A Writer's Process: Autumn Barlow

Autumn Barlow

Writing is a journey that is individual and this has two important consequences: one is that it is a personal journey to a unique destination, and the second is that people are on different stages of that journey.

At the moment, I am an entertainer. My writing seeks to make people laugh; if this were Tarot, I'd be the Fool, and I'm happy with that.

The process might seem superficial. It is one that I have honed over the decades; on my journey, this is what works for me.

I keep the pool of inspiration filled. I read, widely. I seek out culture both high and low, and I explore new places, a lot. It all goes into my mind, and often emerges in surprising ways. I don't begrudge taking an afternoon off to walk around town. It's all part of it. I need to be human to write about human life.

Often I have one spark that comes to me as a sentence or an image. I let it roll around my mind for some times. I am always working on multiple projects at different stages. I seem to have a knack for compartmentalising.

Once the idea has grown and I have a character with a problem to solve, then I sit with a large sheet of paper and some post-it notes and I outline their arc. I split the paper into sections and make sure I have exciting scenes to look forward, well-scattered through the book.

If I am not excited about writing it, I don't do it. If it's boring to write, I tell myself, it could be boring to read.

Then I type up each chapter as a short paragraph. I do this on a laptop, often away from home, in libraries or cafes. I find novelty sparks my creativity.

Finally I sit at the desktop computer and I set myself strict word counts. Some may find this intimidating. I write in bursts, aiming for 3,000 to 5,000 words a day. I let the energy of the tale drag me along.

Then I put it aside and work on another project before returning to edit it.

I try not to get bogged down in other people's ideas of what a "real writer" should do, or act, or say, or be. I know my aim: to entertain. And I work hard to please the reader.

A Writer's Process: Adrastos Omissi

Adrastos Omissi was short-listed in The Wild Words Biannual Writing Competition

I find that the stories I write that work best are often largely without process or without a conscious goal. They come from long reflection on an idea or a feeling. You think about it, you play with it, you chop it up, and then suddenly, often when you’re doing something else, a story seems to just happen inside your head and you write it down as quickly as you’re able. This was one of those.

 In the Valley of the Shadow was one of many I wrote in the months after the death of my grandfather, and like a lot of these it deals with the theme of death. Confrontation with death is so impossible for the human mind to grasp that we react with panic, fear, and denial. I tried to capture these feelings in my story whose main character, through the concept of his eternal life, finds himself utterly trapped: too scared to die, but too dead to live. The story tries to capture a moment within this endless life he has consigned himself to when real feeling – in this case, of pain and loss – finds him and he can only react the way that he has taught himself to, by retreating from the truth that life and death are – and have to be – sides of the same coin.

For me, a story often revolves around a key phrase or theme on which you try to hang the rest. Within this story, there were two points of focus that I tried to draw. The first of these is the opening word, ‘uncoffined,’ which I hope will draw the reader with its strangeness. I wanted it to evoke the horrible impropriety of a dead body – that feeling that it just shouldn’t be the way it is.

The other is the smell of pine, a smell of childhood for the character. We all tend to ignore smells most of the time, but at certain moments it can be a very powerful sensation and it connects us to our memories in a way that no other sense can. We are all, I think, haunted by smells from childhood that fill us with a bittersweet sense of a lost past, and I wanted that idea of a smell that anchors the character to a life he has lost to be the driving motif of the piece.

A Writer's Process: Penny Walker

Penny Walker was a shortlisted runner-up in the Wild Words Spring Solstice 2015 Writing Competition with her entry Above Grasmere.

"Although I do a lot of writing for my work, I’m only an occasional creative writer.

This poem records a precious day, when I went on a school trip with my younger daughter.

There’s a secret double meaning in its title. We were ‘above Grasmere’ in the Lake District. But it was also her final year at Grasmere Primary School in Hackney, London. This school trip for families to a namesake beauty spot was a goodbye to primary school because she would soon be ‘above Grasmere’ and moving on to secondary school.

The whole trip was a rite of passage: fun, exciting, and also poignant.

