’ll have more confidence to make that fiction real.

Do you use stories to make up for lost chances or stifled moments? What events have you encountered that help bring out unheard voices?

Short Stuff

This Week’s Bit of String: Though she be little…

When I was a teaching assistant, most of my students were taller than I was. During my first year, I supported a particularly boisterous Year 9 class, and as I was trying to settle them one day, a very tall boy who later got expelled for bringing brass knuckles to school loomed over me with a grin. ‘Miss, you’re small.’

‘Yes—but mighty. Sit down!’ And would you believe it, he did. For a little while.

Statue of a 'Muse' from Roman times. — Also at the Louvre: Roman statue of a Muse. Finally found her!

Any fans of art and literature will know decreased size doesn’t detract from power. At the Louvre, I was struck by how small the Mona Lisa was—seemingly no bigger than a standard A4 sheet of paper. Meanwhile, on the opposite wall hung a massive depiction of the wedding at Cana, Jesus’ first miracle. Which does everyone remember? By creating a small portrait, Da Vinci drew focus to just one figure, and the nuances of her expression. With large-scale pictures of entire scenes, it’s hard for viewers to settle their attention.

Beginning, Middle, and End

So it can be with short stories versus novels. I’ve written previously about the implications of each literary form, but I’ve been doing more short story research lately. I covered Raymond Carver and Alice Munro, since they’re seen as greats in the genre, and I read a volume by Annie Proulx, because I loved The Shipping News. As someone always seeking story ideas (knowing that many of those ideas will turn only into notes, snapshots, or vignettes rather than actual stories), I enjoyed studying these works and wondering, What was the starting point for this story? How did the writer make it work?

Certainly the hardest thing for me in turning an idea into a story is ensuring development; pinpointing a beginning, middle, and end. The short story is more flexible than the novel. Equal attention need not be paid to beginning, middle, and end—one or more can merely be implied. Munro likes starting stories with a little anecdote that happens later, or with someone looking back to a seemingly random detail. And a few of Carver’s and Proulx’s stories left the endings ambiguous.

Mountainside view of the Swift Diamond River, bordered by pines, in New Hampshire — Ah, the mountains, rivers, and woods of home…

My favourites were a couple of Carver’s stories, “Cathedral” and “A Small Good Thing,” both stories that realistically but surprisingly diffused tension between very different characters with warmth. I also loved Annie Proulx’s “The Unclouded Day,” not just for its great title and the description of my native New England wild places. There was its completeness, and humour with just enough insight into the protagonist to sense good intentions. Again, there was warmth in this story.

That’s my personal taste: a story can narrate a bleak event (for example, the death of a child, as in “A Small Good Thing”), so long as there’s an element of kindness between at least a couple of the characters. And yes, I do like a decent arc, no matter how short: you don’t have to give me the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I’d jolly well like an idea of where the colours lead.

Short Story Round-Up

On Twitter, I asked about other writers’ favourite short stories, and their own criteria for a great one. Stephen Tuffin, who recently judged and hosted a fabulous new event, The Squat Pen Rests championship in short fiction, provided a thorough endorsement of Truman Capote. I have to agree; his “A Christmas Memory” is my absolute favourite in the festive season.

Stephen also tweeted about what makes a great story: ‘A great short has to leave me with an afterglow. As if I’ve been gifted something meaningful and relevant. Great shorts need more reader input but the effort is rewarding and leaves me feeling I’ve been shown another world, different but the same as my own.’

The short story volumes on my bookshelves — Shelfie from my short stories section

Fantasy author Grace Crandall recommends Ray Bradbury’s stories. I had actually read “The Foghorn” just the other week, when a friend at a discussion group provided it as an example of a great, atmospheric tale. Grace says, ‘‘‘The Rocket” and “The Beggar of O’Connell Bridge” are two of my favorites of his. I think a big key to short stories is having a conclusive emotional arc, and he’s such an expert at delving into human nature and feelings.’

