Writing History

I found it relatively easy, in Early Scribbles to explore my reading history and feelings towards books.

Writing is as much a passion for me as reading is, but my relationship with writing is more difficult to chart. Perhaps this is because it is much easier to share favourite books and characters than to discuss preferred pieces of writing.

I don't know if this is a real memory or one of those stories that is passed down in family folklore and becomes, by default, a memory. On my very first day at school, aged three, I wrote my name on a drawing I had done.  The nuns, (for it was a Catholic school) were in raptures, amazed that I was capable of such a thing.  I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about; I had been writing my name for a while. But they insisted on giving me a small cuddly toy in recognition of this 'feat', and my mother glowed with pride when she came to collect me.  There indeed was an early confirmation of the transforming power of the written word.

I wrote a story called 'The School Caretaker' when I was about five, that I also mentioned in that first post.  The narrative was simple: I wrote in the first person as the caretaker and described incredibly mundane tasks that I performed through the day - like changing a lightbulb and sweeping up in the locker area.  Again, my teachers enthused.  My grandmother kept the little exercise book in which the story was written until the day she died. There was further validation of how powerful writing could be in the reactions of the adults around me.

I recall gaining the final credit I needed for a Headteacher's Award for an essay on Maximilian Kolbe, and then a second one for an argumentative piece on the channel tunnel (before it had been built).  In the final year of middle school I won the History Prize for my 100-page project on the history of my local village.  I'd presented it chronologically, showing how it had grown from its first entry in the 1341 census, moving right towards the present day and including taped interviews with elderly residents who had talked about their own memories of the place changing. The prize was a book token, and I chose a book on British wildlife that I still have today.

So those amount to my early writing triumphs.  If there were public disasters, I have blotted them out. I was a furious diary writer from my early teens to my early twenties and I would have been mortified had anyone found and read those entries, so personal were they.  I no longer keep a journal but I do have a notebook that I am often scribbling in, though with nothing as formal as diary entires. And I have always written poetry, sporadically at times, but it is always there in the background.  I am also, in spite of this digital age, an avid letter-writer.  Nothing beats a hand-written letter.  Nothing shows quite how much you care for the recipient.  I have had pen-pals since school-days, and sustained a teenage romance by weekly letters when the object of my desire was at boarding school in Wales.  These have bee replaced now by  friends in far-flung corners of the earth.  Most of them in parts of Australia, where I was lucky enough to teach for a year, and tempting though it is to use email to keep in touch, I try as far as possible to write letters. 

I have had many fountain pens over the years. I prefer to write in real ink, but I don't have a special affinity with one particular writing implement.  I just replace my Parker every few years as it goes missing at school or starts to leak.  If I'm working on something creative my favourite place to go is a local cafe, sitting near the window. Well, it worked for J K Rowling, so who knows?

So, there you have it: some of my earliest memories to my current practices, and the kinds of writing that have played the most important part in my life.  How do you recall your own writing history?

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, June 2012

I have to be honest, it has taken me a long time to work on my own Jubilee piece.  I found it difficult.  I really enjoyed all the different photographs that had been taken during lessons, but it was hard to choose a single image, and hard to link it with my own thoughts and feelings about the Jubilee celebrations.

I have enjoyed reading Carol Ann Duffy's Jubilee Lines anthology of poetry of the last sixty years.  The Royal Visit by Fleur Adcock and Carol Ann Duffy's own The Thames seemed particularly powerful.  Adcock's poem because of the personal significance of a royal moment and the interesting juxtapositions emphasised as a result, and Duffy's personification of the river to evoke all its rich and varied history.  Both seem to see the respective royal celebrations as something simultaneously significant and not.

I was eventually inspired by a photograph over at http://uptotheskiesanddownagain.blogspot.co.uk/ which showed a Union flag filtered by sunlight with trees behind.  The picture seemed to be somehow nostalgic.  It resonated with me and brought back memories of earlier royal celebrations: the Silver Jubilee in 1977 and the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981.  The result is the poem below.  I have deliberately played with rhyme.  I wonder if readers can see how, and why.

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, June 2012

Sunlight strains through the trees above
(A welcome break from this endless rain)
And makes a Union Jack translucent
And I see right through it, child again,

To ’77 and a flurry of flags
A blurry bustle of colour and crowd
Coke with a straw and a bag of crisps
The picture is vague, the memory half-formed.

In ’81 the edges are sharper
More flags and waving for a new princess:
In an enchanted fairy-tale golden carriage
And miles and miles of wedding dress.

Now my daughter is five years old.
I engineer for her some memories too.
So we string the bunting across the house
And dress in red and white and blue.

There’s face-painting and parties galore
A commemorative mug given out at school;
The Thames flotilla on the television, and singing
God Save the Queen in our living room.

Why is it that I want her to remember
This jubilant moment of history in the making?
To own her own heritage, perhaps, and to be
A part of something bigger than ourselves.

Jubilee Imagery

Here is the image that I chose today; make of it what you will:

Jubilant Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis: Now, that is a big word for a Friday afternoon. 

It comes to us from Ancient Greece, and relates to the idea of writing inspired by or about art or visual images. The ekphrastic tradition is more complex than that, but we come across it in its modern form all over the place in English Literature.  Some of my favourites include the poems I Would Like to be a Dot in a Painting by Miro by Monica Alzi and Musee des Beaux Arts by WH Auden.  But more on those at a later date!

At this point I have to confess that I'm not really claiming that my bad photo of the steps outside the British Library that inspired the previous blog post count as art, far from it:

But what I do want to do is build on last week's stimulus of 'Near and Far' by using images to inspire our writing, bending the rules of ekphrasis a little.

