A Life Twice Tasted

Observation and Inspiration

2012-01-30T17:11:00.006Z

‘When you surrender to what is fully now and so become fully present the past ceases to have any power.’ E.Tolle

Thanks G for the pictures and the inspiration.
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And now
And now
And now wx

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And now
And now
And now wx

Joe's List

2012-01-29T10:56:00.005Z

W.I.P New Novel is about a group of writers. One of them is Joe Conroy aged nineteen who lives in a hostel. He has been advised to make lists before he starts his story about Trace who lives in a group home

List - Trace at the Seaside - Joe Conroy

- Fat Bob and skinny Joan, on duty
- Bob drives the brand new minibus.
-The sea boiling up like scummy soup
- The darker sky simmering like grey custard
- The mini-bus stinking of dinner, salt, vinegar crisps and hair-gel
- Bob and Joan light off to King William pub
- As they walk away Bob touches Joan’s arse
- Glass box with weird talking clown – one lass runs off screaming
- Five pound-coins in Trace’s paw
- Bag of chips, ice lolly and three goes on the waltzer
- Whirling round and round and round
- Sea, lighthouse funfair.
- Sea, lighthouse, funfair
- Sea, lighthouse, funfair
- Woozy, sea-sick, Trace falls into the arms of a lad with red socks
- She joins him racing the tide and the tide wins
- Sheltering from the rain, tucked under the cliff
- Fucking in rain that fingers his bare arse
- The boy in red socks can’t manage
- Rain stops. Trace laughs. The lad
- punches her in the stomach and runs
- Trace is sick into a rock-pool
- the size of giant’s foot
- hermit crabs scuttling for dinner
– later the minibus stinks of
- the salt-sea, candy floss, and the last of Trace’s dinner.

Iconic Book Group

2012-01-18T14:30:00.004Z

Last Saturday our bimonthly Room To Write Book Group had its latest meeting to discuss our last set of books in the Reading Down The Decades project where every two months we read three iconic novels which represented in turn the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties. And now we were onto the Nineties. The books, chosen by our leading muse Gillian Wales were: Reading Turgenev by William Trevor; Amongst Women by John McGahern and Regeneration by Pat Barker.

I own all these books, having had read them when they were current but – being a swot! – I read them all again, This time my treat was a to read them on my new, customised Kindle. These novels were still a joy to read and appreciate again. I loved reading them in this fashion. I found the process absorbing and at the same time surprisingly swift. It was so easy to concentrate on the words.

I particularly liked the fact that I could highlight and make a separate set of verbatim notes of lines, phrases and paragraphs as great phrases struck me, Reviewing these notes on Kindle was like reading the novels all over again and they made good notes for the meeting. (These notes would make a good basis for an article on any or all of these books…)

Our group consists of ten compulsive readers, including three senior librarians,one biographer four writers and one aspiring poet. In one way the discussion was easy.These novels were all by great writers. They deserve their iconic status. This was a given. We did not need to re-invent some literary wheel.

Our opinions were quite varied and reflected the individual insights of our members but one conclusion was how entirely fresh and relevant these novels were for today, twenty years later. Regeneration brings to mind similar moral issues regarding fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the plight of military returners. Both Reading Turgenev and Amongst Women brought up the politics of both domestic and historical repression,. Most interesting was the discussion swerving to the issue of gender and writing, not just in the content but in the style and structure. For instance we thought Pat Barker and John McGahern had more similarities in their muscular, dark style than they had with William Trevor, whose brilliantly understated allusions have a gratifyingly feminine apprehension of the balance of dark and light even in a stultifying situation. We even got into a tangle about whether being passive could be an act of defiance and enabled the retaining a secret sense of self.

This is a great group. Very inspiring company for a Saturday afternoon..

My favourite verbatim quotes from my Kindle:

from Amongst Women: “Rose’s tact was so masterful that she resembled certain people who are so deeply read that they can play with all the ideas without ever listing the books,..”

from Reading Turgenev: "A person’s life isn’t orderly, Sister Hanna maintains; it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there. Only love matters in bits and pieces of a person…”
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rom Regeneration: “Sometimes when you’re alone in the trenches, I mean at night, you get a sense of something ancient. As if the trenches had always been there …it had skulls on the side … like mushrooms …. it was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough’s army,…”

On a personal note I still think – as I thought in 1991 – that Billy Prior in Regeneration is the most compelling original character of the latter part of the 20th Century. And Rivers, the psychiatrist, is the most original, well imagined rendering of an historical person.

*
Looking forward to the next Kindle read for me: : Nicholas Nickleby for the next Bishop FM Writing Game.
My own books on Kindle: Paulies Web; The Romancer; A Woman Scorned, and Gabriel Painting.
wx

Posted in Kindle, Mary Ann Cotton, Pat Barker, Paulie's Web, Room To Write, The Romancer, Writing Style Tagged Great novels, Pat Barker, Reding Group, William Trevor, Writing Style

French Leave: Connections Between Travel and Writing.

2012-01-03T13:13:00.001Z

‘With presents tucked away and the shortest day not far behind, and with it being dark already at four o’clock and the lashing wind stopping us from stepping outside where to our thoughts turn to?

They turn to long days, bright skies and warm summer breezes. They turn to travel and holidays which will make the high points in the new year of 2012…’

- which was how I opened the Writing Game broadcast at noon on January 1st 2012.

For the January programme the plan had always been to make the connection - in highly personal terms - between my own travel and my own writing and on the writing of others who are embarking on writing. ‘… I love the way in which even people who don’t write are inspired to make journals and scrapbooks, pinning their journeys, their summer retreats there on the page to preserve that time forever…’

I had lots more to say, of course. But with a busy and people-stocked time over Christmas the January programme loomed up far too quickly for sanity so, beloved visitors gone, I had two very intense days to get the programme into shape.

The first time this connection between writing and travel had a visible impact on me was when I wrote a young adult novel called French Leave:

‘…Over fifteen years ago in Normandy, France I came across a small very well kept military graveyard attached to a farm. ..I doscovered that the young soldiers – some as young as eighteen – were from villages within a few miles from where I live…I was in tears when I got into the car but I knew in my writer’s heart that some time this place, this feeling would be part of a story…’

So it was some years later that I wrote French Leave - about a boy of sixteen in the 1980s who runs away from home, hooks up with his grandfather, and travels to Normandy. Together they travel to Normandy to visit this graveyard. The grandfather, as a boy of eighteen had fought in this military action and the two of them find the grave of his friend, also eighteen, who had died alongside him.

And years later my many stays in the Languedoc in the South West of France inspired a novel An Englishwoman in France which illuminates the ambiguity of time which for me pervades the ancient port town of Agde. In this novel two stories - one in 304 AD and one in 2010 AD - wind into one. I am sure that without my intense experiences in travelling in this area I could not have written this novel or had the courage to express some of the challenging ideas about time which are at its heart

I have included a reading from this novel on the programme to give readers the flavour,

Also featured on this January edition of The Writing Game are:

- Historian Glynn Wales on The Grand Tour – Travel and writing in the 17th and 18th century on The Grand Tour – a trip taken by aristocratic young men, for educational, cultural and other less respectable experiences.

- A conversation with Terry Ferdinand, who also loves France. Terry tells of his adventures in buying and refurbishing a house in the Lamousin district. His enthusiasm bubbles through the microphone. He also reads for us an article – previously published in the Limousin Times, about a visit to the historic town of Aubusson, famous for its fabulous carpets.

Writing Game and past editions now available in iTunes Store at

http://itunes.apple.com/dk/podcast/the-writing-game/id478998111

Writing Game podcast from Bishop FM: http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/category/podcasts/

To ‘E’ or not to ‘E’ : Christmas Books & Kindle

2011-12-03T12:56:00.001Z

Writing Game Broadcast on Bishop FM 105.9

Sunday December 4th at Noon

After that you can listen to iTunes *download or Bishop FM Podcast .

I to hope you get to listen...

On this programme Avril, Gillian and I discuss the importance of books at Christmas and our secret bookish desires. We also consider the pros and cons of eBooks, writers publishing on Kindle and the desirability of a Kindle reader in your Christmas stocking. We also broadcast extracts of books by Avril and myself – The Orchid House (Avril’s novel set in a Cornish Garden and A Woman Scorned (my novel about the legendary Mary Ann Cotton).

Our choices really ranged widely (see below…) Interestingly all except one are available on Kindle, so whichever medium you choose we hope you enjoy your Christmas reads. You might even find a Kindle reader in your stocking!

Happy Christmas, happy reading, happy writing. .. wxx

* For iTunes go to iTunes store, click on podcast then enter Writing Game and Wendy Robertson under Title and Artist to download.

Now, our Christmas recommendations:

Sarah Raven's Wild Flowers

by Sarah Raven and Jonathan Buckley

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean

by David Almond

(Also on Kindle)

India in Slow Motion

» Mark Tully

(Also on Kindle)

The Troubled Man

Henning Mankell

(Also on Kindle)

Death Comes to Pemberley

P. D. James

(Also on Kindle and audio download)

The Orchid House

Avril Joy

(Also on Kindle)

A Woman Scorned - Serial Killer of Scandal Victim?

[Kindle Edition]

Wendy Robertson

A Woman Scorned

Paperback Edition (Headline)

Wendy Robertson

Home Birth

2011-11-29T10:33:00.005Z

Lunch with my oldest friend Pat. We meet every month or so at an hotel half way between our homes and continue the lifetime conversation, I took her copy of the paperback of An Englishwoman in France, She has copies of all my books and is a treasured reader.

She goes up to the bar to order our coffee and sandwiches, I flick open the pages and the novel falls open at the point where the central character Estella recalls the birth of her daughter Siri. Reading the paragraphs gives me a jolt, I reflect yet again how one’s own deepest experiences insinuate themselves unwilled into one’s own fiction ...

" ... When I get back to the house, it’s empty. After the heat of the early afternoon outside the shadowy courtyard is cool. I pour myself some lemonade and – suddenly hungry – I butter a hard chunk of bread left over from breakfast and sit outside eating it at the wooden table.
And now Siri sweeps back into my mind like a warm breeze off the river. Siri. I reflect on how long it took her to be born and how kind the midwife was, how patient; how I apologized for not being good at this thing that some women do so easily.

I remember listening to my mother pottering round my tiny flat, keeping out of the way, just as I’d asked her to. I remember the midwife sitting with me into the early morning hours knitting a jumper for her son, waiting for that fulcrum point where Siri really wanted to come and my body felt a proper willingness to squeeze her out. I remember thanking God that my colleague at the magazine had managed to fix me up with a home birth. By now, I thought, in hospital they’d have been doing all kinds of things to haul Siri out. They’d have had instruments out, for sure. But that night my midwife told me that all it took was patience.

Then at last Siri joined me in the world. The fact that my mother was in the next room made me swallow the grunts and roars as, with a final heave, Siri came! She was here, with me in the world, outside my body. She let out this very polite, yelling cry of surprise and the midwife washed her face and wrapped her in a linen cloth. Then she laid my baby on my breast with her face close to mine, squeaking and muttering like a kitten. ‘Not hungry yet,’ she said. ‘Tired herself out getting out of there, poor pet.’

I stared down at Siri’s round, pink face and the rim of hair standing up from her head like a black crown. The midwife, busying herself at the other end of my body dealing with the afterbirth, looked across just as my baby opened her big black eyes and looked straight, straight into mine. My body was engulfed by what felt like waves like electricity as we recognized each other.

‘Ha!’ said the midwife. ‘Been here before, has that one!’

That was when my mother pushed her head round the door. ‘That’s it, then? Did I hear someone cry?’ She came in with a big mug of tea. ‘Aren’t you a clever girl?’ She kissed my sweating brow. Then pulled back the linen cloth. ‘And isn’t this a very pretty . . .’

‘. . . girl!’ I said.

‘I thought so,’ she said.

Then the midwife - suddenly looking very tired herself - started to pack her bags and baggages. ‘Kip for me,’ she said, smiling down at me. ‘We did well there, kid.’

‘What’s your name, Miss Clark?’ I said. ‘What is your name?’

‘Siri,’ she said. ‘I know, I know! But my Mum’s Swedish pen-friend was called that. You know what mothers are.’

‘I do now!’ I said, rubbing my sweating cheek against that of my new daughter. ‘I do now.’ ..."

Siri’s savage murder at the age of thirteen is central to the narrative of An Englishwoman in France. My friend Pat tells me she is really enjoying it. Wx

“Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21”

2011-11-25T22:08:00.002Z

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Wendy

Being a novelist, I am always looking for narrative even in the finest poetry. I am rarely let down:

What can ail thee knight at arms/alone and palely loitering? Now there’s a story…

… he took me out on a sled,/And I was frightened. He said, Marie,/Marie, hold on tight. And down we went./ In the mountains Oh boy, what a story is there!

My novelist’s instincts have been riding high in reading Kathleen Jones’ poetry collection “Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21’

Kathleen is wonderful at showing the hard surface of things and illuminating the drama and depth of things beneath. The poems linger with you in the cafe, or in the bar on the marketplace; they make you think of your own life with its passions, its tragedies.

It is impossible to summarise the themes and the implicit powerful narrative in this collection of fifty four poems. Literary inspiration is there with the empathetic poem dedicated to Christina Rossetti; metaphors for sensual, sexual passion both disguise and illuminate depth of feeling.The most powerful stories here are those in a Cumbrian setting with their tacit signals of power and duty: The Fell Gate which delicately alludes to a life story with dark undertones; the very ambiguous War Hero and the troubling Uncle John, …who was the family conscience. And we have to deal with the dark conclusion to The Soul Catcher: …I have souls to sell you/ for the usual fee – / should you lose yours.

The most powerful writing here for me – the keenest voice – is where the writer illuminates the peculiarly tacit nature of intimate relationships in working class households – as in the poem Ginny. … Ginny carves the bread against her breast/ dealing slices to her brothers/ seeing her father’s shadow at their backs/ putting her school prize on the fire….

And most potent for me - The Laying Out Of the Dead - would be spoiled by mere quotation here and must be read in full in a quiet place.

‘Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21’ is a book of fine poems and also – for this novelist – a buried treasure house of narrative.

Endnote: The book – published by Templar Poetry is beautiful in itself – lovely to see, handle and read.

Writing is the Sound of the Soul Breathing

2011-11-23T09:26:00.001Z

Writing is measured, shapely, intended

Every breath out predicates every breath in

Each sentence brings forward another one

Every word is a platform for the next jump

In meaning

We breathe in lines, in paragraphs,

In pages, in chapters, in volumes -

Our life laid there in a trillion words

A million separated, well formed

Page-squiggle-sounds

Writing is the notation of the quiet soul-

Not blasted out by trumpets and clarinets -

Dark smoke in the air, rising -

But the words lie there, just

Waiting for your eye.

They lie there in ranks and lines

Waiting for you to add your world

To my notation on the page

Creating a different world

New to your soul and mine

Writing is the sound of the soul breathing

Writing is the Sound of the Soul Breathing

2011-11-22T18:15:00.001Z

Writing is measured, shapely, intended

Every breath out predicates every breath in

Each sentence brings forward another one

Every word is a platform for the next jump

In meaning

We breathe in lines, in paragraphs,

In pages, in chapters, in volumes -

Our life laid there in a trillion words

A million separated, well formed

Page-squiggle-sounds

Writing is the notation of the quiet soul-

Not blasted out by trumpets and clarinets -

Dark smoke in the air, rising -

But the words lie there, just

Waiting for your eye.

They lie there in ranks and lines

Waiting for you to add your world

To my notation on the page

Creating a different world

New to your soul and mine

Writing is the sound of the soul breathing

The Case for Mary Ann…

2011-11-03T12:47:00.001Z

A WOMAN SCORNED - Serial Murderer or Scandal Victim?

If you would like to read a novel based on the historical case of an alleged serial murderer who was hanged in the mid 1800s my novel about Mary Ann Cotton is now live on Kindle.

This novel – based on the historical evidence – shows the prosecution to be faulty, based on flawed evidence suffused with doubt .

The case for Mary Ann is made here by young protofeminist Victoria, who brings a fresh eye to the proceedings in this novel which has curiously modern overtones.

If you haven’t yet acquired a Kindle you can download the novel to your PC, following instructions on the Amazon Connection.

Readers so far have called it life-enhancing rather than depressing…

Talking to Adele Parks

2011-10-13T11:04:00.001+01:00

Great evening for the Durham Book Festival last night in the exquisite Jubilee Room at Bowes museum. I was chairing the event for Claire Malcolm director of the festival.

Adele Parks – writer of bestselling novels reflecting the lives of women today was

interesting, funny and shared many insights into the disciplines of writing a novel each year that will sell massively at home and abroad. She read from her new novel About Last Night – about the friendship between two women and the lengths they will go to to support each other through thirty years.

We talked a bit about the reductive nature of genre labelling such as chick-lit. As Adele said, at thirty five years old, her characters so were hardly chicks . But as she also said if such labelling made her novels seem accessible to people who might not have picked up what is a very well written novel, she is happy. Her sensitivity to this is informed by the fact that she works with charities concerned with enhancing basic literacy across the nation.

She also had some good points to make about how women writers were more swiftly pigeonholed than male writers who also write about domestic dilemmas and issues of relationships.

It is always a sign of a good event when the audience finds it hard to leave and this was the case last night.

Thank you Adele for a great evening.

I would recommend About Last Night as a good read. I particularly liked the character called Pip and original, quite flawed character who is so very engaging.

Looking forward now to other Durham Book Festival

New Cover for Mary Ann Cotton

2011-10-09T14:01:00.001+01:00

Inspired by Al from Australia who reads this page I went back to the drawing board to redesign the cover of A Woman Scorned the novel I am now revising to be published on Kindle.

Al thought the image too stark and severe and I now agree with him. The whole point of the novel is that Mary Ann was not the monster that legend presents to us. The evidence says otherwise. So I got out my camera and focused on her amazing, sad bewildered eyes and her sensual mouth and her perfect bone structure.

So here is an image of Mary Ann Cotton – and the book – that is much truer to the character in my novel and closer to the historic truth.

What do you think?

Thank you Al…

Extract from the chapter

‘2 Fruitcake and Almonds’

(Victoria, visiting from London, is narrating…)

… The porter had taken my hand luggage and settled me in the solitary First Class carriage. I was sitting there in secluded splendour when the door was wrenched open and a pale-faced woman peered in. She pushed a heavy bag and a basket onto the floor of the compartment and lifted a fragile boy of eight or so into the carriage. Then she leapt lightly up the steps herself and settled into the corner opposite to me. I choked for a second on the scent of fruitcake and almonds, with some kind of back-smoke of lavender and honeysuckle. She filled the whole carriage with her perfume and earthy warmth.

I turned to stare out of the window, but not before I’d taken in the image of a woman of thirty or so, of taller than average height with thick glossy black hair under a rather becoming bonnet. She wore a surprisingly fine paisley shawl and - finely polished although stitched and mended – small button boots. Instinctively I pulled my own boot, with its built- up instep, further under the hem of my skirt.

Staring at the puffs of steam dissolving into trails of vapour that streamed past the window I wonder at the audacity of this unlikely woman in entering a first class carriage. Then her voice, low and surprisingly well modulated, cuts through the air between us. ‘And how have you been these past days, honey?’

In the silence that follows I realise that the woman is talking to me. I turn my gaze to meet the darkest blue eyes, large and shining in a perfect oval of a face. Now I see that she is actually quite beautiful, despite the workaday clothes. I want to smile and my cheeks feel hot.

