A Writer's Process: Rachel Contini

When my beloved childhood neighbourhood was demolished I found a story. 

It was a small run of streets in the north of Liverpool, I loved growing up there, it was a place where everybody knew everybody and you could leave your front door open.  The houses were small but warm and friendly and the people the salt of the earth.  

The demolition project was called Pathways and it would become notorious thanks to George Clarke questioning the need to rip communities apart when the existing houses could be refurbished for a fraction of the cost.  Thus began the empty houses scandal. 

The personal stories behind my old neighbourhood were heart-breaking.  People were lied to from the start. 

They were promised like for like housing which never materialised, they were given less than the value of their homes which left them financially stretched when it came to buy a new one, and when the Pathfinder scheme ran out of money mid project some residents were left adrift in the middle of derelict streets, flanked by run down houses infested with rats and a target for vandals and arsonists.

I decided their story needed to be told.

That was the easy part.  The difficult part was finding out details.  I contacted a few former residents and asked for their story but they were not really forthcoming, they were probably a bit suspicious of this lunatic who’d suddenly appeared in their inboxes asking them to relive their heart-ache. 

So, with an absence of facts I did the next best thing – I made it up and bashed out a first draft.   Then I received some good fortune – I always believe if you get down to working the universe will help and that’s exactly what happened.  Somebody set up a Facebook group for former residents to share memories, I shared mine and suddenly a host of people I’d grown up with contacted me, and they all had the back story. 

I re-wrote and re-wrote filling in the blanks and fleshing out the story until I felt like I had something with real heart. 

I doesn’t have a happy ending, real life often doesn’t, but it has a hopeful ending.  People always have an amazing ability to pick themselves up and carry on; I wrote the ending I wished for these incredible people.

It’s now being considered by BBC Writersroom.  Watch this space!

What Are We Frightened Of? Part 1

When fear attacks...

This month so far, I’ve read three draft autobiographies. Each one has left me awe struck at the author’s bravery, their determination to recover from emotional and physical hardship.

Each of them has been trying to convey a life of great profundity and richness, of wild passions and strong desires.

In each one the wildness has been there, somewhere behind the words, struggling to be heard, roaring in its cage. In each one, to a greater or lesser extent, the writer has been afraid to release it. As we all are, some or most of the time.

Take this example:       I was walking along the street; my heels click clacking on the concrete paving. I smelt exhaust fumes. I heard horns, engines revving in traffic. Then I saw him, the ONE, the only person I hoped never to see again.       ‘Hello’ he said.       The next day I remembered back to that encounter….

Cutting away from the action in this way, just as the tension, emotion, or drama rises, is one strategy that us writers employ (usually unconsciously), to stop ourselves from having to make contact with memories that are just too hard to face, emotions that are too painful to feel again. Because what happens if we feel that deeply? We implode or explode, we destroy ourselves, or others, don’t we?

So, to be a freer writer, and a more liberated person, try this:

Always move towards events that carry emotion, tension or drama. Write them out fully. Linger. Let the reader feel.

Don’t cheat yourself, or them, of an opportunity to feel deeply, to process those emotions by letting them move through the body, and swell and dissipate in their own good time. Cutting to the next scene is for mundane events, events that are not significant to the emotional journey of your hero.

Learn to notice when you cut away. And when you’ve learned to spot it in your writing, try to notice it in your conversations, and in your thoughts too. What’s in the white space between your paragraphs? Write and let me know, please.

This blog was first published on October 22nd 2012

The Caged Writer Roars: My Writing Process

Bridget in a moment of post-writing relief

This is a photograph of me at 4pm this afternoon. I started today feeling almost the most miserable I have ever felt, and have ended it a little better. Can you see my relief?

Today I finished a first draft of chapter 1 of 20 chapters, of what is provisionally (and slightly long-windedly) entitled Tracking The Wild Animal: A journey to living in freedom and creativity.

You’ll find it here.

Before Christmas I realised, with regret, that, given my other work commitments, I wouldn’t manage to seal myself away for the large chunk of January I’d planned. So, I decided that the best approach was to devote one half-day per week to writing a short chapter of this book on our wild creative nature. I hope to finish the first draft book in 20 weeks.