Science fiction writer Madd_Fictional, curator of celebrated writing hashtag #SlapDashSat, recommends Harlan Ellison: ‘Nothing like a good speculative fiction short story that presents a left-of-center theme, laced with poignant social commentary that usually features protagonists who are morally ambiguous.’ Sounds good to me!

Finally, Laurie Garrison of the invaluable Women Writers School pointed me toward Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” because it portrays ‘a whirlwind of emotion in just a few hundred words. And there’s such brilliant irony to it.’ It’s another perfect little complete tale.

What are your favourite short stories, and have you encountered any particular challenges in reading or writing them?

Are We Having Fun Yet?

This Week’s Bit of String: Solitary bowling

Last week my office had a bowling night out. While we cheered our mostly lacklustre shots over cheesy chips and a vast range of alcoholic beverages, an older couple set up a few lanes along.

Only the woman bowled. She wore a bright pink skirt, a lycra team t-shirt, and a grave expression. She’d brought wristbands and kneestraps. Her husband recorded her work with a handheld, flip-out camera, I assume so she could critique herself later.

Before each play she communed briefly with the ball, hugging it to her chest, contemplating the long lonely expanse she was about to cast it into. I’m not sure what goes down between a bowler and the ball in those split seconds. My workmates and I tried mantras like, ‘I am one with the ball and the ball is with me,’ none of which worked any magic.

The pink-skirted woman threw fast, powerful shots and toppled most if not all her pins. But her expression never changed. Though her dedication and force impressed me, I couldn’t shake the feeling she’d leave the alley deeply dissatisfied.

It’s great to pursue a sport or a hobby, whatever it is, any avenue of self-improvement. Probably for those of you reading this blog, writing qualifies as such a pursuit.

And chances are, like me, you’re not exactly earning a living from it. It’s the beast you feed your spare time to, before going to the office and after the kids are in bed. Those precious slices of our day get devoured by building word count on new projects, editing older pieces, managing a social media network, critiquing friends’ work, researching agents and publications, promoting our gigs and releases, reading and research.

It’s a bit like having a second full-time job, isn’t it?

Work, Hobby, or Talent?

To check how it is for others, I polled Twitter on which term best describes writing in the respondents’ lives: work, hobby, or talent. (I included a disclaimer: I understand these words aren’t mutually exclusive, but I wanted to see what other writers viewed as most accurate.)

A much larger percentage chose hobby to describe writing. A fair few selected work, and only a small number said talent, which is understandable. We may have talent for writing but the term is insufficiently indicative of the conscious effort required.

Looking at the etymology of these terms, the word hobby derives from the word hobbyhorse, and the use in Morris dancing. This affiliation with pretending to do something puts me off a little; it links a hobby with a substitute; something not fully real or functional.

Rocking horse and doll's house in an antique shop Christmas window display — Even better than the real thing?

Regardless of what your hobby is, it’s real to you and it does serve a function, even if that function is to escape reality. Articles such as this one from Very Well Mind abound on the importance of hobbies to cut down on stress—and, where necessary, to provide eustress, ‘the healthy kind of stress that we all need to remain feeling excited about life.’

We can probably agree there is stress involved in writing. Even for those not wishing to publish or share, I imagine they still struggle with developing their stories or poems enough to please themselves. The challenges involved here, I believe (admittedly without absence of bias), equip us with resilience and empathy in other areas of our lives.

Partly because of this stress, I join those categorising it as work, if not the most profitable kind and certainly not the most unpleasant. By treating writing as another job, this legitimises time spent on it and shields us from some (certainly not all) encroachments. It keeps our morsels of time out of other greedy mouths.

Consider the definitions of work, which according to etymonline.com all date back to old English, around the start of the thirteenth century.

“To perform physical labor:” Well, mental labour certainly. And a bit of wrist strain on those rare occasions when the words are really flying over the keyboard.
“To ply one’s trade:” Yes, somewhat. Possibly many of us consider ourselves writers above whatever we happen to do to earn the bulk of our income.
“To exert creative power, be a creator.” Undoubtedly.
Finally, my favourite: the transitive sense “manipulate (physical substances) into a desired state or form.” Disregard the parenthetical and you bet your boots we manipulate, we manipulate words into desired form.