‘Well, honey?’ she says….

Revising the Mary Ann Cotton Novel

2011-10-06T19:26:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: Mary Ann Cotton,A woman Scorned,Justice,Murder

Revising this novel (A Woman Scorned) –first published in 2004 - has been fun!

I had forgotten how significant this novel was and how much my outraged sense of justice is at its core. . Interestingly in my new contemporary novel, Paulie’s Web also looks at justice and injustice in ordinary people’s lives. I had not made that connection until I started on the revision of this 2004 novel.

In my novel, I put the case for the defence of Mary Ann Cotton, who was alleged to have killed at least three and at most eighteen people in the mid nineteenth century. Hanged for her ‘crime’ in Durham Goal, she has become a dark legend in the north as their own female serial killer.

I kind of went along with this idea but once – encouraged by my friend Gillian Wales - I had read all the sources I felt that Mary Ann had been done a great injustice. The novel – based strongly on the original sources – came out in 2004 and I am now preparing a revised edition for the Kindle publication.

To make my point on this revision I have given it a new subheading: A Woman Scorned: Serial Killer or Scandal Victim?

And I have eve designed a new cover to make my point more clear!

What do you think?

A little extract: (These extracts will follow the novel)

The story is told through the eyes of Victoria Kilburn, niece of Doctor Kilburn the doctor central to the story. She is visiting her uncle from London and is delighted and eventually horrified at what she witnesses in this small Durham village. Like Mary Ann (called Marian in my novel) she is an outsider and it is she who witnesses the runaway injustice visited on this unusal and charismatic woman.

Here she is having tea with a new acquaintance Kit Dawson:

… After the usual pleasantries about the weather (gloomy) and our own health (blooming), Kit Dawson tells me a tale about his day sitting at Mr Chapman’s elbow in the local magistrate’s court, making notes regarding a case about two women in West Auckland who came to blows over the abuse of a washing line, and renewed the battle again in court only to be fined five shillings each and bound over to keep the peace.

He thinks this is very funny, but I am concerned at the fine. ‘That would mean such a lot of money to these women. Two week’s wages for Lizzie, my aunt’s maid.’

Kit Dawson is entirely indifferent about this. ‘If they care about that, they shouldn’t start bashing each other. They’re barbarians, every last one of them.’

I shake my head. ‘Mr Dawson. To be poor is a misfortune, not a sign of barbarism.’ I regret the primness of my tone but mean what I say.

To my surprise he laughs. ‘Ah, you live a protected life, Miss Victoria. You should see what I see in court! Drunken miners, low women, thieves and vagabonds, wife-beating husbands, husband-beating wives. For me it’s like that first, most absurd circle of Hell in that courtroom...’

This is the world in which Victoria makes friends with Marian who ends up on the gallows, and shows us the injustice as it happens t0 her new friend.

Guest Writer Terry Ferdinand in France

2011-10-04T00:34:00.001+01:00

Note from Wendy: Knowing I like all things French and am interested in his renovation of his French house Terry (my friend who also broadcasts on Bishop FM) sent me this lovely account of a day out in France. So I decided to make him my first guest writer. Whenever I talk to him I think of the Maison d’Estella although I do not own it - Thank you Terry

A Day Out

It was a Thursday and we had worked on and off for a fair amount of the week achieving a lot of home improvements in our French house and actually taught ourselves new French pointing skills. So and as the day was sunny, bright and cool, we decided we were in need of a break and a little bit of fun and some sightseeing.

To the east of us lies Aubusson, a beautiful medieval town steeped in antiquity, with narrow streets, ancient buildings, coffee shops, lots of round towers, the river Creuse and a huge cathedral which stands high above the town and has been designated a world heritage site because of its 600 year old unbroken tradition of tapestry weaving.

Into the car we clambered and headed off to Bourganeuf to fill up with petrol - a necessary evil if you want to get anywhere - and then we embarked upon the forty or so minute drive into the history of France.

From Bourganeuf we took the main road to Gueret and drove until we reached the lovely town of Pontarion. The drive into Pontarion town centre is a long downward gentle incline cluttered on either side by a mixture of old, ancient and occasional modern buildings. At the bottom you cross over the river Thauron via an old bridge and as we glance over the parapet to watch the water lazily bubble its way onward, we see the remains of the ford and in the calm still water we see the 16^th century fortress Galliard reflected back at us.

Leaving Pontarion by the right fork in the road sign posted to Aubusson, we meander down through the forest road twisting and turning and passing through St, Hilaire le Chateau - another small village which holds good memories for us. On the right we passed the Auberge where we spent our very fist “house hunting” night in the Creuse. I remember the quaint cosy room, the way they had blended very modern glass architecture with the 16^th century granite building, and served a sumptuous meal at a reasonable price.

The forty minutes drive passed quickly and very enjoyably, passing through many old hamlets and by verdant fields full of healthy Limousin beef cattle with their distinctive colouring. As we rounded a bend in the forest, there spread before us was the town of Aubusson. Parking was easy, as it is in all of the France that we have explored. You are encouraged to visit and spend money in the towns, and to help you do that, the town councils provides plenty of FREE and well maintained parking places.

Aubusson nestles at the bottom of a valley and straddles the majestic river Creuse. This town has been famous since the 16^th century for weaving tapestries and carpets, throughout the centuries. Tapestries have adorned many of the rich and famous chateaus of nobility and - of course - the palaces of the French kings. The town is clearlymedieval in construction, with very narrow streets and tall buildings towering over the passers-by. There are the traditional round towers to be seen everywhere, with roofs of amazing steep pitch covered with tiny tiles and proudly boasting the very French style dormer windows.

Shops and houses are built of granite and many of them are adorned with wonderfully carved lintels and intricate iron balconies over carved doors. The traffic system is one way and works very well with the 20^th century cars driving down the medieval narrow streets that have been recently cobbled to give the ancient feel to this modern town.

Aubusson is busy. The streets are hung about with multi coloured pennants and people throng through the narrow pathways and crowd the pavement cafes. There is a feeling of prosperity in the air, and everywhere there are signs of tapestry and antiques shops.

What dominates most is the 12^th century Cathedral. Signs tell you there are 50 parking spaces available at the cathedral, so we weaved and threaded our way by car, through really narrow streets, and climbed forever upwards, eventually ending up in the free car park. The views were magnificent, giving us an almost 360 degree panorama of the city spread out far below us. We could see the River Creuse meandering between the buildings below and the narrow streets swarming with tiny people.The new tapestry museum shone like a beacon to our left inviting us to visit and the cathedral, in its entire magnificence, rose up behind us.

We left the blazing sunlight behind us as we entered through a huge oak studded door into the cathedral. At first it appeared to be black and shadowy, but as our eyes became accustomed to the light, we were astounded by the size of the inner space. The roof curved and towered above us and still bore the signs of the medieval artisan paintings of intricate design, although faded and damaged by the centuries of wear and tear. You could still see and imagine very clearly that the entire ceiling, columns and arches were at one time covered with dazzling colour in a huge celebration of the religious beliefs of the people.

The light shone into the huge space in vibrant shafts of colour through beautiful hand crafted stained glass windows, casting a sparkling array of blues, greens, reds, golds, depicting scenes from the bible with an exquisite detail unequalled in today’s craftsmanship[. The space was vast and looked empty, but as our eyes were now accustomed to the inner half-light, we could observed that opon tha walls in this open and unguarded space there hung paintings of great size and antiquity and original tapestries more than three hundred years old.

We looked and marvelled at the lectern which was an oak carving of a griffon from solid oak which held a huge bible. We admired the simplicity of the main altar, the complexity and colourful private chapels, and the sea of chairs arranged in perfect rows telling us that this cathedral was still in use and indeed very well attended.

Inspired by the wall hanging inside the awesome place of worship, we walked out into a wall of heat and sunshine, drove back down through the winding narrow busy streets of Aubusson, and headed directly for the Tapestry Museum/

A little bit of the history.

Tapestry or weavings as they were once called, were used to warm the bare stone walls of the palaces and castles, and were first mentioned in 1601 when King Henry IV banned the importation of all foreign tapestries, especially those from England. Royal manufacturing patents were issued for Aubusson in 1665. Its twin manufacturing city of Felletin received the same patents in 1689.

Even at the beginning of the 20^th century some 2000 people were employed in the industry but since then the jobs have seriously dwindled to about 50 actual weavers. Shortly before the 2^nd world war the French government realised the seriousness of the problem and issued new commissions to leading artists of the day, one of them being the famous Spanish artist, Picasso.

Once inside the modern air conditioned building and having paid the 4 euros entry fee, I was surprised to read the sign allowing photography, but without the aid of flash, no doubt to preserve the integrity of the many original hangings. The rooms were large and dimly lit, creating the atmosphere and an image in our minds of a modern day cathedral; the walls were as expected, spacious and hung with weavings dating back to the 1600’s. It also included some modern the day weavings. Artefacts both ancient modern were dotted about on tables throughout the rooms. In one corner glowing in the dimness were two very colourful shelving units housing a myriad of colourful wools.

What did draw the eye and immediately grab your attention was the oasis of bright light in the centre of the room. This it was a modern weaving loom and operating it was an artisan working on a small tapestry. For a fascinating and informative 15 minutes we watched and understood the intricacies of the weaving with a loom, we saw the need for patience, and we learned an appreciation of the skills of hand, foot, and eye co-ordination needed by the operator.

An hour passed as we wandered around mesmerised looking at original antique tapestries from the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries. We stared with astonishment at the details and shading created by genuine craftsmen with nothing more than a few coloured wools. Modern hangings were also displayed, and they ranged from traditional weaving, to paintings and stained glass. The trade had modernised and diversified and I suppose it had to stay alive, and grow.

The day at Aubusson was so interesting and informative. What was nice about it was the way it was easily available, almost hands-on. It was a welcomed relief from my own painting and decorating in my French House and well worth the visit.

On our way home we came across another hidden gem in the tiny but very pretty village of Moutier - d’Ahun and we were even more amazed at what we found there. But that’s another story.

Terry Ferdinand

October 1 2011

Spy Fiction at Sunday Noon 2nd October 2nd on Bishop FM

2011-10-01T12:01:00.001+01:00

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/2011/10/listen-to-spy-fiction/

The Writing Game1st Sunday of the month, at 12pm

- Afterwards on Podcast -

Join me and Writing Game regular Glynn Wales as we talk about Spy fiction and the way it links with 20th C History. John Buchan to John LeCarre, Ian Fleming to Grahame Greene, from (recently retired MI5 boss) Stella Rimington to ... well Stella Rimington!

Glynn is on very good form! W e get to questions like Does spy fiction reflect 20th Century History? Do you have to have been a spy to write spy fiction? & Is spying and spy fiction a men's game.? (That's where Stella Romington comes in.)

Next Month we are visiting Escomb Saxon Church for Historical insight and writing inspiration. If you have written about Escomb get in touch and hear your writing on the programme. If you live far away check it out on the web, be inspired and send us your poem.

See/hear you soon!

Wendy x

Escomb i

A dip in the hill

on the way to the river

- water makes a round pool

now called holy

and built upon

by no ordered hand -

just strong men adding

stone on stone

stolen from the military

-their tool marks tell us --

poled on rafts upriver

to build a church.

This is Queenie…

2011-09-24T15:01:00.001+01:00

From Paulie’s Web

This is Queenie, whom Paulie first meets in the white van on the way to prison…

…That time Queenie was sectioned and in the hospital they gave her the pills that took away her visions of the giant trees and stars and the Water Man. She was meek, very good, in the hospital. She helped with the tea rounds, taught a young girl to read, and stayed tucked up in her bed all night.

When they had a case conference the professionals decided that Queenie Pickering was a prime candidate for Care in the Community, now not only fashionable but compulsory. Her house with its cocktail cabinet was sold. In a rare soft moment she had signed the lot over to Janine, her niece. Janine had sold it and gone off to build a new life for herself and her boyfriend Roger, in the depths of Canada.

But there was sheltered housing with a very kind warden. Queenie - for everyone called her Queenie now - Queenie could live there and the nurse could call every week to see that she was taking her medication. Everything would be Hunky Dory. Wasn’t that how Care In The Community worked?

After a week Queenie walked out of the sheltered house. She put on her hat - not so smart now - put all her most precious things in three carrier bags, and caught the long distance bus to the town where they would not find her. Best to lie low, she thought. Best to lie low. The gleaming Water Man would be there. He was everywhere, so he would be in the city. And the sky in that place would be studded with the pearly moon, the golden sun and the silver stars. And there again the trees would stride the earth.

‘…when bats fly at noon

and owls take refuge in darkness

frightened of solitude

proud to be independent

with silver shields

to hide their isolation…’

P.Smith

Picture this: Writing People

2011-09-21T13:20:00.001+01:00

…Picture this Our writer goes on Monday morning to spend time with writers in Cramlington. Early start to drive there. She found the place after a few false starts. They passed the library and the Pheonix pub, where she has given talks in previous years, This time it was a church hall which she found after circling quite a number of roundabout. (One lady, when she arrived ,was sympathetic. Cramlington is roundabout city, she said.) …

We arrived just in time and a crowded room with a large circle eager faces met me . I had a little flutter with bags and books before I launched into my take on a wroiter’s life.

It was interesting to note that half of the members of this group were men. This is unusual as many groups entirely or almost entirely consist of women. There was definitely an energetic buzz in this room.

I referred to my writer’s memoir The Romancer within the talk because this is my own literary take on my writer’s life. I focused first on what I call ‘picture this’ – a piece of writing rendering in the third person.incidents which happened to me.

I read two extracts which begin…

Picture this. A little girl of three in a Fair Isle cardigan, playing outside a house in Lancaster. With her head of Shirley Temple curls she’s winsome, prettier than she’ll ever be in the many years to come. She’s chalking on the sill of the big bay window. She stands back. That looks right. Just like she has seen her mother do, when she writes her letters. But then the little girl frowns her characteristic…

and from much later in the book

Picture this: Our writer, now our young mother, is sitting with her back to the sea wall at Alnmouth on the Northumberland coast, surrounded by the detritus of a seaside picnic. The wind from the east is cutting and she wears two ponchos knitted for her in carpet wool - bought as a bargain - by her mother Barbara. … Our girl has never liked the cold, suffering blue hands and feet as a child….

I read these extracts to show that writing about your experience in the third person carries a curious fictive liberation and allows you as the writer to get closer to the truth without the internal gag of reductive autobiography.

Then it was their turn. I challenged them to write their own ‘Picture this. Some people were unsure. One man said outright that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. But he was persuaded. In fact these writers met the challenge wholeheartedly and the read-around revealed some genuine talent and sensitivity among these writers.

The Picture This notion had sold itself and the writers showed both their talented response and their satisfaction in the process.

It was a very staisfying, busy and hectic morning and Avril and I found our way out of Cramlington more easily than we found out way in…

Footnote The discussion was very lively and interested and moved to the distraction of misleading covers and democratisation of publishing for writers through Kindle. More on both those subjects next time.

Take a look at my ebook Paulie’s Web ….

Paulie on her way…

2011-09-16T13:02:00.001+01:00

I have been thinking, as you know,(see last post) about books on Kindle. Having done all the work putting Paulie’s Web onto Kindle myself I feel I know the whole seventy thousand words by heart! And I’m learning lots of new things about the Kindle process. By the time I get through all my novels I’ll be quite an expert.

Already lots of people are downloading Paulie. She seems to appeal to many readers for different reasons. If you are interested in the experiences of people on the margins of our comfortable lives, you will like Paulie! She is great - clever, resourceful and capable of surviving the hardest challenges that life throws up at her.

In the story Paulie is at the centre of a web five very different women whom she encounters in prison. Their charm, their pain and their humour affect Paulie’s life and she touches theirs, as we see when they meet again years later. Paulie also has an impact on her psychiatrist who has to change some of his preconceptions when he meets her.

Prisons can be hard places for anyone associated with them. My own experience as writer in residence - for a total of five years - was challenging and life-changing. Interestingly when I was first interviewed for this role I asked the Governor what would surprise me about this experience on the margins of the prison world. He told me I would be surprised how much laughter there was inside.

His words proved to be true. I hope Paulie’s Web – as well as telling the truth about the desperate lives some women are forced to lead – reflects the laughter and the comradeship in that prison – as far away from ‘Bad Girls’ and Mars is from Venus,

Interestingly enough it was after this prison experience – ten years ago - I felt able to reflect on and write about the lives of women in internment in World War Two Singapore, in my novel Long Journey Home (click) which is still around on Amazon and in libraries. That will be on Kindle too whan I get faster at this game.

If you fancy meeting Paulie, Click Paulie’s Web here to download your Kindle edition for the price of a glass of wine, quite a nice aftershave or a bargain lipstick! £3.44

(Stop press - My great discovery today is that if you don’t yet have a Kindle reader there a lots of FREE applications you can download to read Amazon books on your computer – including Paulie’s Web, and my collaborator Avril Joy’s Orchid House . You can get them on your computer, your phone or other convenient screens)

They are easy to read! I had a go. Just click here on stories on your screen and follow the trail.

Hooray! Paulie’s Web now on Kindle

2011-09-12T11:02:00.001+01:00

With my friend and collaborator Avril Joy I have been experimenting with the process of publishing a novel on Amazon Kindle. Like many informed people I have moved from the notion that these E readers might be a passing fancy towards the new and important sense that novels in this new democratic form of publishing can give a public platform to many talented writers whose good novels may never survive the thorny obstacle race that is present day market-driven publishing.

Avril and I are interested in this process for our own work, but also interested in making the process accessible to new writers, particularly those who attend our Room To Write conferences – where many writers are working at publishable level.

So – what to put up on this new, magical system. My second short story collection? One of my early children’s novels? ‘The Romancer’, my memoir about writing?

I plumped for Paulie’s Web which sprang out of my life-changing experience as a writer in residence in a woman’s prison.

This novel has been a long time a-coming. It has taken me ten years to digest the extremities of my experience in prison and write my novel as true fiction in a way that pays tribute to the many women I met while working there. If, by the by, it goes some way to cracking the absurd stereotypes of women in prison it will be an extra delight. While there are dark passages here I make no apologies for the ultimately optimistic tone of this story which is a true reflection of the humour, stoicism and kindness that I was witness to in my prison experience.

So, what is it about?

Paulie Smith, rebel, ex-teacher and emerging writer comes out of prison after six years, her conviction overturned. As she moves around in the next few days, struggling to readjust to the scary realities of life ‘on the out’, she reflects on her life in prison. She focuses particularly on her first few weeks inside, alongside the four very different women whom she first met in the white van on their way to their first remand prison.

Paulie’s thoughts move from Queenie, the old bag- lady who sees giants and angels, to Maritza who has disguised her pain with an ultra-conventional life, to Lilah, the spoiled apple of her mother’s eye, to the tragedy of Christine - the one with the real scars.

And then there is Paulie herself, who ended up in prison through no fault of her own. Their unique stories, past and present, mingle as Paulie - free at last - goes looking for these unique women who have now been ‘on the out’ for some years and are, Paulie hopes, remaking their lives.

Now PAULIE’S WEB is on its way to being out there on Kindle! It is in the works. It should be up there tomorrow for readers to download. Fingers crossed.

Avril’s clever, sensual novel THE ORCHID HOUSE is already out there and she has posted some helpful tips on her blog for writers out there who want to have a go. Her book is downloadable, as she says, for the price of a decent cup of coffee. A new day dawns for all writers.

