0 Which Superhero Would YOU Be? by Tamsyn Murray

I don't know about you but I've never really thought of myself as a superhero. I'm more of 'quietly gets on with things' kind of operator rather than the type who single-handedly fights her nemesis and saves the world while looking awesome in skimpy tight clothes and snogging the love interest. And then I organised an inspirational LOVE Writing day at a fancy hotel in Hertfordshire and invited Miranda Dickinson and Julie Cohen along as guest speakers, and they taught me that there's a superhero inside me, inside all of us, struggling to get out.

The idea is simple and comes from this TED talk by Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy, who suggests that 'power posing' for a short amount of time before an important or stressful event can give us the right body language and self-assurance to do better. It can confer self-confidence and an aura of awesomeness. Miranda suggested we find a pose that worked for us - our Superhero Pose - so that we could invoke the power it gives in our everyday lives. And to help us on our way, Miranda made us practise our pose in front of each other.

As you can see, we looked pretty amazing. And the best part was that it actually worked - after thirty seconds of holding the pose of a strong, confident person, I actually felt stronger. So the next time I have something terrifying to say or do, I'm going remember how it felt to channel my inner Supergirl and tell myself I can conquer the fear to stand tall. Or was it Wonder woman? Or maybe just Superwoman? Whatever helps me to stand tall.

Who would you choose to copy in your Superhero pose and why? And don't forget to strike the pose as often as you need to. It's your key to feeling better about yourself and the thing you're about to do. Now...which superhero shall I be today..?

Detail: Which Superhero Would YOU Be? by Tamsyn Murray

0 Twig by Twig

 My desk is near the window. I would probably get a lot more done if it weren’t, especially at this time of year. And right now I have such a deadline that I shouldn’t be looking anywhere but at the screen.

I have a garden. It’s not a particularly nice garden because I’m better with words than with plants. Mostly, since I stopped being a cat owner, my garden seems to be a bird feeding station.

I love watching birds. Recently I’ve been watching them gather the materials for their nests. Carrying maybe one twig at a time. One very large twig, often longer than the bird itself. In their tiny beaks. It takes them ages to lift it, and even longer to fly with it to where they want to go. It must be, for us, like hawking a huge tree trunk round in our teeth.

When I see a tiny sparrow with a twig I wish I could build the nest for it. The task looks impossible. It looks even harder than the book I am struggling with right now, the one that seemed like a good idea when I signed the contract, and now seems impossible to get done in the tiny amount of time left. Much easier to look out at the birds. How are they going to get enough twigs?  How are they going to know what to do with them? How are they going to be able to put them all together and make a nest and then lay their eggs?

It exhausts me to think about it and there is so much that can go wrong.

When I first moved to this small village in County Down, a pair of housemartins built their odd, mud-hutlike nest in the apex of the side gable of the house. They were charming, if a little bit annoying – noisy beggars, and I was forever cleaning their poo off the roof of the car. But I loved seeing them wheel around and hearing the tiny squeaks of their chicks.

Their nest was a preposterous thing – a sort of mud coconut-shell affair clinging upside down, held on by hope. Then one day I found it smashed on the driveway, the dead chicks spilt over the gravel. The parent birds wheeled and wheeled in shrill distress. I could do nothing. It was unbearable.

A few days later I saw them with bits of mud in their beaks. They rebuilt. They raised another brood of chicks. They, or their descendants, return every year. Their upside-down mud hut clings on. 

I still haven’t finished this book and I don’t quite know how it is going to end. I’ve been asked to write about the Easter Rising of 1916, and right now it feels too big for me, and much too scary. And I should be working on it right now, instead of looking at birds flying round with twigs in their beaks.

I don’t know how they do it. I wish I had the instinct for this story that they have for their collecting, and carrying and flying and building and rebuilding. But I will do it. Twig by twig.

Detail: Twig by Twig

0 Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance - Savita Kalhan

I don’t generally read books twice, but there are a few that I come back to time and time again.

Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance is one of them. Radio 4 has dramatised the book in one hour segments over three weeks, which is an amazing feat considering it is 614 pages long. It’s on Sunday afternoons at 3pm. Today the last part will be aired, but you can still listen to podcasts of the first two parts.

I’ve listened to the first two episodes and enjoyed them. But it’s very much like when you watch the film version of a book you love – it will never be quite the same and rarely can it be better than the book. I have to almost totally separate the two entities in my mind in order to be able to watch the film.

But the Radio 4 dramatisation is nevertheless very good. The pivotal scenes from the book are present even if much of the background is not.

In A Fine Balance Mistry explores the inherent inequalities of the caste system, extreme poverty, high level corruption, and life during the turmoil of Indira Gandhi's Emergency, and the sterilization programme, and the 'Beautification' policies, which led to the forced removal of street-dwellers into indentured labour. His characters are drawn from many Indian communities including the Parsi, Hindu, and Muslim communities. The cast of characters include Untouchables to beggars, thieves and even Indira Ghandi; but there are four central characters of different backgrounds and histories, and it is from their perspective, and through their hearts and minds, that the story is told.

The four characters are a Parsi woman, Dina, two tailors and a student from the north. Tragedy exists at the heart of each of their stories, it permeates each page, yet the resilience of their spirit sits right next to it, tempering it. 'You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair' - and quite simply, that is exactly what Rohinton Mistry does.

'... his sentences poured out like perfect seams, holding the garment of his story together without drawing attention to the stitches' - this is a line spoken by one of Mistry's characters, and perhaps best describes the mastery and craft of Rohinton Mistry himself.

His work speaks to me as an Indian, but it is universal in scope and in its depiction of humanity. He is, above all, a writer who plunges you, heart and mind, deep into his stories, where you remain submerged until the final page has been turned and you come up, gasping for air. It’s a work of genius.

Listening to the dramatisation has made me want to pick up the book again. It’s inspiring, and it inspires me to write.
Is there a book that inspires you?


Radio 4 - A Fine Balance

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Detail: Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance - Savita Kalhan

0 The Room In My Head - revisited - Linda Strachan

In January 2009 I wrote a blog on ABBA about the  Room in my Head.  It went something like this -

The Room In My Head

As the new year begins I look inside my head to find that room where inspiration might be hiding….   

In the middle of the room there is space, empty of life or furniture.   Walls, accustomed to colour and pattern, stand bereft waiting for design - perhaps imprints of flowers, pattern or activity.

Underfoot boards made of wood and nails move to mark my passage and where the light floods though glass no curtains block its passage. 

And yet the room is full of hope and joy because the sun is shining, casting summer against the emptiness.  
Sounds fill the space with anticipation - strains of mystery that fill my ears and delight my senses, holding me captive - wondering - what I will discover?

This year, many years and stories later, I find my year starting with the Room in My Head well populated by the book I am currently writing.  There is still space in the room although it is well furnished with characters and places, ideas, textures and much activity.

Underfoot  ideas are scattered on the boards like so many sparkling jewels - tempting and clamouring for attention. 

Terrified they might be discarded, their brilliance allowed to fade, dissipate and be condemned to become mere pebbles abandoned on the path to the finale.

Light flooding through the glass varies with each passing day, dependent on the story's progress, from dreary grey rain-clouds...

to breezy sunshine over water.

At the moment the Room in my Head is packed with a tapestry of thoughts, emotions, wrong turns and epiphanies.


It changes daily and fills to bursting with the noise of those who inhabit the story, each with their own goals and intentions, duplicitous or discernible,

but always fascinating.




What fills the Room in your Head?



---------------------------------------------

Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children.

Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me  
she is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 

Detail: The Room In My Head - revisited - Linda Strachan

0 THE SUMMER of FRUITION – Dianne Hofmeyr

 

This morning I killed someone. I got up early while the house was quiet and did it and then howled. It was tough. I hadn’t planned it. It came over me suddenly with huge conviction that it was the right thing to do. But it wasn’t easy.

