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.

Time To Finish That Book?

At every course and workshop I’ve ever taught, individuals have arrived, plonked themselves down in a chair, glanced at the assembled group, heaved a relieved sigh, and said ‘you know, it’s just really hard to do it on your own’ (or words to that effect).

In my experience, it’s not mastering writing skills that’s the tough bit. We’re all natural storytellers, and techniques are relatively easy to learn. No, the really challenging things about being a writer are :-

- Carving out time in a busy life, to write.

- Feeling supported and motivated in the solitary task of writing.

- Keeping enough perspective and having sufficient, quality feedback to judge what’s working. 

- Staying focused and patient enough to get to the necessary level of detail.

What marks out a successful from an unsuccessful writer, is not that intangible ‘talent’. It’s two other things. Firstly, the ability and willingness to keep plodding on. The best writers are very hard workers. Secondly, knowing how to ask for help when it’s needed.

I find nothing more satisfying than helping a writer dust down that manuscript that they’ve been trying to complete for years, and get it to the point of publication.

There is nothing more conducive to confidence and happiness in life, than doing what we told ourselves we would do, and finishing that book. That’s the moment when we stick our flag on the summit of Everest.

The Details

The mentoring scheme runs from October 2016- September 2017. There is a limited number of places. It is composed of twelve hour-long sessions (one a month), via Skype/telephone or in person. The process will be tailored to individual needs, and will offer: -

-Writing skills

-Goal-setting/practical advice

-Support to manage any blocks that come up during the creative process

-Detailed handouts to support subjects covered

-A mid-month email 'hello' to check how you're doing

-Optional experiments (exercises) to undertake between the sessions

-Written feedback can be offered in lieu of meeting time, if appropriate

The fee is £1000, payable upfront, or in monthly instalments.

The scheme is aimed primarily at those who are serious about completing a longer fiction or non-fiction project. It's also for those who want to make an on- going commitment to improving their storytelling skills. I guide you to come up realistic goals, and to stay on a steady path to completing them. If you take a up a place on this scheme, I promise, I'll be with you all the way :-) 

I look forward to hearing from you if it's what you're looking for. bridgetholding@wildwords.org

Bridget Holding- Biography

Bridget spent six years as a screenwriter. She is a winner of the Sky Movies Short Film of the Year Award, with The Rat Trap, a film staring Emilia Fox. She has also read screenplays for Sky Television. 

She’s a former associate lecturer for The Open University, and has been a tutor of creative writing for The University of Exeter since 2008. She’s spoken or taught at the following festivals of literature: The Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, Uppingham Summer School, The Telegraph Ways with Words Festival, Winchester Writers’ Festival, Penzance Literary Festival, Swindon Festival of Literature, Chipping Campden Literary Festival.

She runs Wild Words online and real-world writing community.  Access the Facebook page here. 

She’s also trained as an integrative arts-based psychotherapist specialising in enabling the creative process in writers. Her articles have been published in Writing Magazine, and The Psychotherapist. She has featured in magazines including Saga Magazine. 

Contact: bridgetholding@wildwords.org

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

The Surprise In The Dark

The other night I walked the fifteen minutes from the main road to our house, carrying a plastic shopping bag. It’s a steep, winding mountain track.

It had been a while since I’d trod that path in the pitch dark of a moonless night. As I walked, I remembered the extraordinary peace of being alone in the blackness, in a completely silent place, under a million stars. 

The next moment I realised that of course I wasn’t alone. There were rustlings in the undergrowth: hare, badgers, or deer perhaps. There were the creeping shadows of trees. There was also the wild boar. He snorted loud in my ears, a noise something like the exclamation of a surprised pig. Then he turned a panicked circle in the undergrowth close by. I knew the great size of him by the heavy cracking of the saplings. They are big, wild boar, and can attack when they feel threatened. Instinctively, I struck at the plastic bag as noisily as I could. He orientated to where I was, and racketed away into the bush.

I am pleased to have stepped a little outside my comfort zone that night. My daytimes these days are spent wrestling with updating the technology that runs the Wild Words ecourse. The whirring, the rattling, the turning cogs of my overloaded brain drown out every other sound.

There is so much movement inside my own head at the moment, that everything outside seems still and dead in comparison.  No wonder we human beings get lonely. We think we are the only creatures living, breathing, moving.

Last night, my brain stopped still in the presence of the boar, and I re-connected with something bigger. And somehow, when I met the boar’s presence with the striking of the bag, I turned a little to face my own fear, and my world expanded, just a bit.

This article was first published on January 17th 2013

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.

The 'New' Nature Writing

Wild Words at Swindon Festival of Literature 

It’s the beginning of the season of festivals of literature, and writers’ summer schools, in the UK.

 In the last two weeks I’ve presented my work in Chipping Campden and Swindon. At both festivals I felt warmed by the generosity of organisers, and the passion of my workshop participants.
 
In London, with a spare moment between commitments, I decided that what I wanted to do most in the world was to spend leisurely time in a gigantic bookshop with comfy chairs and a café. Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus was on my route, and fitted the bill very nicely.
 