For the Love of Art

Writing is also, of course, an art. I deliberately withheld that option from the Twitter poll, but I imagine most would agree. And art is perhaps a more encompassing term than hobby. Did you know the word’s Latin root artem/ars is related to arma, the Latin word for weapons?

We are bearers of weapons, folks.

As we go into battle, as we get down to work, as we utilise our talents and pour time into our hobbies aiming for self-betterment, let’s make sure we still love it. Let’s make sure our faces don’t sag into chronic frowns as we hammer out plots and contemplate rejection letters. I keep thinking of the woman in the bowling alley and how joyless she looked. If you worry about burnout, here are some links to previous inspiring posts:

So what do you think? Work, hobby, talent, art?

Animals are Characters, Too

This Week’s Bit of String: Crying over cats

‘Miss?’ the Year Eleven boy asked me, tossing his carefully sleeked hair without looking up from the doodled serpents invading his Science BTEC exercise book. ‘Do you ever start randomly crying while you’re petting your cat, because you wish so much they could talk to you?’

I don’t think it’s ever brought me to tears, even when I was sixteen myself, but I definitely used to look in pet cats’ eyes and sense much present in them that we, their humans, missed.

The boy’s question brought to mind a passage from Muriel Barberry’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Renee refers to her ‘appreciation’ for her tenants’ cocker spaniel as: ‘that state of grace attained when one’s feelings are immediately accessible another creatures.’

Guinea pig terminally dissatisfied by food dish. — ‘Here goes nothing.’

We now have only guinea pigs as pets, but their feelings are pretty darn accessible. They’re an important if timid part of our family, an affectionate interest uniting us as our son gets older. And if anyone doubts that animals are sentient, I defy them to look at a guinea pig, any guinea pig, and not be struck by the chronic consternation on their faces. It’s as if they’re constantly in dire need of food but always expecting to be disappointed.

Since animals cause us to reflect on what makes us alive, what makes us sentient (to use a rather unattractive, clinical-sounding word), and they bring us joy and unity—isn’t it right they should feature in literature?

Animal Voices

It’s easy to find animals in the fantasy genre. The dragons of Pern, the owls and thestrals of Hogwarts, the daemons of Lyra’s Oxford, the Noisy animals of New World in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series (oh, Manchee!)

So too they should be present in mainstream literature, sincewhen we write we attempt to reflect and learn from real life. Certainly animals have served as set pieces and symbols in literature since Homer told of Circe’s pigs and Polyphemus’ sheep. But in using them only as such, do we devalue their contributions to our lives?

Pictures in Warner Bros Leavesden studios paying tribute to animal actors in the Harry Potter series — Unsung heroes of the Harry Potter films.

There’s the pigeon offering occasional commentary in Pigeon English, and the freed parrot in Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue. The parrot gets a chapter of his own: one long, continuous sentence. His thoughts fly free as he leaves the home he knew for decades, after his owner’s death. It’s nice to get these extra, imagined perspectives, but by making animal characters simply witnesses to the humans’ folly, they remain a little flat.

A great example of using animals realistically yet appreciatively is Marina Lewycka’s Two Caravans. Her novel about immigrants in the UK encompasses many points of view, including a dog. Different characters rate each other based on their respective reactions to Dog, and he leaps in to save the day at the end.

The novel also features scenes in a chicken-packing factory, which convinced me to buy only free-range products ever after. Her depiction linked callous attitudes about animals to abuse and exploitation of migrant workers. It should hardly have been surprising, but it had a somewhat revelatory effect on me.

Animal Roles

Cat posing in line with flowerpots. — Catmouflage: They see all and know all.

Although these authors have gone to great imaginary lengths to use animals as characters and assign voices to them, there are other ways to integrate our furry (or feathery or scaly) friends. Why is it so rare to encounter human characters who own pets? Allusions to a pet can serve as useful shortcuts establishing character. Are they a dog person, a cat person, a horse person, maybe something more unusual like a snake person?

