The Closing Ceremony

So we've reached the end of the Olympic Games, and I'm sitting in Spitalfields Market to watch the closing ceremony. We've all been affected by having the Games in dear old London. For one thing, 70,000 of us have been volunteers, people of all ages and backgrounds who gave freely, cheerfully and with great common sense (that least common of gifts).

 I've been enchanted by the 'ribbon of gold' wild flower park, which snakes through the Lee Valley, where I was born. We hope it will leave a lasting legacy. Time will tell whether the Olympic Stadium will do for the East End what Docklands did for the Port of London, i.e. push out the local people and replace them with Merchant Bankers. Please the Good Lord that in ten years' time the East End of London hasn't reverted to some sort of graveyard for the Olympic legacy that never was.

The secret behind the Games was the preparation - I couldn't help noticing. It applied to the organisers, the volunteers, the children who didn't even tell their parents their great secret - that they, not a famous sports celebrity, were going to light the cauldron in the stadium, and most of all the athletes.

So anyway now I'm looking at a synopsis for my W.I.P. Time was when I used to bash out the synopsis after I'd finished a story. Now I'm going to have a go at preparing it before I've started.

A good synopsis should mimic the novel's tone, according to Sarah Domet (90 Days To Your Novel). For example if the novel is fast-paced and exciting, the synopsis should be the same. If the novel is full of mystery, yes, the synopsis should be too.  I've gathered that you must not leave out major plot points, and especially, the resolution.  Pay attention to detail, hone, edit and re-edit. Don't stop, not until that finished story's in your hand and it's really, really time to go home. And right now, it's really, really time to go home. I close the notebook and head for the station.

The Bitter End

So, day 3 of my impromptu writing workshop.  Still Diamond Jubilee weekend, so I gravitate to Buckingham Palace, and follow a detachment of gorgeous police horses. Once more, there are punters who camped out all night, desperate to reserve a place for the concert this evening.

For me, I'm stalking the final third of my Thomas Tarling novel, and I lap up the atmosphere, which is a bit akin to that of the fairground. The rain has been torrential in the night, the St John Ambulance work through the crowd dispensing first aid and hot drinks. Me, I'm surviving on porridge - I've discovered what the Scots have known for centuries;

• it's nourishing
• it's cheap 
• it's great for those on a diet.

My first task is to list the final scenes by bullet point, and then to mirror the first day's work by jotting twenty 'last lines'.
I can't believe I never thought of this 'twenty first lines, twenty last lines' idea before. In fact, I didn't think it up, I got it from Sarah Domet's book The 90 Day Novel. It's a seriously searching exercise. I'm finding this business of ending the novel so hard. But I suppose everyone does.

Every writer I know has trouble writing - Joseph Heller

You can find Buckingham Palace here

Souvenir sellers flock to Buckingham Palace

Spirit of Summer Set Free

So, four days' creativity, no interruptions! Must get the plot for my 19th century novel down in scene-by-scene form. Britain is in the grip of a once-in-a-lifetime public holiday to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of HM the Queen; ideal opportunity for writers like me to shake off the cobwebs and get out on the streets.

Began with bed & breakfast in the seaside town of Margate. Ye Gods, Margate Old Town serves the largest breakfasts in the world. Hugely full but content, I sit down at my window overlooking the bay, to focus on my story's timeline. It's become a monster, like one of those dogs that has to have counselling because it's become pack leader in charge of the human family.

I tell it to sit, nicely, and divide it into the classic three parts: beginning, middle and end. Traditional model? Boring? Hope not. We expect to know where a novel begins.

 I come up with 20 first lines, each supposed to set the scene for my hero's knife-edge journey through the book. 'Thomas scraped the horse-shit from his coat', maybe not. 'His lawyer was drunk again, and in the gutter,' perhaps. 'He heard the elephant's ankle bells, and dragged his brief from the gutter,' now I'm getting there.

Not aiming for perfection yet - that can come later. Just brainstorming the different ways I can get an over-view. It's a waiting game, sitting it out on the cliff-tops of the imagination. Since the seagulls are screaming overhead, and I've had absolutely no exercise since I got here, decide to follow take the stiff climb to the old castle, for 'Jack in the Green'.