What has been incubating for two years now, is an 18 step theoretical approach to moving from block to flow in work, relationships and creative pursuits.

It’s a broadening out of the theory I use when working with writers through Wild Words. This systematic approach uses the metaphor of ‘tracking a wild animal’. I came up with this approach over several trips to track wild animals in the Himalaya’s, and Pyrenees.

Recently, in my own life, I’ve been rather echoing today’s writing subject ‘The Caged Animal Roars’. Yesterday, forgetting the key to my office did not help my general mood. I did the first 2 hours work on this chapter outside before someone let me in. Luckily, being outdoors always makes me feel better, and that happened yesterday. It was extraordinarily mild for a January day, and I could hear the river rushing in the gorge.  My eyes were able to rest with each pause in the writing, as I looked at the mist hanging over the far mountains.

I’ve spent two months trying to work out how to write this first chapter. I knew that if I could get that right, the rest would know where to go. It’s been unremittingly horrible. There is nothing that makes me more depressed than floundering around unable to find the heart of my writing.

One sticking point here has been how to bring the theory together with my personal experience, as well as how much to write fiction, and how much autobiography.  Reading back what I’ve written, I see it’s about half fact, half fiction. Which is which, I’ll keep to myself for now.

The other major block to the process has been the complexity of the theory. There’s the vast terrain of our relationship to nature, to ourselves, and to creativity to explore through the book. And I won’t begin to name all the psychology theorists that will inform the story as it goes on.

With the completion of this first chapter today (albeit extremely rough at the edges), I feel released. That’s the addiction of writing. I know from experience I’ll remember this thrill and forget the horrors of the process. Oh well. At least I live with passion and vibrancy!

Thinking of you all as you beaver away in your solitary writing spaces this week. Wishing you great freedom of word and expression. 

A Writer's Process: Jill Adams

I like to write with a fountain pen in a favourite notebook/diary in the most informal relaxing place I can find, either curled up in an armchair or at my dining table during the winter and in the summer outside on the patio or by a pool on holiday.

I write something down almost every day even if it is just some dull old fact about the weather as this is the time for me when any creative thoughts are freed to fall onto paper.  The ideas that grow from this daily focus that I like are transferred to a larger notebook and then if I still like it and the idea has 'legs', then it is typed into my laptop, printed for satisfaction and filed.  There are lots of ideas that just don't get beyond the first scribble. 

I also keep a tiny notebook in my handbag for moments I feel a need to record experiences with a few keywords, for example, whilst waiting for an appointment. This notebook is also used for messing around playing hangman with my daughter.  I feel under-dressed without a notepad and pen!

To compose a poem it is usually a fairly quick gathering of a scene or event that I've noted in my diary.

This is an exciting experience, not nerve-wracking or relaxing but exhilarating. I don't write poems in an exact rhyming form, but I let the words launch themselves onto the page in a totally random way that I cannot give reason to. 

The time it takes to collate a poem can be perhaps just a couple of hours for the initial raw draft to become a 'completed' piece.  Then the idea is left to brew for days or weeks.  If after this time the poem still provides me with satisfaction, I'll read it aloud to some long suffering member of my family and edit out the frayed bits.  

Even though a sense of finish comes to me at this point, it is never quite done, because at this point of the process I can find many faults and things that I don't feel are professional, and the nagging feelings of self-doubt about my writing ability creep in. 

The following piece of poetry is inspired by Bridget's prompts from Wild Words, to get back to nature by way of marking ancient festivals and getting down into the cloying ever spinning earth.  It is based on a particular ten-mile stretch of a B road in North Aberdeenshire that I travel often.  The view from the road is of many Crofts nestled into the landscape and it is this that I've tried to capture. It is an unfinished piece that I will revisit and polish at a later date.

Unfinished Journey

Blue tractor lurches and sways

on the soft undulating field.

Away to the left, behind the shelter of the stone wall

sixty ewes gather.

Bleeting.

They nibble fresh pale green hay.

Blue tractor turns left out of the muddy gateway,

trundles away

along the metalled road towards Grange Crossroads and the tiny Primary School.