In my novel The Wrong Ten Seconds, treatment of a dog catalyses the action. Pets are a central part of characters’ lives. Introducing one of the protagonists, Lydia, I described her car:

‘The cluttered Fiesta—Mabel—smelled of takeaway curry and chips, cat litter bought in bulk, and hand sanitiser.’

Beyond representing personality traits of their owners, including pets in stories gives humans opportunity for insight. Lydia is self-aware enough to know that she needs her cat, Slim Shady, more than he needs her. She recognises his purr doesn’t always convey happiness, but sometimes cloaks fear. The purr indicates to her:

‘You only get away with this because I in my benevolence allow it.’

Animals at the Beginning

In my current novel, about Eve and the (presumed) first family of humans, animals have an even bigger role. As much as Eve and Adam’s lives changed on their expulsion from Eden, think what it meant for the animals! Through no fault of their own, they had to leave paradise as well, and were thence forward seen as fair game. Literally.

Surely humans didn’t go straight from discovering wildlife wonders in Eden, to wearing animal hides and eating meat outside its walls. The sudden need to provide for themselves would change things, but it would not be a comfortable adjustment. Tension grows between Eve and Adam when he starts out eating fish:

‘What’s next, killing cows? Lions, lambs? You could roast one of the angels.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that, woman! I’m not the one who ever sought something I wasn’t supposed to take.’

The way each character relates to animals represents and colours the way they relate to others. Adam tells himself he has dominion over the animals, but in God’s curse on Eve, she’s been told her husband will have dominion over her. Does that make her equal to the animals? This is just one reason she has a keen interest in how he treats them.

Further, they have to wonder about God’s purpose in creating themselves and the animals (which, for this work, I’m imagining He did; see my previous post on working with incredible premises). If God is willing for them to dispatch with the animals so easily, what does this say about their own mortality?

It’s like Sirius Black said (somewhat ironically, given his later treatment of his own house-elf) in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, ‘If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.’

Kindling Magic

This Week’s Bit of String: Phoenixes and falcons

Last weekend we took my son and his girlfriend, wearing Hogwarts t-shirts, on the Harry Potter tour at Warner Bros’ Leavesden studio. Several younger kids in the queue sported head-to-toe Gryffindor robes, one boy of maybe seven years old wearing Harry-style glasses as well, and humming John Williams’ Hedwig’s Theme on repeat.

Among fans, then. I was tickled too by a couple in their fifties, scampering around the outdoor sets and giggling while they waited their turn for photo ops. ‘Look at that,’ marvelled the man, peering through the back door of the Knight Bus. ‘You can see the beds, and all!’

Inside the creature workshop, the woman squealed and pointed at the display case where Fawkes stands regally. ‘It’s that falcon! From the headteacher’s office.’

So I got the impression these two fans hadn’t read the books. But they were no less enchanted by the story, perhaps enticed by the added celebrity sparkle of the film studio.

What’s the precise magic of a franchise that enlivens so many people, whether encountered on page, on screen, or in a bright-plumed animatronic bird? Different factors might appeal more to one fan than the next, but I believe even we non-fantasy writers can replicate some of this alchemy.

Harry Potter and the Approval of Twitter

I checked in with Twitter about the boy wizard’s appeal. Susan Macdonald cites the series’ ‘good characters.’ Definitely; they’re vivid, varied, and complete with fully-drawn, engaging background.

I posed with the trolley going through the wall at Platform 9 and 3/4. — ‘Best take it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous.’

Lia, who tweets as @LiaTheBookBat, loves the parallel universe JK Rowling illustrates, and the possibility of ‘impossible things fuelled by magic.’ I agree the juxtaposition is intriguing: relatable characters and specific, just slightly altered details make the wizarding world seem ever so close.

Thriller writer LV Matthews (@LV_Matthews) notes that the ‘good overcoming evil story’ is especially relevant ‘in this crazy world.’ Certainly, Rowling pulls off this epic theme very well, examining different reasons people are attracted to good or evil, confronting friction between different members of the ‘good’ side, and even forcing the protagonist to question whether he himself might have evil tendencies.