Pragmatic Angels

2011-09-08T13:54:00.001+01:00

These days novels with overt or implicit supernatural themes are creating and increasingly popular field of fiction. My own novel An Englishwoman in France has at its centre a modern woman who sees the dead and can slip through time. It was fun to write as somewhere in my subconscious I feel I can do just this.

Last night I went to Thornaby Library to take part in the Read Regional Campaign with two other authors Beda Higgins and Carolyn Jess-Cook

Carolyn talked about her novel The Guardian Angel’s Journal which is the story of Margo, who dies at forty two and returns to earth as Ruth to be her own Guardian Angel and encounters the possibility of making crucial changes change.

Carolyn’s reflections on her approach to writing this novel were satisfyingly pragmatic, not in the least airy-fairy or quasi religious; her affection for her her characters - Margo and her angelic alter ego Ruth - shines out in her discourse. making the supernatural propositions in the novel seem believable, even rational. No wonder this novel is being praised across continents, although perhaps the Americans’ promotion of it as a ‘Christian Novel’ is a bit reductive. A must to read, I think.

Beda Higgins the prizewinning North Eats writer read from her new collection Chameleon. The short story she read to us reflect her insight into a child’s point of view where reality and fantasy dissolve into each other and everyday playground experiences of a vulnerable little girl are processed in a dark surreal fashion that end up in near tragedy and what seems like a supernatural transformation of the little girl herself. Another ‘must’ to read.

There was a buzz in the room, and some interesting conversations. The people asked questions about our writing processes. I seems that we all work in different fashions but agreed that it was most important to write consistently – many days in sequence , to write opportunistically when the time to write emerges, and to have the story in your head even when you are not writing. I advocated separating the writing and the editing processes entirely. Carolyn Told a fascinating story of writing this novel at astonishing speed when an agent had seen the first fifty pages and liked it.

The writers in the room asked for our recommendations for inspiring books. These emerged:

Dorothea Brande: On Becoming a Writer

Walter Mosely: So This Is The Year You Write Your Novel

Stephen King: On Writing

A very good evening…

Beginnings: A Found Poem

2011-08-27T10:01:00.001+01:00

A poem found in the big sort out

Beginning

To begin a new thing

one has to bring about

the end of earlier things -

Conception is the end

of one affair

and the beginning

of another

Birth is the end

of a secret inner affair

and the beginning

of love out in the open -

lasting a lifetime

And so on, back to Eve

though even she engendered

the demise of Adam’s spare rib

2002

Stan Barstow, My Dad, and Gregory Pack

2011-08-25T10:45:00.001+01:00

BR’s calls to France were mostly about the ordinary business of being apart but he did mention Stan Barstow’s obituary and I asked him to clip it for me.

Been back a fortnight and have just come across the clipping. I was instantly making connections First to the astonishing resemblance of Barstow to the glamorous Gregory Peck – who was all over the screens in the years when Barstow was writing his groundbreaking novel A Kind of Loving in the time he could spare from his job as a draughtsman.

The writer mentions Barstow’s role in the rise of the regional literary novel in the late fifties and early sixties. Possibly to the detriment of his national standing, Barstow stayed in the north, asserting later, ‘To hoe one’s own row diligently, thus seeking out the universals in the particular, brings more worthwhile satisfaction than the frantic pursuit of the largely phoney jet age internationalism…’

A largely fair obituary is marred by the inclusion of one critic’s comment that ‘At least you know where you are in the company of Mr Barstow’s sentimentalised Tykes … there’s usually Trooble at t’Mill, the privy sits proudly at the end of the garden, and lives revolve round the family.’

Yaargh! These mean, mistaken and ill conceived phrases manage to combine the regional. literary, linguistic and class snobbery that still has a stranglehold on the British literary world. As a writer of some ‘regional literary novels’ myself I too have encountered this same frustrating prejudice . American literature celebrates fiction from its non-metropolitan regions and is much more deep, rich and substantial for it.

Back to the clipping. The other absolutely astonishing resemblance in the picture is to my own Dad, who would have been Barstow’s contemporary. The same sharp strong features, the same film star moustache and thick dark Brylcreemed hair, the same fierce direct look, neat suit and tight tie.

The same working class élan…

Footnote; My dad died when I was nine and my mother was thirty six. (See my memoir The Romancer on the sidebar). She adored Gregory Peck ( the George Cloony of that era)and in her long years alone went to see every film he made. She went to see Captain Horatio Hornblower six time. Now I do rate G Peck myself but this seemed excessive.

Or it did. until my revelation today.

A Very Nice Review …

2011-08-22T19:49:00.001+01:00

A very nice review – God bless America!

An Englishwoman in France.

Robertson, Wendy (author).

July 2011. 224p. Severn, hardcover, $28.95 (9780727880314).
REVIEW. First published July, 2011 (Booklist).

In this eerie, atmospheric paranormal novel, Robertson deftly intertwines two time periods, slowly absorbing one into the other through her remarkably likable protagonist. Although current-day syndicated British horoscope writer Stella sees dead people, she can’t see her young daughter, who was brutally murdered, and Stella desperately needs closure. In 301 CE, young Tib, a healer, and his Corinthian mentor, Modeste, spread their belief in the newly organizing Christian religion and become Roman targets in Gaul. When Stella’s long-suffering husband takes her to France and they rent what was Tib’s home, Stella sees the boy and Modeste around town. After Starr’s husband returns to Britain and his job, leaving Stella alone, she finds herself in Roman times, a companion to Tib and Modeste as they tangle with the emperor, his wife, and the old religion. Robertson’s meticulous details about the Roman era and early Christians come to life in this tale exploring time, souls, and love.

— Pat Henshaw

Restoring the little Writing Room

2011-08-22T09:36:00.001+01:00

I came back after three weeks in France to find that GR had stripped my little writing room of the messy palimpsest of five years of writing – pictures on pictures, postcards on print-outs, three tattered dream-catchers, two computers, two printers, stacks of paper, piles of notes, hundreds of notebooks. Wires and cables. And books, books books.

I’d come to think this retreat was picturesque, full of potential literary treasures, stacked with ideas. But truly, truly, it was becoming an image of an overstuffed mind. clogged up with a plethora of spurious inspirations and notional ideas.

Much of this stuff had spilled off the shelves onto the floor. So I asked GR if he would kindly build me another long shelf while I was away.

Golly, had he done more than that! He’d stripped the room of its entire contents. Then he stripped the walls and painted them, refurbished the sash window so it works again. He stripped the floorboards and restored them to a gleaming, nut-brown Victorian patina. Oh, and he built three new shelves: one very large, two smaller and narrower.

So, when I got back home there was my little writing room looking very empty and twice as large: an inspiration in itself.

So all I had to do now was reintroduce all my stuff to this new, pregnant space. Of course this meant I had to sort it all and only allow back into the room things I really wanted around me.

This process involved several black sacks.

As I sorted I found two novels I had forgotten – one pretty good, actually. A whole collection of short stories written more than twenty years ago. A lever arch file with the complete contents of a book I had (have) in mind about writing – called, I see, The Determined Butterfly. I found two plays I had written from my novels . I found numerous poems written in various notebooks. One (see below) from 2002 when I must have been in a scary state of mind.

This was an opportunity too to assemble my notebooks (large and small) in some proper order. Ditto my diaries, my inspirational CDs, my archive of floppy disks containing all my early work, my workshop files. And my radio stuff - together at last in black boxes.And I could assemble my dictionaries (more to come…) and give each of my writing projects a plastic box of its own. Now all my work is accessible, all in order.

Then. last and possibly most important, I have re-done my inspiration board with new images. The last things I pinned up (again!) were the dream catchers…

The decks have been cleared so I can sail on with my next novel which is half-way there ,but was somehow stopped by… the stuff!

Oh – and here is the scary poem from 2002;

Dark Lady

Lady of shadows where do you walk?

Come into the light -

Let me see you more clearly

She lingers now at the edge of the dark

Walking the streets with her diamond eye

Beating disks of glittering metal

Choosing the child for the next conflagration

Lady of shadows, where are you walking?

Come into the light -

Let me see you more clearly

She turns into an alley darker than Hades

Confronts a huge man whose eyes cannot see

Diamond gaze cuts the husk of his eyelids

Igniting his soul with the dark fires of hell

Lady of shadow, where are you walking?

Come into the light -

Let me see you more clearly

I’m running before you, fearing your gaze

Fearing your hands with their tin-drum beat

Fearing the reach of your long, thin arms

Fearing the high-heeled click of your feet

Lady of shadows why do you follow?

2002

Outsiders – Kitty Fitzgerald

2011-06-04T09:17:00.001+01:00

Kitty Fitgerald on the June Programme of The Writing Game

Posted on June 4, 2011 by wendyrobertson

Tune into THE WRITING GAME on Bishop FM http://www.bishopfm.com/listen/

2pm Sunday 5^th June ‘My Theme is OUTSIDERS’

The Writing Game is a programme for readers and writers from the broader region, and – through the magic of the internet – much further afield, (latest response from Rhode Island New York…).

In this thirteenth episode Outsiders we consider looking at life from the outside and the role of writer as outsider. The programme features novelist and playwright Kitty Fitzgerald, a long term resident in the North-East who came originally from Ireland by way of Yorkshire. Kitty’s novels are peopled by outsiders – particularly Jack Plumb the disabled anti-hero of her nationally acclaimed novel – originally a radio play – the brilliantly inventive Pigtopia.

We also hear an extract from a novella by Avril Joy who evokes with great insight the lives of those ‘Outsiders Inside’- women in prison.

I hope you like it… wx

Catch this programme live at 2pm on June 5^th or afterwards on podcast -

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/category/podcasts/

Don’t forget that all thirteen programmes are available on these podcasts. Listen to a wide range of writers talking. Try last month’s programme Words & Music which features composer musician Andy Jackson and poet Su Kane on their music/prose work Whispering Stones, inspired by Durham Cathedral.

‘This programme celebrates the breadth and depth of the talent of writers working and living in the North. The informality of the Writing Game allows writers to speak their mind and all the conversations are building into a significant archive of Northern writing talent.’

Wendy Robertson.

Every Picture Tells a Story

2011-05-20T15:35:00.001+01:00

Everything comes together.

In the last year the writing has been going well but I tend to take on too much and have got into the dangerous habit of catching up with my own shadow and forgetting how to relax.

Then I read a book* about the Haida Mythtellers of North America, which has made me think a lot about the ultimate storytellers whom he compares with composers and artists rather than poets. He contemplates Valazquez’s painting Kitchen Maid With the Supper at Emmaus.

Bathhurst says, ‘Even for non-Christians (I am one) the young Valazquez’s painting opens a door; it confirms what every mythteller, physicist, biologist and hunter gatherer knows: that man is not the measure of all things.

In my workshops I often compare the writing of a novel with the process of painting a picture – conceiving the idea, choosing your media, blocking in a large canvas, telling the story, trusting the hand and eye and the paint/pen, looking and looking until you think you’ve got it right…

In this month’s Writing Game I talk about this book and how stories emerge and are handed down through generations. How families and communities reflect the permanence of their identity with their myths. I also read an extract from The Romancer (see sidebar – one definition of Romancer is ‘mythteller’) about how stories have been handed down in my family and are integral to my novels which are – in the end - ‘pure fiction’.

All this made me reflect on just how long it’s been since I painted. So I got out my paints and thought about the joy I had walking last week in the spring woodland among the bluebells.

And I set up on the big desk by the window, turned on Radio 4 Listen Again to the Desert Island Disc interview with consummate novelist Howard Jacobson, and began to paint. Then something else. Then music.

Three hours went by in a flash, and when I emerged with the half-finished picture I knew I had been relaxing, not working. I felt refreshed, stimulated. endorsed.

So now I’ve been rehearsing saying ‘No!’ to people and have put painting on my permanent ‘to do’ list.

For me relaxation means emotional survival.

* Recommended to me by Kathleen Jones – A Story as Sharp as a Knife by Robert Bringhurst

The Subtlety of Collaboration

2011-05-09T16:24:00.001+01:00

by Wendy on May 9th, 2011

The Writing Game this month features Andy Jackson, composer, and Su Kane, writer, in conversation about their collaboration on a piece called Whispering Stones, about Durham Cathedral.

They express beautifully the nature of the project and the subtlety of artistic collaboration. It’s now a podcast** and includes some thoughts on story making (me), and blogging for writers (Avril Joy).

This made me think about my own view of collaboration. The Writing Game is to some degree collaborative I suppose. And one of my novels Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvell Cooker started as an idea for a stage play but when I realised how much negotiation, collaboration and concession would be involved I rather retreated from the idea and seven years later wrote it as a novel.

Perhaps a novelist cultivates that element of total control: a writer is creator, location manager, actor(s) and director – only conceding the role of producer to the publishers.

However i do enjoy collaborating with my friends Avril Joy and Gillian Wales in Room To Write the organisation to encourage and develop aspiring writers which also supports and inspires The Writing Game.

So I can’t be an entire megalomaniac…

**Listen to Writing Game podcast on story, on words & music collaboration, & blogging for writers http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/

PS As you see, I’ve been walking in bluebell woods. Perfect English spring. Very inspiring….

From → Bluebells, Collaboration, Spring, Writing, Writing Game

One Comment →

avril permalink

I agree Wendy – as a novelist one is generally on one’s own and there is something very satisying about the control this brings

But like you I enjoy collaboration. It is always inspiring in some way, it feeds into the writing -besides which it’s fun and very life enhancing to work with one’s friends in this way.

Love the bluebells!!

Ink pens and Umbilical Cables

2011-04-11T12:19:00.001+01:00

Apr 11 11

by Wendy

It could have been the two consecutive days of sunshine. It could have been a desperate need to escape from dark moments when the novel-in-waiting couldn’t hustle its place between meetings about the Divan writer’s celebration, about the radio programme. about a new publishing venture. It could have been because of promised evaluations for writers or the planning for this Wednesday’s launch of An Englishwoman in France

Whatever it was, I simply couldn’t get on with my new novel. Now I have to tell you it’s my fine boast that I can usually do this among the sturm und drang of everyday life. I often tell new writers that the writing has to be the first thing you do, your prime project.

But the problem was that I’d actually resorted to thinking that, so save time, I could skip the hand- drafting and jump to working straight onto the machine. After all I wrote reams on the machine to service other aspects of my life. And I’d lost two ink-pens and the time to go and replace them was very fugitive.

So it was that my time to create was bundled up with all the other tasks (including blogging); tied by a kind of umbilical cable to the computer.

But my precious story – it seemed – was having none of that. She was sitting on the windowsill kicking her heels muttering, when-you’re-ready, when-you’re-ready.

Then one day my A4 drafting book fell off the table in the little study. I flicked through the pages and admired the inky flow of my own writing and the energy of those paragraphs before they were transcribed onto the computer.

In a second, it seems, I was in Ryman’s choosing a new ink-pen and a fresh bottle of ink. Then the sun came out and when I got home my story was sitting on the garden table ready to flow out of the bottle onto the page of the A4 book. All that day and the next and the next… Whoosh! Talk about the genie springing out of the bottle! Pure magic.

Portrait of a Town - the April Writing Game

2011-04-03T17:36:00.001+01:00

The Writing Game on Local History

Sunday 10 April at 2pm on Bishop FM (105.9)

You’ll have noted that The Writing Game has strayed into the peaceful stretches of Sunday afternoon. I hope you enjoy it in this more leisurely space. And, as always, if you can’t make it then and there, you can download our podcast after the 10th April http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/category/podcasts/and listen in your own selected leisurely time where listening to writers and thinking about books could be a very good thing to be doing.

Commentators from outside say how much they like the way the Writing Game renders an image of a certain part of England. I think they and our local listebere will like today’s programme - on writing local history

Like so many Writing Games our April programme is grounded here South Durham – today specifically my own town of Bishop Auckland which is the home of Bishop FM . And always we place ourselves in the broader context of the nature of writing history. The Writing Game is local in its focus, but never parochial in its attitudes

So today our main point of consideration is the local history of Bishop Auckland. Both of my guests today talk about how a sense of local history fosters a particular, unique identity.

In pubs, cafes and shops on Newgate Street, our main shopping street - if you dig several feet down you will find Dere Street an important Roman Road - on Newgate Street in the pubs, cafes and shops, you can witness the habit of Bishop people of reflecting on their intricate, shared past. They talk of the people and the families they have known – names emerge like a biblical litany – his mother.. his grandmother .. his cousin – and so and so begat so and so –

You can her talk of the schools as they were, the celebrated football tam, the Thursday and Saturday markets, the choirs, the churches, the anniversaries, the Romany funerals, the old bishop with gaiters……

Stories sing in the air of Bishop Auckland ringing with pride and a true sense of identity

My first guest for April, Barbara Laurie has tried to capture all this in words, to nail it to the page in her local histories. As well as writing these histories. Barbara is a teacher from a family of Bishop Auckland teachers, has been Mayor of Bishop Auckland, a county councillor and is now a district councillor. Peter Laurie her husband, will read a wonderful piece that he wrote about the traveller- hawker tradition in Bishop Auckland from their website www.bishopaucklandhistory.com

(Look it up! All the books we mention are shown on the website.)

Then, to complement Barbara’s view of writing local history ,we have regular Writing Game contributor Glynn Wales reflecting on the way the historical idiosyncrasies of Bishop Auckland may or may not fit into the context of historical writing in general but how it may reinforce a sense of local identity in a national setting.

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I hope my regular listeners find me here on Sundays and continue to enjoy The Writing Game. I’ve had messages – word of mouth and email from listeners here in South Durham and – through the magic of the Internet – from much further afield - as far away as Melbourne in Australia and Kentucky and New York in America.

Here is one from America

> “I enjoyed the podcast conversation with David Almond. I want to look for his books. These programs are wonderful. I loved listening to the children talk about the books they'd read (of course I adore their accents); and I closed my eyes listening to the Fireeater---my God the suspense in that and feelings it drew out. The reader is marvellous. You are so fortunate to be able to participate in such a great undertaking as The Writing Game programming. “

And another:

> “I listened to the podcast of The Writing Game with Wendy Robertson. The poet who spoke about basing much of her work on Horace sent me to my old school anthology, in repose right here beside me on the bookshelf, to read him again after 48 years. One of four included poems is Mortality---of course, why not. AND, it is an ODE--- Horace: Poetry 101. Love your comments.”

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NEXT MONTH – May Programme – Words and Music

The Writing Game talks to another couple who live at the heart of Bishop Auckland – Andy Jackson and Su Kane. Andy is a composer and musician who is, among other things, the creative director of The Cobweb author which performs across the region hundreds of times a year. You will also remember Su, who ran The Evergreens and also gave poetry and drama workshops at Bishop Auckland Town Hall. They will be talking about their writer-musician collaborations, particularly their cantata Whispering Stones, about Durham Cathedral. We will hear the magical blends of their words and music. A treat in store for all of us..

Zurbarania

2011-03-31T08:51:00.001+01:00

My house is close by Auckland Castle – the home of the Bishop of Durham - which, in the last thirty years. has been part of our family experience. I have have walked in the adjacent Bishop’s Park in all seasons. The park and its Deer House feature in several of my novels. not least my latest An Englishwoman in France. My daughter was married in the Bishop’s Chapel and after the wedding we emerged into the winter dusk to sparklers and mince pies. I have sent visitors there in Autumn to relish the wonderful autumn colour made so because of the inspired planting two hundred years ago. I have been to concerts and events there and walked off many a dark feeling on its wandering pathways.

