A Writer's Process: Sophie van Llewyn

I love to write on the huge couch in my living room, with my computer in my lap, reclining my back on the multitude of soft pillows .

However, that isn’t really an option any more since I became pregnant , so minor adjustments have had to be made.

When do I write? Being a doctor, my schedule is quite chaotic. During vacations, I write 4-6 hours per day, but when I have to work, I am only able to write on week-end for a few hours.

I find writing a very rewarding experience and sometimes I manage to enter that state when I am ‘on a row’ and the ideas keep flowing. I often try no to be over-conscious about my writing and let my unconscious do the job, too, with very surprising results. Not once had I looked at the computer in front of me after committing something to paper and wondered ‘Where did that come from?’

The greatest surprise was the ending of my novel.

First of all, my leading character ended up in a totally different place than what I had expected as I began to write the book, and second , she did something which I didn’t entirely approve of.

I had invested certain qualities and features in her, and at some point in the story, she began doing whatever she wanted and not what suited me. However, this only made me happier with the final result. My character was so strong and came to be so alive in my mind, that she actually did things her way, in the end.

I sometimes find it difficult to choose the perfect words in order to convey an idea I have in my mind.

At times, I feel that the words I have written don’t accurately express the idea I had formulated in my head. I encounter this difficulty most often when I am confronted with descriptions, landscapes, interiors, dress or countenance. I often find that the words on the computer screen don’t do justice to the Idea as I saw it with my mind’s eyes, and I find that incredibly frustrating.

I should probably mention at this point that English is a foreign language to me,

but if you would ask me now if I find it hard to write in English, I would say no. I believe that writing in my maternal language would be just as hard/easy (it is all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?)  Of course, it was difficult in the beginning, I really had trouble with the phrasing, but approx. 200,000 words later, I can’t say that I find it straining anymore. I have read somewhere , years ago , that people express themselves with far more clarity in a foreign language, because they have to search more consciously for their words. I can tell you now, from my own experience, that the statement is true.

sophievanllewyn.wordpress.com

Learning From Salvador Dali

I’m lucky enough to live just two hours from Figueres, birth and death place of artist Salvador Dali.

The other weekend I visited the museum he created (he’s buried underneath it!) I’ve never been particularly inclined towards his work, but I was converted. His draughtsmanship, as well as his sheer range of output, was extraordinary.

Although he wasn’t a writer per se, I learnt a lot about writing that day.

Dali knew his art history. He charted the development of certain images and themes through time. He took classic works and twisted them around, or added unlikely elements. Something provocative, or modern, or so mundane it was shocking.

Take, for example, his painting entitled Copy of a Rubens Copied From a Leonardo.

He brings his characters into contact with energy and fearlessness. Oh the humour! The reverence and irreverence! Delightful. Shocking. Dali broke the mold. He did something different. And that woke people up. It set them talking. It still does.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous to achieve that with words?

For writers, as much as artists, the first task is to know and appreciate our heritage.

The skilled masters of our craft are our roots. It is from that stable base, that we can reach for newfound heights. First, we learn from them. We copy their style, content, and themes. Then we move away from them. It’s something like growing up and leaving home.

The second task is to ask ourselves: What can I do with my writing subject that hasn’t been done before?

How can I turn this subject or theme around? How can I look or speak from a different place?

In my opinion, it’s a mistake to believe that the route to doing something new begins, or is primarily about, looking for ways to confront, challenge or conflict with others’ views or work. That might be a byproduct, but it’s not where we should put our creative focus.

Instead, the journey begins, ironically, with that which we think is known and therefore not worthy of our attention. Ourselves.

Consider: what is the roar inside that needs to be heard? What needs to be said? By me. In this moment.

Ask yourself: How can I be myself without shame or apology? How can I step outside the box? How can I think what I’ve been taught is unthinkable? What will support me to say the unsayable?

When we write from that source of authenticity and power, we challenge the status quo without fear.

We can withstand any criticism, because we’re being carried along by something so fundamental, that we will never doubt its ‘rightness’.   

The Monthly Writing Prompt

There’s a picture, by Salvador Dali, entitled Bed and Two Bedside Tables Ferociously Attacking a Cello.

Take courage and inspiration from it.

Choose a scene you’ve already written, a narrative poem, or an event from a screenplay or novel, for example.  Alternatively, write a new scene.