Harry Potter and the Recipe for Enchantment

Personally, I was struck by how walking around the full model of Hogwarts felt like coming home. The first view of those turrets and spires, and I might have been Harry or Hagrid or even Tom Riddle, recognising a beloved place.

Hogwarts model — My son reckons this model is about 1/8 the size of the ‘real’ Hogwarts. It was truly stunning.

Strong emotion passed on from characters to readers: that’s the real magic here. Such deep empathy, whether for fictional or nonfictional people—that’s magic, and a mighty, unifying force.

Anyone following this blog since its launch in the wake of the USA’s 2016 presidential election will know creating that kind of magic is my favourite part of writing and reading. But there’s a lot involved in achieving this. All the factors above were instrumental in JK Rowling’s success with it, plus one more overarching element.

Even more than Hogwarts, the part of the tour that moved me most was Platform 9 and 3/4. Toward the back of the train, a car was open to show two different scenes. One end depicted Harry’s first ride on the Hogwarts Express, while the other showed the series’ final scene, ‘Nineteen Years Later.’

At its roots the Harry Potter series is a Cinderella story, Hagrid showing up on Harry’s eleventh birthday like a Hairy Godmother. (Or something.) Watching Harry’s journey, painful though it is at times, gives us hope, as referenced by my Twitter acquaintances.His story lets us believe that however ordinary-looking, however put down we may be even by the very people meant to care for us, it’s not out of the question that in some alternate realm we are renowned, and we may prove ourselves worthy. Hope liberates our empathy—right or wrong, it’s easier to feel for someone who has an inkling of a chance.

(Side note: JK Rowling didn’t achieve the same heights with The Casual Vacancy, maybe because this essential ingredient was omitted. The characters were wide-ranging and believably flawed, but offered very little hope.)

So we are drawn in, enticed by clever touches like owls and wands, encouraged by The Boy Who Lived until we’ve fallen as hard as if we’ve eaten a box of Romilda Vane’s chocolates. In our own writing, it’s worth remembering the mixture of minor detail, promise of redemption, and characters that inspire deep, true feeling. What would you add to the potion?

Playing God

This Week’s Bit of String: Tidying up the building materials

Once when my son was about six years old, I looked in on him during his evening tidy-up to see him gloomily tossing his Lego into their bucket, punctuating their impact with sighs. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m just…angry at God.’

He explained his grievance to me: ‘While we were eating dinner, I asked God really nicely if he would please tidy up my room for me.’ Another sigh. ‘But He didn’t.’

I’d seen him in a similar predicament with the magic wand he’d received for his birthday. And when he was a toddler, just learning his manners, there were those agonised epiphanies that saying please—‘the magic word’—won’t get you extra sweets or a later bedtime.

So it didn’t seem the time to put God’s existence under review, anymore than I would tell him there’s no such thing as magic. ‘Sorry, mate. I don’t think He works that way; He likes to make sure we know how to do things for ourselves.’

Losing My (Bias Against) Religion

Religion—and, well, not relying too exclusively on it—has enmeshed itself into a few of my stories. In Artefacts, the first novel I wrote, talking about God embarrasses the protagonist, ‘like talking about someone and suddenly realising they stood behind you.’

I feel that way, a bit, penning scenes with God in my current novel. As it’s Eve’s story, though, and her family’s, He plays a prominent role. I guess it’s the first time I’ve written about a recognisable figure, an entity Who might (who knows?) actually exist. That changes things, doesn’t it?

Carvings of God on His throne — Above the door at Notre Dame Cathedral. Can omnipotence and love really go hand in hand?

Last week I wrote about reimagining the first humans in the Bible, as well as the angels, trying to de-stigmatise as far as possible. These days, at least in our fast-paced, ‘enlightened’ society, it seems God too has become somewhat stigmatised, the focus of blame and skepticism rather than adoration. I don’t want to get caught up in that, even while sympathising with Eve and other characters He punished.

One has to wonder, if God does exist, and is by definition omnipotent and eternal, do all our pleas and tirades sound to Him like a child not wanting to pick up his own toys? I’m trying not to be restricted by pro-human bias in my view.