I wanted to capture how I felt about her and about my own changing identity. The first few lines emerged pretty much fully formed, and I scribbled them down. I wasn’t sure that there was any point in trying to write any more, but I took the risk and a few more verses came. The hard work was trying to see whether phrases and ideas that were 100% meaningful and understandable to me, would make sense to a reader who wasn’t inside my head.

I didn’t fully manage to strip it of cliché, but I’m pleased with some of the images and compactness.

When I was happy enough with it, the first person I shared it with was my daughter. After all, it was her story too. She encouraged me to do a final polish and was OK with the idea of me trying to get it published in some way.

And I’m glad it has been. But its importance is very personal - it’s a love letter to my daughter and to the bittersweet aching pride in letting your child leave you behind, beyond your protection, as they have to."

My Creative Process by Charlotte Stevens

Charlotte Stevens was a shortlisted runner-up in the Wild Words Spring Solstice Writing Competition 2015 with her poem About Witches. You can read her work here.

She told me about her creative process...

"I have a preoccupation with form when writing.

I have felt in the past that my writing has to have some kind of established form to be 'valid', and so I have often struggled with trying to capture the ideas and images I want to explore in a formal and recognised structure.

'About Witches' represents a breakthrough for me.

I was working with these ideas relating to dissent and disorder but was trying to write them in an English sonnet form. I liked the contrast, but wrangling the words into the established form was difficult and somehow 'flattened' the work. So I broke it apart. I pulled out lines and messed them up and around, and I felt this freedom to do something different and create something that worked better.

The outcome, this poem, is by no means perfect, but it is different to the way in which I was writing before, and revisiting it influences how I write now.

Since then I have been exploring free verse - still rather obsessively with my syllable counting and metrical forensics! - but it has moved me forward and opened my writing up."

Helen Ellwood on Life and Writing

Helen Ellwood talks to me about her writing and life process...

When I began writing 'Message in a Bottle', I wasn't thinking about publication,

I simply wanted to escape the pain of a spine-damaging car crash. By thinking about my time living as a South Seas castaway, and recording my memories on a Dictaphone, I was able to distract myself from my disability.

As the years rolled by, and my health improved to the point where I could sit up and use voice-activated software, I began to believe in my story. In reality, who goes to an uninhabited desert island to get away from their troubles? I did, and it was a story worth telling, yet for some reason I couldn't finish the wretched thing.

Originally, I'd gone to the island to have an adventure and thereby heal my grief. My mother had died only the year before, and I couldn't cope. I ran away to ‘paradise’, tried to face my demons and returned alive, but did that really make a story? Self-doubt kicked in.

In 2011, I gained a few writerly tools and a dose of self-confidence from Bridget’s writing course at Swanwick Summer School, and a year later gained the interest of literary agent Meg Davies. At this point, I was still focusing on the travel adventure; putting my inner journey second.

I failed to hold Meg’s attention, but my next re-write, in which I focused more strongly on the inner journey, got long-listed for the Mslexia Memoir Competition 2014. So far so good, but Bridget felt I hadn't yet reached the heart of my story. Something indefinable was missing.

I’d gone to the island to find freedom from grief, yet once there, I’d remained emotionally restrained. Why hadn’t I been able to yell and roar – to heal? Why hadn’t I been able to challenge my companion when I needed to? Why had I let the press walk all over me?

As I read through my manuscript with an open mind, I realised my book was actually about authenticity.

I was brought up to be a well-behaved child. Unfortunately, I became too well-behaved; I grew into an adult afraid of authentic self-expression. I was a wild child in conformist clothing. This inability to speak my truth dogged my adventure on all levels. I had found the heart of my story. My journey was complete.
By writing my thoughts and feelings in italics, and showing my actual speech and behaviour in normal text, my latest rewrite explores the mismatch between the two; giving rise to insight and personal change, with a refreshing touch of humour, all set in an exotic and claustrophobic environment.

I am very grateful to Bridget for helping me give birth to my Desert Island memoir.