I’ve known the person for two years or more and had never thought of killing her. But I did it. Now I’m bereft. But bad things happen. My story was too calm. Too stitched up at the end. How can one be working in one direction and then do such an about turn that you become a murderer overnight? And how can one feel so utterly sad about someone who is completely made up in your own head? Before writing them into the story, they didn’t exist, except in your deep consciousness. Is it the same deep consciousness that impels you to kill the person as well? I don’t know. All I know is that I hated doing it but the story is stronger.

I’m at my sea house… seems harsh to say this… when I know how cold it still is in the northern hemisphere right now… but I’m wondering if this house has an impact on my writing. In London I live so cramped and envy writers who have huge expanses of wild countryside to tramp while they solve their plots. Here I have nine kilometres of pristine sand and sea with a wild rocky outcrop at the end. As I write in the early mornings the salt air wafts in heavy with the smell of the sun on the wild indigenous coastal ‘fynbos.’

Do writers all have special places that unlock more – memory palaces not in the true mnemonic sense (I might be able to write that but can’t say it without stumbling) but places that make writing easier? Less about bricks and mortar and more about a space onto which we can project our dreams, hopes and fears? Like opening a drawer and suddenly the smell of it brings the memories and stories spilling out?

I’ve been writing this novel for more than two years now and I’m still polishing the stones of it that tumble around in my head and still finding the bleached bones buried in the sand. Perhaps now is the time to let it go? If Liz Kessler’s blog was The Spring of Ideas… perhaps mine is The Summer of Fruition.

I’ve posted this video below on ABBA before when I originally made it as a response to place. But perhaps a bit of summer sunshine might not be misplaced. It was my first attempt at stitching visuals and music together so the loop in the music pauses in the middle but then picks up again.

Matt Haig tweeted recently: ‘Fiction is just a dream we have that we try to externalise.”

Twitter @dihofmeyr

www.diannehofmeyr.com

ZERAFFA GIRAFFA by Dianne Hofmeyr, illustrated by Jane Ray, published by Frances Lincoln made the Top 100 Classics in the past 10 years List in THE SUNDAY TIMES and the Best Picture Book List for 2014 in The Times on Saturday.

Detail: THE SUMMER of FRUITION – Dianne Hofmeyr

0 World's End - Eve Ainsworth

When I was thirteen, something quite amazing happened.

Prior to this, I had been scribbling ideas at home. I had even sent a children's story - Muddles the Mouse - to Penguin, typed on a second hand rusty typewriter, to which I'd received a glowing letter and several paperback books. But my inspiration was drying up. I was young and no longer felt inspired by either books or my writing.

But then I found a bookshop - World's End. This was an age when I was first allowed to trek to town by myself or with friends and it was during this time that we discovered the shop, tucked away in the back streets. It was an unassuming building, hardly the most exciting thing to see - but when we wandered in, we found the thrill of books overpowering.

To be honest, it was pretty intimidating. The back of shop was full of comics and graphic novels. Teenage boys filled the aisles, leafing through the boxes and glaring at us skinny, nervous girls as we slipped in.

I remember rows of new shiny books, stacks of crime journals which pricked my curiosity. And then - on a bottom shelf, in the far corner - was a shelf marked TEEN.

We crouched down and pulled out some battered second-hand gems - the majority of them American. My eyes darted across the text. Christopher Pike, Lois Duncan, Lois Lowry.

My first purchase was Christopher Pike -  Gimme a Kiss. This book kept me up at night. It was pacy, thrilling, daring.  I never looked back.

Every week I would be in that shop, ignoring the boys at the back - just leafing through my new inspiration. Some days I could afford to buy, others I would just plan my next purchase. I particularly grew to love Pan Horizon books and gained an impressive collection.
The owners got used to seeing me, as I took away another book encased in a crisp paper bag. Inside my head was buzzing with ideas. I knew now that I wanted to write just like these authors.

It was a sad day when the shop finally closed in the late 90's, but of course by then the teen market was expanding rapidly. Things were changing. But I missed my backstreet shop, the smell of old books, the rough carpet against my legs as I sat reading, the gentle bell as the door was opened.

