What do writers do all day (when they’ve just published a book)?

A writing den…

Well, I shall disclose what I do — and you can imagine that others may do similar.  For example, today about 20 snails were removed from the garden wall, where they had been hibernating… 

But, I digress…As an Indie* writer, like others I’ve not only scribbled and tapped my way to completing writing another book, I’ve dialogued with my designer and approved her gorgeous cover design. I’ve been involved with lots of editing, and checking, and then, there’s the publication stuff. I’ve carefully filled in the Ingram Spark requirements on their on-line form, which will include adding the ISBN(International Standard Book Number, which identifies it as itself and no other book), and a Book Description which will go out to everywhere the book might be sold (Amazon of course, and also catalogues and other outlets), to help with shelving and inform marketing. Also an author bio, and a suggested category (one or more) of target readers… and some other admin… Really, simply all the things trade publishers do. Only we do it ourselves!

From this – old ‘dot matrix’ files to this – a book of short stories…

And after that…we go into recovery mode. Or, we hope to. We flop, we make an effort to pick up life where we left it, before writing the book — or more like, before we had to really tidy up the original idea with re-writes, maybe send it out to beta readers, do a bit more thinking, creating, editing, typing, and begin to think about the publication pilgrimage. So, we then pick up life, and rediscover all the lovely hobby-type things, and fun type things, and relax type things, that we’d being doing. Before. 

We also maybe pay some attention to our second string.

Mine is oil painting. Painting on the whole doesn’t feel like work, even though it’s also a creative task. I also enjoy drawing, and I need to draw, to sharpen my observational skills. Which can feel like study or learning or practice — but is enormously satisfying. (At present it’s bit sad to be missing those life classes!) I’m constantly discovering how many writers are also artists, or artists are writers. Although oddly, it’s not like that for musicians — musicians’ second strings seem to be playing other kinds of strings (violinists who play the ‘cello, viola players who occasionally pick up the double bass…) or a flute, a  bassoon, a harp — sometimes more than one other instrument, or other music (jazz, blues…) or they sing… And of course for me gardening comes to the fore again, pottering among the plants. And photography — almost an addiction on any walk remotely featuring nature. I wake up and realise I could actually do more yoga between my scheduled classes, and make more contact with my friends, and have less resentment about the the passing of time, and not getting things done. I could even enjoy doing the ironing!

Recovery mode is necessary for slowing down! Do writers read?  Yes!  we all need to read widely — and that shouldn’t be a chore, even reading for ‘research’ is fun to do, if like me you’re curious. I love reading books by fellow writers whom I know, as well as poking about in a bookshop seeking out who is new and being promoted, to uncover current trends. As a slow reader, I take a while reading a long book. And notably I find myself reading with pencil in hand, underlining clever sentences, or slants on the story, ready to write a review. 

Reader, you may think we writers are a lazy bunch, and self-absorbed. You mayn’t realise quite how many hours it takes to write a book, let alone the publishing, and the marketing… Rather than self-absorbed, we mostly have over-active brains, brimming with ideas, surging with excitement over ideas, in the thrall of the creative urge/addiction/problem. Reader, I’d have preferred to be a non-creative: but as a supportive kind of friend used to reply whenever I complained about this, ‘So you think you’d rather be a pig, happy, than Socrates, unhappy?’, and then add, ‘I don’t think you would!’ (But who’d want to be Socrates, happy or not?)

And, you do see why we’re so utterly overjoyed when you buy — and read — and maybe even review — our productions! ***

• ‘Indie authors’ are those of us who undertake to do all the usual editing etc work of a publisher independently – so we shall indeed be finding and using a cover/interior designer, editor(s) to provide copy, continuity and other editing, printer, etc – maybe Ingram Spark, or possibly use Amazon via KDP… The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) keeps lists of competent professionals, and advice can be found via their website, their blog, and by webinars.