Then, re-tell that scene from a previously unconsidered point of view. Purposefully choose something wacky. The bed in the love scene, the pet hamster in the cage that witnesses a world event, or the sun shining on the fields of your seventeenth century manor house. How does it change your view of your characters and events? What do you learn? Have fun, play and explore. 

Wild Words: What Are We Frightened Of?

The important thing to know is, that just because you think you want to free those wild words, doesn’t mean there won’t be whole raft of ways in which you will unconsciously try to avoid doing that very thing.

Cutting away just as tension, emotion or drama heightens is one example. And there’s a whole sub-category of ways in which you will try to sabotage your relationship with me in our group or individual sessions. Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally.

We think we want to live and write in a way that’s unfettered, spontaneous, more instinctual, but it’s an unfamiliar way of being. Human beings, in general, cling to what is familiar, even if it’s unpleasant.

We’re frightened of the unknown. Added to that there’s the terror we feel when getting in touch with those strong emotions is offered to us as a possibility.

Be reassured, I will never go storming in and strip away the strategies, the defence mechanisms that you’ve unconsciously spent years erecting. I will never force you to face what lies behind. Freeing the tiger that way, might mean the tiger turns around and eats you, or me, or us both. No, we must be much cleverer than that, like a good tracker. A good tracker understands and works with his environment; he doesn’t see it as an enemy.

It may be that some, or all of your strategies no longer serve you well, but it’s important to acknowledge that your body and mind are doing the best they can to keep you well and safe, within the range of possibilities open to them.

So our starting point is to respect our own creativity, strength and resilience in this respect. It’s easy to be clear about what we have to gain by freeing those wild words, but it’s what you have to gain by NOT freeing them that is keeping you stuck. That’s what we need to work to understand. What is it that you have to lose?

This blog was first published on October 31st 2012

Competition Runners-Up Story

Climbing Kinder

by Robyn Curtis

 

I head for the gravestone edge

grit-faced, looming

over broad-shouldered hills that hug

the sling of the valley below.

past a carcass washed-boned,

 a whorl of sheep's wool on wire

past incipient bilberry, pink and raw

I strike out for base-rock; I want to lie

on autumn-warm slabs

before the purple heather darkens

with slick rivulets

of peat-brown age

and crows pick over my white bones;

a corkscrew thorn drills the earth

a handhold, a crook for a pilgrim

climbing into the sky.

And when at last I lie, pressed

against sun-kindled granite,

I will know

I have been something after all -

one who can keep the darkness warm

and still ride the lark's phrases.

A Writer's Process: Robyn Curtis

My poem Climbing Kimber has been through various incarnations, one a bit too flabby, one too pretty, too gritty ... yet there it has stayed, the sky, the moor, the grey stone and rich heather and peat.

Kinder Plateau is my second home - after the downs of the Isle of Wight - and there it was the sea that fed the steel clouds and wind. But now living further north, limestone gives way to granite and some days only the tops and edges above the Edale valley will do.

I often start poems with an image from nature, usually on a walk which becomes a slow process if it's one of those days when I am stopping to scribble in my notebook every ten steps! I carry a small notebook that slips into a pocket and a soft pencil. I have become addicted to 3B pencils and their feel on the paper so nothing else feels right, though in extremis anything that makes a mark will do.

Images sometimes spark a personal memory - more often provoke a feeling which can take shape in the image. Although the sense in my poems is often of sadness, it is rarely exclusively sad because making an image, especially from nature, both gives the sadness expression and surprises us with a deeper joy, from both being in nature and in the act of creating itself.

I didn't write for many years;  like many of us, not listening to myself in the throes of family and career.

But I careered out of all that a number of years ago and have been coming to terms with health limitations alongside a deep need for self-realisation - said so often but it's so true, that if you are not doing what you feel you are meant to do, or being who you are meant to be, how can you find contentment?

So here I am in a new way of life: kids left home, obliging husband who gives me all the space I need and carries my lunch and camera up the hills; I have the luxury of a room to myself at the moment but that could change soon with enforced downsizing. I feel I could do without almost anything except a big table covered with art stuff that I just play with and my own room, however tiny, for just being alone in.

I don't actually write much in this room. I type things, amend things, play around, lie on the couch, talk to the cats - and I find all that 'nothing' time is vital for any creative process to grind into action somewhere out of awareness.

Then the writing, first draft, amendments, better wording, next level of ideas - all tend to pop into my head on the train, in a cafe, in the bath - I am looking for a waterproof writing set up for making notes in the shower!

