Remember what I said yesterday about how you sometimes need a break? Well, I'm taking a few days off to relax with the family and gather my strength for the coming term.
I'm looking forward to getting on with some more writing when I get back - I have lots of ideas for articles - but I'm very relieved to be escaping the grand de-clutter for a few days!
I've made a lot of progress, but there's still quite a lot to do and I'm getting to the stage where I'm started to lose things that I had right under my nose a couple of days ago. I think that means I need a break. I need to say 'Stop! Breathe! Rest! Clear your head!'
If you're short of things to read, you could log on to Triond.com and call up my Profile page which will link you to lots of other pieces that I've written. Of course, there is quite a sizeable back catalogue on Blogger too, so do read some pieces I wrote earlier, if you haven't already done so.
Normal blogging service will be resumed on Monday 18th August. Till then, goodbye and take care...
Gale
Friday, 8 August 2008
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Do You Need a Rest from Your Writing?
It's something that often happens when we've been working intensively on a project or struggling to meet a dealine - once the pressure's off, we slump, our brain seems to close down, and we feel as if we're incapable of doing anything. How can we manage to write books, create poems, finish a thesis ever again? Even the thought of it makes us feel exhausted.
The truth is that sometimes we just deplete our energy reserves and we need to have a rest and build them up again before we attempt anything else. This applies especially if we've been involved in a creative endeavour in which we have been digging deep and giving of ourselves, not just going through the motions of showing up at work every day and putting in a set number of hours.
So what are we to do if we find ourselves in that position, feeling we ought to be writing, but not having the physical, emotional and mental energy to do it? Listen to our bodies, give ourselves time and space to recover. Do something undemanding, reduce the amount of stimulation we are exposed to or do something which is a complete change.
Today I watched a one-off drama I'd recorded some months ago called The Good Samaritan. It was light-hearted, entertaining, undemanding, and very, very funny. It was just what I needed after a hard week of de-cluttering and filing papers.
You might like to go for a walk or a swim or do some yoga. Go and visit some friends you haven't seen for a while. Do something with your hands, like making cards or jewellery. Anything to help your body and mind make the shift from the high octane gear that you've been operating in to a more gentle, restorative frame of mind.
So if you feel you need it, have a rest - you'll be glad you did.
The truth is that sometimes we just deplete our energy reserves and we need to have a rest and build them up again before we attempt anything else. This applies especially if we've been involved in a creative endeavour in which we have been digging deep and giving of ourselves, not just going through the motions of showing up at work every day and putting in a set number of hours.
So what are we to do if we find ourselves in that position, feeling we ought to be writing, but not having the physical, emotional and mental energy to do it? Listen to our bodies, give ourselves time and space to recover. Do something undemanding, reduce the amount of stimulation we are exposed to or do something which is a complete change.
Today I watched a one-off drama I'd recorded some months ago called The Good Samaritan. It was light-hearted, entertaining, undemanding, and very, very funny. It was just what I needed after a hard week of de-cluttering and filing papers.
You might like to go for a walk or a swim or do some yoga. Go and visit some friends you haven't seen for a while. Do something with your hands, like making cards or jewellery. Anything to help your body and mind make the shift from the high octane gear that you've been operating in to a more gentle, restorative frame of mind.
So if you feel you need it, have a rest - you'll be glad you did.
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
Develop as a Writer - Become Curious
I mentioned yesterday that it's good to be curious when you meet people and helpful to ask them about their work. But actually, it's good for writers to be curious about all sorts of things. That's surely one of the defining attributes of a writer, curiosity, nosiness, a desire to know about things and find out about how people think.
You can be curious in any situation at any time. Take, for instance, a simple walk round the streets where you live. There are all sorts of things to notice and observe, from the flowers in the gardens to ladybirds on leaves, people's various sort of cars, alterations or extensions they have made to their houses, their style of furnishing, whether their houses and gardens are well cared for.
Observe and ask yourself why things are so. For example, if you are on a street of beautiful gardens and there is one house which looks really out of place because the paintwork is scruffy and the garden is overgrown, ask yourself why it might be. Who lives in a house like that?