* *Suggested reading (!) : “My Friend has Self-Published her Book. (Does that mean it isn’t very good?)” – a short blogpost by ‘Joy V’ the writer Joy Velykorodnyy, where she explains why and how Indie writers publish their own works, and why these books are worth buying and reading.

** *My books can be bought from the Hodge Publishing website, at: https://hodgepublishing.co.uk/    (Or, of course, on Amazon, or via your local Indie Bookshop, Bookshop UK etc…)

Taking off my Hat to my Younger Self

Dot Matrix printer: remember them?

(This was first published as my contribution to the Authors Electric blog for the month of June 2021)

Yesterday our usually human-oriented, friendly cat spent eight hours lurking under the sofa bed in my ‘den’ (or writing space), which doubles, with the sofa in its bed pose, as a guest bedroom.  For him, ‘lockdown’ was most definitely over: a small fast-moving human creature, whom he had forgotten about, was again whooping and shouting around the house…

         I could agree with the cat. Lockdown provided a quiet routine life, when writing could be fitted into the daily round of on-line shopping, exercise classes, meetings and chat. Ever since my husband’s office sent everyone off to work from home (16 March 2020) this routine has given our cat ‘sit-on time’ around 10.00am, as we three met up for our tea and biscuits morning break, and again around 4.45pm for tea and a slice of toast (the cat of course had cat kibble, if hungry, but the specialness of these times isn’t food (forhim), it’s that he can sit on a lap, one of his very favourite things). 

In fact, lockdown has given our cat a new interest: observing and researching human life. He finds all of it extremely diverting, if mysterious. He’s an eager participant (or tries to be) at Zoom/Teams meetings (along with other cats), watches a cultural television programme with deep concentration and puzzlement, and always turns up hoping to join my weekly on-line Yoga sessions… but enough of cats, except to say that having hunted all over the house for him, I discovered him under the sofa bed, having squashed himself flat, and beaten the record of the Lakeland cat which Beatrix Potter observed as having sat on the lid of a basket for five hours. After such a feat, he was extremely hungry, and ate two suppers while I began preparing ours.

That cat who sat on the basket for 5 hours (from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, one of my favourites as a 4-year-old)

My observation meanwhile was to feel like taking off my hat to my younger self: during this last lockdown, we’d discovered, lurking in some box in the attic, a collection of about ten short stories written by that younger self. Some printed by our first, dot-matrix, printer, on recycled paper bought from one of the then-new ‘fair trade’ catalogues, now yellowed with age. These were from that now-taught-as-history-in-schools date of 1989 — remember what you were doing then? Although I know women who write now while raising a family, as Mum to three children, then aged 12, 8, and 8 (twins), I wondered where they find the time? Making supper for two, I recalled cooking meals for 6 (including my mother who was living with us) back in the 1980s.  

Whatever, the discovery has kicked off a lockdown project: to edit and publish my stories from 1989 to just the very beginning of the 2000s as a collection, a historical looking-back through the last 20 years of the 20th century, when life was simpler.

All the elements which drive my present writing and interests are strongly present in those stories, but with a different, more innocent slant. Back then, I’d had a few articles published but hadn’t even thought of writing a novel, or had any ambition about ‘writing’. The articles concerned, at a non-specialist level, socio-political attitudes. But in the stories, characters swirl through a world of their own personal discovery based around their relationships, mostly heterosexual, mostly concerned with a spot of romance, dreams broken or dreams achieved — mostly lessons learned, sometimes strangely magical. They chronicle the background of the world of my University years, dotted all over with the friends I moved among: artists (I’d hang around their studios, envying them the apparent freedom studying Fine Art), or medics (how on earth had they known to apply for this so-adult subject, what was it like to be on the wards discovering the realities and responsibilities of clinical medicine? Like me, they were barely into their 20s). One story at least points forwards to my first novel Baby, Baby, which takes look at the ethics of artificial reproduction. 

