Tomorrow nights Writing Game features a not to be missed conversation with crime writer Ann Cleeves recorded when Wendy and I met up with her at the Hexham Book Festival. The Writing Game is broadcast on 105.9 FM at 7pm – 8pm and should be available as a podcast within a day or two at the Bishop FM website.Inspiring for both writers and readers – do tune in!
Queen of the Night Tulips in my garden
Suddenly it’s summer – the buttercups have grown high in the field of cows, the tulips I planted last October are fading and the grass on our newly seeded lawn is just showing through.
With temperatures in the high 20s and the day being Sunday what better excuse for idling the day away with a glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc and a copy of Hilary Mantel’s dazzling epic – Wolf Hall. Exquisitely and bravely written it compels us to feed on the dark meat of HenryTudor’s England; the blood and guts, the political intrigue, the King’s lust, the continent’s despair, and through it all the rise of Cromwell, the most powerful of Henry’s courtiers - spin doctor to beat all spin doctors, (Peter Mandleson eat your heart out ) – the enforcer – as much a man of our time as his own, a rich and complex character, both villain and hero.
‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,’ says Thomas More, ‘and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’
The novelist, says Mantel, ‘lives inside the consciouness of her characters…’ and ‘…agrees just to move forward with her characters walking into the dark.’
I recommend walking into the dark with Hilary Mantel – so much to enjoy- Wolf Hall is unputdownable and so much to learn about wriitng fiction.
Today I walked in the bluebell wood near the Botanic Gardens in Durham - heavenly! Took my new camera
Writers need readers, without them we are nothing. When we write or when we come to consider what we’ve written, it is vitally important that we ask ourselves if it will work for our readers and what their experience of our novel will be.
I recently had some interesting feedback on my current novel after a close reading by a perceptive American reader. It was invaluable to know about his experience of the novel: what he felt about about my characters - how they might be developed further, what else he needed me as the author to tell him, where there was ambiguity, where he needed clarification or to be ‘pointed in the right direction.’ His feedback made me see the novel from the reader’s perspective. It made me realise ways in which I could improve it and it reminded me of the duty we have as novelists not only to create fully rounded and satisfying characters but also to guide our readers effortlessly through our narrative.
Eileen Elgey – friend, writer and reader, recently had a piece on being a reader published in The Journal (click to read)- the first thing she does, she says, when she wakes in the morning is reach for a book….
The Water Table - Philip Gross’s award winning collection of Poetry – winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2009- evokes the landscape of my childhood like nothing I’ve ever read before – the shifting ground, the mud, ‘the megatonneage of it,’ the silt and the channels, and the body of water that lies between one shore and another of the Bristol Channel, that he calls ‘Betweenland.’
It is all here and every picture he paints brings it back to me afresh; the colour, the light, the fluidity and the fragility (which I really wanted to capture in my novel The Sweet Track ) as well as the solid ground and the factories which I watched on another shore. In Designs for the Water Garden water appears as -a mist maze, a rain-gazebo, a water-glass lens, its variety is infinite and here are we flowing side by side as lattices of mostly water.
Philip Gross’s words are beautiful, subtle, elegant, and despite his concerns for our watery planet, his vision is human and optimistic. But what makes his poetry truly great is its wonderful clarity and accessibilty.
You don’t have to know this place to walk with him.
Not quite my field or cows - unfortunately my camera is broken.
Last autumn I wrote a poem In The Field of Cows, about loss and the ‘disappearance’ of the beautiful cows I’d watched all summer in the field opposite my house. Later, Jan, my sister-in-law, who is an artist, etched some of the words in glass.
Four days ago the cows came back! As beautiful and new as ever, and as well as indulging my new found passion for crime fiction I am writing about them again – here is my poem in progress…
In The Field of Cows 2
You come back, surprise me
-velvet black, copper, grey-ghost
water stained stones-
show me the sky of
billowy cloud, trees turned
beech, salmon pink and lime
leap across lady’s smock
head nuzzle, tail flick you huddle
a troupe not yet separate you
swagger and play, remind me what it is
to jump the moon, seize the day
in praise of summers to come
oblivious to the wind tarnished
blossom yesterday blown
P.D.James is eighty nine, soon to be ninety. At the Hexham Book Festival last Sunday you could be forgiven for thinking she was twenty years younger …or more! She was simply fabulous, as was her host Val Mcdermid, and their on stage meeting sparkled with good humour and wit. Their conversation was littered with gems about writing and the writing life. Val McDermid had undoubtedly done her homework, and together they made it seem effortless and above all – fun! It was a privilege to eavesdrop.
At Hexham I also talked with crime writer Ann Cleeves, who I knew in another life, in prison. It was great to meet up with her after a long gap in which she has become a star! She is as she always was, a brilliant and dedicated writer and a lovely person to know and be around. She also said some interesting and perceptive things about writing crime fiction which chimed with P.D. James earlier in the day – in particular they both spoke about structure and plot in the crime novel, as a liberating rather than constraining force: as something that looked after itself.
Being new to the genre I’d worried a great deal about coming up with a plausible and complex plot – it had seemed like venturing into unknown and hostile territory (although of course we are hard wired into the genre, if not from our reading, then from film and television.) Then when I’d finished the first draft of my novel I wondered why it felt so easy and relaxed to write– I think now I know. I think as Ann said, ‘the plot takes care of itself.’
AND I love what P.D. James says in, Talking About Detective Fiction – a must-read for crime aficiandos- ‘To say that one cannot produce a good novel within the discipline of a formal structure is as foolish as to say that no sonnet can be great poetry…’
*** To read more about the day and about Ann Cleeves’ interview on The Writing Game - read Wendy’s great post at Lifetwicetasted.
Writing Junkie is written by Avril Joy, author of The Sweet Track – her first novel, published in 2007 by Flambard Press. She began writing ten years ago after meeting prison Writer in Residence Wendy Robertson - with whom she now works. In 2003 was awarded a Northern Promise Award by New Writing North. Having ‘escaped from prison’ after twenty five years! to become a full-time writer, she is passionate about writing but admits she still has much to learn. Through her blog she hopes to chart her continuing journey and share, with all those other writing junkies out there, what she discovers along the way. For more click on ABOUT -top right
Write not what you know…
write what you love
Elizabeth Berg
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