And I'll never forget it.

Perhaps even stranger - I ended up marrying one of those intimating teens that lurked at the back - so at least we can reminisce together.





 

Detail: World's End - Eve Ainsworth

0 Once Upon a Time...in Prague by Savita Kalhan

The Astrological Clock

Everything about the origins of Prague, from the castles, the river, the cobbled streets of the old city to Charles Bridge, almost everything has a story, a myth or a legend associated with it.

 

Prague’s origins are said to go back to the 7th century and the Slavic Princess Libuše. Not only beautiful and wise, she also possessed prophetic powers. Libuše and her husband, Prince Přemysl, ruled peacefully over the Czech lands from the hill of Vyšehrad. According to legend, one day Libuše had a vision as she stood on a cliff overlooking the Vltava. She pointed to a forested hill across the river, and proclaimed: "I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars." She instructed her people to build a castle where a man was building the threshold (práh in Czech) of a house. "And because even the great noblemen must bow low before a threshold, you shall give it the name Praha." And so Prague was born.

The Old Square

Charles Bridge

The Arch to Charles Bridge



Wenceslas Square

 



 

St.Vitus Cathedral

 

 

 

I won’t recount all the myths and legends associated with the city, because there are so many. There are tales of tragedy, of love, of valour and of sacrifice. Here are but a few titles in case you wish to look them up.

The Iron Man, The Silver Fish, The Headless Templar, The One-Armed Thief, The Ghost of the Miller’s Daughter, The Begging Skeleton, Karbourek the Water Sprite, The Golem of Prague, The Murdered Nun, The Mad Barber, The Legend of Dalibor, Prophecies of the Clock.

Chair of Nails

Torture Chamber

 

Surreal urination at the Franz Kafka Museum...

Modern day declarations of love

If you run out of books...

Prague was a great source of inspiration to me. It was as if I were stepping back in time. Sadly I missed out on a Ghost Tour of this magical city. Oh well, I’ll just have to go back...

 

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Detail: Once Upon a Time...in Prague by Savita Kalhan

0 The inspiration for my new novel - David Thorpe

My first novel in several years is out this week – Like Hybrids it's still YA, it's still set in the future, but it's very different in subject matter. I thought it might be interesting to talk about why I wanted to write it.

I lived in mid-Wales, where Stormteller is set, for nearly 20 years. After separating from my first wife I eventually landed up in Taliesin, partly because I was attracted to a place named after Wales' legendary bard.

I know the landscape almost as well as I know my back garden now, having walked over much of it. I always felt when I moved to this edge of the British Isles from London that here, unlike most places, the skin of the present is thin: you can feel the vibrations from the past still reverberating down the centuries like thunder beneath your feet.

Just inland from Taliesin village is a collapsed dolmen that is given the name 'Taliesin's grave' – though it is much older than that.

Between my house at that time and the sea, lies Borth bog: you may remember the images in the media last winter when flames were leaping across it from burning peat despite the snow: spooky.

And then Borth itself: a long sliver of a town that shouldn't be there, streamed onto a spur of land against the glint of the sea, on a section of coast that is the most vulnerable in the whole of Wales to storm surges. Again, it was in the media last winter when it was attacked by giant waves.

The spur continues to Ynys Las, a nature reserve of sand dunes opposite the Dyfi estuary from Aberdyfi – a colony of English retirees and yachting people largely immune to the influence of the past.

Above it, however, by the Bearded Lake, is allegedly a footprint left by King Arthur when he passed this way, and north of there the mountain Cader Idris, Welsh for Seat of Arthur.

But the real stories that come from this area are older than Arthur's: the birth of Taliesin and Cantr'er Gwaelod, which is the tale of how the land that now lies beneath Cardigan Bay was drowned by the sea.

It's these, and the beautiful, wild and dramatic landscape, that sparked my imagination to write this novel.

Let me tell you the beginning of the first story: a mother had two children – a beautiful girl and a hideous boy with a hunched back. The girl wasn't a problem, she's not even part of the story, probably got married off to a Prince.