The early stories point to a then-unrevealed future: soon after (1992) I went back to academic study, and took a certificate course in Social and Political Science, ending up specialising a bit in medical sociology, widening and probably liberalising my knowledge. Through that time, more stories evolved. Where did the time come from?  We had reading, and essays, and there were now pre-teens and teens in the household! 

Now this discovery has spawned a new project: edit and publish them. Western Europe was still moving through days before urban terrorism, “Brexit” and the pandemic. What considerations governed decision-making in ‘normal life’? The news has uncovered sex abuse and corruption, campaigning has brought to light so many diverse communities and issues purposely hidden away by past generations — LGBTQ+, same-sex weddings, Black Lives Matter, anti-Colonialism, the Windrush scandal, the climate crisis, the Grenfell Tower… the list is far longer. For readers, novels as well as non-fiction abound to devour, and to inform. For writers, such rich seams of information, discussion and opinions offer an invitation to juggle (seriously) with the controversial, to inform or appeal to the public imagination. Normal life — without a pandemic — isn’t normal any more (if ever it was).

If the cat could understand, what would he choose? I’ll take my hat off to all today’s fiction writers who try and achieve writing seriously while raising a family. Today it is exhausting to be a Granny and to attempt to write a novel.

The perceptive feline himself… figuring out what’s on the TV…

Reading, Writing, and Always being Kind…

(My July contribution to the ‘Authors Electric’ blog, reproduced here) “Be kind” 

A few weeks before lockdown, a well-known celebrity took her own life, leaving a note advising others to “be kind”. This may or may not have been the source of advice which circulated, as we began to live shut away from crowds, and thus places of business and pleasure, that we should now do “Small acts of kindness” to neighbours. An effort to create some coping mechanism, some feeling of community, and hope, and to take us out of ourselves.

Well-meaning but in danger, as the words became a meme, of joining with those BBC News tropes of “unprecedented”, “uncharted waters” and “strange times” which, while describing something, also managed to describe nothing. How, exactly, do we perform “little acts of kindness” when all are separated and not to get together? Of course, we do find ways… What I’m saying is, stand back and think — is it worrying that we need to be told? Is it sobering that normally we don’t do these?

Lockdown has become a meme – a subject overdone – yet lockdown is different for everyone, and has provided the chance for reflection to a society which doesn’t reflect very much. On to the next thing, and let’s hope for excitement — as was said of Millennials, “they don’t want material goods like their parents do — they want experiences”.

A Change of Reading

One small change I found myself led into was reading matter. As an avid fiction fan, my habitual reading has being in the area of long, moderately challenging novels.

Not the popular Hilary Mantel ones (though many began lockdown with reading her latest). My taste has been a tour of novels by non-British, non-white writers whose cultures I don’t know with the histories and religious bases which formed them. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons. I returned to reading Barbara Kingsolver, her latest two novels, (Unsheltered and Flight Behaviour) exploring in fictional form the effects of climate change. My lockdown change was a desire to turn to lighter novels, and to actually enjoy a “cosy mystery” set on a Greek island, (Murder your Darlings) and a diary-style account of teaching in a secondary school, tragi-comic and firmly set in today’s Middle England (Miss, What does Incomprehensible Mean?) . Challenged by having the time, I watched TV’s adaptation of Normal People, and the sociologist in me kicked in to consider its meaning. Another contemporary romance, Mix Tape, had also caught my attention, and I thought that these two stories, both published as books in the past five years, demonstrate the truth of the “plus ça change” nature of human beings and what they expect from a romance novel…, and this between couples from opposed cultures, although all Western and all-white.

A Challenge on Content

Interestingly, in both stories attraction is strong and physical, taking place initially at school, cultural differences are of class, both “girls” have difficult abusive homes, both “boys” loving and nurturing ones. Both girls “escape” to a new life where they blossom. Both boys have not known the extent of the abuse the girls had suffered. Both couples keep their relationship a secret from the abusive home. Are these the present day memes of romance novels, I wondered? Mix Tape — taking place in the late 1970s — ends with reuniting the couple, whereas Normal People, a millennial tale, ends with parting for career reasons.