Large rear tyres emit clods of mud

as the rubber rolls quicker

smattering, splotch, splat, spots

of uniform shaped brown earth, spill

on the hard grey road.

Two rows of decreasing muddy dots placed at the dank tired verge,

and over the chipped white dividing line.

The grey road snakes on

across this fertile centuries old country,

unchanged, unspoilt, unique.

Sharp bends hide ancient stone bridges, falling down over burns

and guttural ditches,

between them who come here from the South,

incomers searching for the 'good life',

and them, the locals who inherited a part of this cloying earth.

Every crop of wheat harvested now and

rhombus shapes set to plough,

plain fields of grass remain.

On the left and later on the right

clusters of pine trees sprout their woody crops,

dark with ever green tips

pointing to outer space.

They form the darkest patches on this quilted landscape of Aberdeenshire countryside

gathered together by the seam of double hedges,

that adjoin the metalled road.

Blue tractor takes a sidetrack to the left, a stony and muddy length,

stops at a wee hoosie and a chimney stack

smokes

from the hearth crackling below with hearty fire.

Rain is blowing up.

The sky to the North has pale blue shreds of rags

strewn across it, remnants

from the sunny morning.

Darkness is coming earlier these late November days,

and earlier than ever today

with gigantic  grey clouds.

This time tomorrow daylight will be shorter

bringing this earth towards the Yule Festival.

The ever changing clock of seasons lulls us like babes in cribs

but,

stay awake, and drink and feast, look around and appreciate,

love and be loved,

and gaze intently at every view and savour every breath you take.

A Writer's Process: Sara Khorasani

Sara Khorasani

Recently I had to write a series of autobiographical poems as part of a project. Yuck. No thanks. I want to write twisted fairytales and Dharmic poems about the nature of existence.

I sit down to begin the project and feel my body tense, my breath shorten. My mind dims under the spotlight, ideas hide themselves in dark corners and my energy slumps. I feel caged, I feel confined, I feel like I’m being told what to do and I don’t want to do it.

I’ve learned that when given a project that doesn’t get my juices flowing I need to find a way in by writing around the topic.

There is always a way in that sets me off, that fires that glow in my body when an idea begins to breathe life. I may have to rummage around to find it, but a word, an image, a feeling will eventually emerge that becomes the ember that later ignites into a story or poem.

In the case of the autobiographical poem sequence I was tasked with, I did some freewriting on the broad theme of ‘childhood’ and through it I started to taste flavours, rekindle feelings and spark images from my past.

Then I go outside - into the woods, or to the beach, and then I wait. Not an impatient waiting, but a waiting born from faith that something will arise if I create the space.

And as I sat beneath a chestnut tree weighing a conker in my hand something did emerge. It was a strong image related to a story my mum told me once - about how she dressed my father – a stern Iranian with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude, newly arrived in the UK – as Paddington bear, complete with duffel coat and jam jar, and took him to a Halloween party. 

And a single line – ‘She’d never make a teddy of you’ – was enough to give the otherwise comedic incident a flavour of foreboding, and acted as the seed from which a series of autobiographical poems emerged.

A Writer's Process: Nikki Woods

Nikki Woods. A winner of the Wild Words Biannual Writing Competition 

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.

A Writer's Process: MJ Oliver

MJ Oiiver 

Nothing gets in the way of my writing, I'm very focussed.

I've amazed myself by discovering that I actually relish the performing of my poetry, whereas previouslyI'd always hated any kind of public speaking. I think it's because I love writing so much, love the process of discovery that comes with it, I just can't wait to share it with others. 

I'm working towards a collection of poems and prose-pieces, relating to my father, who was a Hobo in Canada during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This has involved lots of research (historical and family), which I've enjoyed balancing with fiction, where there were gaps.

I've found that writing poems in the voice of others, ventriloquising, can be a really powerful tool. 

I also write poems that relate to love and loss, of family and friends, in which I tend to identify with wild animals -- it seems to help in getting to the core of my feelings.

It also minimizes the embarrassment I feel when disclosing personal emotions, and at the same time, I hope, makes the poem more accessible to others.