Inspired By Nature: Sue Johnson

My work and the natural world are closely linked. I am fortunate to have lexical-gustatory synaesthesia where I interpret some words and names as a specific taste.

For instance, ‘world’ tastes of pink blancmange, ‘feather’ tastes of whipped cream and ‘thunder’ tastes of thick porridge. These sensations never change and can’t be switched off!

Since 1st January 2013, I’ve written a poem a day every day. I discovered that, even on days when time was a problem, I could always find a few minutes to scribble the draft of a poem in my notebook – usually sitting in a car park and watching the clouds or focusing on a bird or a tree. Some of these poems have gone on to be published in small press magazines – often with minimal alteration. Others have been developed into longer poems or they’ve formed the nucleus of a short story or a scene from a novel.

A friend of mine keeps a nature journal which includes photographs, pressed flowers, sketches, feathers, leaves and short poems. It occurs to me that this would be a brilliant idea for developing a series of story boards for a short story collection.

Obviously, not all my poems ‘work.’ This doesn’t matter. I have great fun recycling them.

If you fancy trying this, it involves scissors and glue and you can create more than one version. Print off a copy of a poem that hasn’t worked. Cut it up. Add six new words, a colour and a sound. Reposition the words. Play around with them until you’ve got something you’re happy with then glue them in place.

At the end of his life, the artist Picasso said he regretted not playing more. I’m determined not to let this happen to me.

If I do get stuck with a writing project I find that a walk amongst trees or by water helps me to sort the problem.  I’m also lucky to have a summerhouse in the garden where I hear blackbirds on the roof and the scent of lavender and honeysuckle drifts in through the open door.

Nature is playful. Look at the way the clouds move. Look at the common names for wild flowers – what could you do with ‘enchanter’s nightshade’, ‘fox and cubs’ and lady’s smocks?

Listen to the sound of the wind and the different birdsongs.

For a long time now, I’ve looked on the words I create as being like a seed bank. They will yield a harvest when the time is right.  

www.writers-toolkit.co.uk

A Day In The Life Of A Writer: Elizabeth Ducie

When people ask me if I’m retired, I am indignant. True, I will never see 60 again, unless I take my mother-in-law’s example and start counting the years backwards.

True, I no longer have a day job that pays the bills. True, I have thrown out most of my business suits and spend my days in jeans or shorts. But I still work, I protest: I am a full-time writer!

But what does that mean? Do I work a 9-5 shift, five days a week? Do I have someone managing my time and giving me instructions? Let’s think about that.

Even without a regular alarm clock, I get up very early; usually before six o’clock. If it’s a gym day, I head to the nearest town, punish my body for a while and then return for breakfast. Otherwise I hit the laptop as soon as I am up. But either way, I am working well before many employed people.

And in the mornings, I write. Whether it’s a chapter or two of the next novel, a short story for a competition, an article or blog post, I try to get some new words down on (virtual) paper every day.

It’s the quantity of words that I use as my main measure of productivity. (In my earlier life, I was a production manager and it’s hard to drop the terminology.)

As a self-published (by choice) author, I am also responsible for marketing and sales, so there’s lots of administration and promotion to be fitted into the day. That’s my afternoon task; less creative but equally satisfying.

I knock off about tea-time in order to catch up with the early evening quizzes (my guilty secret) but will always have the laptop set up on the table in the lounge. I often return to it during the evening, although it will mainly be for lighter work, like catching up on social media (and yes, that’s work too).

With a life-style like this, weekends mean very little and so this would tend to be my timetable, whatever day the calendar is showing.

So it’s fair to say I work more than a 9-5 shift, seven days a week. But I am my own boss and I manage my own time. If I want to take a couple of hours off for coffee with a friend, or go to the hairdressers mid-week, I do.

No, I’m not retired; I am a full-time writer; and I have the best job in the world.

www.elizabethducie.co.uk

A Writer's Process: Michael Loveday

I’d like to explore here how we, as writers, might recover when faced with a creative trough.

It involves a confession – about three years ago writing and I had fallen out of love.  

What had begun as an adventure, one that easily seduced me, had now dissipated into a series of irritable, familiar and tiresome habits. I was disenchanted with a writing process that I didn’t relish, and disenchanted with my end-product. In short, I was thinking of giving up. The challenges and highs of completing an MA and my first poetry pamphlet in the same summer had left me, afterwards, wandering in something like a desert sprawling with tumbleweed. I could almost hear the wind blowing past my ears. Is that it? What do I do now? Where the hell is everybody?

What follows is an outline of the remedies I sought. They may not all work for others; but perhaps some ideas will connect if you’re ever going through an uncreative time.