But the boy... the mother felt sorry for him. Perhaps the gift of wit and wisdom might make him popular so she could get him off her hands. So she laboured a year and a day to make a magic potion for him, but on the last day she left the servant boy, Gwion, in charge while she popped out. "Just stir: don't taste," she told him.

You can probably guess what happened next. The long and the short of it is that Gwion got to sample the potion and he received all the gifts intended for the son. He was the one who became Taliesin.

Nowadays, Taliesin is revered in Wales and beyond for his poetic and shamanic genius. But his talents should have belonged to someone else – the son, whose name is Afagddu. No one remembers him now, but Taliesin has a village and even an arts centre named after him.

So I thought: how would Afagddu feel? What would he want?

And this is a starting point for Stormteller.

As a rebirthed baby, Gwion floated down the Dyfi river to Ynyslas where he was found by a local prince, who named him Taliesin. That leads into the second story....

...with a tragic ending – the flooding of the land – that it seemed to me has echoes of the threat that Borth and the whole coast of Britain faces now and in the future: rising sea levels, more storms and extreme weather caused by climate change.

We all feel threatened by climate change. We feel powerless to do anything about it. So I wanted the novel partly to be about giving some degree of optimism. It's trying to look at the question of rewriting the endings of stories: ours – about climate change – and these two old legends.

It's easy to give into a sense of fatalism. I believe that we can all rewrite our stories, we at least have the power to do that. And this is true for the teenagers in the novel. But, as in life, there are always sacrifices to be made...

You can find out more about the background to the novel here.

Detail: The inspiration for my new novel - David Thorpe

0 Writing: is it theft? by Savita Kalhan

“Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal.” T. S. Eliot



A couple of recent articles by writers have made me think about the process of writing and the question of theft in writing. I’m often asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas from?” I’m pretty sure every writer gets asked this question at some point in time.

My imagination is pretty vivid, I would usually respond. So when I hear a story, or a piece of news, or someone relates an incident that has happened to them, I store it away – to perhaps use one day. My imagination will usually do the rest, amplify it, alter it, assign it to a character, incorporate it into a story line, perhaps even make it the whole crux of a plot. As William S Burroughs said, “All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?”

I’m not sure anyone would really call it theft or stealing – unless you ‘borrow’ whole sentences or paragraphs, and that’s a whole different blog! What makes stories relevant, individual and original is how the source of inspiration is used and manipulated by writers. If a number of writers are asked to use the same news item as the inspiration for a story, you can be assured that it will result in several very different stories. I ran a creative writing workshop last week where I gave fifteen students the same opening sentence. By the end of the session, each of the students had taken that sentence and continued it into a whole variety of stories ranging from ghost stories, adventure, romance, fantasy and science fiction. In Jean-Luc Godard’s words: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

In a recent essay describing his creative process, Ian Fleming, said that many of the scenes in his books are drawn from real incidents that he “dolled up, attached a hero, villain and heroine to, and there was the book.”

He may have over-simplified it, but perhaps not – he used to write the first draft of a story in six weeks, which is pretty astounding. Here’s a link to the rest of his essay. It’s an interesting read. http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/literary-ian-fleming-how-to-write-a-thriller?t&s&id=03763

My writing process has come under pressure these past few months, and my motivation and staying-power is not quite what it used to be. I’ve tried working in different places and at different times, but I have felt stuck. October is the month that that will all change. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve told myself. Fleming had a tropical island hideaway where he wrote, uninterrupted, 2000 words a day. I may not be in the fortunate position to be able to fly away to Jamaica and work four solid hours a day so that at the end of just six weeks I could have a first draft of 60,000 words under my belt, but I’m damned well going to try and get the current work in progress from draft to manuscript.

And yes, my story was partly inspired by something I read in the newspaper, partly by other stories read when I was much younger, and by simply observing what modern day teenagers get up to when they’re up to no good...

 

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Detail: Writing: is it theft? by Savita Kalhan