Five January Small Stones

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I’ve been writing small stones this January, although truth be told I’ve been more attentive to my poetry and my new novel! (More of that to come)

Anyway here’s a taste of my month so far:

1. Frost holds fast to the edge of the field / in the blonde grass the heron stands / a train beneath its feet

Written after a walk along an old railway track

 

2. Ruched skirt, frilled blouse/ feather earrings/ a girl among pigeons

I was shopping in town when I saw this.

 

3. Distant cars/ fireflies in the jungle’s sudden dark

From my writing room window.

 

4. It was evening all afternoon/shadows rippled across the field/a goldfinch sat in the hawthorn

I’d been reading and imitating Wallace Stevens..

 

5. Honda baseball cap,walrus moustache /two rosaries, a scottie dog under his arm / he fills the kitchen

I met this guy in my friends kitchen!

 

Another small stone - in my home made book I used pages with text on as well as blanks

This small stone is about re-discovering a novel I had already begun and taking it up again!

 

Useless Poetry

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In 13 Ways of Making Poetry a Spiritual Practice, (a title borrowed from Wallace Stevens’ poem  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird) Buddhist and poet Maitreyabandhu urges us to Cultivate Uselessness. I like the idea.

I for one spend too much of my time wondering about what I can achieve with my writing, about how it will be received and if it will be successful -is this poem, story, novel good enough to win a competition, publication – a contract?

Maitryabandhu  admits that  We probably need some success in order to carry on with the “stitching and unstitching” of serious writing  but warns of the dangers of success. The more success we experience the less it satisfies, and the more disappointed we feel by lack of success .

Not seeking success does not however mean that we don’t have to work hard, develop our imagination, read deeply, read well, be open to criticism and disappointment, all of which I am striving to do as I enter the world of poetry writing

I am also finding instinctively that life has become quieter more contemplative perhaps I’ve dropped beneath the racket of thought – the repetitive mental chatter, the worry and flurry – into direct, unmediated sensation. Then the richness of life, rather than the hubbub of thought, will find it’s way into your poems. I hope so – maybe that’s why I’ve given up on Twitter!

Read the whole Maitryabandhu piece here

From – Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

15mins of Unmissable Radio

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Jeanette Winterson celebrates reading – ‘a private conversation happening somewhere in the soul,’  – on Radio 4′s Book of the Week  slot- Stop What Your Doing and Read This. A Book. A Bed. A Mountain.

If you do nothing else this week – as Jan who sent me the link says (and thank you, thank you Jan) – then LISTEN  HERE you won’t be disppointed

From the website – Passionate, funny, revelatory and inspiring, this series is a mission statement about the transformative power of reading; about the way it inspires us, the tangible impact it can have on our well-being and the importance it holds for us now and will continue to hold in the future.


 

Writing Heaven

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The walls of Balliol College Oxford are too thick for wi-fi,* they tried it and it didn’t work. How do I know? I got it first hand from the porter.

Inside Balliol

Before Christmas, I went to Oxford with my friend, writer Wendy Robertson, for four days of writing. We stayed in rooms in Balliol which fronts onto Broad Street, and sits right in the heart of the city, only minutes from the Sheldonian and the Bodleian.

Being free from everything domestic so close to Christmas felt dangerous and delicious. It worked!  We wrote whenever we pleased, did whatever we pleased. We had four days of glorious blue sky, intense winter light, immaculate lawns and breath- taking architecture. We explored the city’s lanes and cobbled streets, its ancient gates and doorways:  glimpses into hidden worlds. Breathed in the immaculate gardens on our doorstep: tree ferns flourishing in sheltered corners and cyclamen flowering on the lawns under the beech. And at the end of the day we had impromptu readings, as well as on one occasion, a glass of champagne in The Randolph!

The Bodleian

It was all fun. I even did a spot of Christmas shopping in Blackwells. But we came to write and write we did. For what more does a writer need than a room of her own, a desk and chair and of course her best writing buddy with her – someone as obsessed as she is, who wants to talk writing into the night over a bottle (or two) of red and a plate of cheese and biscuits? (There’s a handy Sainsburys only minutes away.) You could say it was heaven and you’d be right.

* If you want to hook up to the internet you can borrow a cable from the porter for a £5.00 deposit – there is a connection in every room. As it turned out I enjoyed being internet free.

Balliol Lawns

 

Reading Poetry – Kathleen Jones

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Part of my plan for 2012 is to read more poetry. I want to write poetry but know that one of the first things I need to do is read more.

A collection I’ve been reading and returning to is Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 – Kathleen Jones publishedby Templar Poetry.