(1)   I loathed the results when I put pen to paper. A voice kept telling me I wasn’t creative enough. The writing I admired most, I realised, was associated with a quality of playfulness – one that I now seemed to lack. Michael Atavar has said: “We have this idea that creativity must be a product – a book, a performance, an event. I believe that creativity is a process. It might result in some of these external things, but its main purpose is to develop an attitude within ourselves.” I decided I wanted to make my process as slow, meandering, playful, fertile as possible – as if I were fermenting some fine wine to sip in the future.  (Later, I encountered the poet Liz Berry’s description of her writing process. I drew huge inspiration from this rich, leisurely experimentation).  https://poetryschool.com/poems/sow/.

(2)   I realised that I associated pure creativity most strongly with the visual arts. Look at kids! – they’re painting before they write. I admire artists for doodling away in notebooks, making preparatory sketches. So I bought an A4 artist’s sketchbook for my drafting – cream paper, unlined. I turned the page to landscape, starting in the centre (forgetting about order and position), and filled the page outwards with my pen. I felt much closer to my creative self. 

The drafting process.

(3)   I reminded myself that other writers readily confessed to writing awful stuff. Ann Lamott labels it “the shitty first draft.” https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf

Raymond Carver talked about how his first drafts “are dreadful”; how he regularly went through between 10 and 30 drafts to get a piece of writing right. 

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymond-carver

I became increasingly fascinated with the way it was possible, through patient drafting, to turn base metal into… if not gold, then at least something more interesting than base metal.

More than ever before, most of the words I wrote were “wasted” – edited out; revised to the point that they were no longer the same; or seemed so embarrassing that they were hidden in a drawer. I followed a new 80/20 rule: the last 20% of a piece of writing, I told myself, takes up 80% of the time.

These three seemed to offer a key. In addition -

(4)   I hunted back through several years’ worth of old, abandoned drafts and experiments from my first few years of writing – I’d been industrious when I first started, burning with enthusiasm, before I realised how awful I was, but I’d kept all my old drafts. I sifted for places where the writing had a touch of sparkle. I didn’t find as much as I’d hoped. But I did surprise myself to see this other person, buzzing with ideas, accumulating reams of material. Had I really, once, been producing so much stuff?

I remembered the deal Julia Cameron urges us to make – Universe, look after the quality; I’ll look after the quantity.

(5)   I started using my iPhone to jot down poem / story concepts the moment they sparked, whether memories of my own life, or fiction ideas. Barely a sentence, or a couple of words each time – without saying “oh, I’ll remember that later”. Gradually the list accumulated until I had a large resource of prompts I could go to when it was writing time – just pick the one I fancied most that day, and go.

(6)   In a topsy-turvy experiment, I started using a computer for editing, instead of my beloved pen. I found I was tougher when I typed things in presentable black and white, and this seemed to push my writing to its benefit (though with drafting, I still rely on pen and A4 sketchbook, where I want access to first thoughts, as free as possible from the inner critic).

(7)   I held my nerve more and shoved first drafts “in a drawer” for longer before tinkering. Maybe not quite the mythical month that some writers argue first drafts should be set aside for. But a couple of weeks, at least. Just to see things genuinely fresh.

(8)   And I started a writing journal. A third one, in fact – to my shame, I am a serial journaller, already possessing a traditional diary (where I wrote twice a week), and a reflective learning journal for teaching (once a week). I nattered in my writing journal whenever it suited me. I babbled about: process; how I felt about edits I’d made; potential new edits to try;  sequencing and structuring of material for fantasised poem / story collections; news of rejections (boo! hiss!) or acceptances (hooray!); books I’d been reading, plays and films I’d seen; creativity generally; quotes from books that I admired. Etc, etc. Anything that nourished and consoled the process.

That uncreative tumbleweed: it’ll haunt you if you let it.

There is a long list of other things one can try (and many I’ve stuck with) to escape from it – walking, jogging, meditating, eating better food, going to see films, spending more time with other writers, time with loved ones doing anything but writing, experimenting with a drastic new haircut, smashing your fists against rocks (er – hang on – maybe forget about those last two).

In the end I have, I think, settled in a better place in terms of process: I’ve decided that being a writer demands a mingling of doubt and faith that is disconcerting to experience, but one that I can live with for now.

If you don’t doubt your work, don’t interrogate your themes and narratives, worry about your sentences, you may never push your writing enough until it is ready to share publically (if that’s what you want to do – admittedly a big if).

If you don’t have long-term faith in what you are trying to achieve, you will falter at hurdles – when obstacles materialise in the writing, or when rejections appear, or when low confidence risks leading you into the desert.

Maybe, in fact, negotiating the intersection of these two opposing forces – doubt and faith – is the mission of the writer.