But then, I read the book. Memes they may be, but Sally Rooney’s story tells more than can be conveyed by the dimly-lit, meaningful looks of the TV adaptation convey. The inner lives of her protagonists, troubled by doubt around issues of identity and worth, weave in and out of this on-off relationship and give, albeit in unrelenting flat prose, what is not there in the dialogue. The tragedy of the romance between two school misfits is that each has been unknowingly the other’s tutor in adolescent development. And the ending, a disappointment to many reviewers, is indicated (though not overtly stated): as adults they — or certainly Marianne has — achieved the ability to do without the other.  Whereas in Mix Tape (set in the late 20th century) the protagonists are all set, at the end, to elope together, leaving marriage partners and grown children behind.

An indication that the meme has moved on from romance to a reality where the individual’s own career trumps caring about a person close to themselves, and self dominates over all human relationships? Or have they merely matured, rather than “using each other”? A point to consider for my review, on my website.

Reading romance novels, albeit serious ones, makes me wonder about how much the romance genre meme is an indicator of the health, or not, of a society. And put my own work under the spotlight: does my work (novels Baby, Baby and The Labyrinth Year) fall into “unshelvable” due to a low ratio of sex to other issues of the couples’ daily lives?

Is this because it shows too much of how they carry out the scientific interests and work which holds them together as much as physical attraction, how they work on a mystery together, and raises ethical and religious questions?It had seemed at the time of writing these weregiving the reader some stronger food than simply the sugar of the sex drive. And it was all part of the learning curve of my two young protagonists. Or, is my story-telling simply outdated as we move onwards?

A Chance of a Future

Well that is what I’ve learned, and shall we keep up the “little acts of kindness”? Many of us have learned, as the roads quietened and there was nowhere to go except our own gardens and the nearest walkable park or common, to slow down and appreciate the natural world. My hope is that we’ll continue to and live with an eye on the survival of more birds in our gardens, more wildflowers on the verges, and more insects to pollinate them. And of course the range of readers, like the range of books, is infinite, and the human psyche does actually often return to what’s easiest. Maybe I’ll write the action next, and leave out the romance?

And so, shall we all continue to be kind?

(…and by the way, what am I reading now? Another ‘cosy, light’ book, Stranger at St Brides, by my friend Debbie Young, and  Sally Rooney’s first, Conversations with Friends... plus ca change…)

Ignoring Brexit… or Why be Political when you could be Normal?

‘After Brexit’ and the English weather is as it ever was – nostalgically these two look out across the Thames towards Parliament… (photo BBC News Getty images)

Indeed, why? As I (mis) quoted Janette Winterson’s autobiography title (‘Why be Happy when you could be Normal?’)  on my January Authors Electric blogpost. (An Amateur looks at the Art of Poetry, scroll down to find it, the group publish a blog every day on there).

So, ‘all work and no play…’ My blogging has gone a bit that way… you, the Reader, may think ‘far too political’ and give up – you, a follower, may stop in your tracks, and vow never to come here again… But wait, here is the real(er) me… with the things I enjoy!   And ‘after Brexit’ I intend to continue enjoying them… whatever the weather (and at present the local water meadows are under water…) 

Robin singing to defend his territory – or simply enjoying a spot of sun on an otherwise grey, damp, morning with

One of my favourite walks is a visit to our local nature reserve, trying to catch on camera the plants and wildlife… Robins are the commonest birds there, and several have become friends with regular visitors… Just before I met the Robin, this Jay swooped down to ground level and  began turning over the left-over autumn leaves, and  pecking up any insects it could find…

Crowds gather to view the flooded water meadows

And now for the ‘lake’ which develops every winter, and this year has surpassed itself… rather sad for us observers, the Teal who often migrate over and inhabit the lake in the winter months have been put off by a huge invasion of seagulls – and also, possibly, by the number of lively  dogs being walked on the water meadows, who leap joyfully into the water regardless of the cold!