This weekend marks the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and our school is ablaze in a conflagration of red, white and blue.  I would like you to take a photograph of something that captures the essence of this idea, from near or from afar.  Post it on your blog, then use someone else's photograph to write your own piece.  You can use any form you wish. 

Think carefully about the detail as we were doing last week, but also think about the significance (or otherwise) of this momentus occasion: a historical event celebrated only once before - in the reign of Queen Victoria.  Will you write from the point of view of the object - perhaps something that has seen great change over the past sixty years? Or consider what the next sixty might bring?  Perhaps you will focus on this precise moment in history.  Whatever you choose, you need to link your iconic image and your descriptive writing with a deeper thought.  Please comment below when you have posted your photograph, and I'll look forward to choosing one to inspire my own piece of writing!

Steps: Up Close and Personal

So far we have attempted some flash fiction, as well as trying to answer some 'impossible questions'.

This week's challenge is to think about perspective. 

Try and write a piece entitled 'Near and Far', focusing on a single object.  Begin by describing your chosen object from very close up, noticing the minutest details and interpreting them for your reader. You could pick anything you like: an ordinary household item, an item with special significance for you, or a piece of rubbish blowing in the breeze in the street.

Then move a distance away and see how the perspective changes.  Think carefully about the vocabulary and any imagery you use. You may wish to only reveal what the object actually is at the end. 

I have chosen to write about the steps outside the British Library, simpy because I sat on them for a while at the weekend and had a chance to observe them closely.  I am including only my 'near' description for now:

Cracks, like pencil marks in the stone, trace the journeys and paths of a million footsteps. The fine lines swirl and age with each passing pair of feet.  Tiny particles of dust trapped in holes make smooth again the damaged surface forming a time-worn, careworn concrete canvas: mottled, stained and pock-marked.  Ancient chewing gum blocks a tiny crevice, new mortar for an impromtu repair. A single green leaf has fallen, uninvited.  An upturned polystyrene cup rolls to and fro, detritus of a passing civilisation. 

Three black tramlines mark each edge, reminding life's passengers of the danger of these obstacles.  The steps are deep and wide to accomodate all shapes and sizes: the internal and external weight of the climbing and descending multitude. My two feet can stand one in front of the other on each carved ledge.

What do you think of the description?  Can you identify any ways that I have used language to create a particular effect? 

Impossible Questions

Let's get thinking creatively by attempting to answer some 'impossible questions'.  You can have some fun with this.  Choose at least three from the list below, and try to write a detailed response for each. Fill your descriptions with simile and metaphor; you can really go overboard.

If you're feeling particuarly inventive you could try them all.  I've had a go at the first two combined: let me know what you think of my efforts!

1. What do numbers taste of?
2. What do words smell like?
3. What is the sound of silence?
4. How old is never?
5. What colour is fear?
6. What does greed smell of?
7. What shape is infinity?
8. What does an echo look like?
9. Who is nowhere?
10. What is the texture of sadness?

Crunchy Numbers and Whiffy Words

Numbers taste metallic.  That sort of taste you get if you accidentally get a piece of silver foil in your mouth, or you attempt to bite into a coin.  They taste that way because they are mechanical things forming patterns and processes but individually they are leaden and fixed.  They can set your teeth on edge. Very unwieldy numbers taste worse, like rust.  Bits of them fall off and get stuck. Then they are a bit crunchy, but not 'good' crunchy like honeycomb, more the fiddly-chomp of iron filings.You want to spit but they cling. 

Not like words, of course. You can't usually taste words because they are like fizzing popcorn in your mouth, dynamic and untamed.  Explosive if too concentrated.  Words can sometimes smell musty like an old library, particularly when they aren't used often enough.  Mostly though they smell like spring, full of the promise of new life and the joy of a long summer ahead.

Fiction in a Flash: Bound

'Flash fiction' is an increasingly popular genre, with many well-known lifestyle magazines publishing examples and a great number of competions running at any one time. It is, literally, fiction 'in a flash': a whole story in a very short space of time, say 100 words or less. You may have encountered it as 'mini sagas', though through Forward Press these are limited to just 50 words.

But a story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, and this is very difficult to do in such a short space of time! Now, I've promised not to ask you to attempt anything I'm not prepared to have a go at myself, so here's an example of mine, entitled Bound:

Gradually, she came to.

Her mouth was dry and she ran her tongue over cracked lips. The darkness was disorientating, and there was a strange numbness in her legs. Pinned back into the chair, bound and blind-folded, the fear pulsed quickly through her body. She was aware of movement around her, though helpless in her own immobility.

Suddenly, her captor spoke. “We will shortly be coming into land. Please ensure that your seatbelts are fastened…” intoned the tinny voice. She removed the air-line eye mask and smiled groggily at a fellow passenger. “Sorry, was I snoring?” she asked.

You can see that the beginning attempts to create tension: Where is she? What has happened? Has the protagonist been captured? Starting with 'Gradually, she came to' suggests that she may have been unconscious.

I am playing with the reader's expectations in the middle part of the story. The description of her dry mouth and aching limbs, reference to a blind-fold and being 'bound' reinforce the idea of capture or kidnap.

I am trying to surprise the reader at the end. She hasn't been kidnapped at all and is merely asleep on an ordinary flight. Were you fooled?

The title is also a play on words. She is bound by her seatbelt but also 'outbound' on the flight.

Now your turn. Have a go at writing your own flash fiction story. Make sure that the whole narrative takes place in 100 words or less (mine is 98!) Remember to comment to let me know that you've had a go.

Good luck!