This is a collection that ranges across the geography of a poet’s life; that explores the push- pull of a deep attachment to place and a desire to escape.  No matter how far we travel with Kathleen Jones including into ‘the impossible distances of history,’ we come back to the Cumbria of her childhood – to the hitch and drag of the fell gate ‘strong enough to pull /a whole life down.’  The attachments are strong, often darkly ambivalent, the language is spare. There is so much to admire here from the moving The Laying Out of the Dead  which reminded me so acutely of my own mother’s death, to the understated Terremoto  from Camaiore in Italy where the poet lives for at least part of the year.

These poems spoke to me of my childhood, my attachment to place and my desire to escape- for me they do what the best poetry does: connect with us, touch us and give fresh and unique expression to both shared and new experience. Highly recommended.

Do take a look at Templar Poetry if only for their fabulous covers – and why not treat yourself while you’re there?

Indie Celebration

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Happy New Year!

I’ve been making books with my sister-in-law Jan. I love spending time with her as it’s always fun and very creative. We both made notebooks for our January small stones -

Here they are:

I used to work a lot in paper, some of which I painted before using, some found or given. I made collages, experimented with colour, texture and form, and making notebooks reminded me of how much I want to work with paper again.

While we made books we talked about the year ahead; our creative and life goals. Some of mine include:

  • publishing my crime novel Blood Tide which nearly made it but not quite and which I believe in and want to get out into the world – also launching it in style and getting to work on the sequel.
  • exploring journaling and notebook making – I’m hooked after just one session.
  • writing poetry – reading a poet a week, learning what I can, finding my own voice.

There were other things on my list but really they all came down to one thing – celebrating the Indie – exploring life outside of the writing world of the establishment, doing it for myself – and in a spirit of co-operation and not of competition.

I’m looking forward to 2012!

A Poem For Christmas Eve

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I blog once a month on the 24th at Authors Electric – so today I put up my Christmas Eve post – if you would like to read it there – here is the link

This is the post:

Any soldier in the trenches  in 1915 who happened to read a copy of The Times for 24th December might have seen Thomas Hardy’s poem  The Oxen. It was first published in this edition and printed alongside news of the devastating conflict that was ravaging Europe. It appeared alongside an advertisement for Bovril -which claimed to give strength to the men in the trenches!

When I was seventeen I was given this poem by my English teacher to read aloud at the Christmas Carol Service. I learned it by heart and every Christmas Eve without fail it comes back to me. I didn’t know, until recently, when and where it was first published, or that ‘in these years’ referred to the years of the Great War. I hadn’t fully grasped its context. But I instinctively felt its poignancy, its air of regret and I understood the folk traditions from which it came and which meant so much to Hardy. I loved its language too: the comfort of words like ‘combe’ which were a part of my West Country heritage. I understood the desire for something magical, something to believe in.

Now it seems as poignant to me as it did then at seventeen, perhaps even more so. After all we are still at war and the spiritual messages of Christmas are easily forgotten.

So I offer you this beautiful poem as a Christmas gift and I hope you come to remember and enjoy it as much as I do and I hope you have a wonderful – happy and peaceful – Christmas wherever you are and whatever you do. 

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy

 

 

 

A River of Stones Jan 2012

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I wasn’t going to sign up for the January River of Stones. I was thinking there’s a lot I’ll be doing in January and do I need something else on my list? But the answer of course is that writing small stones does not take up your time. On the contrary it slows you down, it grounds you in the now, time opens up and with it come great treasures. If you don’t know about small stones then find out more here. I hope you’ll think of giving it a go. This time I’m going to buy myself a beautiful notebook to put my small stones in.

Forgotten Stories

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“I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me… I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life… I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I’ll ever have.”  Natalie Goldberg

I love this quote – it’s how I feel about writing just now – quite raw – I think that’s because I’m writing stories born out of my prison experience – forgotten stories that I need to tell and now I’ve opened the floodgates they’re pouring out

When You Hear The Birds Sing is the first story (8,000 words) – the story of an Irish girl called Theresa. It’s dedicated to the women of HMP Low Newton.

When You Hear The Birds Sing

Come now into that cell with me and stay here and feel if you can and if you will that time, whatever time it was, for however long, for time means nothing in this cell. Come, come in. An Evil Cradling – Brian Keenan

The first time they put me in a cell and I heard the door lock behind me I couldn’t breathe. I pressed the bell and they came running then; opened the door and gave me a brown paper bag to put over my mouth. Breathe Theresa, they said. Breathe.

Now, I’m used to it.

I was named after a saint: Little Flower, Marie Françoise Therese Martin. My mother Bernadette kept her picture by the bed in a pink plastic frame decorated with roses and lived in hope that I would grow up sweet and pure just like Saint Theresa. Bless her, but what the fuck did she know?’

I was thirteen when we left County Down and fifteen when Bernadette died, old enough to look after myself, and besides I’d met Asif and we’d set out on our summer of love. But that’s not to say I stopped missing her, or that I ever stopped loving her or wishing it had been different.

