The Book of My Life
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The book of my life. Creating ourselves in the writing.
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The Caged Writer Roars: My Writing Process
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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: Gabrielle Mullarkey
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CARRIED BY THE CURRENT, NOT SWEPT AWAY
I’ve been thinking more about the creative process in writing since I finished my MSc in creative writing for therapeutic purposes, and started volunteering in the day centre of a local hospice.
Here I meet lively, diverse men and women who share details of their lives, and then kindly allow me to recreate their stories on paper.
Stories shared with me have included looking after a pet parrot, travelling overland to Kathmandu, a first kiss in wartime Glasgow, and winning a ballroom dancing championship.
Each life and story is brimming with richness, sometimes lying untapped inside the tellers themselves, who might listen politely to my little spiel about ‘writing in the hospice’ and then say, with natural modesty rather than dismissiveness, ‘I don’t think you’ll find anything that interesting about me.’
It has been a steep learning curve, as well as a privilege and responsibility, to recast these riches and return them to their keepers, (hopefully) true to the originals.
Talking to people who may never thought of writing down their stories, I have found that the creative process, a dynamic, fluid, living thing – a slippery rabbit – is informed not only by this collaborative interaction, but also by the environment (radio playing in the background; drinks trolley coming round; storytellers with an eye on the door or an ear cocked for the reflexologist or beauty therapist’s arrival) and my own sense of commitment and discipline to respecting and rendering.
Alongside this process, I have maintained other strands of writing – my own commercial fiction and my self-therapeutic ‘mental doodling’. I dip into as many forms as possible: short stories, articles, poems, interior dialoguing and the maintenance (a garden metaphor is appropriate) of my website.
In the hospice, it’s a challenge and a risk for people who tire easily or are living with overwhelming life changes to gift me their precious moments and stories, and a challenge for me to do justice to their words. We are mutually alert to signs of their fatigue and my RSI!
I think we’re also mutual gift-givers, so it’s important that I don’t treat encounters in this context as a resource or a repository of multi-layered anecdotes to plunder fictionally at a later date.
Equally, because so much of my commercial fiction writing is a private, solitary endeavour, each encounter with another storyteller has made me feel part of a larger creative continuum. I have slipped in and out of moments, edged between cracks to celebrate hidden blooms and tried to – as a workshop leader put it recently – let myself be carried by the current without losing sight of the shore.
www.gabriellemullarkey.co.uk
@authorgabrielle
www.metanoia.ac.uk/msccwtp
For the Darkest Day (2015)
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Those who say they don’t believe in ghosts,
don’t know how it is,
to sleep a night as clear as day,
where you are held in warm arms,
and heaved on a chest of laughter.
Only to wake in a cold, empty bed.
And the terrible, surreal dream of her vanishing,
Those who say they don’t believe in ghosts,
don’t know how it is,
to open your mouth,
and for her voice to come out.
For her muscles patterns to move
your fingers.
For her posture to slip inside your core,
until you are suspended,
as if from a coat hanger.
Those who say they don’t believe in ghosts,
don’t realise that the dead are not only around,
but they hijack your body,
whilst simultaneously being so utterly absent
that you feel you will rupture with the pain.
A Writer's Process: Jill Adams
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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: Joy Bounds
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The Final Draft?
I knew, every time I revised, redrafted, rewrote or edited my novel, that it wasn’t quite working. I read chapters on re-structuring, books on self-editing, consulted colleague writers and friends, but I could never quite bottom out what was wrong. Rejection letters from agents and small publishers were no surprise.
I loved the story, though, and I wasn’t prepared to give up on it. It tells of the impossible dilemmas experienced by an old man when he can no longer care for his wife because of her dementia, and of the sad events in her Care Home. Other family members and caring professionals are deeply affected by what happens.
Writing can be an expensive activity, especially if you’re not earning much from it, but I decided as a final vote of confidence in my novel to pay for a critical appraisal. They don’t come cheap. The critique was both challenging and encouraging, and somehow opened unknown curtains in my mind, casting clear light on the craft of novel-writing.
I gave myself four months to work with its advice. Although in theory I’m lucky enough to have time and opportunity to write, in practice I’m busy with lots of community activities, so a couple of times I took myself off to find solitude for some uninterrupted work. On the second of these I took only a book to read and my walking boots. Basically, for four days it was me and my novel and the rainy autumn air. No obligations, no TV, no phone, no internet, no people.
I achieved immense focus, and discovered some useful things about myself too. At home, if I need a break from writing, I turn to some of the things on my ‘to do’ list. Somewhere within me a decision has been made that I’ve done enough writing for that day. But now, with no ‘to do’ list, or anything else to distract me, I was having a break and then getting back to writing.
There were profound consequences of this – more even that just achieving a lot more in a day. There was space, immense and free, where I – my mind, spirit,intention, focus – could creatively solve the problems of the novel. Insights, ideas, words, images broke out of the inner fog, and the story began to live. Now, back home, I’m trying to recreate some of those conditions within the busy-ness of everyday life.
http://joybounds.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/JoyBoundsWriter/
A Writer's Process: Sara Khorasani
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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
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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.
Winter Solstice Competition Runner-up: Hannah Ray, with You Were Born in a Pandemic