In other words, if you spend enough time thinking “it’s not good enough”, it has a chance of becoming “good enough”. It’s the kind of logical and existential paradox that will trigger cycles of crisis and recovery. (May all artists and writers be creatively fruitful in the land of their suffering! Ha!) But the reality is more mundane: one step at a time, what if I cut this word here, or change that one, or add this one? Would it read more strangely, more beautifully, more powerfully? Can I at least have some fun trying?

 www.michaelloveday.co.uk

A Writer's Process: Sue Shooter

Writing my first novel has been like journeying to destination unknown without a route map. I was crazy to set off in the first place then things became even crazier.

Downloading ideas is the easy bit, just letting them flow. I use good old-fashioned pencil and notebook. That’s how I learnt to write as a child. It’s how my head pours out its garbled contents onto paper. My scrawl is messy and no one would want to read my graphite-scribbled confusion, but my next step is to type up the sentences one by one, arranging them into some kind of order, assist the words in making their sense.

Then I edit. Then I edit. And then I edit some more.

When I’m shaping each subsequent draft I surround the creative process with various repetitive activities. I knit, ferociously. My family have accepted, without complaining, manifold garments from me over the last three years since I started writing fiction. It’s good to know how much they love me!

I also do Killer Sudokus. After making the transition from academic writing to creative writing these puzzles keep my left brain fed, watered and relatively contented. And I swim lots of laps in the local pool or walk miles on the coast path which helps clear my mind. This also has the welcome side effect of keeping me fit when my bum has to spend countless hours on the seat in front of my laptop, or when I have to stare out to sea for a long time, story-dreaming.

These activities help me into an uncontrollable ‘zone’ which is a state where I feel suspended between sheer panic I’ll fail to narrate the story as it should be told, and sheer excitement that something is emerging.

When the key to a scene or a character rises to the surface, when the story solidifies in my head like butter coming together in a churn, I know my supporting activities (aka my OCD behaviours) are working. It feels like magic is happening.

It’s possible to conclude from this description of my writing process that I am clinically insane. Who cares? I’m doing what I love, although the anxiety of whether my book will be published sends me reaching for my knitting needles…

Your Wild Words: Helen Ellwood

For many years, I was plot bound, held in check by the beginning, the middle and the end - kept behind the bars of good-girl grammar and spelling.

I insisted on knowing what was going to happen and frequently forced my characters to obey. They had no freedom to express themselves, to turn right instead of left, to explore the dangerous jungle trail to the unknown.

I always thought it was weakness when people said that their characters wrote the story, but now that I have two teenagers learning about love and a tropical island intent on their death, I’ve change my mind.

Even I, the god of this particular little world, can’t tell these youngsters what to do or say. I have learned to listen.

I can now feel the wild heartbeat as they kiss for the first time.

I hear the knock, knock as the bones of a long dead soldier roll against the coral. Fear tightens my belly as the island plans their doom.

Wild writing is not safe. It is liberating.

A Writer's Process: Tiggy Hayes

I sneak downstairs usually in the dark like a naughty nosy child, warm up my conservatory and sit at the table.  

I have no lights on (except from the computer screen) and the windows look south (with east – west views) over a field and common land full of trees.  

The only company I allow, and is around at this precious time of the day is the dawn chorus from the multitude of birds that I always hear but never see.   The sun rises all round me and usually begins with a cacophony of sound from the birds, followed by streaking lights as the sun hits the horizon until I have a clear beautiful morning.  Today it is frosty and shining.

My current project is draft 6 or 7 of my book Memories, I hope to have published but have spent years editing. I wrote this as a skeleton for my first NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2010 but struggle with the editing of it.  I have had some fabulous feedback from beta readers and an agent who insisted I send it out rather than self-publish, she unfortunately took the wrong genre and it was not ready at the time.  I am nearer that stage now and would like to send to an agent this year.  

I am also looking back at my recent 2015 NANOWRIMO story line (Destination; a historical novel).    My husband cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats last autumn and I went as support for him in the car.  I used my time to create a historical journey visiting places my character might pass through.  Normally I would not look at this one for some years, 2 others waiting in the drawer, but I am working on an historical fiction course and this is providing the subject matter.    I have many other projects on the go; short stories mainly with an ever hopeful plan to sell them to womags, but the market for this is reducing and the pools of extraordinarily good writers increasing; I will have to keep writing.

Once I am on a roll, I find the writing really easy - I can write a skeleton in just over a month but I do live, breath and sleep the characters.

I am an avid fan of NANOWRIMO and find this an incredible way to allow a story to develop in its own manner.   I write short stories easily as well usually in a few days.  I do a little bit of planning and this then allows the words to tumble out.  Getting them down on the computer screen or paper quick enough is usually my problem.  I don’t know where the words come from and I often find I have a different ending or a new twist that was not in my planning at all.  The rough draft is usually good content but needs a lot of work to bring it up to readable material.