 

And of course, back in the nature reserve plant life is stirring, snowdrops just coming out, just a promise of spring, and many varieties of fungi – these (below) are Elf Cups, (measure them against the ivy leaves and see how tiny they mostly are) pointed out to me by a very sharp eyed friend on a wonderful sunny morning… 

and over on another blog, a writer friend has just reminded us all that we should build much more play into our lives, lest we become world-weary women… when life escalates into being  too political, it’s all too easy to forget that! More nature walks, fewer earnest discussions… so I’m drawing this to a close and going for a cup of tea and a biscuit… then more thoughts about the follow-up to The Labyrinth Year…

Are you still writing??

Beginning to settle on the storytelling for the next book, my idea for the opening page is a girl on a train…

“Are you still writing?” Friends – especially the long lost who reappear, visiting – sometimes ask. The answer– yes – looks untrustworthy, since the third book in the Mullins family saga series, hasn’t yet appeared, and number two, The Labyrinth Year was published in 2014.

‘So – are you?’

My “Mullins Family – book 3″ hasn’t yet appeared for unavoidable reasons: health, computer problems, politics. I’m picking up from there, publishing a selection of poems, ironically perhaps relating to those years 1997-2007. and redesigning (with a designer) the Hodge website. Some writers, either by contract or by their own choice, must aim to turn out a book a year. Their readers expect it. Are these always a good read?  Maybe. Or maybe not. Even within a genre, (and genres which follow must-have elements and expectations, such as ChickLit, fast paced thrillers, cosy crime, police procedurals), there’s variation. It takes committed, well informed, professional writers, often with a background in journalism and no “day job” to do a really good job on a yearly basis. My kind of thought provoking books will always take longer, involving research, time to mull this over, and integrate it into a plot with a story arc and satisfying conclusion.

So, I’d thought, ten fictional years forward for each novel. Book two is set in 1997, that’s then a leap forward – to 2007.  Enormous social and political change took place in those ten years. Pre-millennium, governed by Tony Blair’s New Labour, life was very different. We were on the edge of the financial crash but most of us didn’t know.

Pre 2000, we were warned to fear the “millennium bug” which could potentially ruin computer systems. Thanks to hard work from techie people this didn’t happen. But instead, terrorism struck in 2001 –  9/11 shocked and rocked the world. And catapulted the world into a different era. Followed by, in 2016, the idea that we should leave the EU in a process called “Brexit”.

Pre-2000… post Brexit…????

Quite how life in 2007 would speak to us today, when our minds are filled with wars, terrorism, paedophile scandals, Brexit negotiations and now knife crime, what would be exciting about the year before 2008?  Even post 9/11 and the London bombs of 2005, it was still a time of innocence compared to today’s news. Even adding a dimly growing awareness of Climate Change … Book 3 is now set in 2017.

My heroine is a Millennial, Jenny and Max Mullins’s daughter born in 1992, a five year old in 1997. We find her, Alice aged 25, in tears as she travels by train, her mind full of memories… She has recently opened a box and found items she’d saved back in 2007, aged 15. What these memories are should unfold as the story moves along, and we learn of the personal tragic end to that year for Alice. The climax of the idea for 2007… but not the same book…

It’s going to stretch my imagination, and my research capability, to get inside Alice’s mind, but it is an exciting prospect. Have you a book within you, disrupted by political change?

Live… Lose… Learn… poetry by Mari Howard will be available later this year… look out for it soon on the new Mari Howard Hodge website…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The writer, the Sussex Chair, & Brexit

Maybe it is the time of year: after the solstice, a time of hope or after crazy Christmas, a time of space. For whatever reason, the collective spirit has lightened, even though the world still seems to be at war with itself. A friend who was in deep gloom over Christmas and New Year writes that her depression has lifted, another of that how being “stuck” in her writing, composing a silly poem about that has freed her up again, and I’m  being weirdly inspired by a chair.