I join the crowds, albeit nervously, for this most traditional of ceremonies - the day the Spirit of Summer is set free. Morris Dancers everywhere.

Challenge myself to jot down at least five different scenes, with summaries. They might be included in the first act. They might not. The point at this stage is get a body of material down, being patient, stalking the tale. I look up, and see that Jack, the old green man of winter, is about to reach a bloody end.

Finally, the summoning. New life is on its way.

Like the Morris Dancers in Margate, I saved the summoning until everything was ready. On the train journey back to London I have two hours, one ham sandwich and three cappuccinos' worth of energy in which to explore my main man, Thomas Tarling, and his desperate bid to escape the law.

You can find Margate here:

 

http://www.margateoldtown.co.uk/

Passion on Good Friday

Been working every hour of the day on setting this week. I'm fascinated by the way mood in a story can be implied by the setting - that includes the season, the weather, the wildlife, the antics of the general public. As a Londoner born and bred, I love to be out and about in my beautiful, diverse city. It's like a character itself, with its many moods and changes. Today, on Good Friday, Trafalgar Square was sombre

Passion of the Christ, Trafalgar Square

and grey, as thousands gathered around Nelson's Column to watch a bloody but beautifully acted Passion of the Christ. It was a great moment to make notes for the lowest scenes in my current novel - the haunting, the despair, the bits where Thomas can see no way out.

It seems barely a couple of weeks, in fact it is barely a couple of weeks, since the same square was bright and full of laughter for Chinese New Year. On that occasion, too, I took my notebook and tried  to etch the details on my

Chines New Year Celebrations, Trafalgar Square

mind for use in some fictional scene or other. I think setting can be a brilliant way of implying everything without overstating it - remember Charles Dickens' character Miss Haversham and that house, all neglected and wild, just like the poor lady's mind?

The Fountains, Trafalgar Square

When summer comes, it'll be the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The crowds will come again but the fountains of Trafalgar Square will be a bright oasis in the heat.  It'll be a great space for writers like me to do timed writing exercises, make lists and dream of the happy ending - if I decide to let my Thomas Tarling have one, that is.

You can find Trafalgar Square here

Blowing Life into A Story

I've been working on the characters I need for my second novel. When I started my first book I knew nothing about planning a novel so I just launched in and typed away until I ran out of steam (around one and a half chapters in). I didn't want to be one of those ghastly people who say, at every social gathering, 'I've got one and a half chapters in my desk drawer but of course I've no time to finish them' so I joined a writing group.

One of the first things they taught me was how to make a character chart - by taking 10 or so names, and writing each at the head of a long column in your notebook. If, like me, you're comfortable with spreadsheets, then do it electronically. Then, you start to fill in the columns with names, characteristics, relationship to the others, jobs, and so forth. It's vital that you have this material noted down in order to avoid those awful mistakes, halfway through a novel or maybe in your third, when the blue-eyed boy becomes a brown-eyed charmer.

Some of my first characters had jobs I've never done or am likely to do, but I researched by reading first and then going to visit the places they might have worked. In order to find out about glassblowing, I went, one freezing cold morning, to watch how it was done. I chose a studio, Bath Aqua Glass, where glassblowing is still carried out in the traditional manner, albeit with the safety equipment my characters would not have had in 1826.

Once I got into the studio and felt the heat of the glasshouse fires and the laughter and jokes of the men, I realised that I did have a stock of memories to give colour to my novel.

My own Grandfather was a surgical instrument maker, and I well remember him coming home from the forge, and what his hands were like, and what he ate, and his tales of the doings there. He had a passion for his work, and a joy in the artistry of it, which I saw again in the faces of the men in Bath. They told me about the history, and the dangers, and that arsenic oxide smells like coconut. This is how the novel has its first quickening, and shows the first tender signs of life.

Fill your paper with the writings of your heart - William Wordsworth

You can find Bath Aqua Glass here

Public Rage, Secret Agendas

So, we're all getting hot under the collar about the bankers' bonuses which are, apparently, 'not even enough to brag about in a coffee bar'. You could buy five coffee bars of the kind I frequent for one banker's bonus, only we call them cafes out here.