When you get to the heart of your story, the journey is complete.

Why I write by Nikki Woods

Nikki Woods was the winner of the Wild Words Spring Solstice 2015 Writing Competition with her entry Taniwha.

"I felt rather nervous when Bridget asked me to describe the processes I adopted in producing Taniwha...

I am fairly new to creative writing - though I’ve published non-fiction in the past - and, to date, I’ve focussed more closely on what I have written rather than why or how I have written it. Bridget’s questions made me think about the aims and ambitions of writing, as well as the obstacles.

When friends ask why I write, I tend to trot out predictable answers: a love of language and reading, a passion for communicating ideas, the thrill of hearing that others have enjoyed my work. All are true, but they are only part of the story. The other part is more personal: it’s as if a lifetime’s experiences of joy, anger, love, remorse, sadness, cheer, bereavement, delight (to name but a few) have reached capacity and can no longer be contained. They need to cut loose and, for me, their escape route is the written word. In Taniwha, these experiences are represented in themes including oppression, isolation, cultural dislocation and determination.

This is not to say that I set out purposefully to cover particular issues. Far from it. The themes that find expression in my writing are rarely developed in a conscious manner. Rather, I find that ideas evolve during the process of writing, jumping onto the page in a way that is at first surprising but ultimately predictable.

In this respect, I have no choice but to start with what I know, and I continue by (re) interpreting and broadening my experiences within the act of writing. I aim to mix what I know with what I want to know, and use the familiar in different and, I hope, creative ways. In relation to Taniwha, for example, I have lived in New Zealand but as an adult, not a child. I have never had a home on a farm but have experienced bullying. I do believe in monsters, especially those that lurk in the dark depths of deep pools.

The main difficulty I face in writing is beginning a new piece of work. It can take me days – even weeks – to get a story off the ground. I find that a walk with my dog in the wild always helps (pictured). As I sit down with a clean sheet of paper, I feel a conflicting combination of excitement about what I might write, and anxiety as to whether I will be able to write anything at all. I imagine the feeling as a writer’s version of stage-fright and, picking up my pen, I brace myself to step into the limelight.

Seeking Authenticity by Kester Reid

Read Kester Reid's piece, 'Stream', listed for the Wild Words Competition, here:

To write, I seek to experience authentically – unexpectantly, and unhurriedly. I respect every being and every force as something alive with a present power to animate our shared reality. I await their messages, their teachings. To express such experience is impossible. To integrate it is my only goal. To reflect and write about it is to explore it again, to explore its essence, and share it perhaps. Poetry is the most honest way for me to do that. I go back there and look again, with words.

My piece for the Wild Words competition ‘Stream’, began as a journal entry during my time living amongst the Achuar tribe of the Western Amazon. For some years I have been drawn to this particular tropical wilderness, and into tribal realities. The isolation, both cultural and physical, of such experiences, taught me a huge amount about myself and my cultural mode of experiencing. Wild forests and native friends taught me a more natural way, a more human way.

Stillness and observation are critical aspects of an indigenous lifestyle. Cultivating these practices, and states, is vital to noticing the intricacies of the world around me – in order to thrive, physically and spiritually. Such a mode is a survival tool, but also the gateway to recognising the beauty and mystery of the world, which is a momentary happening to which I am integral, which pulses heavily on the waves of my own breath. I recognise the power of natural forces, the creativity there, and the mystery. And suddenly, everything is alive, so alive – as alive as me. This intuition that my experience of consciousness is a marvel not unique to my own species is deeply connective – it makes me humble before the Great Mystery, it uplifts me as a part of the Great Mystery.

‘Stream’ began with an experience I never intended to write about. The same curiosity that drew me out to those forests, and down that particular stream, somehow guided me to explore it with words. The root of it all is out under the changing sky, and inside the wild mind. Coming to close to the Earth, and all Nature, our nature. The rest is just reading and writing and honing – becoming more honest, more open, more honest.

I am pleased to be connected to the Wild Words circle. Thank you."