I sit at my desk in my cell pretending to be someone else. I look at the orange I kept back from breakfast sitting on a blue plastic plate. Did you know an orange is not orange? No, an orange has patches of pink and yellow and even green, if you look close enough, if you screw up your eyes like I sometimes do. Things are not always what they seem. They’re not that simple. I learned that in here. In the corridors, outside the cells, there are skins thicker than ten jaffa oranges and masks made of concrete. ..

I roll the orange against my cheek and under my nose then open my book… ‘You gotta learn how to bluff. You’ll never make it in this game if you don’t…’ well that’s what Bob Dylan says. And he was Bernadette’s idol.

I read a lot. It was books that keep me going. All kinds of books, including the ones we wrote in at school: feint- lined with margins, squared paper for graphs, better for words, letters fit just right in the squares. Books kept things cool. Still do.

I used to steal them, stole a lot of things I didn’t even want or books I could have got from the library. In the beginning I wrote everything I got down in a waxy covered notebook: a red Elizabeth Arden lipstick, a pair of diamond patterned tights, a pen and pencil set from Smiths, gardening magazines (hundreds – Bernadette loved gardening) the trouble was before long I had too much to keep and I was caught in a trap of steal and get rid and steal again, as if I had no choice.

Just like now, caught in the revolving door, in and out of prison, swearing never to come back but heading out and straight for trouble. Some people are made like that…

If you would like to read more, When You Hear The Birds Sing is available for download -99p onto KIndle or your PC HERE


Interview With Morgen Bailey

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Morgen Bailey is an indefatigable spirit, a mere glance at her blog will convince you of that. Take a look and you’ll find it’s full of great interviews and lots of goodies for us writers.Today I am featured in her blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more – number 206!

I thought it would be fun to reciprocate so here is Morgen Bailey answering some questions I put to her

Hi Morgen – please tell us something about yourself

Hello Avril. Thank you for inviting me today. OK, short answer (because I can waffle for England!): I’m a tall (5’10 / 1.78m) mid-40s English blonde who’s always been an avid reader (Stephen King in my teens, mellowed to crime and humour more recently) but came to writing after stumbling across crime writer Sally Spedding’s creative writing critique workshop late 2005 at my local university and haven’t looked back. I took over when Sally moved to Wales early 2008, added a writing workshop a year later and we’re still going strong. I’ve written four and a bit novels (three of those for NaNoWriMo), two anthologies (including Story A Day May), over 100 short stories, some poetry (although I still don’t ‘get it’ and admire those who do) and loads of flash fiction. Plenty of fiction fodder to eBook, mostly dark and light with a distinct grey area in between. :)

 

Where do you write? Can you describe the space – the things around you and how you get started? Do you for instance need coffee and music before you can write?

I’ve just moved desk actually. I converted my back bedroom into a study (the joy of living alone, well… with a dog). It’s the second biggest in the house and catches the sunlight (I have a gardener’s dream: a south-facing garden) and I’m a morning person so it’s perfect for me, plus it backs on to other gardens so little road noise. I have two Mac laptops; the main one on the old (proper) desk playing through my iTunes 2-star rated songs so I can delete the ones I don’t want to upgrade to 3-star (I’m a nerd by the way) – this I can do while emailing but I have to have classical (noise but no lyrics) when I’m actually writing – then on my desk (actually a fairly small round pine table given to me by my aunt / uncle when they upgraded their conservatory furniture – my whole upstairs is pine, suits the 1930s wooden floors) I have my smaller laptop (a MacBook Air – which goes everywhere with me) and a great 19” monitor so I can have two things open at once and drag from one to the other (see earlier ref to nerdiness – inherited from my brother – his studio apartment in Zurich looks like a scene out of Minority Report, although I don’t remember Tom Cruise having to step over things to get from one side of the room to the other, thankfully not something I’ve inherited from my brother). I also have a magazine rack of display books containing printouts from everything that goes on my blog and Morgen Bailey Daily e-newspaper. :) I also have a pot of pens, another of mints (I love humbugs) a clock (not sure why as I use the laptop’s), Bluetooth keyboard (I have long arms but not that long) and magic mouse and a couple of noteblocks for scribbling stuff (usually jobs lists).

I’d like to like coffee (I love the smell) but it’s tea, or at the moment the dregs of a cup of tea and pineapple juice and lemonade.

Oh yes, I missed a bit. How I get started. It depends really. I’m on a work-in-progress at the moment (anthology called ‘Calendar Girls’) which came from having written a story called April’s Fool and then I thought why not do another 11 stories about the other women. Unless it’s dreadful it’ll be buffed and polished to death and then go online next year as another $1.49 eBook.

 

You seem to favour stories and novellas. Any tips for other writers tackling either of these forms?