He’s Got the Look

So far I’ve not gone into great detail about God’s appearance. That’s not the done thing, is it? In our art we tend to come at physical description obliquely, if at all. Likewise with my re-invented angels, apart from the odd mention of their scales, wings, and fire. The humans in the story accept these beings and have no reason to overtly describe them.

Flaming orange sunrise over a hilltop — Like this, maybe. I’m just throwing around ideas here.

There’s mention of God’s immense size, and lack of clear outline. I mean, He’s God. We can be justified in thinking he has humanoid aspects (or commonly manifests them), because He does say He’s made people in His image. But I don’t think He’s just a muscly older man with a flowing white beard, the way Michelangelo depicted Him.

For one thing, He’s not going to have a corporeal body. He’s energy, and why He would choose to generally have a human form, I don’t know. I suppose it has its uses, a certain organisation and compactness. But in my work there’s a glow to Him and a deep, shifting substance that defies boundary. His eyes can turn into oceans, His smile into sunrise.

The King (of King)’s Speech

What I have God say in the book is far more important than how He looks. And I haven’t a whole lot of source material to base it on. I’m not on board with the whole divine scriptures idea. Sorry, I’m a writer myself. I know how easy it is to make stuff up and then it feels like canon in my mind. That doesn’t mean it is. That’s possibly my human bias talking, but for the purposes of this project, I’m going with it.

I’m drawing the line at accepting God’s actual words as relayed in Genesis—but weeding out ideas that are merely imputed to Him.

For example, when He punishes Cain for killing Abel, He says Cain is exiled and will lose his knack for growing crops. He never says Cain is banished from His presence (that would be admitting some limitation to His power). It’s Cain who moans that he’ll be out of God’s sight, and then the narrative picks it up.

Granted, He issues curses at key moments, but He doesn’t just pronounce judgment. He questions those involved, giving them a chance to explain themselves or at least ‘fess up—all the while opening Himself to even more disappointment as they flounder around pretending they didn’t do that thing they really weren’t supposed to do.

He strikes me as part Albus Dumbledore, part Atticus Finch, giving people space and a bit of prodding to see if they’ll figure things out for themselves. Here, Eve’s daughter Ana recounts to Cain how God encouraged her to start her own family, while admitting she too would carry her mother’s curse.

‘So I told Him: “I think You are a brutal Master.”’
Cain gave me one of his rare, full-on looks, allowing me to see the Mark. ‘Then what?’
‘He said, “Well, at least you believe I’m your Master.”
“What choice do I have?” I asked. ‘You gave my parents life out of dust and bone.’
“You have every choice, Ana. You and all your future children and grandchildren, you have a choice.” And His glow seemed to dim slightly. I almost felt sorry for him.’

After all, I feel a certain sympathy with Him, too. Creating people, letting them bumble off on their way doing what they like, forcing You to spring up obstacles in their path to slow them down and get them to look about themselves for once…Ahem. Yes. Perhaps God and us writers have a thing or two in common. What do you think?

Getting the Picture

This Week’s Bit of String: Racial bias in a dancing competition?

In December 2016, Ore Oduba won the glitter ball on Strictly Come Dancing. My son was quite excited about this, and admittedly I was too, enchanted by Ore and Joanne’s jive in Week 4.

But my son had been anxious as the final drew near. Historically, celebrities of colour get fewer votes from the audience, judging by the frequency they are in the bottom two. Often they dance perfectly well. They just don’t get the audience votes, and have to be ‘saved’ by the judges.

So every year there are concerned murmurs about whether the dancing show itself is racist, and then the requisite backlash from white people offended by the very suggestion.

Here’s the thing: there are more white people than not in this country, and there are probably more white people than not watching Strictly Come Dancing. Humans gravitate toward the familiar, the reflective, so the many white viewers may well vote for a white celebrity. Amongst very talented candidates, that tiny blip of recognition on the subconscious radars of thousands wields some influence.

It’s not overt racism, I think (I hope), but innate bias. We need to be aware of it. To probe our decisions a little, rather than huffily dismiss concerns others have about it.