The chair has always been in my family, it was in my room as I grew up. We inherited it from my grandparents, and it just looks like an ordinary upright chair with a rush seat. Apparently it came from artist’s studio, which kind of gave it a romantic feel when I was a teenager, and somehow it seems to have followed me around and is still in our house today. It’s in the room where I paint. A couple of years back, I put the chair in a painting of a child in a strop, an artistic child whose foster mother only understands pink and spangly girls, but this is a denim jeans, creative small girl who hates her pink bedroom. Although she isn’t me, I understand her. The girl is Daisy, known Daze, a character in my Mullins family series, currently two novels Baby Baby, and The Labyrinth Year.

In June 2016 we went on holiday to our favourite place in Cornwall, and the sun shone as we picnicked, on 23rd, with crowds of others at a picturesque typical Cornish cove… When we came home, the painting wasn’t working. I simplified painting the chair, leaving out the essence of the design. I was also really stuck with the third novel, had problems with my computer, had a nasty illness, decided the website needed a make-over, submitted to gloom and pessimism.

And here’s the thing: today I discovered this is actually a ”Sussex Chair”. The spools on the back are central to a design otherwise characterised by simplicity and practicality. It’s a well known William Morris ‘arts and crafts’ design (though ours is a version without the arms). The story – that it came from an artist’s studio – fits with the period it was made.

Strangely that lifted the gloom: knowing I have to make a proper drawing of the chair, do the  intricate and worthy task, a work that takes time and care. It’s a kick-start to getting the novel writing going, and it’s come alongside finally having the website and computer problems solved.

Odd how a chair can call you back to creativity.

Writing my series in Winter

The large pond at our local Nature Reserve, a photo of the resting and waiting which sums up winter. I’m so glad Christmas and New Year are gone now, and we begin looking up towards the longer days and the creeping up of  new shoots and signs of spring!

A few days ago, some writer friends were talking about writing for Christmas in the summer months – I am trying to write about summer as nature is lying low under frost (and hopefully not more snow!) and low cloud. It’s cold, damp, and horrible  here: the pond surrounded by thick, dark, mud, the trees bare except for the clinging ivy, the reeds broken, brown and collapsed.

Meanwhile, the volunteers who care for the reserve have (and are) running work parties to cut, prune, and plant … out there in warm clothing, hats, boots, gloves … And their work will encourage birds (already just beginning to practice their mating songs), butterflies (maybe there are crysalis/pupa hiding cosily amongst the apparently dead vegetation, or the piles of lopped-down logs), I know there are eggs of a particular butterfly somewhere in there, safely waiting … It’s all poised, even as we hurry by, nipped by a north wind and frozen by the incredible damp of living between several rivers …

Yesterday afternoon I walked through the sticky mud, under the low, grey sky, along a waterside path … and yes, this swan couple are back to dating, having driven away last year’s teenage brood … signs of spring, fertility, and the return of warmth to the sun, and colour to life!

So glad I am writing about my characters in summer … the long, damp summer of 2007 … when there is mystery, distress, and growing up to be done …

 

 

 

Being authentic, Writing about Christmas …

It’s snowing … when it snows here in the UK, we all get very excited … all morning, couples, groups, and families passed our front windows, hurrying towards the nearest green space (it’s fairly near), big smiles on their faces, and pom-pom hats on their heads … It’s kind of sweet and funny … All too soon the snow will melt into a brown slush, the slush will freeze to treacherous ice … but until then, it’s winter wonderland, all set for Christmas.