I admired a series of thirteen rather dark paintings in the dining room – the inspired purchase of a former bishop. These were eventually cleaned to reveal thirteen portraits of Sevillian citizens by the Spanish painter Zurbaran – to represent Jacob and his twelve sons – founding fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. They were originally destined for South America but by a series of coincidences - including piracy – became the property of this bishop.

In a recent example of what is a modern brand of piracy. the Church Commissioners attempted to sell the paintings, now valued at fifteen million pounds, to the highest bidder. A campaign began to swell among to local people, led by Dr Bob McManners of the Civic Society. Then local and County councillors. the local MP and many others swelled the ranks. The Northern Echo lived up to its own heritage as a campaigning newspaper and took up and endorsed the cause, providing the much needed oxygen of wider publicity.

I sensed a helplessness, a hopelessness here and there. After all where stood the needs and identity of people in a small town in opposition to the ravages of asset stripping bureaucrats of the institutional church? The campaign was well meaning but really a lost cause wasn’t it?

And Lo! there was a miracle!

As Chris Lloyd reports in today’s Northern Echo:

‘Zurbarans saved - Auckland Castle to become major attraction

TWO wealthy financiers have teamed up to save the Zurbarans and potentially turn Auckland Castle into a major heritage tourist attraction, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Evangelical christian Jonathan Ruffer has agreed to buy the Zurbarans for Auckland Castle.

Mr Ruffer, 59, was born in Stokesley in North Yorkshire, believes the masterworks should be put on public display.

It is hoped that there were be several sources of money for the Auckland Castle project, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund and the Department for Culture, but £1m has already been pledged by the Rothschild Foundation, a philanthropic organisation chaired by Lord Jacob Rothschild.’

Halleluya! It seems Mr Ruffer is offering fifteen million pounds to buy the paintings for Bishop Auckland. And Mr Rothschild is offering one million pounds to support the development of this project.

So a stranger has intervened in the history of this town which will now be changed by his action. It’s an object lesson for all of us, in these times of powerlessness, to see what can be done when ordinary people get the bit between their teeth.

Today, splashed across the front of the Northern Echo is the Good News. it’s time we had Good News don’t you think?

Launching An Englishwoman in France

2011-03-27T10:35:00.001+01:00

Please join me 7pm in Ponteland Library on Wednesday 13 April to celebrate my new novel — An Englishwoman in France— the first of a three novels set in the Languedoc—an atmospheric and strange part of France which I love. Share with me some of the story and the novel’s secrets over a glass of wine. I look forward to seeing you

Copies will be available

… Wendyx

If you fancy joining me ring the library to confirm numbers 01661 823 594

(If you can’t get there the novel is available on Amazon or you can obtain a copy from me at wenrob73@hotmail.com)

…Stella is pretty relaxed about her gift of second sight, but . . . my partner Philip thinks I’m barmy. No, seriously, he thinks I’m mad! In fact I’m very normal – normal as any of us ever is. Me, I see the dead in the more ordinary way of things. I saw this woman standing behind the woman at the till in the Spar shop. She was very old and wore a red sari with gold edges. She was like smoke in the air . . .

Stella’s happy-go-lucky attitude to her gift screeches to a halt when Siri, her twelve-year-old daughter, is savagely murdered and Stella can find her daughter nowhere, in this world or the next. Then, in the old French town of Agde she meets Louis, a clever, mysterious man and a young boy who is always near him. These two lead her to a place and a time where her search for Siri takes on a new meaning.

From ‘The Romancer’, my book about the writing process:

This house is the inspiration, of course, for An Englishwoman in France. From the first time I saw it I had this weird feeling that I knew this place, that I’d been here before. And so the writing, the chapters, started to unfold in my head and find their way nto The Notebooks. I felt there had to be someone here who could see – even move through time into the layers of the old city. And so the astrologer Stella walks into the story, into this house, to regain her sanity after the insanity of the murder of her daughter. She drops through time to meet the boy who will eventually be martyred and become St Tibery, the patron saint of the mentally ill….’

New Blog Address for LTT...

2011-01-25T07:31:00.002Z

Dear Friends

My blog, A Life Twice Tasted, is now integrated with my website at

www.wendyrobertson.com

Same blog, same person, different place ...

Please do come over. I've been missin' you!
wxxx

Editing The Writing Game With Terry Ferdinand

2011-01-11T17:45:00.001Z

Tonight’s Writing Game is our poetry special.

Hosted by regular presenter Avril Joy This month’s Writing Game features Thornaby poet Maureen Almond who bases some of her poetry on the classical Odes of Horace. It’s fascinating to hear how she tells her tales of the shipyards and their people using this sophisticated form. She also talks about the way she started writing poetry in her forties, and how she sets about writing her new poems - a great insight for new poets.

Then Glynn Wales tells of how he used poetry to inspire a boy in his Ferryhill school to read more deeply and widely. And he reads for us Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled which has resonance today when are own young soldiers – some from our region - return injured from Afghanistan.

We also hear again from Kathleen Jones talking this time to Avril about her own ventures into poetry. (I’m looking forward to going to the launch of Kathleen’s book about Katherine Mansfield, The Storyteller at Foyles bookshop in London on 21st…)

My regular mentor James is away in London so I put together the final edit in my little cubbyhole studio with the help of my friend Terry Ferdinand who is a very good teacher. I learned lots. He says he’ll show me how to interleave music with the segments next time. I’m looking forward to that as it will make the whole thing much smoother. I’m still on my learning curve.

I’m also looking forward to listening to Terry’s programme on Bishop FM next Sunday at four o’clock. Check Terry F out on Bishop FM

And I hope you’ll go to The Writing Game on Bishop FM

to check out our poetry special

Tonight at 7pm Tuesday 11th January

so those outside the area of you might like to download it

after the broadcast,

A New Journey for The Romancer – she’s now available Online

2010-12-17T15:07:00.002Z

They say learning new things keep you young. If that’s the case then I’m getting younger every day. On the inside anyway.

The latest is that after something of a journey of discovery i have created a way in which you can from from me in a collector’s edition through Amazon. Click on One new 7.99 This means it will be available for friends at home and abroad so hooray for that. I’m dying now for someone to give it a try to see if it works, If it does I will do the same for all my books.

I’m just looking round now for something else I need to learn…

First Reader for The Romancer

2010-12-13T09:15:00.001Z

I was touched to hear from Anne Ousby, who brought a real smile to my face this morning. She’s just reading The Romancer.

‘I've started The Romancer and am finding it gripping. Obviously it's autobiographical but also written as a story - much like your other novels and it seems to me that there's enough distance between the you and 'the girl' to almost forget it's about you. I love the way you've introduced true stories that inspired your novels and woven them into the narrative…’

Anne is a playwright, short story writer and now a novelist. A member of our Room To Write conference, she has just brought out her intriguing novel Patterson’s Curse. Anne Ousby RtW loved her novel and encouraged her in getting it out there, where it’s now selling well.

It’s so heartening for me to get a perceptive reader’s comment on my much loved hybrid literary creation.

I hope other people out there are reading and enjoying it and would love to hear from them.

Stop Press

2010-12-10T13:58:00.001Z

I see copies of The Romancer have not yet arrived at Amazon. (Can’t think why …) If you are in a hurry to get one for Christmas for your writer buddies you can get one directly from me (wenrob73@hotmail.com) Email me with an address and I’ll invoice you and despatch it directly. I’m very keen for people to read it sooner rather than later . wxx

Books In The Snow

2010-12-03T20:20:00.001Z

by Wendy on December 3rd, 2010

Nine days since the launch of The Romancer and the snow is still unremitting. It closes in and fogs up the brain. I thought concentration would be easier confined as I am to the house. But no it’s curiously harder.

Still, today I’ve laid down the tracks for the 6th December Writing Game for Bishop FM. It features the inimitable Pat Barker and a choice of Christmas books from friends of the programme. (James suggests that Bishop FM may apply to put The Writing Game on itunes. A fine thought, just about compensating for the wall of snow – picturesque but imprisoning.)

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CHRISTMAS BOOK SUGGESTIONS FROM FRIENDS OF THE WRITING GAME

Christmas Books on Bishop FM

Recommended by, among others, Pat Barker, Kathleen Jones, Debora, Pat Kidd. Wendy,and of course, our official reviewers Glynn and Gillian

Frank: The Making of a Legend – Hardcover (4 Nov 2010) by James Kaplan: Frank Sinatra Lissten to what Glynn says on the programme

Howards End is on the Landing: A year of reading from home by Susan Hill (Paperback - 8 Jul 2010) Listen to Gillian’s recommendation on the programme

The Singapore Grip – Paperback (1 July 1996) by J.G. Farrell. Listen to lynn’s recommendation on the programme.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (Virago Modern Classics) – Paperback (6 April 2006) by Elizabeth Taylor. Listen to Gillian’s recommendations on the programme.

Recommended separately by Debora in London and Pat from Morpeth

Wait For Me: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister by Deborah Devonshire (Hardcover - 7 Sep 2010) The Duchess of Devonshire must be one of the last people alive who met both Adolf Hitler and J.F.Kennedy. As the youngest of the legendary Mitford sisters, she has witnessed much of the history of the twentieth century from a ringside seat. Her humour shows here, as does her steely stickability; here is a unique patrician voice echiong down to us from the 20^th Century.

Chosen by Biographer Kathleen Jones’ who was featured in our November program. She would like to give: The Still Point – Paperback (4 Feb 2010) by Amy Sackville Kathleen tells us this is a marvellous novel. It’s the writer’s first and … ‘ so beautifully written I’m in awe. The way it’s narrated, the reader is like a ghost, haunting the characters, eavesdropping on their lives. The story concerns a young woman, Julia, in a troubled marriage, whose ancestor was part of an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole leaving his very new wife behind. The common factor between these two women, separated by time, is the house, which Julia has just inherited, full of artefacts, curiosities, diaries and letters and family history. The narrative moves from the past to the present, weaving the stories of both relationships together until you come to a surprising, but very satisfactory conclusion. It’s a marvellous blend of fact and fiction and it deserved to be short-listed for Orange and Booker prizes, though it didn’t win. I’m sure she will one day…’

And – to receive – Kathleen chooses - ‘I would most like to receive Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Hardcover - 19 Aug 2010) Kathleen says, ‘Detective fiction is one of my addictions. Most of it is quite badly written, relying on the strength of the plot to carry the story forward and you read it to solve the puzzles rather than for the beauty of the prose. But Kate Atkinson is a seriously good writer and prize winner of fiction, so when she began to write detective novels I was in bliss! The books are such a good read I am always sorry to get to the end. A new one is a celebration. So, yes, please, this is one for my Christmas stocking!

Pat Barker – from today’s programme – chooses Heartstone (Matthew Shardlake 5) by C. J. Sansom (Hardcover - 2 Sep 2010) ‘ The most recent in a crime series set in the reign of Henry 8Th centring on a hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake The others are Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign and Revelation. I can recommend all five books – to give and to get – with great enthusiasm. The in depth research never gets in the way of character and plot. Both the historical and invented characters are brilliantly drawn and the narrative pace never lets up. Even if you think you don’t like crime fiction or don’t like historical crime fiction please give this great series a try.

My own choice of a book to receive is Kathleen Jones’ Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller – Hardcover (30 Nov 2010) . If you remember Kathleen and I talked about this new book in the November Programme. Katherine Mansfield is a tragic and exciting figure – one of the three best ahort story writes of the first half of the 20^th century, As I am studying the short story for the March Room To Write Conference. I am so looking forward to reading this.

The book I’d like to give someone is My Name is Mina by David Almond (Hardcover - 2 Sep 2010). Listeners will remember that David and I discussed it at length on and early Writing Game. I am such a fan of good writing , in fact, that I would recommend any book by David Almond. Each one is a treasure in it own right. David’s books are marketed as children’s books but they read well at every level of age, sensibility and literary awareness.

And finally – for Christmand cheer Debora in London Chooses to receive : Comfort and Joy by India Knight (Hardcover - 25 Nov 2010) The good, the bad and the funny sit alongside each other in this wonderful book about love family and Christmas. This is a laugh out loud book – enormous fun and perfect escape from Christmas preparation. One reviewer says, ‘Yes there are stereotypes but they can be funny and comforting – I loved the characters such as Sophie – the mother who makes her own yoghurt, I loved Clara, I loved her funny rants about family, about Christmas, about stuffing the turkey and the ridiculous attempts we all go to to create ‘the perfect Christmas. It all rang horribly true, was laugh out loud funny, warm and somehow kind of glamorous.’

As you read through the joy and pain of her Christmas you can see elements of your own family Christmas.

I have to say that the range of books here demonstrate just how much enjoyment, escapism and delight on offer from Books at Christmas. Even in the snow…

Edit

Snow Follies

2010-12-01T19:56:00.001Z

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window. Alice Munro

****

Gilly says she’ll close the cafe when we go.

The snow cranks itself up into a blizzard. People pass by - head down against the white onslaught, conscious of their hero-status. Girl sporting flat blonde hair and leopard spotted fur bustles by.

My friend wraps up and braves the blizzard to plough her way to the park. Her mission is to take photos of trees that have strutted their brilliant stuff in the snow for two hundred winters.

I – frightened of slipping - opt to stay by the window, drink a glass of chilled white wine and think about my new novel which, thank the Lord, is set in sunny France. Nice to contemplate.

Gilly’s friend - carrying a shovel, wearing work cap and fluorescent jacket – makes his way to the door. ‘I’ll see youse!’ he says to Gilly.

I follow him through the door and think of Gilly, clearing the tables and closing the cafe behind me.

Romancer One, Snow Nil

2010-11-27T11:56:00.001Z

My heart sank when it snowed in the night and some roads became un-driveable, but still, out of eighty expected, thirty five great, adventurous people joined me in the theatre to celebrate the launch of The Romancer.

Bishop Auckland Town Hall still put on a good show for me. We still had our silver stars and our air of celebration; I still had my whole collection of books on show including photos of the very first launch, with the cake iced with the illustration from the cover of Riches Of The Earth.

I still had my timeline of books stretching from 1972 to 20010’

My friend Gillian Wales still managed the proceedings with her usual elan, standing beside the writer’s portrait painted by Fiona Naughton which rested on the massive, black ,paint-splashed easel of the late Tom McGuinness, the wonderful artist whose biographies Gillian has co-written.

My friend, writer Avril Joy, still read passages from The Romancer in her usual restrained, nuanced fashion which lets the drama speak for itself.

There were still lots of copies of The Romancer to share and sign.

And still people talking, always talking. And people listening with focus and asking really good questions.

And Bishop FM’s Terry Ferdinand, invisible behind his camera, was still taking these pictures.

Lots of writers to talk to… some of them not quite on camera

And we still drafted in the boy who loves chocolate to flaunt the balloons and hand around Anton’s wonderful canapes. And we still got to relish Anton’s Romancer Cocktails.

So we drank a toast to absent friends who had not managed to get there but were with us in spirit. And after all dratted the snow didn’t win.

And on Friday The brilliant Northern Echo published my article about the personal significance of writing The Romancer on its Leader page.

I called the piece ROMANCING THE NORTH which seemed appropriate.

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If you fancy seeing what all the fuss was about you can buy The Romancer direct from me - signed if you wish ( email : wenrob73@hotmail.com)

Or order it from good bookshops

Or from Amazon online

Or order it from your local library…

Wendyx

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The hand-made book – a game of Consequences?

2010-11-22T06:54:00.001Z

by Wendy on November 22nd, 2010

The launch of The Romancer, it has been decided, will be in the theatre. Images of all twenty three- or is it twenty four? – novels will be hanging from purple ribbon. Anton, who caters in the cafe at the Town Hall, is creating our signature Romancer cocktail and inventing intricate canapes. I am looking for silver balloons.

In these pessimistic times in publishing I am determined to demonstrate optimism to the degree that I have designed and developed this book myself. I have commandeered Fiona Naughton’s portrait for the cover and have worked alongside Steve Tolson on the design of the outside and the inside of the book.

Gulp! With the launch of The Romancer ever nearer, I am now contemplating the consequences of my actions. For many years I have wanted to write a book about writing – well, my particular approach to being a writer. But I have not until now found the form that would best express my peculiar approach.

But for now here, in an extract from the book itself, is how it happened…

(Extract from The Romancer)

Setting the Scene

I am a lifelong admirer of the art of the biographer, who lives in the halfway house between history and personality. Returning from lunch with biographer Kathleen Jones one day, my head full of her new work on Katherine Mansfield and its connections with her biography of Catherine Cookson, I was suddenly inspired to make a ‘valid connection’ between my own life and my writing: a kind of creative memoir. So I embarked on The Romancer – not a conventional memoir, but a kaleidoscope with all the elements of my life and experience as glittering fragments in the drum. Every time I shake this kaleidoscope a complex pattern emerges: each new pattern is a novel or story unique in itself.

The Romancer is made up of three parts. First comes Inspirations, an account of elements – people, experiences, places, insights and feelings – from my own life that have, whether or not I was conscious of it, inspired my wide range of novels and stories. Inevitably this is the largest part of this book. Without such inspirations would there be anything to write? These elements are the glittering fragments in the drum of the kaleidoscope.

Then Onto The Page celebrates many things – the poetic charm of getting the right words in the right place, the development of character, the evocation of place, the organisation of ideas, the architectural skills of building a novel and the joys of editing and shaping one’s own prose. It involves seeing one’s work into print and the surreal, occasionally comical, vagaries of the world of publication….

Romancer : Don Quixote, anecdotist, daydreamer, dreamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fabulist, fictionist

2010-11-17T09:59:00.001Z

So busy this month. Last Saturday was the fab Room To Write Conference, which went very well. Super, dedicated writers full of hard work and good humour – a great deal achieved in a day. Three novels completed and published and several more on the way. The day was fine and the Whitworth Hall setting was superb. Blowing off the cobwebs ar lunchtime with a walk in the grounds was just the ticket. Hard but rewarding work for the participants and the leaders. Everyone learns something.

Wonderful day – wonderful writers….

Now - Down to planning the launch of my new baby – The Romancer - which is a kind of hybrid memoir. Readers of Lifetwicetasted have read some extracts from this book – which is really about the process of writing counterpointed with aspects of a life in relation to the novels it inspired. I have copied below for you the press release details of the launch and an invitation to you, should you be around. Otherwise, events on this blog on the next few days will act as a virtual launch – complete with extracts!

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Bishop Auckland Town Hall Book Launch Thursday 25th November 7.30pm

Celebrating The Romancer

Romancer : Don Quixote, anecdotist, daydreamer,
dreamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fabulist, fictionist,…

Bishop Auckland writer Wendy Robertson is celebrating her twenty five years in the writing game by publishing The Romancer, a unique mixture of memoir, original writing and novel extracts mapping her life in writing from early
beginnings in a family struggling to survive, to the challenges and delights of
making her living as a writer.

After an early career in education Wendy Robertson became a full time writer and
has written twenty four novels, a book of short stories, an occasional article and
was a Northern Echo columnist. She has been Writer in Residence in a woman’s
prison. She mentors new writers and gives writing workshops across the North.
Based in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, she now has her own Community
Radio Show The Writing Game where she is building an archive of writers talking.

‘Writing The Romancer,’ she says, ‘has truly been a labour of love.’