Still, it's been a good week - lost 3lbs now, still amazed that Cheesy Wotsits are only 3 points but a nice piece of apple pie is 7. Where's the justice in that, eh?

Extended my work on plot to include 'setting' and this week I've been learning all about the secret agenda. Tried this exercise in which you describe a garden shed as seen by a man who's just lost his son in the war. You don't mention the son, or the war. Let it roll around in my subconscious while prowling about London until I came upon Covent Garden, the setting of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Eliza Doolittle - now there was a girl with a secret agenda.

I think of my almost-finished WIP, the one about the glassblower, and how those men slaved for fourteen hours a day, and died from the chemicals that pounded into their lungs. What must it have taken to get out, with a wife and six little uns in tow? Secret agenda.

Stars Bright, Wikipedia Dim

So Wikipedia has gone dark but most of Britain are watching the stars with dishy Professor Brian Cox in any case. Meanwhile I've lost a pound on my Weightwatchers' diet, progressed to drinking two bottles of water a day and made pleasing progress with my outlining. I never realised it could be like this - usually I'm wrestling with the plot and the prose at one and the same time, and the plot points get all lost in the 80,000 words minimum it takes to write a novel.

I've been able to construct my plot using real details from actual crimes, as it's a mystery. That's stage 1. Then, of course, I'll be letting the creative voice take over, and the real work of fiction will begin - the true life crimes are just a beginning point. To use a real-life crime only barely disguised, especially when the many victims, including the family and friends of the deceased, are still alive - very poor, in my opinion.

Blue Monday

The Nag's Head on Blue Monday, The Most Depressing Day of the Year

Today is 'Blue Monday' - supposedly the most depressing day of the year. Strange, because we had excellent meeting in the back room of The Nag's Head.

Amazing what four writers, who pay critical attention to one another's manuscripts, add a dash of love and a jolly good helping of freshly baked flat-breads and olives can achieve.

After years of being a pantser writer - ie one who launches in and wrestles a plot out of the skin of their pants - I've decided to try OUTLINING my next novel before I write it. Possible ways of outlining, so I gather, are the 'Structure Plus', the 'Signpost', the 'Notecard', the 'Spreadsheet' and the 'Flowchart'.

Decided to try the Spreadsheet because I ploughed through a Learn Direct course on spreadsheets - might as well put it to use. Always did hate Flowcharts. Returned home, counted Weightwatcher points - how can a Chai Latte possibly be ELEVEN points?

Doing It Like Priestley

Just got back from the Faversham Hops Festival - a glorious, English end to the summer indeed. Faversham is a lovely old town in the heart of the 'Garden of England', the county of Kent, and it took no more than a couple of hours to get there on a red London bus. To while away the journey I revisited J. B. Priestly's Good Companions, which I'd downloaded to my for the purpose.

The Good Companions has a fascinating history since Priestly wrote it at a time when he was worn down with tragedy - the effects of the First World War, the death of his young and beautiful wife from cancer and the loss of his Father, tragically early at the age of 56. A single dad, trying desperately to pay the bills and bring up two daughters alone, Priestly would not have been able to take the time out to write the book were it not for the supreme generosity of his friend Walpole. Walpole, knowing that Priestly would be too proud to accept a gift of a year's salary, although he was wealthy enough to give it, instead suggested they collaborate on a book. Priestly agreed, and on these terms, Walpole donated his share of the royalties as a gift so that The Good Companions could be written.

'The Good Companions' turned out to be the book that Priestly called 'the only one I could have written at the time'. He quite literally wrote himself out of misery, with this charming tale that breaks all the publishers' rules - much too long, multiple protagonists, long rambling plot, feel-good ending. Incidentally, Priestly's knowledge of the forgotten corners of England during the Great Depression of the 1930s, all to familiar in our current credit crisis, shines through.

I love it.

Thoroughly unflattering but an essential part of the day...

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break 

  William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew

 

Banbury Cross

Superb day out in Banbury. This charming market town was made famous in an old English nursery rhyme:

Ride a cock horse
To Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady
Upon a white horse.
Rings on her fingers
And bells on her toes
She shall have music
Wherever she goes

The cock horse was a strong horse, perhaps a bit like one of these beautiful fellows. He would have been harnessed to one's carriage when it needed extra help to pull it up a steep hill, and then unharnessed at the top, to return to his bag of hay until the next carriage came along.