So this poem comes after some considerable heartache dealing with the fallout from loss and trauma,

and earlier drafts featured heavily the gravestone/gritstone and running dark streams ... but as it evolved the moorland birds and sky and the great freedom and hope they bring would not be left out and I was so happy to find that I did actually feel I could live in both places -the darkness we must all navigate at times as well as the airy and magical spaces of the world and when you are up high you can really be with the birds there.

Thanks to Wild Words for giving me the opportunity to share with like minded writers - I am quite a beginner tip-toeing into the world. Good luck to everyone. 

The Rain

We’ve never had so much rain here. It’s charging down the mountainsides and refreshing the parched soil.

We hope it may even put water in our well three years after it dried up completely. Everywhere new rivers are springing into being. Energised by the melt-water from the snow on the high mountains, they’re carving themselves paths through the trees, and cadging free rides down the mountain gulleys. On Sunday, with a gap in the clouds, a group of us went for a walk. I love to walk, but mostly I do it alone.  I’m used to walking being a time for contemplation, when I invite poetry to nudge at my thigh, or brush its wing against my face.

This walk was different. It was full of chatter and laughter. Not very surprisingly, given the noise level, there were no animals to be seen, and no poetry came to me either.

I didn’t mind at all. I revelled in the companionship and light-heartedness of the expedition. With each step water gurgled under the clay soil like the unsettled stomach of the earth. It gushed and trickled and fizzed its way between rocks. It laughed and chattered alongside us.

We’d gone with the intention to look for animal tracks. The ground is usually parched and cracking here, which invariably means a race to catch the prints before they blow away as dust. Not this time. The story of the previous 24 hours in the life of this mountain was stamped in the mud. Paths were etched across the land like the wrinkles on an ancient face.  Tracks were everywhere: criss-crossing, overlapping, accompanying each other, and wiping each other out too.  Deer, wild boar, badger, and fox, to name just a few.

This week’s writing prompt: Rain

Listen to the rain. Listen to how it sounds when you’re inside, on the windows, walls and roof. Go outside and listen to how it sounds when it strikes trees, rock and other surfaces. How does it sound under your feet, and on your head?

If the rain were a conversation, how would it be communicating? It might be shouting, or cackling, whispering, squealing or muttering. Perhaps how it feels is clear too. It might be calm, or angry, hopeless or joyful.

Write a poem or piece of prose about it. Write first from your own point of view as you listen to it, and then from the point of view of the rain itself.

This blog was first published on February 13th 2013

Competition Runners-Up Story

English Girl

by Lucy Whetman

 

From the moment I arrived in Greece I felt that I had come to the right place.

My cheap night flight to Athens reached Ellinikon Airport at dawn. It was overdue by several hours. Though ship lights had marked the distance to a black Aegean as the plane descended, by the time I walked across the tarmac I could see Mount Hymettos. The mountain’s wide-angle outlines ranged out against a warming sky: a horizon that seemed open with expanded possibilities and the freedom to learn. I had launched myself into a new life as an English teacher and now on this luminous September morning it was to start.

In the arrivals terminal I found George, the bleary, soft-eyed son of my soon-to-be employer.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I told him.

George bridled. “Why? It’s not your fault. It was the flight.”

“No, but…” I laughed. “I suppose it isn’t. You look tired though.”

He shrugged. “I will sleep later, it is not a problem. My father was here but he went home when we heard there was a delay. He has to work today.”

“You don’t?”

“Later when the school is open I will do something, but now no. I am the youngest son so I get to stay at home and do nothing.”

George’s smile said he was aware he was a Benjamin: the best-loved (and loveable) baby boy. Chubby and round-cheeked he may have been, but his swept-back hair held waves of grey.

“How old are you?” he asked, as if he read my thought.

“I’m 28. You?”

“Twenty-four. You look younger.”

“Yes? I probably act that way too.”

We reached a white saloon in the car park and stowed my luggage.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” George asked.

“Two younger brothers. I’m the oldest but I’m not the grown-up and responsible one.”

“The black sheep of the family?” His eyes gleamed.

“Perhaps. I have to do things my own way.”

In the car George offered me a cigarette: Karelia, a Greek brand, and we cruised along the empty coastal highway past showrooms of illuminated chandeliers. I had not slept much either but it felt as if I was coming home after a very late night out. I felt buoyed up by excitement, hedonistic, liberated by the perspective on a new day from the other side.