I notice our gravitation toward the recognisable in other areas. My name, for example. People glance at it and assume it’s Natasha, although they’re neglecting an s and slapping an h in willy-nilly. People see what they’ve seen before.

Studies also show that babies are drawn to certain types of faces—after a few months. There’s an interesting article on that in Slate, here. As we develop (or supposedly develop), we suffer from ‘perceptual narrowing,’ as if our senses get stuck in a rut. If we’re not exposed to a broad range of sights, we will stop looking for them.

Re-Visualising History

With these biases and predilections in mind, I’ve been trying to get the right mental image for the protagonists in my novel about Eve.

Usually when we write a story, it plays vividly in our imaginations, a cinema multiplex in our brains open 24/7. The same is true for me now, but because this story has its basis in something other than my imagination, I have a distinct unease that the imagery is not my own.

Recall every classical painting or children’s Bible illustration you might have happened upon that depicts Adam and Eve. Flowing gold locks—maybe sometimes brown hair, but always porcelain skin, right? God would have been cruel to form such pasty creatures and pop them down under the Middle Eastern sun.

Selection of National Geographic magazines — I’ve been trawling through my best sources for portraits resembling early peoples of Southern Iraq/ North of the Persian Gulf.

Anthropology traces the first humans back to Africa. At some point we probably all had dark skin as a clever, preferable adaptation. One day that feature may well win out evolutionally again. For my work-in-progress I’m using a less scientific source, but even the Bible says Adam was created of the earth’s dust, and then Eve was formed of Adam— probably not lily white, then.

It might be unfair to say racism is behind all the whitewashing that Adam and Eve underwent over the centuries. But plenty of people have twisted passages from early Genesis to support racist ideologies.

For example, after Eve’s son Cain (also a major character in the book I’m working on, and quite fascinating to me) is ‘marked’ by God for committing fratricide, certain factions have said that mark was black skin. A curse justifying slavery and other cruel practices against millions of people. However, God marked Cain not as a curse, but a sign of guardianship, to show He would wreak vengeance upon anyone who, in turn, harmed Cain. In my book I’ve put it on Cain’s upper cheek, figuring it would have to be quite visible:

‘Against his dark skin it was blanched white as if God had seared through to his very bones.’

It’s still hard to conjure up the right image in my head. Not just because I’ve had years of the wrong images, but also because I’ve never known many people of Middle Eastern origin. I’ve unwittingly had my own perceptual narrowing of sorts.

I guess, though, that I don’t always see my characters when I’m writing a story. Most often I see scenes through the protagonists’ eyes: their surroundings, their loved ones and interests.

And I hear the voices. Dialogue—external and internal—scrolls constantly through my head, with or without a precise picture of who’s speaking the lines.

Here Be Dragons

Stitched emblem of a Chinese-style red and black dragon — Oh hey, Gabriel.

It’s been less challenging to picture Eden, the punishing land around it, and the angels charged with keeping the two separate. I decided a while back that our ideas of angels suffered a major perceptual narrowing.

Why are they always portrayed as looking human? There’s no indication they’d resemble us at all. The creation story says God made people ‘in His own image,’ which to me implies the angels weren’t made that way. Besides, if Lucifer, himself an angel, was the tempter in the Garden, he’s also described as a serpent. A serpent with arms and legs, that is, which in his case were struck off as punishment for that fruit episode.

So angels are serpents with arms and legs…how about they breathe fire, too? Yeah, I decided dragons are actually angels. Handy critters to know when outside the Garden Adam and Eve have to keep warm and cook food.

I’ve had Gabriel describe it thus:

‘The man and woman went forth and multiplied. That was the Boss’s only command they followed unerringly, although their kind bred division over the years, too. Their descendants assumed we, the Boss’s messengers, should be shaped like men, often slaying us when we appeared.’

So this book idea evolves to challenge old perceptions: white ancestors, humanoid angels…What will it take on next? Well, there’s God, obviously. Tune in next week to find out how He’ll look and sound.

What steps do you take to fight perceptual narrowing in your creative endeavours?