On reading The Romancer ;
‘…truth and fiction like two hands clasping…’ – a rare glimpse of what it’s like to be
inside the process of writing.’ Kathleen Jones Biographer
‘A moving and compelling exploration of the links between a writer’s life and her work.’
Pat Barker Booker Prizewinning Author
‘More than just a memoir… a master class in the writing process.’ Sharon Griffiths
Northern Echo Columnist & Novelist

The Town Hall invites all readers and writers to
join Wendy in her Romancer celebration of
books and a writer’s life here on 25th November

To make sure of your Romancer Cocktail -

RSVP to 01388 602 610 or Wendy at wenrob73@hotmail.com

NB If you cannot make the launch The Romancer ;

will be available from 25th November

from good book shops, libraries, Amazon, or

Wendy at wenrob73@hotmail.com or Gillian at www.roomtowrite.co.uk

Visit Wendy’s website at www.wendyrobertson.com

Not being a poet…

2010-11-04T22:09:00.001Z

Not being a poet I can’t call this a poem. It’s really more

A writer’s list…

Rain slicks the blue van to a shine

Water lies in pools on the market square

The market stalls have left their spoor -

Vague shadow of a bad day’s takings

Raindrops weigh down cyclamen

On the last flower stall.

A woman crouches like a dealer

In her hoodie: pillar box red.

Another woman, her bleached hair

Hanging like snakes, hauls

Her boy from school,

Both unwilling.

I have to say there’s something rakish

About a raised blue umbrella.

(PS This hosta is called a Blue Umbrella)

November Writing Game: a Sense of Place

2010-11-03T08:57:00.003Z

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/2010/11/episode-7-fiction-sense-of-place/

Original air date: Tuesday, 2nd November.

No player? Right click, Save Target As - The Writing Game - Episode 7

On The Programme:

Prolific and well loved author Elizabeth Gill (who hails from Crook)
We also hear from David Williams whose territory is the streets of Newcastle and areas North of the Tyne
Avril Joy reads from her new crime novel Blood Tide which begins with detective Danny beck watching a woman throw herself off the Tyne Bridge on a dark and threatening night
And we hear again from Norma Neal who read her touching story Washing Lettuce on the October programme. This time she talks about beginning to write. Very inspirational.

Next month Books for Christmas. What you would like to receive and what you would like to give?

Have you any thoughts about this? I'll mention them on the December Programme.

The Artist

2010-11-02T09:04:00.001Z

I was re-editing some short stories for my new website and I thought you might this short-short story.

The Artist

The artist showed a great deal of promise. He was known as the Valasquez of his generation. His treatment of light and his handling of symbolism was unmatched in his century. Even as a young man he astounded his mentors and his teachers. After his training, (which he passed with flying colours and without the humiliation of an examination), he hid himself in a peeling house at the end of a long beach and set up his easels. Using his phenomenal eidetic memory he painted pictures of the teaming city which were somehow drenched with the light and the movement of the ocean.

All he would accept for his paintings was a small pension for food and paint from the national museum. He thought to sell the paintings would chip off parts his own soul so he would no longer be able to paint.

For ten years he painted in the beach house, his work becoming more distilled, more distinctively abstract. But there was this curious thing. No matter how abstract his painting became, even the most humble and unlettered person could understand his meaning and feel connected with the cosmos. Such people returned to their homes from the national museum and were kind to their spouses and children, knowing now that this was the only way to live. Some of them planted trees and flowers in their streets and alleyways to make their own personal contribution to the beauty of the world.

So, the painter was considered by all to be a national treasure.

One day he fell in love with a plumber who came to install a bath in the house on the beach. The plumber, a fine man with slender shoulders and a seeing gaze, had three children whom he brought to live at the beach house, The presence of the children inspired the painter to return to a more realistic style, He painted pictures of the children - in glowing shades of green and purple, aquamarine and ochre - jumping the waves and scaling the rocks. People who looked at these pictures became full of hope and knew things would be better in the new millennium.

But then there was a great storm of water and the beach house was demolished. The plumber, having rescued the painter and his own children, died of a waterborne disease. In his will he left his tools and his children to his friend the painter. Now for the first time in his life the painter had to be responsible for more than the quality of his painting and the purity of his message. In these new days the well-being of his foster children became his highest priority.

Just at that time a very rich man from Russia offered to build the painter a new house on the beach and as well he promised lifelong protection and security for the children. This was offered on the single condition: that the artist should paint a picture of Russian’s daughter, to be exhibited on the day of her wedding. Of course up to this point the painter had only painted out of his own soul, and had never taken commissions, But because he was looking to the security of the children he took on this special task.

While the beach house was being rebuilt the children lived with a fisherman whose wife played bowls with them every day and let them win. During this time the painter lived in the house of the rich man, so he could concentrate on the painting of the future bride,. The bride lent him her wedding dress, which he hung from a rafter in his painting room, a sky-lit attic with a vast roof window. He placed the dress in a corner, where it could glow like a moth in the shadowy eaves.

The bride herself posed for him seven times, lolling back in an exquisite Louis Quinze chair the painter had spotted in the music room. The girl had a dark, limpid beauty. The painter’s skin prickled in reaction to her sexuality and his senses melted as she made her availability clear. She told him she would do anything … anything … to make sure the painting was perfect, She had to please her father after all. That was paramount. In some desperation the painter told her that what she must - must! - do, was to sit in the chair and stay there. Otherwise the painting would disintegrate and her father would be annoyed.

All the time the painter worked he would allow no one to see the painting. When the beach house was finished he had the painting taken there to add the final, finishing touches.

So the nature of the painting was an unknown quantity as, on the afternoon of the event, the wedding guests - led by the father, his daughter and her groom, all arm in arm - came tripping merrily down the great staircase towards the portrait draped in black venvet, Standing to one side of the easel, dressed in their best, were the artist and his three foster children. The children were glowing with health, nut brown from the sea breezes,

The shouting and the laughter stilled as the bride and her guests gathered round. Then, at last, the rich man pulled a tassel and the velvet shroud fell from the picture. The groom gasped. The bride fainted.

People crowded in to see a canvas covered with a dense black- so dark that its depths took on a green mould. In the foreground the artist had rendered a perfect vision of an empty Louis Quinze chair.

© Wendy Robertson,

Balloons and Birds

2010-10-29T11:36:00.002+01:00

One pleasure recently - having gained some time as The Romancer is now proofed and ready for its print run - has been reading original materiel in the excellent reference library of the Bowes Museum.

I have been reading letters written to Josephine, the French wife of John Bowes. She was in safety in England but very popular with her her friends in France who continued to write to her as they experienced the worst of the Franco Prussian war and the siege of Paris.

The gossipy, urgent tone of these letters of the French demi-monde is redolent of its time in late 1860s France. Preoccupation with siege and safety mixes with social niceties and conventions being flouted. Thanks to Josephine for the use of her box at the opera sit there alongside concerns for the loss of a box of game, (shot in England by John) sent by Josephine as a gift to help the ousted soldiers and the poor in Calais.

What caught my eye yesterday was a reference in a letter (1870) to aeronauts who has landed in a balloon which had floated over the hated besieging Prussians and landed near Calais. The letter tells of aeronauts emerging with four pigeons. There were four birds because apparently the dastardly Prussians had birds of prey trained to attack and kill these winged messengers. So they attached the message to four birds hoping one would get through…

It occurred to me that these birds of prey were an innocent metaphor for the ultimately brutal occupying Prussians.

Podcast now here: Biographer and Poet Kathleen Jones

2010-10-20T08:59:00.001+01:00

The October Bishop FM podcast now available!

Click…

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/2010/10/episode-6-working-class-fiction/

If you remember Avril and I talked with Kathleen Jones in her mill home just over the border in Cumbria. You can hear the clatter of knives and forks as we talked over lunch. Kathleen talked about her early commitments as a writer, her vivid experience as a mature student, her views on her own and others’ poetry. These will all feature in later programmes. This programme, however, we will focus on her unique views on the art and craft of storyteller Catherine Cookson a very popular and –as will emerge – a much underrated writer whose worldly success is sometimes mistakenly seen as a sign of her lack of artistic virtue.

We will also hear our own reviewer Chartered Librarian Gillian Wales who runs Room To Write with Avril and me - as she talks about the impact of the work of Catherine Cookson on the book borrowing public in the 1980s and 90s – and also reflects on the best of Cookson’s novels.

And listen to Avril Joy’s story of publishing her father’s account of his experiences of London during the war, and hear an extract from Sedgefield writer Norma Niel’s touching novel, rooted in her own family memoir.

Click…

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/2010/10/episode-6-working-class-fiction/

Vikings and Ghosts

2010-10-12T10:15:00.002+01:00

In an attempt to relax after finishing The Romancer I watched a fascinating Time Team special on television, (typical pedant relaxation…) on the fact and the myth of Vikings in Britain and the world.

It seemed these Vikings were everywhere, as Tony Robinson eventually said, a bit like the Americans - over armed, over-sexed and over here. And here. And here.

I learned that part of their great success both in invading and carving out trading and farming space for themselves is that they had metal technology that was centuries ahead of their time, Their swords were very superior slicers, and secured their dominance, just as the repeating rifle secured the dominance of settlers over indigenous Native Americans in America. And the Atom Bomb ended the Second World War.

One way we know of this proliferation of the Vikings is the ubiquitous presence of their words in the language called English and of place names which reach deep into the British countryside.

Viking settlements are marked for example with place names ending in –by which means homestead, or farm. Think of Whitby, Derby, Rugby, Whitby, Selby, Grimsby. They are also marked by place names ending in –thorpe (or -thorp, -throp or –trop) which also means farm. And toft which means the site site of a house or a plot of land. And then there is holm which means a dry place in an area of marsh.

Names like this proliferate even deep inland in my part of the country. Only a mile or so away, for instance, is a village called Toft Hill.

Then, sitting back with my cup of tea, I had this thought that the genetic Viking heritage of many modern people could show itself now in the revels of the hard men (and women) round here on a Saturday night; in their desire not just to drink but get plastered (arguably a sign of manhood in the old Viking culture); also in their historic bravery in twentieth century wars and their stoicism in enduring hard conditions at work.

Then I had this idea that I could write a novel that illuminated these parallels between a bunch of Vikings then and a bunch if these guys now. Maybe a kind of ghost story.

Or not.

Maybe I should sleep on it.

wx

Spinning Plates

2010-10-11T08:35:00.001+01:00

Just emerging from the fog of final editing of The Romancer, where I’ve had to retain in my brain the whole of the book that I’ve written in such loving parts. It’s like those people in the circus who have to keep plates spinning on sticks and dash across and across to keep them spinning.

At times the brain has ached and the simple joy of blogging has had to be put to one side. But I have missed it. Ironically it was carving out the artless pieces about writing and my life on my Life Twice Tasted blog that inspired me to write The Romancer. No Life Twice Tasted - no Romancer.

Twice I thought I had finished the book and twice I dived back to insert another section so the balance was right and that plate kept spinning.

But now it’s gone and out of my hands and out of my mind for a while. Endings are about new resolutions. I have awarded myself a bunch of flowers and - apart from sorting out the sock drawer and the jumper drawer - I intend to write a short blog every day for a while, to get back into the rhythm.

So, if you’re still there, thank you for caring. See you tomorrow,

Kathleen Jones on Catherine Cookson on The Writing Game

2010-09-24T10:29:00.003+01:00

Kathleen Jones on Catherine Cookson

Great Working Class Fiction &

commentary by Gillian Wales

on Bishop FM 105.

October 57pm on Bishop FM

On Wendy Robertson’s

Writing Game

Join me on The Writing Game at 7pm October 5th when we feature an interview with Kathleen Jones who, as well as writing of the lives of Christina Rosetti and Katherine Mansfield, is the esteemed biographer of our own Catherine Cookson.

’Kathleen Jones biography displays all the Cookson virtues. Her narrative is uncluttered and direct, her analysis complex and sometimes surprising. Most importantly she never condescends to her subject' Kathryn Hughes, Daily Telegraph

"This is such a bravura exercise in biography, I would suggest Kathleen Jones not only wins her case but should be awarded costs."Charlotte Cory, times Literary Supplement

Avril and I talked with Kathleen Jones in her mill home just over the border in Cumbria. You can hear the clatter of knives and forks as we talked over lunch. Kathleen talked about her early commitments as a writer, her vivid experience as a mature student, her views on her own and others’ poetry. These will all feature in later programmes. This month, however, we will focus on her unique views on the art and craft of storyteller Catherine Cookson a very popular and –as will emerge – a much underrated writer whose worldly success is sometimes mistakenly seen as a sign of her lack of artistic virtue.

We will also hear from our own reviewer Chartered Librarian Gillian Wales - who runs Room To Write with Avril and me - as she talks about the impact of the work of Catherine Cookson on the book borrowing public in the 1980s and 90s – and also reflects on the best of Cookson’s novels.

We also feature Avril Joy’s story of publishing her father’s account of his experiences of London during the war, and hear an extract from Sedgefield writer Norma Neil’s emerging novel rooted in her own family memoir.

ALL THIS AND MORE ON BISHOP FM

Tune into 105.9 at 7pm on October 5th

Join me on The Writing Game at http://www.bishopfm.com

and see blog and podcasts at

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame

Wendy R

Further Contacts for you…

Wendy’s Blog: www.lifetwicetasted.blogspot.com Holy Island and the Advent of Writing/ The Omms and the Aahs/ The Amazing Terry Deary / Glynn's Compelling Case For History
Kathleen Jones’ Blog http://www.kathleenjones.co.uk/kathy~1.html

Avril Joy’s Blog http://www.avriljoy.com/
Room to Write website http://www.roomtowrite.co.uk/

Holy Island and The Advent Of Writing

2010-09-16T10:15:00.001+01:00

I was invited by a friend to visit Holy Island to have lunch with another friend in a tower a hundred yards across the dunes from the sea.

The last time I was on Holy Island was when I was sixteen, two generations and a universe ago. I have a photo somewhere of me sitting on a beach in a red anorak, the harsh wind blowing my hair into greater tangles.

I was there on a ‘pilgrimage’ from my church. Not that we walked the eighty or so miles. There was a church bus, if I remember rightly. But we did walk across the Causeway, which is only accessible if the tide is right. I think I loved it. but really I was too full of my own adolescent concerns properly to appreciate this extraordinary place.

This time it was different. The day was bright and the wind was soft; the isolation was healing. We sat for a while in the top of the round tower which has small square windows cut into three foot thick walls at all the points of the compass – towards the Causeway in one direction, towards the sea in another.

Three of us – all writers – considered the possibilities of writing about this separate, isolated uniquely spiritual place, this meeting place of wild nature and the spiritual universe. The island landscape has inspired films, poetry, historical and more meditative writing but not, we thought, fiction. Somehow the spiritual depth of the place, did not lend itself to the rough trade of contrived narrative. I thought that perhaps it might lend itself to fable, to a fabulous weaving of inspiration and vision -- like the ancient magical tales that thrived here before advent of writing.

I sat for a while and drew the marram grass in the dunes that holds the island together just as the stories of saints, their writings and their journeys, hold together the myth of Lindisfarne in our imaginations.

I think I have to go again and stay. And write.

The Ommms and the Ahhhs

2010-09-10T08:41:00.001+01:00

In an effort to calm myself down and stop the world spinning. I’ve been trying out some meditation tapes. Six so far and they all work in that it has to be very good for you, to sit very still striving towards a serene mind. It’s an improvement on thinking about the first thing in the queue of things to think about, with something always waiting in the wings. (My late brother was a time and motions study engineer. I sometimes think I might be imbued with his spirit. Not a minute wasted.

I suspect the best of the tapes is the most serious – Meditation Heavy, you might call it. The dark-velvet male voice talks about universal God a lot and the voice through the earphones is dark velvet with rapier penetration, The downside is that it requires you to vocalise a lot. AAHH for the morning meditations, OOHMM for the evening trips. I could certainly feel the slowing down, the return to slow contemplative sanity. But the downside is the vocalisation. Although the door to the little room is firmly shut, embarrassment stops me vocalising freely. This, of course, demonstrate my latent inability to let go: my tendency not only to watch myself do something, but empathise with other people’s reaction to my doing it. All copy. The writer’s curse.

On the other end of the scale is what you might call Meditation Lite – a soothing chirrupy female voice backed by syrup-y film soundtrack music.She asks me to visualise a film on a screen where I a the star who wins out against all odds and ends up believing in herself. Despite being slightly gloopy this works as well as Meditation . Afterwards I am transformed - fresh and motivated. I am more effective in my day.

In between these two extremes are the more storytelling, visualisation tapes where I have to imagine myself in a place. So I can put myself on the moors in Weardale or beside a river in the Languedoc, where I can drop into a hypnotic trance and assure myself I am what I am; that I have no fear; that I am a worthwhile person; that I have the power to make myself happy; that I can make myself achieve my dreams.

While I enjoy the visualisations most, the effect of these very different meditation experiences is the same: I emerge transformed – fresh and motivated. I am more effective in my day.

Of course the common denominator of these experiences is just sitting still, slowing down and relaxing, for thirty whole minutes, twice a day. This is what does the trick. Real meditaters can do it without the crutch of tapes or resonant voices in the ear. It is rightly called a discipline and has someone who applies discipline to various other parts of my life I find this impossible. I need a voice to guide me, to pace me. Otherwise I think too much.

So I’m telling my stressed friends now, ‘Feeling stressed? Get a tape – any tape – and go meditate!’

Terry Deary on The Writing Game

2010-09-06T12:39:00.001+01:00

On Tuesday 7th at 7pm on The Writing Game

The amazing Terry Deary

On this programme my focus is history. fact and fiction.

In factual history we can learn that - no matter in what age we live – there are constant features – the human instinct to survive, even to thrive , in adverse circumstance, to make cure, to kill, to cure, to make love, to develop ideas, to nurture, to celebrate, to rule and be ruled, - all these are constant.

But some of us turn to historical fiction to receive our historical fix,filtered and shaped through the writer’s imagination. So we see the Tudors through Phillipa Gregory’s eyes, We see the times of Thomas Cromwell through the eyes of Hilary Mantel, We see ancient Rome through Lindsey Davies’s detective fiction. We e 17^th Century Holland through Tracey Chevalier’s Girl With the Pearl Earring. e see eighteenth century war at sea through the eyes of Patrick O’Brian

But now there is a generation of readers who see history as a joke - one long laugh. Perhaps, like much these days, this started on the screen with the hilarious excesses of Blackadder, the TV series. But the most successful writer promoting the funny side of history has to be the creator of the Horrible History genre of books - Terry Deary, who knows the Bishop Auckland very well. And who comes from Sunderland but lives near Durham.

A former actor, theatre-director and drama teacher, Terry is the author of over 200 books for young people with a total sales of 25 million in many countries. A great bulk of these are his Horrible History series although there are other longer, equally interesting works

Terry’s books and his stance are anti-establishment and anarchic He does not see himself as an historian. ‘My agenda is not so much history as human behaviour,” he says. “Why do people behave the way they do? That is what I try to answer through non-fiction and fiction. When you understand that, then the world becomes a better place. Because people look at each other and try to understand one another.”

And now this month on Bishop FM Terry will talk about his new Longer Novel called PUT

OUT THE LIGHT - set in Sheffield in World War Two during the Blitz. There are typical Terry Deary jokes here but this is a serious – very readable - story about the wartime experiences of two English and three German children.

Being so much in demand and choosy about his company Terry’s a hard man to get hold of . He turned down the BBC’s Desert Island Discs but on Tuesday 7th at 7 he’s on Bishop FM’s Writing Game.