Once upon a time, not that long ago, to find fiction, or non-fiction, that took connection with nature as a theme, I would have been crawling into the most obscure sections of the bookshop and dusting off cobwebs. No more.
 
Imagine my delight when centre-stage on the ground floor, and featured in the front window, were books collected under the shining title ‘New Nature Writing’.
 
But what exactly is ‘new nature writing’? In an article in The New Statesman, Robert Macfarlane (something of a king in this emerging literary genre), defines it well. Read here.
 
It has, as its core value, an appreciation that human beings are animals, that we are animals among other animals. It values community over commodity, modesty over mastery, connection over consumption, and the deep over the shallow.
 
It turns out that at Wild Words we’ve been trailblazing. The kind of writing many of us practice, is selling like hot cakes. We’ve become a trend. That makes me very happy. I’m happy that people who make a choice to cultivate an appreciation of the natural world around them, and to record it, are now considered amongst the coolest people you can meet (didn’t we always know it!)
 
I spent a glorious day in that bookshop, fuelled by carrot cake and Earl Grey, sifting through a pile of (as yet unbought, and untarnished) ‘new nature writing’ books.
 
What’s exciting is how broad, deep and wide the genre is. It takes in poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. It fuses nature writing, travel writing, philosophy and psychology. (For specific examples, see Macfarlane’s article).  An interesting strand is that of the memoir writers, such as Helen McDonald's H is for Hawk, and Amy Liptrot's The Outrun. These writers have turned to nature in times of difficulty and disillusionment, and have found it has everything to offer.
 
There can be a perception that nature writing is a little ‘tame’. The pastoral poetry tradition, that can be traced back to the Greeks, and extended into and through Renaissance England, idealised rural life and landscapes. It is partly, if not mostly, responsible for that view. 
 
Central to what I communicate with Wild Words, is that writing inspired by contact with nature can be imbued with a force that goes way beyond that. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with pointing out the beauty and majesty of nature. Recognition of its power to soothe us, and restore us to health is sorely needed. However, the new nature writing is much more than that. Rightly so, given we human beings dig ourselves ever deeper into a hole, in relationship to That Which Sustains Life.

It’s groundbreaking, thought-provoking, politically challenging, society changing. It’s awe inspiring stuff.  It connects people. It’s a route to re-find the animal in us. The wild.
 
Not everyone who comes to Wild Words is interested in the genre of ‘nature-writing’ and that’s fine. Every skill we hone here is applicable to all writing in all genres. But, maybe, with this new take on an ancient tradition in writing, those of us who are interested to try their hand at it, can come out the shadows.
 
We’re no longer regarded as something akin to train spotters, we’re cooler than Madonna.
 

The Monthly Writing Prompt

Those of us who choose to spend time in nature, consider it normal. It isn’t. Most people only read about it in books. There’s even a term for the wide range of problems that can result from the modern phenomenon of dislocation from our environment- Nature Deficit Disorder.
 
Have you had contact and experiences in nature that have formed or informed you, or which have echoed other themes in your life? If so, that gives you something unique to say. Write about it. For those who haven’t. 

 

Between The Lines

Saturday’s Vide Grenier (village jumble sale) turned up an exciting find. For one euro I bought a letter, unopened. It bore the stamp of the German authorities, a Polish place name, and the date 1942. 

Seventy years after its intended reading, I sliced into the envelope. Inside was a single folded sheet of notepaper, still crisp and white. The spidery writing was blobbed with the uneven ink of a fountain pen.  My mediocre grasp of French didn’t stand a chance.

In the three days before a friend came over and translated it, several war epics played out in my mind. Occupied territory… wartime secrets…code breaking…a letter stolen… the intended reader dead…

I was on the edge of my seat when it was eventually read out to me. The writer talked about the price of bread, and how far advanced the spring was. And then, well, that was it. Not one reference to the war, or the political climate. Not a mention of fear, hatred, or the thrill of lives lived close to death.

It said nothing, and yet it said everything- about the censorship, the restriction of free speech, and the monotony that are the marks of living under occupation. It made me think about how much is revealed by the absence of words on a page. Often absence is more telling than presence.

When we write, we carefully compose our ink marks. Perhaps we should also consider how to use the white spaces; the no man’s land of paragraph breaks, the pauses between words, the blank page at the end of a chapter.

Technically speaking, white space gives the reader a moment to breathe, to process, to reflect. Paragraph breaks signal changes in location, or allow us to take leaps in time. But we can make use of the absence of words on a more subtle level also. 

We could, for example, have our character be asked a question, and reply only with silence. Or, our character could choose not to mention a huge subject in their life. The ‘elephant in the room’ has a powerful impact.

If we can just look past the proliferation of symbols we will see that there is wildness hiding in the shadows of our words.  

The Weekly Prompt:

Look at your page of writing. Instead of focusing on the black ink marks, be interested in the emptiness between the words. Notice how the white sky of the page wraps perfectly around your letters. How the ground of it supports them. What is being spoken by the absence of words?

When you next write a story or poem, have the intention to allow the white page to reveal. In this way the reader will discover the answers to their questions, rather than being a passive recipient. If they are spoon-fed the words, you deprive them of the excitement of the exploration.

This article was first published on May 4th 2013

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?