Editing! Editing!  I can go back and re-read something and tweak the grammar etc… but find it difficult to re-write bits. 

 I hate having to cut out the crafted words even when they don’t go….sometimes less really is more but I struggle.   I re-read and re-read but really find it difficult to read the words on the page as opposed to the words in my head (that should be on the page).  Time away from the project does help on this one.

I am a fan of Swanwick Writer’s School which I hope to return to again this summer.  I come away from the week feeling so inspired and really at one with the world, having people around me who thrive on words as well and do not regard me as weird!   I belong there and meet so many fantastically creative people who encourage, challenge but never make me feel inferior.

My biggest obstacle is I lack confidence in my own ability to write but I do enjoy the past time and love being immersed with a project. 

I write under the name of Tiggy Hayes and post to my blog; Dawn Chorus, not as often as I should.    

https://tiggyhayes.wordpress.com

A Writer's Process: Sebastian Lander

I don’t know whether I should call my writing a process – it’s more a linguistic version of throwing paint at a canvas when I have the time, and inspiration deigns to drop in.

I write sporadically, often at the kitchen table, even though we have a quiet studio at the end of the garden. Being in a space where there’s the opportunity for distraction somehow lends energy to my writing. And I can always put my fingers in my ears when I need to focus.

Sometimes I tap at my laptop in bed, reference books spread around me. It feels indulgent, an emotion I am ironically trying to indulge. My writing has the tendency to slip down the list, in favour of seemingly more productive priorities.

 

I have worked with words for a number of years. That question, ‘Have you got a book in you?’ has long been in the back of my head and, on occasion, on other people’s lips.

It’s only now that I am trying to get that book out, and I don’t even know if it will be any good.

Currently I am researching and writing about a character in Elizabethan England. The research part threatens to stretch endlessly into the future, unless I am careful. Meanwhile, fact and fiction are locked in a gladiatorial wrestling match in my head, fact holding itself up as truth and fiction championing freedom. I am learning to make room for both.

I try to visit as many places as I can which will enable me to resurrect the past. Lines pop into my head and I write them on my iPhone, puzzle pieces to be later worked up into a hopefully faithful 16th century picture. When I am writing, I light an incense stick. For me, the smell evokes everything Tudor, bringing with it the nostalgia of childhood visits to historic houses.

 

I find that I have lots of ideas and can really visualise how I want my writing to read in my head. When it comes to fingertips on keys, it doesn’t always match up.

And then I start labouring over the language, which can weigh it down.

I have fixed on finishing my book by the time I am 40. Just completing it will be an achievement in itself, let alone anything else. Hopefully, those splodges on canvas will eventually take some sort of meaningful form.

A Writer's Process: Andy Stevens

Great! I’ve the whole day off to write.

I’ll open up Final Draft and finish that knock-out script I’ve been working on. In a few days’ time, I’ll send it off to the BBC Writers Room. That’s a mere formality though, isn’t it? It’ll get snapped up, they’ll appoint someone famous to direct the show for the telly - like Stephen Frears. I’ve got it all planned out – late night BBC4 slot at first then over to prime time BBC2. The Baftas and the Golden Rose of Montreux will follow then off to Hollywood to negotiate with Netflix to produce an American version with plenty of canned laughter!

I’ll make a coffee first though.

This coffee’s good. Those little pods that come through the post from that exclusive Coffee Club are wonderful. They give just the right amount of va, va, voom to get one started. You know what, while I’m savouring this coffee, I’ll log in to ‘BBC Listen Again’. I’ll quickly catch up with ‘In Our Time’ and ‘Round Britain Quiz’ to sharpen up the grey matter prior to opening Final Draft.

Wow, I actually got two questions right in ‘Round Britain Quiz’.

OK then, let’s get started! Oh, wait a moment, it’s 1100 now and I’m feeling a bit peckish.

I could kill a p-p-p-p-penguin right now. Let’s quickly see what’s in the biscuit tin. Good Lord, it looks like Mrs Draco has taken austerity to heart and expanded its coverage to include biscuit procurement – there are only bloody Malted Milks in here! Things will be very different once I’ve submitted this script. Until then, I’ll have another coffee and dunk this Malted Milk.

Right, OK, I’m back in front of the computer and ready to…blimey, there’s a Siskin on the feed station outside my window, I must get a picture of it for my year list.

Bugger, it flew off! If I want it to come back, I’ll have to fill up the feeders and hang some fat balls – it shouldn’t take too long.

I fed the birds but unfortunately Mrs. Beasley from next door heard me – she can talk the back legs off a diplodocus…and she did.

Oh dear, it’s lunchtime. I’ll make a cheese sandwich then sit back down at the computer.

There was something I needed to do today…what was it? Catch up with ‘Happy Valley’ on iPlayer? Or was there something else?