I do, well spotted. :) I used to read novels (see earlier reference to Stephen King) but I don’t have so much time now (although I love listening to audio novels – just finished the 7-hour ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’, which was great by the way, despite having too many people hesitating /  pausing / deliberating – but then we writers will always have a pick at something) so I love short stories and novellas because I can read them in one go; plus I’m often too keen (either if it’s gripping or extremely dull) to get to the end!

As for tips, it depends on the story but best just to concentrate really on one scene or event. Don’t have more than four characters or you’ll confuse the reader (and make their names very different to each other). I’d say every sentence counts in a novel but every word counts in a short story. It should have the usual factors; mix of short and long sentences, dialogue and description – and everything written should be there for a reason; does it keep the story moving? Do we learn more about the characters.

You can obviously elaborate in a novella more than a short stories but the above still holds true. If a reader starts to glaze over, just one more bit of waffle (something I’m good at) will make them put the book down and move on to someone else’s. I really think that the eBook will be the making of short stories (certainly hoping so anyway) – we’re busy, our attention spans are shorter and I think now that established writers will actually start making their books shorter for this very reason. There aren’t many people out there who’d read 100,000 words on their iPhone, a Kindle maybe but I think it’s the way eBooks are going to lead writing… and I for one will be walking right alongside it. :)

 

Is there a kind of book you’d like to write but haven’t got round to yet or haven’t dared?

My NaNoWriMo book last year is probably the one that will never see light of day. It was based on an experience I had (not a good one) and I had my character (a Lara Croft, incredibly successful, version of myself) get her own back on the man involved. It’s inspired by what happened and I’ve kept his name (but not mine) because it’s also a great play on words. I’d have to change his name if it ever went out in to the ether and it would lose that meaning. It may go out in some form as I have a few wonderful prison scenes that I had such fun writing but generally it was a therapeutic write, one best left in a ring binder.

I’m fascinated by The 365-Day Writer’s Block Workbook – can you tell us something about it and where we can get hold of it?

Absolutely. This was my first eBook sale so it’s my baby. :) I have been podcasting since August 2010 and in the hints & tips episodes I usually include seven sentence starts for anyone listening to continue, one a day, if they wish (some have and told me so!) and I’d gathered over 3,000 of them (many written when I was temping and was on a too-quiet reception, something I’d relish now). I did put a load of them on Twitter but then I changed it to report the news of one of the writing groups I belong to and put the sentence starts on my blog.

Sentence starts are one of the exercises I use regularly in my Monday night workshops and they’re one of my favourite prompts so I thought I’d create new ones for a writing guide and The 365-Day Writer’s Block Workbook (Volume 1) was born (there will be other volumes of other exercises, not more sentence starts – not until volume 21 maybe). It contains over 1,000 sentence starts split into 21 a week (three a day) and a mixture of first person (days 1 and 4), second person (rarely used in fiction but my favourite – days 2 and 5), third person (days 3 and 6) and then any pov (i.e. As the piece of paper set light…) for day 7. At the end of each week there’s a tip of some description so plenty to keep a writer (whether they suffer from writer’s block or not) or writing group going for a year.

Like the Story A Day May anthology (they’re both $1.49) and free eShorts, it’s currently accessible via http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/morgenbailey. They’ve only been online since late October / early November (2011) and I’m very pleased with the feedback (although I’d love more reviews!) so far. Every time I receive a Smashwords ‘purchase notification’ or ‘review notification’ email comes in a stupid grin spreads across my face.

 

What does the future hold for writers and what do you hope it holds for you?

In a word ‘exciting’. We have more control than ever before and whilst it’s more difficult than ever to get an agent or publisher we can build up a reputation online before we catch their attention. And some, like me, will go their own way with eBooks with the thought at the back of their mind that one day they may have their books in bookshops but in the meantime have a wonderful time connecting with, and occasionally selling to, their potential readers. I have a LOT of content that can go online but it’s a slow process. I’ve gone through the Smashwords formatting hurdle (still with a smile on my face), enjoyed designing my own covers (it’s made me look at photography in a new light – leaving plenty of room for title, author name) and have Amazon next on the hit list with the seven items (four free shorts, the workbook and two variations of a 31-story anthology; one just the stories, the other prompts and author comments). I wouldn’t do it without an editor and I have a great one (hi Rachel!) which is why it’s slow, because we’re being thorough and for a writer who means business, that’s the only way to go.

 

Favourite inspirational quote:

<laughs> One of my favourites is a Douglas Adams but I wouldn’t call it inspirational. “I love deadlines – the sounds as they woosh by”. I’m generally very good with deadlines (the worst thing anyone can say to me is that’s there’s no hurry). A fellow Script Frenzy (I did http://scriptfrenzy.com April 2010) writer said “you can’t edit a blank page” and that does it for me.

Thank you Avril, I’ve enjoyed being on the other end of the mic. :)