Hear also on this programme historian Glynn Wales’ take on factual history.

If you can’t tune in, the podcast of this programme will be available from Bishop FM from 8th September.

Terry's new full-length novel Put out the Light will be published by A & C Black on 9 September 2010. Terry will be taking part in a signing tour to launch the book. (A&C Black ISBN 9781 4081 3054 4)

Bishop FM 105.9

Glynn’s Compelling Case For History

2010-08-20T13:09:00.002+01:00

‘Not to know what took place before you were born is to remain a child.’ Cicero.

One half of our review team on The Writing Game (see sidebar here) is Glynn, teacher of history for over thirty years, now a trainer of teachers at Durham University and Senior Examiner of A level History for the EdExcel board.

A bit of a renaissance man, Glyn reviews all kinds of books for the programme. For relaxation, he reads crime. However the theme for the the September programme is History - Fact and Fiction so we were right in his territory. Wonderfully, Terry Deary had agreed to be interviewed for this show, talking about his WW2 novel PUT OUT THE LIGHT, and of course his anarchic, very best selling ‘Horrible History’ series.

So Glynn’s review brief for September was Historical Fact. I asked him to review great history books now available. So he came to my smallest room - which is now giving service as a studio – to record his segment. However, before he gave his book recommendations, I asked him for his view on history and its teaching in schools. Glynn’s combination of vision, scholarship and enduring ideals inspired me to include an excerpt from his talk here.

****

I thought you’d be interested in Glynn’s compelling case for history:

Glynn ‘ ….(learning history) allows children to see the present, it transforms the world about them and it gives them more of a sense of identity than they had without it – a sense of national identity. regional identity, in fact local identity as well. It shows them what man has done and therefore what they are capable of doing, whatever they want to become. And it tells them an awful lot about themselves
‘Not to know what took place before you were born is to remain a child.’ I go along with Cicero on that.
History helps to de-centre them, to show they’re not the centre of the universe. It promotes critical thinking, tells them to weigh evidence, to look at the pros and cons, to make judgements based on evidence … Also it should be a good read. History is a literary subject; good history is well written, it’s exciting stories that can fire the imagination.
How it should be taught? Children learn in a variety of ways and should be taught in a variety of ways There’s certainly a central role within that for a a teacher – a teacher, not a facilitator. The teacher should be the centre of the classroom: stories such as the great fire of London, the Gunpowder Plot again fire the imagination.
Children learn by doing, so things like role play, playing the role of the detective, examining evidence , artefacts, paintings, building, photographs – all these and written evidence at its highest helps them to make judgements.
In the big debate about knowledge and skills, I suppose I’m on the knowledge side . They should leave school with a body of knowledge which helps them to do the things that I have outlined. To apply critical thinking to their actions and attitudes. Armed with this they can look at cause, consequence and change in their own wider experience . …
Wendy: The teacher as the great storyteller as well as the purveyor of knowledge, judgement and experience. That all sounds to me like history should be at the centre of the curriculum,
Glynn: Indeed it should be. Everything has its history, its historical link. It could be seen as the most important…
Wendy: I’ll vote put it at the centre of the curriculum.
Glynn: (laughs) Thank you Wendy
Wendy: So what about your books this month…?
Glynn: Well, never have so many works of history or of such quality been produced than at present, nor has history been so well taught. According to OFSTED it’s the best taught subject on the secondary school curriculum – a far cry from the state of history on which Terry Deary took revenge by producing his Horrible Histories .
I even venture to say that never has (a populariser) like Terry been more important then at the present. History as a subject has suffered terribly at the hands of the outgoing Labour Government to the point where it’s marginalised in many schools, subsumed within general humanities courses ( so the critical discipline is lost. W.) and even discontinued as a GCSE option.
Remarkably in the whole of Europe, only in Britain and Albania is History not a compulsory subject for 14-16year olds … Had there been more historians in the Labour government then (the study of history) would not be in such a parlous state, nor might Britain have such a dubious foreign policy reputation as it has in the world in the moment.
Wendy: (Taking a breath…) And so the the books?
Glynn’s Choice:
I offer then, some BIG history books which I’ve enjoyed reading in the last year and which continue Terry’s and Wendy’s theme of wars in the 20th Century.
THE STORM OF WAR by Andrew Roberts – a well researched narrative history of the Second World War
THE WAR OF THE WORLD, Niall Ferguson’s radical re-interpretation of both Twentieth Century world wars. Like all my books here this book is beautifully written and combines broad brushstrokes of judgement with fascinating detail and anecdote .
HUGH TREVOR ROPER, Adam Sisman’s biography of the historian, son of an Alnwick GP who rose to be England’s top historian, As a young don and army historian Trevor Roper’s detective work produced The Last Days of Hitler which proved that Hitler had indeed died in the bunker and made the historian’s name. He was involved as a writer, scholar an consultant to so many events of the latter twentieth century. (Glyn goes on to outline how the book revealed critical flaws, tragedy and even farce which compromised but did not destroy the genius of this iconic historian.)

****

Glynn said so much more about these books. but to hear him you will have to wait until after 7pm on September 7th if you are in the area or get the podcast from Bishop FM afterwards. (Earlier Podcasts are there too) http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/category/podcasts/

Of course you will also get to hear Terry Deary which is another treat. I’ll put a post on the blog her about Terry and his contribution nearer the time.

It was great to listen to Glynn. I’m certainly inspired to read all of these books , but will make a start with the Nial Ferguson’s War Of The World …

Women and Their Family Ties

2010-08-12T11:46:00.002+01:00

From ‘The Romancer’. my memoir in progress:

The close, passionate and sometimes difficult relationship between mothers and daughters features in many of my stories through different faces, different characters and different narratives. One prime example of this is Family Ties. In this novel we have an old mother with a middle-aged daughter who has a daughter in her thirties who has a seventeen year old daughter herself. This novel - a kind of Four Ages of Woman - probably has the most fictional truth deriving from my life. I have plucked elements from my own life for the second, third and fourth generations of the women in this story. But the oldest woman – Kate, perverse, independent, intelligent, secretive, charismatic – most clearly emerges from my deep experience of my mother Barbara. I realise this now, though I have to say I wasn’t conscious of this when I wrote Family Ties.

Excerpt from Family Ties -

Elderly Kate has had an accident and stays with her middle aged daughter Rosa, her thirty something granddaughter Bronwen and Bronwen’s teenage daughter Lily -

- … When she came here from hospital Kate was quiet. The hospital had shocked her more than she would admit. That and the accident. The next morning she was up at her usual time and in the kitchen before I could get there. The table was set. The cereals were standing to attention and she was stirring porridge in the pan.

I remembered my father in Coventry stirring porridge in a pan. And how happy I was then. Before she came back from her nightshift at the hospital. I remembered how, in the bad times at Butler Street, there was no breakfast because she was depressed and anyway she had to be at the factory by seven thirty. And how I fainted in Assembly.

Anyway on the first morning of Kate’s stay I fled upstairs without any breakfast, mumbling something about getting on with my work. I sat here at my desk and told myself that at my age I really shouldn’t be running away from my mother.

Since then I’ve managed to eat the porridge before I flee back upstairs to my study. But here I am, still disturbed by the sound of Kate talking to Bronwen and young Lily, what with the click and clatter as she moves my things here and there and the sputter and sweep of the Hoover. When I go downstairs the place will be tidy and shaved clean and all the ornaments will be slightly out of place. There’s no doubt about it – with Kate here I am slightly out of place.

… Of course she started this herself, by letting Bronwen have the bag of papers with the Tick Book in it. She knew what she was doing. Tick Book*, ticking bomb! Here I am, sailing along, quite content, then Boom! It floods back. Those years are on my mind again: hiding in the house like an injured rabbit; dancing behind closed curtains; writing in the Tick Book about how Brock came; battling with secrets. I weep for the child that was me….

*Shop credit ledger, given to Rosa as a child, in which she kept a diary.

‘Theft’ – The Very First Novel Adventure

2010-08-08T14:17:00.001+01:00

How ‘Theft’ came to be published is a story in itself. At that time I was at home with two small children. I loved this time, letting the dust build up somewhat and writing when they were asleep. That was when I wrote Theft. It seemed a time of such freedom.

At that time I was a member of an association called The Federation of Children’s Book Groups which aimed to get more books into the hands of more children. This nationwide forum was lead by a very charismatic young woman called Anne Wood who lived in London but came from my home town and had been to my grammar school, although I’d never met her. One day she came North to visit her father and we had a little meeting in my house, with other like minded people. Towards the end of the meeting I mentioned that I’d just finished writing this children’s story called Theft. She asked if she could read it. I handed it to her, apologizing for the rather scruffy copy, as this was my only spare. I was pleased that anyone at all would take the trouble to read this, my first full length novel.

The next morning she rang me to tell me how much she liked it. I was so pleased, as Anne was so informed, so savvy in the field of children’s fiction. Then she continued. ‘So I think we’ll take it.’

‘We?’ I was puzzled.

‘Corgi Carousel. That’s Transworld.’ That was when she told me she’d just been appointed the first editor for Transworld’s new children’s imprint and had the power, there and then, to say ‘Yes.’ Magic.

Even more interesting than that, this was the Anne Wood who went on to set up an independent TV production company, ‘Ragdoll’ which produced, among other excellent programmes, Rosie and Jim, Tots TV, Teletubbies, and In the Night Garden. This was the Anne Wood who was listed as the third richest person in British broadcasting in 2001, with the value of her business estimated by Broadcast magazine to be £130m. Her charity, The Ragdoll Foundation went on to lead the field in imaginative philanthropy aimed towards children.

I met Anne when she was on the cusp of all this. I sometimes wonder if, like me, she ever got ‘lines’ at school for reading at the dinner table.‘

This is an extract from ‘The Romancer’ -

an attempt to mesh together my life and my books.

* After Theft there was a three year novel haitus while I pursued my academic career. Still writing, though, I went on to write three more ‘young adult novels (for Hodder & Stoughton) before embarking on full time writing and long adult novels.

Posted by Wendy R at 11:10

Labels: Anne Wood, Theft, writing

Avril said...: The Romancer promises to be an extraordinary and fascinating book.
What a coup getting your first novel published in that way and how modest you were about your talent - great story Wendy.
A x; 8 August 2010 12:18

Writing Before Writing

2010-08-05T10:24:00.002+01:00

I could write before I could read or write.

Picture this. A little girl less than three years old, playing outside a house in Lancaster. With her head of Shirley Temple curls she is winsome, prettier than she will ever be in the many years to come. She is chalking on the sill of the big bay window vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

She stands back. That looks right. Just like she’s seen her mother do. But then she frowns her characteristic frown. Is it all in one, or are there breaks in the line of squiggles? She runs inside the house and climbs onto the mantelpiece where she knows there are letters behind the clock.

Letters are big in her house these days. There are letters from Daddy who’s making aero engines in another city. Mammy reads these out to them all. They always end love Bill. There are letters from Cy, the Canadian soldier who stayed once and carried the little girl on his shoulders. Her mother smiles as she reads them. Then there’s the letter that made her mother cry, about Jimmy, whose plane crashed in America. There’s a photo of Jimmy on the mantelpiece in uniform: a sharp face with smiling eyes.

The little girl takes one of her Daddy’s letters and looks carefully at its neat loops. Ah yes. There are gaps between the squiggles. So she goes outside and with the corner of her cardigan – knitted in Fair Isle by her Auntie Louie – she rubs the sill so there are now spaces between some of the squiggles. Now she has done some real writing.

Vvv vvvvvv vv vvv vvvvvv vvvvvv v vvvv vvv

Radio Gremlins!

2010-08-04T10:44:00.001+01:00

As you know here, I am enjoying the work for The Writing Game, my community radio programme all about writing. It is hard work but good on all kinds of levels.* I’ve had good personal response and the people I work with from the station are so kind and clever.

But if you managed to get to hear Tuesday’s programme you will think I’m crazy.

I have to admit that I myself listened with increasing consternation. Gremlins were dancing around in the works. The very good reading by writer Geri Auton was cut altogether; the beginning was cut; the book sequence was cut so that one crucial title was missed. Adverts blasted into the centre of the programme and at one point screeching music from some other line intruded. I have to say I cringed.

It honestly was a case of crossed wires and probably really nobody’s fault. However, James, the Programme Director is on the problem and he and I are going to re-edit the programme this week and it will go out next Tuesday at seven in its proper form. That version will be on the podcast. He tells me all the podcasts should be available, The previous programmes should be podcasted soon. I’ll let you know here when that happens.

Certainly my learning curve is climbing! Things can only get better from this.

For example, I had the enormous pleasure yesterday of recording a long interview with the extraordinary , iconoclastic Terry Deary, writer of the worldwide best sellers, The Horrible History series. He was talking about his new - longer- World War Two children’s novel. Put Out The Light. We have so much to learn from Terry about the Writing Game. This marvellous conversation will go out on The Writing Game the first Tuesday in September.

The Romancer

2010-07-30T11:30:00.002+01:00

Nice to see you again. Lifetwicetasted has been a bit of a no-go area for me in recent weeks – in fact since I came back from France. I know I’ve blasted off here before, about how I don’t believe in writer’s block, but somehow my writer’s mind has a been like a ticking engine turning over but not ready to go.
Of course I’ve been doing some bits of writing, and I’ve been working on the Radio Programme (see sidebar) but this great surging desire to charge into the next BIG THING has been waiting in the wings, not centre stage.
I have not been unhappy but felt I’d somehow turned to a column of wax, unable to melt back into the writer I am.
But if you wait, what’s meant to happen, will happen.
The other day, for my radio programme, I had a conversation with gifted literary biographer and great blogger Kathleen Jones (see my sidebar…). We talked about her new biography of Katherine Mansfield and many aspects of the writing game but I was most intrigued by her typically erudite analysis of the academic and literary disciplines of the biographer - the symbiosis between the writer’s life and the writer’s work.
My dears, the wax started to melt! In between putting the new programme together with James at the radio station, trying to get the house back together after the big paint job and talking with A. about the meaning of life and the balance between nature and nurture, the big idea emerged.
I began to think it’s time I carried out an audit on my work. After all, I’ve been writing all sorts of things for publication for the last twenty five years. It finally dawned on me that I should write an autobiographical monograph outlining my own symbiosis - my non-parochial life here in South Durham and and the novels and stories that have been inspired by it.
Don’t get me wrong – this is not an act of pride, it’s a matter of intellectual organisation and rationalisation. It will be fun to write - in part it has been inspired By how much I love writing posts for my blogs - and will allow me properly to reflect on my life as a writer.
It will be short. I see it as fourteen essays incorporating true elements of my life and the stories that were inspired by them. The quality of the writing will be paramount. As with this blog, there will be pictures. I will publish it myself as an exercise in private publishing, to make the whole book just as I want it to be.
What a treat! Enough to melt any candle.
But first, the title!
There is this saying in County Durham. ‘Oh, him, he’s a proper romancer!’. meaning someone who lives on the borderline between truth, fantasy and lies. I wanted to call my novel about the (alleged) County Durham serial killer Mary Ann Cotton, ‘The Romancer’. My editor didn’t like it. (It became A Woman Scorned’ – a much lesser title for what was a great story.)
Now I know why it was saved. My autobiographical monograph will be my called The Romancer. Perfect! It will be launched on November 24th in the art Gallery at Bishop Auckland Town Hall, alongside an exhibition of all twenty four of my books, a timeline with all the books in and of their times, a collage of some of my articles.
They’re calling it ‘ A Retrospective’. Well, if artists can have then so can writers.
PS After all this excitement I looked up the word ‘Romancer’ (see below) and was moved to see what I came up with. So many of these words fit the way I think I am. I was called dreamer in my family from when I was very young….WX
*********
Romancer’ :Don Quixote, Quixote, anecdotist, daydreamer, dreamer, dreamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fableist, fabler, fabulist, fictionist, idealist, lotus-eater, mythmaker, mythopoet, narrator, novelettist, novelist, prophet, raconteur, reciter recounter, relator, rhapsodist, romancist, romantic, romanticist,sagaman, seer, short-story writer, spinner of yarns, storier, storyteller, taleteller, teller of tales, utopian, utopianist, ustopianizer, visionary, wishful thinker, word painter, yarn spinner reamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fableist, fabler, fabulist, fictionist, idealist, lotus-eater, mythmaker, mythopoet,narrator, novelettist, novelist, prophet, raconteur, reciter, recounter, relator, rhapsodist, romancist, romantic, romanticist, sagaman, seer, short-story writer, spinner of yarns, storier,storyteller, taleteller, teller of tales, utopian, utopianist, topianizer, visionary, wishful thinker, word painter, yarn spinner
‘Romancer’ A mysterious or fascinating quality or appeal, as of something adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful: "These fine old guns often have a romance clinging to them" (Richard Jeffries).

The Sadness of Leaving.

2010-07-03T10:20:00.001+01:00

Journey back tomorrow. I am sad. As regular visitors at Lifetwicetasted will know, I feel I have been here before and am writing my second novel springing from this place.

As well as my notebook I always have my little camera. I’m no great photographer but now my camera is my second notebook and continues to provide inspiration and sustenance in my other special place t- he moody, complex north of England. I thought I would stick my last images together for my friends – as a kind of handful of postcards from the edge, with no message.

Here , the medium is the message, perhaps:

A bientot…

Return to La Guinguette

2010-06-22T14:57:00.001+01:00

Allan and Nira, who own the Maison d’Estella ,cycle along the river to meet us for lunch at la Ginguette. (See last year’s Post Last Walk To La Ginguette). This is the unique the open air cafe situated where the silver-green River Hérault joins a spur of the limpid green Canal du Midi. The Café has a small stage and a tiny dance floor and we talk, eat and drink to the mournful heartfelt romantic songs of, among more contemporary singers, the French chansonniers – the traditional singers who are said to be the last vestige if the medieval troubadours.

On the walls are poster images of singers and crooners from across the world but an especial place is saved for louche retro images of great French chansonniers such as George Brassens and Jacques Brel. I searched the walls of La Guingette for an image of Jean Sablon, a favourite of my mother’s. I have some scratchy memory of my father singing one of Jean Sablon’s songs -J’Attendrai – to my mother when I was small. As my father died when I was nine and couldn’t speak French this should be impossible. But if it’s a false memory it’s rather a nice one.

Whether that is a true memory or not here on wall are images of these fabulist singers talking and smoking with a sophistication lost in our own age,

As it is lunchtime rather than evening at La Guingette, there is no dancing, and the music is on tape. But still it enhances the raffish atmosphere generated by the posters and the distinctly improvised decor as we eat from plastic tables among rustling greenery.

Adopting something of a louche style ourselves we enjoy the food and wine and talk about books we’re reading, exchanging titles and favourite writers as readers do. We share news about current creative projects and family events. Nira talks about the new novel she is reading; Allan is developing a new painting studio; I’m writing my new book; Avril’s thinking about her new poem; Debora’s writing her excellent articles and thinking about a book; Sean and Bryan are talking about our journeys; we hear stories of Allan and Nira’s son Tom who working as a crew member on a luxury yacht taking a three year journey round the world.

Nira says she’s waiting for my new novel Starr Bright to come out, as it’s set in this, her town, in the Maison d’Estella, the house where we’re staying. (One day a group of tourists peered through the big wooden door and the leader asked about the novel – whether it would be available in a French edition...) I’ve been thinking I might change the title but more news of in another post.