Could it be someone who is elderly, no longer up to the physical tasks required in looking after a home? Could it be someone who has had to leave the country in a hurry and hasn't been able to sell their house? Could it be a young single parent struggling to look after sickly, premature triplets?
When you finish your walk, make notes about what you have seen and what thoughts you have had. Keep them in a safe place as a resource to inspire your writing.
You can be curious in any situation at any time. Take, for instance, a simple walk round the streets where you live. There are all sorts of things to notice and observe, from the flowers in the gardens to ladybirds on leaves, people's various sort of cars, alterations or extensions they have made to their houses, their style of furnishing, whether their houses and gardens are well cared for.
Observe and ask yourself why things are so. For example, if you are on a street of beautiful gardens and there is one house which looks really out of place because the paintwork is scruffy and the garden is overgrown, ask yourself why it might be. Who lives in a house like that?
Could it be someone who is elderly, no longer up to the physical tasks required in looking after a home? Could it be someone who has had to leave the country in a hurry and hasn't been able to sell their house? Could it be a young single parent struggling to look after sickly, premature triplets?
When you finish your walk, make notes about what you have seen and what thoughts you have had. Keep them in a safe place as a resource to inspire your writing.
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
Give Your Characters an Interesting Job
As well as providing a locale for your characters and a suitable name, another thing you can do to add interest and depth to your writing is to provide them with a suitable occupation. It's all too easy to plump for obvious jobs for your characters - doctor, nurse, teacher, waitress. But there are many other jobs you could choose for them which have not been so overused in fiction.
How about a nail technician? A pharmacist? A dog handler? A court stenographer? A website designer? A graphic designer? A surveyor? Remember, you can always give your character a job that's unusual for their gender too to make them even more intriguing. What's to stop your surveyor from being female or your nail technician from being male?
There are lots of websites you can look on which advertise job vacancies. You could look in the appointments pages of your local newspaper to find some more. Or spend an hour or so browsing round the offices of a careers adviser - you'll find enough jobs to last your characters years! You'll also pick up some real life facts which will make them seem more realistic too.
Another thing you can do is be curious about people that you meet. If you get chatting to someone on a bus or at a party, ask them what they do, and if it's a job you don't know much about, ask them questions about it. People love to talk about themselves. Make notes afterwards about what you've found out, and perhaps get their contact details.
Or you can seek out people and ask for their expertise. I was once doing some research about how dentists train and what it's like to be a dentist, and my own dental surgeon gave up his lunch hour to chat with me. He gave me some marvellous anecdotes that I'd never have thought up myself. I also rang someone at one of the university dental hospitals, which resulted in a very interesting visit to the department - more interesting things to spot - and he even rang back the following week with lots more information for me.
These days it's even easier with e-mail. It's a cheap way of communicating experts and if someone doesn't want to answer questions, he can ignore your request without you having to suffer the embarrassment of being knocked back on the phone.
So why not give it a go? Find your characters an interesting job. It will make your job as a writer that bit more rewarding too.
How about a nail technician? A pharmacist? A dog handler? A court stenographer? A website designer? A graphic designer? A surveyor? Remember, you can always give your character a job that's unusual for their gender too to make them even more intriguing. What's to stop your surveyor from being female or your nail technician from being male?
There are lots of websites you can look on which advertise job vacancies. You could look in the appointments pages of your local newspaper to find some more. Or spend an hour or so browsing round the offices of a careers adviser - you'll find enough jobs to last your characters years! You'll also pick up some real life facts which will make them seem more realistic too.
Another thing you can do is be curious about people that you meet. If you get chatting to someone on a bus or at a party, ask them what they do, and if it's a job you don't know much about, ask them questions about it. People love to talk about themselves. Make notes afterwards about what you've found out, and perhaps get their contact details.
Or you can seek out people and ask for their expertise. I was once doing some research about how dentists train and what it's like to be a dentist, and my own dental surgeon gave up his lunch hour to chat with me. He gave me some marvellous anecdotes that I'd never have thought up myself. I also rang someone at one of the university dental hospitals, which resulted in a very interesting visit to the department - more interesting things to spot - and he even rang back the following week with lots more information for me.