After staring up at the decorated stone cross which soars above the town, I descended to the water's edge for the canal boat festival.

The canal was packed out with local people and visitors, all enjoying the hottest October day since records began, hotter than Barcelona and New York.

I really want to keep the creative well stocked because I'm working so hard on two novels at different stages and I'm in desperate danger of disappearing somewhere in the swamp of their unresolved plots. Decided to try daily Haiku. I got this idea when I was studying for my degree with the Open University. The point of the haiki is to get daily practice at focussing on a single creative thought.

Banbury Canal Day
Barges festooned with flowers
Floating in the sun

Craft One Ceremony

I've got to admit, I love to work through a self-development book.  Maybe it's the Virgo in me, but writers like Julia Cameron and Eric Maisel have been my creative friends, available at the flick of a page, ever since I realised that I wanted to write.  So, today, Eric Maisel says 'Craft One Ceremony'. A creative soul needs a moment's safety at the dawn and the close of the day; just reflecting, just being. So anyway I went to Neal's Yard in London's West End, in search of an exotic tea, Japanese perhaps, to drink for my tea ceremony each morning. My journey past the docks took me past the Port of London, once the busiest in the world for tea clippers. I thought of the hundreds of masts and spars that would have been there, barely less than a few generations past. 'Who needs anything different,' I thought. Back home as I pour my very British cuppa, I think of my hero and his struggle to make a living in the docks, like his ancestors and mine. I raise my mug to their tenacity, their laughter, their courage in times of war and peace. That's ceremony enough.

Creative Integrity - Last Stand or Last Breath?

Good grief, what a week we've had here in London.  On the one hand, the final section of the last ever Harry Potter film premiered to riotous but peaceful success in theatre land. Fans young and not so young swarmed into the 'West End' of the city. They dressed up, they sat on the lions in Trafalgar Square and generally made no trouble at all.

On the other, Wapping Station stands deserted in the wake of the 'News of the World' phone hacking scandal which grew daily. The senior staff were declared to be the 'No. 1 Priority', while 200 or so clerical  and portering staff in the paper's offices in Wapping lost their employment. Wapping's not a rich part of London - at one time it was the site of the great London shipping trade. Fortunes were made from trade and export then, but not by the local people. They're not likely to prosper out of the demise of a newspaper empire either.

That's before we even start to consider the victims of this alleged atrocity - the families of murdered children, bereaved parents of serving soldiers, the Royal family - how the list grows and grows. Well, the truth pf it all will come out sooner or later.

It is, of course, easy to be sanctimonious after the event, and perhaps this is the moment to take stock, and ask if there's anything I am currently doing, or paying lip service to, 'because everyone else does.'

One thing I do remember is that J. K. Rowling, a decade or so ago, was ridiculed by some of the very journalists who now have time on their hands.  Rowling's crime? She stuck to her guns about what she would, and would not, put in her books. She was choosy about sponsors, about merchandising, caring more about the content of young minds than about money.  Yet what riches it brought her, in the end.

Jennifer Pittam is a winner of Coast to Coast Writing Competition and is working on her second novel.

Decided to Write a Novel

Decided to start writing my first novel after years of thinking that 'I would, if I had time.' I want to write the story of my great-grandfather, reputedly a gypsy barenuckle boxer. I've got a new computer of my own - a little laptop from Currys. Couldn't even work the computer, never mind produce any writing on it. I use a mouse on the computer at work but on this laptop you have to get used to a weird little square that shoots the mouse all over the screen. Anyway, I did get a page done. It was awful prose. Just like something one did at school, when Mr. Jacobs wrote 'good effort, Jennifer, but you need to research the early nineteenth century more thoroughly.' Went to bed, rather depressed. No wonder so many people say 'I would, if I had time.'