Later in the afternoon Allan comes over to the house by arrangement, so he can tell me a very interesting true story from his home ground of Somerset, set at the turn of the twentieth century. I ask lots of questions and we record his story on my radio recorder for future reference.

I find myself listening to a wonderful intergenerational tale emerging from a small run-down fishing port in Somerset. It involves generations of seafaring men and their widely interlinked families. Into the lives of these ordinary people an important artist comes. There is even a prince involved. And at the core of this story, in my view, there is this surprising coincidence to do with painting and art and this practically minded sea-going family.

Although he is sceptical I suggest to Allan that he himself, in a way, personifies somewhat that coincidence: a painter first and foremost, he is an accomplished sailor – although he insists it is the aesthetics, not the athletics, of sailing that he enjoys. And it occurs to me later that the kitchens of their houses here - which he develops himself – seem to me to have the polished wood and shipshape design of a boat’s cabin.

I don’t know that he agrees, but it’s an interesting thought.

Will Allan’s Somerset tale make a novel? Surely. There’s only the matter of the four or five years it would take to research and develop it of course,

One thing’s for sure. Stories pop up everywhere in this place.

A Tale of Three Boys and Diving for Treasure

2010-06-14T14:38:00.001+01:00

The courtyard is in shadow but the sky above is bright blue. My problem is that the wonderful Agde sun waited to come out out until the day my friend Pat caught her plane home. I’ve spent the week telling her that usually it’s warm and very bright here in June: protesting in defence of my favourite French town.

At least on the morning of her departure as the sun started to show its face and we made it to the picturesque Pezenas market. We sat drinking coffee and pastis watching ladies try on hats at the hat stall. We decided that it would be rather nice if we renewed the custom of wearing hats every day . It would get rid of the problem of bad hair days but I suppose would present the challenge of wearing hats with jeans.

The rain and glowering sky had not prevented us - on - Tuesday from visiting the exceptional Museum of the Ephebe, close by in Cap d’Agde.

The Ephebe is a stunning near life-size bronze of a post-adolescent boy which was plucked out of the River Herault in 1964 by submarine archaeologists.

On the wall in my study at home I have a giant poster of the Ephebe, brought back from my first visit here.That first time I was fascinated not just by this exquisite bronze treasure but the moving portrait of this beautiful young man who who was alive thousands of years ago. At that time there was no information about who this elegant, thoughtful person might have been. But I do have my own thoughtful, intelligent boy and my poster always reminds me of A, the boy who likes chocolate, He is alas, not staying here this year.

My poster came into my mind on later visits here when I became fascinated by St Thibery, another young man emerging from Agde (his father was the Roman Governor of Agde) early in the fourth century AD. Thibery was a gifted boy, a healer of the insane who cured people in the name of Jesus Christ. He and his beloved tutor Modeste were martyred and executed in the small Village of Cessaro close to Agde.

Renamed St Thibery, this village became a place of pilgrimage throughout the middle ages, for those seeking a cure for insanity.

These events inspired my new novel Starr Bright*** which considers madness and serious depression in the present day. In the novel we see a troubled woman in the present day who experiences the joys and ultimate sorrows of intimate contact with Thibery and his charismatic tutor Modeste.

So it is that this whole novel started with my fascination with the Ephebe those years ago. In the years since archaeological scholars have concluded that this formerly anonymous figure is in fact a portrait of a young Alexander the Great. How wonderful.

This habit of diving for treasure is an old one here. This town has been a port for more than two thousand years – at one time a crucial Greek and then a Roman port - for exporting and importing all kinds of goods between Gaul and the countries around the Mediterranean basin.

There were battles , pirates, great storms and flooding – here called les inondations. In the last century archaeological treasure seekers started to dive for all kinds of treasure – treasure with both intrinsic value and historical fascination - from swords to nails, from intricate tripods to cooking pots and votive treasures. And there are so many amphorae – terra cotta jars of every size which carried everything from wheat to wine, from oil to cloth. (Pat says they are like the cardboard boxes and packing cases of their times.)

Whatever their size, amphorae were usually pointed at the bottom so they could lie snugly together in the hold of the great sailing ships, like piglets snuggling in rows. And there are glasses and bottles - whole and in fragments – alongside bowls and cooking pots demonstrating a thousand years of the potters’ craft.

All this treasure was hauled from the river by twentieth and twenty first century adventuring submarine archaeologists who are named and described with pride on the walls of the museum. They are an essential part of the whole story.

Another part of the story are the citizen-beach-combers who, on a rare very low tide on the estuary, harvest their own collections of finds and fragments which reflect this same history. This house where I am writing is sprinkled with a number of these objets trouvé which make me feel I am living in history - as does Estella in my new novel Starr Bright.

As a footnote my fried Avril, says these glass and pot fragments remind her of ‘boody’ which I mentioned once on my Bishop Blog. Perhaps that’s our country’s archaeology although so far the the River Wear had never offered up our own Ephebe.

I suppose, really, writing novels is a kind if diving for treasure…

***

So what about…

Starr Bright?

……You might find it strange that through all this mad time I still did my astrology columns, recycling old stuff, free-basing new stuff, making new money to prove I was alive, adding it to the stash that came from my dear mother’s foresight. I worked through the night and slept through the day, only rarely catching sight of a perplexed Philip. I cut down on my antidepressants because there was the possibility that the numbness might make me renege on my deadlines. And I realised that they were giving me suicidal inspiration and I wanted to stay alive to see Siri again.

On many nights I would cast and recast Siri’s chart for the time then and the time now - for the day of the murder and for this same date - one, two, three years later. And again and again I would stare in the mirror and wonder why, why on that day I should have told her, ‘Yes love. You go and get some fresh air!’ What I should have done is shackle her to the fridge, the bed, the washing machine. Anything.’

I looked at her constellation Virgo in the night sky and willed it to bring her through to me from whatever fog she was in, so I could see her. These days, angry at the man called Ludovic who started it all, |I no longer sought out The Great Bear in the night sky,

Even worse, I was perpetually seething with anger at Philip for just being normal. This anger and my nocturnal habits drove an ever widening wedge between us. Where there had been kindness there was now rancour. Where there had been tolerance there was blame and disbelief. He saw me as crazy and incomprehensible. I saw him as hard and unfeeling….

wxx

Settling into The Maison D’Estella

2010-06-11T09:12:00.001+01:00

The town is unchanged. But then it’s only a year since we were here and the town has been here for two and a half thousand years, give or take.

The Maison d’Estella still has its star picked out in stones on one wall and - like the town of Agde - still shows its own layers of time, here so carefully uncovered by its owner Allan, who restored the house and brought up his family here.

We managed one blue sky’d fine day when we went along the estuary to the sea at Grau d’Agde where we walked along the wonderfully kitsch promenade, ate highly specialised ice creams and watched men who looked like pirates disentangling their fine nets from the detritus from the last trip. They could have the right bloodline. Real pirates were a feature of life here in the seventeenth century.

But the wind whistles round the courtyard and we keep protesting to our friend Pat, who is with us this year, that the weather has not been itself. The skies have been grey and lowering, T here has even been a patter of (warm…) rain. We have been looking out our wraps and jackets. We keep telling Pat how usually in June it is fine and bright. Honestly.

My friend Avril arrives on Wednesday to complete the party and tell us that it is raining cats and dogs in England.

But despite the lack of blue sky it’s all still wonderful here. Yesterday was the big market day. I sat on the corner and watched again the kaleidoscope of faces and types. Lots of children. I smile at a glorious cherub and he pulls his tongue out at me. I go with Debora and Sean to the food-market and am dazzled again by the colour and variety and freshness of the food laid out there with artistic precision and artisan pride..

A very handsome young man with dark curly hair selects large tomatoes one by one for Debora, who tells him she’s making stuffed tomatoes for our dinner. She buys courgette flowers which, she says, she will stuff with cheese and deep fry for starters.

There’s talk in the house of football and some concern that the referee for one of the England matches who has a questionable reputation. There is the problem of where to watch the matches significant to us – on the small French TV in the house or out at the Sports Bar down the street, among the French fans.

(I might have an eye to the football but really I’ll be reading Wolf Hall, a reward for ploughing through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with mounting disbelief.)

Things are looking up. Last night before dinner we walked along ancient basalt pavement of the quayside through the heavy scent of a fantastically blossoming jasmine. We went to the cafe on the Place de La Marine for a pastis. whose owner recognised us from last year and gave us a hug, pleased that we had returned.

Later we had the courgette flowers (stuffed with cheese, covered in light frothy batter) and the stuffed tomatoes. There was applause.

Exquisite.

Next – another walk to la Ganguette..

Away To France

2010-06-04T14:42:00.002+01:00

Away to France at 4am. Here are some not-quite poems that I wrote last time. There will be more this-time writing…

Agde Haiku

The sound of swallows

Clouds salmoning the morning

Coffee steams gently

A Child Stretching

A child stretching

Hauling up the base of her spine

Through her shoulders

Along her arms

Right down

To her fragile wrists

More cat

Than anything

Striding with Bread

They all do it -

Young, not so young

Smart, not so smart

Morning and afternoon

Carrying long loaves

From the artisan baker

Greek Frieze

Trim measured borders

Three figures under arches

Framed with rays of basalt light

Crudely carved and very potent

One is a draped

A pious creature turns to one side

His features all scratched in

A garland on his head

The next one is naked, all

voluptuous, curved breasts

and copious belly

She holds flowers

The third is naked too

But moves briskly to the left

Like a business man in a hurry

To get to work

The Painter

She walks with a cheetah's grace

Her face golden, her drawn back hair

The colour of gleaming putty

Her smile as ancient as the town

She says she paints while keeping shop

Splashes of deep ochre and Agde yellow -

Airy spaces, unfinished figures

Brief encounter

With colour and light.

(Photo Thank you Sean)

Crime on The Writing Game

2010-05-28T11:04:00.002+01:00

Novelist Anne Cleeves in conversation on THE WRITING GAME. “What do you need to be a writer? The biggest thing is concentration – because you need to create this fictitious world and if it’s not solid and real in your head then it’s as though you’re writing from memory, not imagination, and you can’t expect your reader to join you in that world..…
(About her success) There was the chance of being on Shetland one winter and people on Shetland encouraging me to write that first Shetland novel. And then having a wonderful editor who will get behind you in a good publishing house you need an advocate for your book within the house. Mine was wonderful. She did things like send the first chapter to all the reps. She really got behind it.”

I’m still of this big learning curve with my community programme The Writing Game but am making progress. I now know how to edit my own tapes that comprise the segments of the programme and spent yesterday afternoon with James Burrage of Bishop FM putting the segments together into one smooth flowing programme. (A new process which I’m just learning…) I glowed with pride when James nodded wisely and said the tapes were spot on. o now that one is put to bed ready to be broadcast next Tuesday 1st June at 7pm. Do listen if you are in the area or watch out here for the podcast.

It has been worth all the work because the production on this programme is much better. One improvement is that, on the advice of Al from Australia (he got hold of the podcast of Prog 1) I have not used music links. He was so right. Thank you Al. So my Crime Writing programme features conversations with Anne Cleeves the Gold Dagger Winning Crime Writer, Peter Walters: Wear Valley Writer Leader and a new Crime Novelist and we have Crime Novels of the Month from Glyn & Gillian Wales.

There is so much great stuff on there. Such great voices. Listen to Ann Cleeves dispensing fresh wisdom about her particular writing game. She's very generous and inclusive and has lots of really fine advice for new writers.

Part of my contribution was …

“‘Perhaps we all think we can write a story with a puzzle, a detective and a solution! Perhaps we could all have a stab at exploring the dark recessed of a criminal’s mind! Crime Fiction is the most widely read field of fiction and covers a whole range of styles from cosy whodunits to murder most gruesome. In this programme I will explore how working writers tackle this widely differing genre. Listen in on June 1st and share their world, and perhaps be inspired to have a go yourself…”

Happy listening. Happy writing.

Ah, Bluebells…

2010-05-21T23:48:00.004+01:00

In this household we know that the summer is on point when the bluebells arrive to strut their stuff our garden. We have this bank to the side of the house which, if left to its own devices, sprouts thousands of bluebells. In recent months/years it has rather been left to its own devices because of writing and other work. So up sprout those bluebells. Everywhere.

I read somewhere that when this happens it’s a sign of very ancient woodlands, even a thousand years old. As this house is in the middle of a small, busy town I think this is very precious.

G is setting up his very neat vegetable patch down at the bottom, with its small miracle of carrots, garlic, leek and cabbage, all now putting their tiny seedling heads above the parapet.

But it’s a bonus now, in going down there, to relish this mall miracle and be reminded that the large thousand year miracle of the bluebells is still with us.

Another bonus is witnessing A, the boy who likes chocolate role-playing a social realist Russian Poster of the 1930s…

Ah, bluebells…

Getting Off The Gear

2010-05-20T20:31:00.005+01:00

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up. Stephen King

‘….He himself was lately dodgy rather than just dodgy because the gear started to make him throw up and he had somehow heeded the Dire Warning from a guy called Cragan whom he met in the Black Bull.
Cragan – a strange, uneasy sort of man - turned out to be a doctor and it was he who got Tegger off the gear. Cragan convinced him that he didn’t have an addictive personality. He’d just been having a really bad time and was self-medicating. They only ever met in the Black Bull but in those months Tegger got himself clean. He’d even shown Cragan some of his writing. There was trust between them. That last time they met Cragan brought him a pile of novels - battered paperbacks - and said he was going away to America, where he’s got this job in a psychiatric hospital.
Tegger never saw Cragan again. He read Cragan’s books, line by line and as he read them it was as though he were in the Black Bull with Cragan, arguing the toss. In the stories were people he recognised. There were even people like himself…’
wx

Writing and Knowing

2010-05-17T15:33:00.002+01:00

Writing teachers invariably tell students, ‘Write about what you know.’ That’s, of course, what you have to do, but on the other hand, how do you know what you know until you’ve written it? Writing is knowing. E L Doctorow

‘As the plane taxis, charges, and then rises into the sky, I find that Aurelie is a businesswoman to the fingertips. The free way she talks about herself and asks me questions tells me she’s not English. It seems she’s a buyer for superior English shops, shipping all kinds of goods from France to England. ‘And you? What is it you do, Ruthie?’ she murmurs.
We finally dispose of the fact that I’m a writer and she’s never-heard-of-me-but-will-look-for-my-books-in-the-future, when the flight attendant comes with her trolley.
We have tea and – at Aurelie’s insistence – brandy. Then we sit back in our seats, assessing each other as people do. Aurelie is tall, anything between forty and sixty years old. She’s fine boned, with a delicate, intricate face. In her faintly accented English she begins to speak of her love for the English countryside and I find myself telling her about the Foxe’s house and my plan for writer’s retreat. ‘In the end,’ I say. ‘It didn’t quite come off.’
…
Wx

Text , Sound and Cultural Taboos.

2010-05-12T11:35:00.001+01:00

Putting your head above the parapet is often proscribed by powerful cultural taboos. This is particularly so in the regions of the English working class from where I emerge. The old childhood maxim of not ‘making a show’ of yourself or drawing attention to yourself can bite deep into quite mature personalities.

As a child and young woman I was achingly shy, didn’t like encountering strangers or being at a crowded gathering. In those early days, not ‘making a show’ of myself suited me fine. But it seems to me now that underneath the surface self of this watchful, tongue-tied girl, a raging exhibitionist was hiding.

It was hidden well. When I first went to college I lost my voice for a week before things normalised, But the inhibitions stayed. When I first started teaching I lost my voice for two weeks. I had this very boisterous class of twelve year olds in my first school. So I had to write QUIET!! in very large letters on the board quite a few times in those two weeks. They were great kids, though.

All that time, though, the exhibitionist was at work - writing articles, stories, mapping novels. It was a secret nobody knew about. Writing was a perfect medium for this shy tongue-tied girl. She could say, imagine, invent what she liked without drawing attention to herself.

But the fact is that in teaching it only works if you do draw attention to yourself. Teaching children taught me not to hide behind my shyness, to let the exhibitionist inside have her airing. She could be funny, daring, expressive. She could be herself. The children loved her, They didn’t know you shouldn’t put your head above the parapet or make a show of yourself so it was OK. That was a comfort.l

After that working with adults in large groups was a very big leap for this shy girl, But she’d learned in school that there was something in her that could really teach people, really do this thing, as long as she became her other, more exhibitionist self.

Then, when the books and stories began to be published it seemed that I was not just looking over the parapet , I’d leapt onto it. But now I had the book to protect me. Or the books. It was not really me, it was them. They were the things ‘making the show’. The shy, embarrassed person that is still me was only holding them.

And now we have the crazy situation of the community radio programme. This voice that repeatedly let me down in the early days is put to work, up there to be judged. I hear my voice on the tapes and think how strange it is, how thin and nervous I sound. But I’m pleased now that I’ve learned the basics of sound editing. Editing sound means that I can nip and tuck the excesses of the reluctant voice. Just as I nip and tuck the texts of my novels and the stories, making them their best selves, I can begin to nip and tuck my voice so its becomes its best self for the programme. Which best self it expresses, the shy girl or the exhibitionist, I’m not quite sure.

I’m loving the creativity of putting The Writing Game together, and talking to and listening to these great writers and readers. Still though, the shy girl and the exhibitionist live on in me side by side and I have to deal with them.

The learning curve continues.

The Joys of Cranking the Engine of a Novel

2010-05-09T23:51:00.009+01:00

Recently, for the programme, I’ve been asking other writers how they start a novel and how they get on with completing it. I’ve also spoken specifically about how I was inspired to write my own novel The Lavender House. So, as I’m beginning a new novel, I thought I’d tell you how this process works in my case.

All writers work in their own way. I think I must be a seasonal writer. For years now, in late Winter/ early Spring I will be puzzling, speculating, making false starts, writing sketches (short scenes that may/might be in the novel) waiting for characters to walk onto my roughly prepared stage, into my dreamed landscape, demanding to be named and styled.

Notes, labels, names, sketches, images and maps start to litter the walls of my little room. My computer becomes petalled with notes and reminders. The novel grows first in a kind of impressionistic collage. The big table is stacked with opened books post-it-ed and ticker-taped with wild notes to myself.

In real Spring ( when the bluebells at the bottom of the garden are out) I feel impelled to start to write, to get into gear properly with this job . The story is bubbling up from the depths of my imagination, throwing up sentences and paragraphs like fire and gas from a volcano.The characters are elbowing their way out of the wings into the spotlight, moving from monologue to dialogue. Occasionally there are shrieks. Let me out! Let me out!

This is when I’ll write novel-stuff in my notebook wherever I am – car, cafes, hotels, park bench - taking pages like stored treasure back to the little room for the painstaking and rewarding process of transcription. Sometimes I’m amazed how brilliant the scribble is. Sometimes I can’t make it out, so perhaps it was too brilliant for this world… It's a mad, mad phase. I become more and more excited, and as the Summer moves into place I am buzzing away, writing every day, living the narrative and not noticing too much around me.

Sometimes at this midpoint there is a worrying haitus. Is it really a novel? Am I kidding myself? Am I deluded into thinking I can do this very hard thing? (Some people label this the Writer’s Block. I think it’s just the imagination muscle screaming for a rest.) So I take a good breather then I go back to the beginning and move more slowly forward again, editing and writing as I go.

With the coming of Autumn the days draw in and the growing darkness helps me to focus more closely on the way the narrative works. These latter stages are just as demanding and interesting but are as much intellectual as imaginative. This is the time when the firecrackers that I set away back in early Spring have to take their place in a coherent and interesting story. And in the end the form has to be right, The facts have to be right.