These days it's even easier with e-mail. It's a cheap way of communicating experts and if someone doesn't want to answer questions, he can ignore your request without you having to suffer the embarrassment of being knocked back on the phone.
So why not give it a go? Find your characters an interesting job. It will make your job as a writer that bit more rewarding too.
Sunday, 3 August 2008
Finding a Place for Your Characters
I talked in an earlier blog about how you can find names for your characters by using internet baby name sites, random name generators, and telephone directories. But this week one of my students said she has trouble finding place names for her stories and asked if I had any advice about how to go about this. So here goes...
The most obvious sources of place names are an atlas, a guide book, or an internet site which deals with geography. But the range of places available is vast, so it might be useful to find some ways to narrow it down. Here are some questions you could ask yourself:
The most obvious sources of place names are an atlas, a guide book, or an internet site which deals with geography. But the range of places available is vast, so it might be useful to find some ways to narrow it down. Here are some questions you could ask yourself:
- Is my story set in a rural area, in a large city or in a medium-sized town?
- What sort of landscape do I envisage for the story? Is it lush? Tropical? Arid desert? Heavily built-up and industrialised?
- Is a sense of tradition going to be important for my characters? If so, what sort of place would have the traditions that will affect them?
- What sort of character traits will my main character(s) have? Are they traits that are particularly associated with certain nationalities?
If you still feel stuck, you could try the old trick of opening the atlas at a suitable country or continent and sticking a pin in it.
Sometimes there is something in your character's description that leads you to give them a certain home town. In a play I was writing with my partner, Kimm, we had a character who wasn't interesting enough, a young woman who had fallen into prostitution in London. Kimm wanted her to come from a middle-class family and to make peace with her parents at the end, but I was against this.
It seemed we had come to an impasse, but the solution came very unexpectedly when I was at a writers' workshop one evening. The task we were given was to list some items a character would have in his or her bag or pockets and then work out what that told us about their character.
A couple of items gave us a new insight into our character and led us to give her a completely new identity, name, and place of origin, and also added a totally new dimension to the drama. The items were a brightly coloured embroidered belt and a pair of sandals (even though the play was set on a snowy Christmas Day in London).
From those two clues, our character became an educated girl from an Eastern European country who found herself working as a prostitute in London because she had been tricked into going there to find a new life by some human traffickers.
To find a town and a name for the girl we did some research on the internet into the phenomenon of human trafficking, found out where lots of girls in that position came from, then researched to find a country which was in the European Community as we wanted her to have the chance to make a new life in Britain once the play was resolved.
So if you're feeling stuck in a rut with your characters, try doing some little exercises or playing some games to discover more about them, then do some research to give them an appropriate identity. If all else fails, try conversing with them. Ask them who they are and what their life is like where they come from. You'll be surprised at what you might discover!
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Write Your Future Life Story
I was de-cluttering my study this afternoon and came across some papers from more than a decade ago. They were from some discussions and tests I'd had with a university careers counsellor about what would be a good career for me when I went back to work after spending time with my baby son.
The careers service did the usual sort of thing - analyse your strengths your preferences and your qualifications, and then come up with some suggestions to suit you. It was very interesting looking back to see whether I had changed, whether my hopes and ambitions had altered, and whether I still wanted the same thing now as I did then.
To cut a long story short, I didn't end up in the career that was suggested as the best fit for me, which was a citizens' advice adviser, but I did end up with two careers that were also a highly scoring fit - FE teaching and writing - both of which I'd been involved in before.
The really intriguing thing is that lots of people believe that the way to make things happen is to write them down. If you want to create or manifest something for the future, what you do is write about it as if you have it or are doing it, and imagine very strongly the emotions that you will feel.
It's an appealing thought and possibly worth a try. Whether or not you actually manage to bring this future into existence by doing this, it will surely clarify your preferences and your intentions, which can be no bad thing.