In my novel, The Labyrinth Year, I wrote two Christmas scenes: a magical carol service, and an up-beat celebration in a church, where the Vicar wore reindeer antlers … At the end of the service, as they leave,  Max, (the Dad) remarks how the congregation’s emotions were played on by the music … Although Mum Jenny accuses him of cynicism, he has a point …

Christmas is a difficult time …A couple of weeks back, a Facebook friend and fellow writer posted that she ‘loathes’ Christmas … and she’s right, though loathing is a pretty strong word, it’s good to make us face up to this: Christmas is an utterly problematic time. I mean, it’s silly: in the middle of a dark, cold, depressing, season, everyone is required to shop till they drop, give and attend parties, perform plays, sing carols, travel across country (maybe continents) to be with family members, to send cards, give presents, be happy, and generally expend extra energy. And catch each other’s seasonal illnesses. Street decorations vie with one another for splendiferousness, and multiple decorated trees appear in the stores and on the pavements. Those vast tins of mixed biscuits appear in the supermarkets …

I want to cover my ears and my eyes: I want to escape …

Do you love it all? Or do you feel it makes a mockery of the (various) religious, and even secular, bases for this, by being a time of spend spend spend when people can run up debts, and when the really desperately poor and the homeless are thoughtlessly given the message that they are left out of all this ‘by circumstances’. It’s really (possibly unintentionally?) hammered home. Even if there is a tad more shelter, and with a Christmas lunch at Crisis, it’s not … well … it’s just not.

We are planning a very plain Christmas with moderate ‘feasting’, trying to be happy and friendly without the BIG stuff which obscures the bottom line reason why Christmas is there. Why indeed is it? In a secular society, the reasoning behind the gift-giving has lost its edge, the causes for celebration obscured. Not that we shouldn’t give and celebrate – but, let’s be honest, it’s come adrift from the story in those carols, hasn’t it?

Did you know that the ‘old fashioned Christmas’ was not a big festival as it is today? In Samuel Pepys’ day, 25 December wasn’t a public holiday. And even not so long ago, people (for example my grandfather) worked up to the end of Christmas Eve, or even worked a half day on Christmas Day itself. Families didn’t necessarily give big presents and a Tree wasn’t assumed to be bought every year.  A mid-winter festival is a chance for fun, but I truly believe this is not necessarily a time for every school to produce a play, and a carol concert, or for evangelising the population, or  to entice people into church with carols, candles, and mince pies… or for getting into debt …

I remain a believer in the Christ who taught compassion, healing, wholeness, inclusiveness, justice for the poor, etc. – and if he was really born into poverty and greeted by angels and shepherds, that is wonderful. But, I feel a lot of empathy with everyone who ‘loathes’ what Christmas has become, and with those who look around and take offence at its public face … This is not a ‘Christian country’ (could such a country ever exist?  Faith isn’t about political boundaries – and if it’s about family, and friends, it’s about caring and sharing.

Whether or not you attend the Carols by Candlelight, the Panto, the parties, the Midnight Mass, and watch the Queen’s Speech … whether or not you eat turkey and drink Prosecco, wearing a funny hat … whether or not it snows…

To read about Christmas, New Year, and a whole 1996-7 family experience, go to our website to find more about The Labyrinth Year … and the prequel, Baby, Baby

 

Why is the writer knitting poppies?

Poppies in our garden …

It’s that time of year: autumn brings a cluster of strange, dark celebrations: Hallowe’en, Guy Fawkes or Fireworks Night, and Remembrance or Armistice Day. All provoke arguments: perhaps the most controversial today is Remembrance Day.

I have joined a group of knitters who are knitting poppies. In the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars, women used to knit for the soldiers, but forget that, our knitting has nothing whatever to do with it. Or with patriotism, separatism, or nationalism. Or with Brexit (I have been a ‘Remainer’ from the first).

November 11 is a day when the practice and consequences of war are highlighted so that we, as a global community, may not continually repeat its horrors. Yes, the Day is also a memorial to those who have died as a consequence of fighting. Their deaths were a tragic, painful, waste: hardly ‘glorifying’. This further reminds us that war needs to be banned from civilisation.