I don’t at all see this part of the process as a chore – it’s the final careful, creative act in making the novel work. It's like taking a garment you’ve just designed and made, and pressing it with care to make it fit and elegant for anyone who chooses to put it on.

By the beginning of December, with Winter set in, the novel is complete and ready to go on, on its own hopeful journey.

But now, with this lovely new novel (called so far XXX), I’m just at the beginning of this journey. I relish the familiar delight and and excited tension threading through my body. Writing like this is a visceral thing. Of all the things I do, my novel is where I am completely myself – travelling alone and enjoying it.

(Pic tomorrow…)

Books on The Writing Game

2010-05-07T12:23:00.002+01:00

(Stop Press - Was invited by Norman Geras be profiled on his great weblog You might like to check it out Wx - http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/05/the-normblog-profile-346-wendy-robertson.html ) Now back to books…

One feature of my radio programme will be a focus on the delights of reading, and how writers can use their reading to inform their writing. In the May programme we featured: Books of The Month - chosen by Gillian Wales (Chartered Librarian & Ex Arts Centre manager) and Glyn Wales (Historian, ex Head teacher & University Lecture ).Their criteria are – Plot, Place, Character & Style

Their choices this month choice were Chris Mullin: A View From the Foothills. (Profile Books) ‘A political diary of a Labour MP from 1919 to May 2005. Reading it restores some of my (Glyn) faith in MPs for it shows a humanity, selflessness and humanity notably lacking in the present parliament. The book’s also witty and entertaining and throws light on the roles of a back bench MP, a home affairs committee member and Junior Foreign Office minister. Uniquely Mullin remained a minister despite his opposition to the Iraq war… A man of principle.’(Timely in this week where we are left with a hung parliament. W)
David Lodge Deaf Sentence (Penguin) Good on style and character. ‘Retired professor coping in a good humoured was with the vagaries of the post professional and eccentric family life Touches on themes of a recession his and an increasingly electronic world of 2009 2010 Britain, Recommended.’

William Boyd: Ordinary Thunderstorms. Chatto and Windus
‘Better in plot and place, we think, though perhaps not so good in style. A conspiracy novel – a sort of 39 Steps for the Naughties It is about a man’s loss of identity and flight from pursuers. The Thames from London to the sea mirrors the hero’s own journey into the depths. A good read.’
Margaret Forster Isa and May – Deals with the relevance of the grandmother in today’s society and the controversial question of nurture versus nature. Novel will keep you guessing right to the end, despite, we think, an occasional overload of information
Philip Pullman The Good Servant Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Pullman’s retelling of the gospels. Here Jesus and Christ are a pair of twins. Pullman destroys the gospel story and articulate his own disbelief in the myth of Jesus Christ Pullman believes in the democracy of reading and doesn’t think it’s the task of the author to tell the reader what the book means. He says he is in the “Once Upon A time business” not the “Message” business.’

And Some Books Mentioned during the Programme Avril Joy: The Sweet Track: Flambard Publishing In her interview Avril talks about the significance of place in her writing – in this book, the Somerset Levels

Wendy’s Novels I used my novel The Lavender House (Headline Book Publishing) to demonstrate the slender and exciting starting points when setting about writing a novel.

On Air and In Shock

2010-05-05T10:41:00.005+01:00

Well, the Writing Game went out last night on Bishop FM!!

It’s been the epitome of the cliché of a steep ‘learning curve’ in the last month, learning absolutely new skills and gathering together ideas and people to generate this one hour radio show for this community station.

The programme was now all on tape so a few of us gathered to listen to it in my sitting room over glasses of white wine. Writers Lisette Rebecca Grout and Geri Auton were there already to record their piece for a future programme, and Avril was there for moral support.

The programme before The Writing Game was a very jolly, chatty, drive-time music show presented by two lively guys who were obviously having a good time. Like me they are amateurs but they sound so much more confident and polished than I know I feel about all this.

Then my music (Dave Brubeck) and my show. It’s very scary. I do sound nervous but I think I get better during the hour. I hope I’ll get more laid back and natural with more experience. My commitment shows through, I think. The contributors – Avril, Eileen, Hilary, Debora, Gillian and Glyn – are all marvellous. Apart from Debora, it’s their first time too. I have to say I feel there’s good, interesting content in the programme for both readers and writers.

Despite the great efforts of the lovely James Burrage of Bishop FM the continuity is just a bit bumpy – all my fault and I know I’ll make it easier for James next time.

One thing that surprised me was the surge of the sound of the advertisements half way through – a big contrast to our restrained voices discussing books and things, I’d forgotten about the advertisements. But it was very reassuring in its own way.

It finally dawned on me that this was the real world. That my programme, my Writing Game was really out there. On the radio. On air. Crikey!

*****

People have been very kind – here are some reactions:

First from Station Manager Gillian Campbell

‘Oh, and the show was fabulous - thank you. I had a house full sitting
around the radio staring at it (that doesn't happen very often in my
house, trust me!)’

…and …

‘Fan mail already - wow, I'm very impressed - well done! ‘

From people who listened

‘Congratulations. The Writing Game was such a success - a brilliant new programme that will be a treat to look forward to each month.’
‘Congratulations! All your hard work paid off and The Writing Game comes across as well presented, interestingly structured and inspiring, The features were short enough to hold the listener’s interest and sufficiently varied as magazine-type programmes ought to be. Well done.’
‘Many congratulations on a good first programme.. Here's to many more.’

That’s it – here’s to some more. Crime next time. I’ll just go and put a cold compress on my head

Crime , Ann Cleeves, and The Art Of Interviewing

2010-05-03T12:20:00.002+01:00

On Saturday we drive across the moors to the Hexham Book Festival. PD James, whom we hear speak later, says she’s rarely up here but how wonderfully beautiful is the countryside her. Perhaps, she suggests, we don’t talk about it much because we didn’t want people coming up in hordes and spoiling it. Well deduced, PD.

We’re in time to witness this Empress of Crime Writing in conversation with the shrewd, flamboyant and generous VaL McDermid. This is no ordinary interview. It’s a merry, respectful conversation between two fellow professionals who know their art inside out. The generation gap between them is invisible. Their mutual admiration is evident. It’s all peculiarly intimate, given that they’re before a tiered audience of several hundred people.

The informality of the conversation is deceptive. It fosters a stream of insightful talk about the nature of the crime novel and its place in literature. It celebrates the diversity of the way writers work and think. It allows us to grasp something of the high professional commitment of this woman who has operated on top of her game through forty years who is till playing hard. She talks of just one more Dagliesh novel…

Then we have a rather surreal lunch at a Wetherspoons pub located in a rather lovely Art Deco venue that was once a cinema. (This reminds me of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction – ladies sweeping down staircases flaunting cigarettes in long holders, and all that.)

As well as sustaining the life of unusual buildings, these Wetherspoon pubs never fail to interest me in the diversity of their clientele – families equipped with drawing books, lone fathers with their children, brooding individuals, men in work clothes, blokes in groups, ladies who lunch lightly. It’s not Groucho’s, where like seeks like and where wannabes try on the Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s much better than that. More stimulating, So much more real life.

But the real purpose of my day is to interview crime writer Ann Cleeves for The Writing Game, my new community radio programme. Ann, Avril Joy and I sit in an upstairs room and talk about Ann’s writing life and how - after writing steadily for twenty years or so - she became an overnight success when she won the crime writer’s Oscar, the Golden Dagger Award and has not looked back since. Translations, film series have followed. One of several keys to her success has been the locating of the last series of detective novels on the Shetland Isles. She has a great sense of place. In fact she’s off to Fair isle tomorrow to celebrate - along with her agent, her publisher, her friends, fans and press - the launch Blue Lightening the last of her Shetland Quartet.

That will be some journey (13 hours from Aberdeen and then another boat trip…) and some party!

Our conversation is wide ranging and absorbing, reflecting, I think , the writer-to-writer style of the on-stage conversation this morning between Val McDermid and PD James. I know for certain that listeners to the programme with be fascinated with what Ann has to say about writing, crime, location and success.

Ann’s interview will go out in my second programme on Crime Fiction on Tuesday 1st June. I hope you get to listen to it.

PS I’m getting used to the little machine with the formidable broadcasting power, but on the way back over the moors I had a terrible panic that I'd not switched it on properly and the magic moment of this lovely interview was no more. When I got home and slotted it into my laptop, there is was, in all its verbal glory. Phew! I almost cried with relief. It was like one of those silly moments when you think you’ve left the iron on and your house is burning down …

Just to remind you:

The first programme will go out on Tuesday May 4^th at 7pm and after that will be available as a podcast to download from http://www.bishopfm.com/.
This first programme focuses on starting points in writing and features Avril Joy in her role of published author, and local writers Eileen Elgey and Hilary Smith.
Forthcoming programmes:
June 1st Crime Fiction Featuring Ann Cleeves
July 6th Children’s Fiction Featuring David Almond.

Just A Hole In The Ground?

2010-04-29T00:10:00.001+01:00

G has decided he’ll make a vegetable garden in the sunny corner on the bottom right hand side of our garden. It’s the only flat square patch on that side of the house which is really a long bank with a few large old trees, soon to be undercut with thousands of bluebells – a glorious sight for a week or so but a bit of a flopping- about mess afterwards. But worth it.

I read something somewhere which said that when bluebells pop up anywhere and everywhere like this – as they have here for thirty years - it’s a sign of ancient woodland. I love that thought.

When we arrived here all that time ago this bottom right hand corner actually was a vegetable patch. I remember in those early days we found a lady’s silver watch down there. (Lost again now…) But we were too busy writing and working to earn our living to grow vegetables and the corner became overgrown. I do remember planting some herbs down there once. My gardening - like most things then and now - happened in my head rather than on the ground. I dream a very good garden just like I dream a very good dinner.

So G, armed with two reference books and tips from his Auntie Susan who is a brilliant gardener, got down to digging and clearing this patch,, doing a brilliant job. Then one day there is this long whistle and G shouted up the bank, ‘Come and see! Come and see this!’

‘This’ is a yard deep hole in the ground. In the bottom of the hole is a terra cotta drain. G has just pulled off a long capping stone.

He tells me that this is a Victorian water pipe, a drain to lead the water down the bank and prevent it from being a swamp.

On the other side of the boundary wall is the filled-in stone arch of a drinking trough which this pipe must have lead to. The narrow road beyond it was once the main road through this small town. The stream, now piped underground, must have fallen down this slope before this house and the other houses in the road were built a hundred and forty years ago.

Before our road existed this area was a flattish plateau called a Garth, owned by the Dean and Chapter – that is the Bishop Of Durham. G knows all of this because for his dissertation for his history degree he researched the land, the houses and the people who eventually lived in these streets after 1860;. It’s a fascinating study.

Now we think there must have been a stream meandering across this land. And probably a well. One clue to this is that our house has always had Springwell in its name. We didn’t really know why, till now. As we are talking we look down at the drain and it has filled up with a good trickle of water. The stream is still running. – well, trickling! This feels like magic. It’s so touching that I could cry. G leans down and touches the pipe and says with a craftsman’s reverence,

‘I was thinking that the last person who touched this was the guy who put it in some workman in the 1860s.’ So many levels of time are sitting in the air around us. We have always shared that wonder.

When everyone – including neighbour Terry who took these pictures - had actually witnessed this marvellous hole in the ground, G rebuilt the stone slab and tile super-structure of the drain and filled in the hole.

I looked up the hill and realised that the stream must have originally flowed through my kitchen. Still running water, then.

We’d acted as good archaeologists and documented the find (see Terry’s pictures here…) and replaced it as we found it. The plot is now beautifully dug, raked over and criss-crossed with stamped-down paths to make six small beds. The potatoes are in, as are the garlic and carrots. There are more plantings to follow.

I think they’ll crop well. They’ll certainly never be short of water.

Writing, Planning, and The Tentacled Monster

2010-04-24T23:53:00.003+01:00

‘Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.’ Goya.

Writing novels is both a simple and a very complex process.

On the one hand I just sit down and write and write and write - and write - until the words on the page grow into the story that - in some ghostly pre-knowledge – I know it always was. This organic model is very attractive – it implies that we writers are extraordinary vessels for a pre-existing story, conduits that act to give form to random elements of our subconscious.

This makes great sense to me.

On the other hand my novel can become a wild creature. It can grow tentacles and flail about. It can grow wings and fly. It can spurt legs and go clumping down the road away from me. For a time this is exhilarating, exciting. Fantastic.

Again, this makes sense to me.

Then there comes a day my monstrous story gets wild, too wild to hold onto. I have to rein it in, to give it form, to shape it up. This process, done well, can have its own more intellectualised creative charge, profiting from the conscious rather than the unconscious mind.

Each time I ask myself how is it possible to pull this material into a readable state without losing the original organic energy?

One name for this process is planning. The very word sounds deadening, institutionalised doesn’t it? Like forcing the tentacled, winged, heavy footed creature into a rectangular box. But there comes a time that I must think of cause, consequence and shape, and make the novel do its work to transform the organic material into a coherent form. This is the other, necessary side of the creative coin that spins, eventually, into a publishable novel.

For me this more conscious planning happens in stages as the whole story evolves. Inside these stages there have to be open cycles of organic speculation, feeling, risk-taking. But it is the planning that takes the story forward.

But I’m becoming aware that when one has written quite a few novels, as I have, there’s the real danger that the planning itself may have become too embedded in the subconscious and can stifle the organic energy of the first writing. The creature’s wings are clipped and the tentacles not allowed to flail.

So I've made a decision to cultivate the wildness, the riskiness again, to let the creature rage, to grow tentacles and wings. And fly.

So far, so very exciting

Thought You Might Like To See The Press Release …

2010-04-24T15:02:00.003+01:00

Been working hard on this project for the last month so I thought you’d like to see -

THE PRESS RELEASE!

The Writing Game

with Wendy Robertson

Bishop FM Community Radio

Author Wendy Robertson is embarking on an exciting new venture – a monthly, hour long, radio programme aimed at both writers and readers, and broadcast on community radio Bishop FM 105.9

Wendy’s programme will feature discussions and interviews about all aspects of the writing process which will be of interest to both aspiring and established writers and to readers. During the programme Wendy will give her informed take on the world of writing and its craft – The Writing Game. As well as this The Writing Game will feature conversation with authors of national standing and will act as a showcase for a wide range of new, unpublished writers.

Joining Wendy as regular contributors will be Avril Joy, Gillian and Glynn Wales presenting their Books of the Month selections, Theresa Robertson carrying the banner for children’s books,. and Debora Robertson who will have spot talking about quality food writing and journalism.

The first programme will go out on Tuesday May 4^th at 7pm and after that will be available as a podcast to download from http://www.bishopfm.com/. This first programme focuses on starting points in writing and features Avril Joy in her role of published author, and local writers Eileen Elgey and Hilary Smith.

Forthcoming programmes will feature conversations with:

· Crime writer Ann Cleeves, winner of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award

· Internationally acclaimed David Almond, winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Anderson Medal, the world’s most prestigious prize in children’s literature

‘Our intention is that the programme will celebrate and showcase the fact that the north east of England is an acknowledged hotbed of literary talent.’ Wendy Robertson

What do you think???

Congrats to Grazia Magazine

2010-04-18T13:28:00.004+01:00

I rather like Grazia Magazine. I’m told its informal category is ‘News and Shoes’ which fits very well. It is a glossy weekly magazine that’s not really glossy. (It has a pleasing matt finish.) It cites celebrity but does not lean back on it. It highlights style and beauty without being slavish. Most importantly to me, it highlights significant public issues without being preachy or didactic.

Last week, amid the shoes and scandal, was a very good piece focusing on women candidates of all parties who are standing in the forthcoming election. These are women who don’t just sound off about subjects; they step up to the mark in their high heels and say their piece. They are young and savvy and all have their own particular ambitions and sense of their potential for power. They don’t want to be anyone’s babes or beauties. They don’t want to be trophy female politicians. They want to be politicians and they feel they can make a difference.

Recent research among young women indicates that when asked to name women in politics, they name Mr Cameron’s wife or Mr Brown’s wife. Politics by association rules. It is no coincidence that these wives/women are bright and well turned out and attractive role-models for young women of this generation.

The inability of these young women to name an actual woman MP could be down to the fact that as a group, women MPs are on the tidy side of dowdy and often sound defensive, even when what they say makes sense. Their earnestness comes over as uncertainty and lack of authority. (Unlike the tousled, charismatic ex MP Shirley Williams who is a delight when she turns up on something like Question Time and exudes knowledge and authority. And smiles. The other exception was the charismatic equally tousled late lamented Mo Mowlam.)

I hope that this collection of potential female MPs produces some sound parliamentarians who don’t dowd down like the current crop and don’t have their bright ideas dumbed down by the processes of a male dominated parliament.

Articles like this in popular women’s magazines are a great source of informed insight for young women who can’t be doing with the effort of burrowing through the pages of The Guardian or The Telegraph for their political education. The are intelligent and can enjoy their political education alongside the latest shoes and celebrity fairy stories.

Why not? I say.

One proviso - I wish Grazia had carried a coverline on its front about this excellent article. You’ve got this level of credibility, so flaunt it…

Auntie Mim and Her Talent With Bullets

2010-04-15T09:55:00.001+01:00

Auntie Mim’s name was really Alice but throughout her life she was known as Mim. They said it was because as a small child she would say me-mim-me a lot. She got a lot of attention.

Like all in our family she was fascinated by words. Her brother, my father, wrote wonderful letters and read and did crossroads. My brother not only did crosswords but made them as well. My sister has written and was a keen cross-worder until seduced by Sudoku. I write. My daughter and son write and love words. And so- on …

In the present day this blog is part of contemporary word-play, as is Twitter, which I have just begun to ‘play’. For the uninitiated this involves writing something in 140 characters or fewer and posting it (see sidebar here). Then anyone who reads it can respond to it in 140 characters or fewer. And so on. Anyone can respond to anyone.

They are all out there. There is a lot of verbal flotsam and jetsam floating about. But the ones I enjoy are cryptic, punchy, imaginative, speculative, fluid, quick. It’s amazing what you can get into 140 characters (ie letters, not words…)

Back in Auntie Mim’s day she was obsessed with this thing called Bullets. I can remember her hunched over a competition in either the People or the News Chronicle where you created cryptic phrases of under so many letters (can’t remember whether it was 140 but it was tight) creating cryptic phrases for the ‘Bullets’ competition and sending them away. She won prizes now and then.

In recent days, getting to grips with Twitter, my Auntie Mim came to mind for the first time in some years. It occurred to me that she would have loved the mental gymnastics of Twitter but would have been disappointed, I think, that there were no money prizes involved.

I thought you might be entertained by a few of the tweets cooked up by me in response to those of others. The other people are highlighted if you want to know what they said…

@paulmagrs Friendly Whitby ghosts mean I can be there in spirit, writing.

@nwndirector Alnwick Castle water falls beat all earthly dress, even Phillipa's

@daneetsteffens Truth is only the first step to understanding perhaps. Or understanding is a precondition for truth, more likely.

@normblog An old friend of mine had a party to decorate her straw coffin, thus introducing meaning to her funeral - but not yet...

about @Adelica Politicians wives wheeled out to order, in the old tradition of the vicar's wife or the wife of that old devil at the manor?

I have to say, as a word-junkie, Twittering is fun. As I say, Auntie Mim would have loved it.