So instead of writing the life story of your past, try writing about your future. Imagine what you'd like your life to be like in ten years' time and write about it, feeling the associated emotions as strongly as you can. Don't worry about whether your future life is feasible or try to figure out how you could possibly bring it about. Just imagine it and feel the emotions you would have if you were living that life.
Then put your life story away somewhere safe. Don't forget to look at it when the ten years are up and see if your life has turned out the way you imagined it would.
The careers service did the usual sort of thing - analyse your strengths your preferences and your qualifications, and then come up with some suggestions to suit you. It was very interesting looking back to see whether I had changed, whether my hopes and ambitions had altered, and whether I still wanted the same thing now as I did then.
To cut a long story short, I didn't end up in the career that was suggested as the best fit for me, which was a citizens' advice adviser, but I did end up with two careers that were also a highly scoring fit - FE teaching and writing - both of which I'd been involved in before.
The really intriguing thing is that lots of people believe that the way to make things happen is to write them down. If you want to create or manifest something for the future, what you do is write about it as if you have it or are doing it, and imagine very strongly the emotions that you will feel.
It's an appealing thought and possibly worth a try. Whether or not you actually manage to bring this future into existence by doing this, it will surely clarify your preferences and your intentions, which can be no bad thing.
So instead of writing the life story of your past, try writing about your future. Imagine what you'd like your life to be like in ten years' time and write about it, feeling the associated emotions as strongly as you can. Don't worry about whether your future life is feasible or try to figure out how you could possibly bring it about. Just imagine it and feel the emotions you would have if you were living that life.
Then put your life story away somewhere safe. Don't forget to look at it when the ten years are up and see if your life has turned out the way you imagined it would.
Friday, 1 August 2008
Writers Just Want to Have Fun!
We writers have been partying! Our severely disabled, but seriously fun-loving class member is 40 today, and we arranged a surprise class party for her last night at the house of one of her fellow students.
She arrived with her carer, who had told her they were going out for a drink at the pub, to find several of us already gathered and the house festooned with banners and balloons. There were sausage rolls, quiches and pizzas heating in the oven, biscuits and traybakes on plates, wine uncorked, and a birthday cake secreted in the kitchen - it had been specially designed for the occasion by another class member who is very talented at cake-making.
Our guest of honour was delighted and we all settled down to eat, drink, chat and laugh uproariously. There were enough funny real-life stories trotted out to fill a dozen magazines, about everything from cats and dogs to how we met our partners and encounters people have had with the college ghost!
We distributed presents and cards, toasted the birthday girl with bubbly, and chatted about class. A good time was had by all.
We await with eager anticipation our next opportunity for a class knees-up! Meanwhile, everyone has gone home with copies of the college prospectus so they can sign up for next term's class. If you live or work in West Yorkshire and would like to come to one of my classes, you can download the adult education prospectus online from www.huddcoll.ac.uk.
You'll be very welcome at any of the three courses I'm teaching next term, especially if you've a big birthday coming up! In between writing fantastic pieces, winning awards, and having work published, writers just want to have fun!
She arrived with her carer, who had told her they were going out for a drink at the pub, to find several of us already gathered and the house festooned with banners and balloons. There were sausage rolls, quiches and pizzas heating in the oven, biscuits and traybakes on plates, wine uncorked, and a birthday cake secreted in the kitchen - it had been specially designed for the occasion by another class member who is very talented at cake-making.
Our guest of honour was delighted and we all settled down to eat, drink, chat and laugh uproariously. There were enough funny real-life stories trotted out to fill a dozen magazines, about everything from cats and dogs to how we met our partners and encounters people have had with the college ghost!
We distributed presents and cards, toasted the birthday girl with bubbly, and chatted about class. A good time was had by all.
We await with eager anticipation our next opportunity for a class knees-up! Meanwhile, everyone has gone home with copies of the college prospectus so they can sign up for next term's class. If you live or work in West Yorkshire and would like to come to one of my classes, you can download the adult education prospectus online from www.huddcoll.ac.uk.
You'll be very welcome at any of the three courses I'm teaching next term, especially if you've a big birthday coming up! In between writing fantastic pieces, winning awards, and having work published, writers just want to have fun!
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