Our small group plan to hang as many knitted poppies as we can on the hedge which obscures the local war memorial. The poppies will not glorify anything. Hopefully they will remind passers by of what war means: a frightful destruction of lives, terrible suffering, atrocities, the ruining of nature, towns, and villages. The world has not learnt from the 1914-18 war and continues to use increasingly powerful weapons, to kill, maim, and destroy. This needs to stop: how can world leaders consider how the world can behave better towards itself?

We on this planet all belong to one world. Globalisation has many weaknesses, but it underlines this interdependence more than ever. The more individuals become accepting, groups become inclusive communities, communities become cooperative districts, and countries unite in their intention to seek understanding, listen to one another, avoid combat and quarrels, the more likely the planet is to survive. It is a time to express our horror at the arms race, and the terrible wounds inflicted on both civilians and the military and upon all that has had been carefully constructed to make lives more liveable. To use Remembrance Day to repent of any part we have in conflicts large or small.

Fear of the other is understandable. Greed to possess what the other has, exploitation or anger at how the other thinks, is not. Maybe it is easier to envisage and desire this world of cultural inclusiveness and acceptance for those who, like us, live in a cosmopolitan city, and count within our family and extended family members who, as a group, represent communities from all three ‘Abraham faiths’ (both practising and non practising). But it isn’t impossible. We are all human: we are all destructible.

My knitting poppies to display on Remembrance Day is far from a patriotic, nationalist gesture: it’s ‘installation’ art. I’m knitting poppies to represent the spilt blood of war, in order to help people visually recall that war destroys and divides. To point up that cooperation, acceptance, and understanding may bring a possibility of hope.  

Writing, creativity, and cliché

Writers and readers: how often have you read or even written something like this: ‘Where a divan bed (substitute tea pot, table, pile of books …etc) served as sofa (dormouse’s house, desk, support for a pot plant …etc)’? Or given your protagonist, male of female, a ‘stiff white shirt’?

Cliché abounds in the world of writing …

How about the inevitable ‘procrastinating …’ which all writers must admit to?  How about ‘and should I have heard of you?’ as the (dreary, hopefully positive) response to admitting you actually write to earn your daily crust? (Or not, as the case may be – because you procrastinate?) (And the turning away …) Do you spend your life in pyjamas, no time to dress properly , the Muse awaits … You surely don’t wear that stiff white shirt – how does one move the arms when wearing one of those? Won’t it crackle when the hero embraces the heroine (in her stiff white shirt)?

To be serious,

this is meant to be about that first cliché – the divan/teapot/table/pile of books which serve … Never mind it’s cliché (a thing can’t serve – can’t it?)  The thing was being used as whether it chose or not. Let’s get creative: what other ways to say that someone hadn’t a sofa/dormouse’s house/desk/pot plant stand, and grabbed the only substitute to hand …

Meanwhile – I guess when someone is needed to do something, ‘will you serve as …’ is more reasonable. We serve on committees, we serve (if in the military) our country, we serve (if a shop worker) our customers. We can serve a meal …

Now, here’s the thing:

Writing and gardening: creative stuff!

serving relies on, well, reliability. As a ‘creative’, as a person who writes, I know that I am not reliable. In a fallow phase, I may serve (in a toddler group, for example, or making cakes to sell at a fete) but, in full flight with a deadline, writing a novel, I can’t promise to serve reliably. Or should I? Which takes precedence: the writing or the service to others?

Good question. Some people would say, ‘You must be faithful to yourself, and achieve your goals’.

Personally, I’m not sure about that one. It feels isolationist … and a bit self-important. Solipsistic, in fact.

However, as ‘a creative’, I know I am not reliable. I know my novel, and my paintings,

Even a creative kid has the problem! 

are important, they are who I am … They will die without my help to bring them to birth …When there’s a call to serve – on the charity stall, the committee, putting out chairs for the concert, counting the traffic so we residents can complain to the council … Or, in more serious, long-term ways, Is that a good excuse? Can creatives make good volunteers?

Over to you …