The Lost Art Graveyard

'I'd like you to write a 2,500 word autobiography,' says Eric Maisel. The wind howls outside and the rain lashes down. 'I can't,' I think. 'I won't,' my mind shouts. I can't penetrate that whirling bundle of protective noise - the one that every artist uses to hide the creative centre of the soul. Tentatively, I put down a note about my first creative experiences, with my wax crayons in the back garden at Woodford Green. I remember a picture on the wall of our little Victorian School, and my astonishment when I noticed it was mine. I remember a week in the Scottish Highlands, painting for dear life. I remember sadness, the years when my art seemed like a love lost forever. I remember when I caught a glimpse of it again, a brief flash in the graveyard. I stand in the graveyard. It's not so scary. People picnic here in the summer. They bring their babies, their weddings and their loved ones at the last.The rain has stopped, the wind pauses. I beckon to Lost Art. I have plenty of time.

Jennifer Pittam is a winner of Coast-to-Coast Writing competition and is currently working on her first novel, 'Face The Champion'.

With Anne in the Lucas Arms

Today I attended a writing class with Anne Aylor in the Lucas Arms, an old pub not far from Kings Cross Station. The class was a precious 'time in' with the artist soul. We wrote upstairs, lulled by the creaking pub sign and the smell of burning sage. Anne, a gifted novelist, has a talent for nurturing the embryo writer in others. For a precious day I found myself once more with Thomas Tarling, his charming and courageous woman Mary and the enigmatic leader of the fair, Zackariah Scarrott. 'One's religion,' said J.M. Barrie, is 'whatever one is most interested in'. Today, the religion of the practising writer was extended by a few more hours, in a London pub with the rain beating down on the streets outside.

Out on the Common with Wild Mind

Remembrance Sunday has gone and now we are deep into Autumn. The trees in London’s forests and parks have turned red and the air is crisp as I trot across the Common to the gym. I am deep in thought as I struggle across frost-encrusted grass and prickly gorse, for I am struggling with my novel at present. Everything in me wants to stay at home and sit by the laptop, battling. Yet, this is the worst thing I could do. Sometimes you have to walk away from your writing to walk deep into the heart of what you’re trying to say. As I come out from behind a tree I startle a deer – a magnificent stag. Because I am thinking about my hero Thomas and his battle to find himself, I’m not really looking where I’m going. I just blundered into his territory, a great, flat-footed human, not looking, not thinking. I must have come between the stag and his ladies, for he stands his ground and barks at me. This is dangerous stuff, potentially, but I don’t even notice because I am deep in the untamed, the wild mind. We look at each other. I see something in him, something that can never be broken. He bounds away. I run the last ten minutes to the gym.

Jennifer Pittam is a guest blogger on Eric Maisel's 'Living Creatively'website. Follow her column, 'London Calling': http://ericmaisel.blogspot.com/

I Remember Very Well...

Well! I've come first in the Coast to Coast writing competition, October 2008. My short story, 'I Remember Very Well' was written for Armistice Day, and it was a real boost to have this little bit of success. It's true that success in anything is a series of tiny little efforts, one after the other. Some of them aren't easy. In fact, some of them aren't welcome. The Remembrance Day events were beautifully done this year - the lines of soldiers straight, the brass on the uniforms sparkling in the sun and entire new generations marching or mourning in silence. Some came to remember loved ones who died in Iraq, and some to honour a grandfather or great-uncle lost in one of the world wars. Rows of men and women, people who had to take one little step after the other, mourning a loved one. In bereavement as in writing, in sadness as in joy, it's one step at a time.

Housman's Bookshop

This week I joined a new writers' circle, which meets in the bowels of Housman's Bookshop in Central London. The place is unheated and unbelievably cold even in this rather mild winter. As we huddled around a single bar electric fire I was, I admit, re-connected to the pre-centrally heated days of my childhood. Yet, there is something very focussing about sitting in semi darkness, coat pulled around your shoulders, munching custard creams and reading a chapter from your novel. When I listed to the others' stories, focussing a hundred percent because after all, what else can you do in semi darkness, I found myself utterly captivated by the different worlds they led me into. Call me old fashioned, but I wondered whether we've lost something precious, sitting here in the 21st century, enjoying luxuries our ancestors would have associated with the idle rich. Maybe I've turned into my mother after all.