The sun grew brighter and people began to move about the hilly suburbs, setting off from neat houses to commute. Towards the centre we passed through rows of still-closed shops with signs in unfamiliar script and high neoclassical facades of faded elegance, fronded mouldings and wrought iron. We came to Kallithea, the southern district where I was to live.

George halted the Alfa Romeo in a narrow street of balconied buildings, lined with bitter orange trees. We heaved my suitcases up marble steps and shuffled into the confines of the lift. Winding upwards a few floors, we stopped at George’s family apartment.

George knocked before we entered and I waited in the hall. After an interval of shuffling sounds and low voices his father appeared.

“Good morning,” he growled. “I am Mr Antonis Papidis, owner and Director of Studies of the Papidis School of Foreign Languages. This is my wife Vasso. We hope that you will perform your duties here in a professional and conscientious manner.”

“I’ll do my best,” I assured him.

Mr Papidis was small and puffy-faced. A sticky-looking wisp of his hair stood up like a wilted crest. Vasso stood behind him, primly coiffured in a peach towelling robe. We shook hands formally.

“I was at the airport with George for some hours,” Mr Papidis rasped. “But it was too late so I, urrrgh,” he waved a hand, “George brought me back. The other teacher Emma will not be here until the 20th so you will stay in our guest flat until she comes.”

“I thought that you needed us straight away.” Mr Papidis had been insistent when I spoke to him on the telephone that I should be in Athens by September the 10th.

“Commencement of lessons will be on the 21st,” he intoned, “Until then you may rest and make preparations. Call here after 9.30 this evening and we will go for dinner with my family.”

He held up some keys. “George, take her to the flat.”

Thus dismissed, George and I proceeded to the tiny garçonnière flat on the rooftop. It was as high and light as a mountain eyrie. Sun streamed in from the balcony through glass doors. George demonstrated how to switch on the hot water, ignite the cooker and haul the roller shutter. A bagful of essentials sat in the kitchen: tinned Nescafe and evaporated milk, sugar, bread rusks, foil-wrapped cheese and jammy biscuits.

“My sister Maria bought these. Maybe there is something you will like,” said George.

“This is everything I need.”

George left and I made coffee, boiling water in a slim briki pot on the gas ring. I drank it creamy and sweet. I floated in a pleasant limbo, removed from my old life in England and content to know that different experiences were coming. I looked out at the stacked-up homes of my newly acquired neighbours. Their balconies were bright with drying laundry and vibrant pink geraniums.

Mr Papidis might be a challenge but I had met slyer dogs than him. At least he barked to warn that he might bite. I was lucky. Native English-speaking teachers were in demand in Greece. By the fortune of my birth I could bring Mr Papidis valuable students. My future boss needed me as much as I needed him.

Before sleeping I meandered into the bathroom and peered through its window at the far Athens skyline. Above the concrete cubes floated a pale, flat rock crowned by a temple. I was astonished once again that I was living within view of the Acropolis.

A Writer's Process: Lucy Whetman

 

‘English Girl’ is part of a longer project about time I spent living in Greece.

When I read Bridget’s prompt for the competition I thought it summed up what this section is about. I reworked the piece in the light of the entry guidance about bringing in ‘the wild’ and that helped to strengthen it.

I like to write about real-life experiences because I want to understand why certain times and events hold such significance for me. Trying to create a coherent account of what happened, and why, forces me to make sense of it in order to communicate it in words on the page. With this story in particular I wanted to show the excitement of arriving in a new country and the way that an unfamiliar culture taught me to see myself and my life differently. From the moment I landed I began to change.

What gets in the way when I write is my own critical side.

My job is as a sub-editor means that this gets plenty of use, so it is challenging but fun to use a different part of my brain, to let go of any pressure to produce something that is ‘right’ first time, and be surprised by what does come out. When I look back at old drafts of this piece and notice how much it has changed, I may think that the latest version is best but I know that it would not exist without the previous ones.

If I get stuck when I am writing, I make myself stop and go for a walk or a bath. I love what pops into my head when I am no longer thinking about it.

What helps is useful feedback and any encouragement, especially from other writers. I like reading the work of other developing writers, particularly memoirists. Hearing people’s own individual stories written in their own words is fascinating.

I do not know what will happen next with this project.

The process itself motivates me. I want to find out what this memoir will become, and I enjoy the feeling that I am learning and improving as a writer.

At the moment I am altering the structure and the memoir is expanding. I have discovered that the main theme is not what I originally thought it was, which is great because the new theme is much better.