Weavers of Dreams

Public Rage, Secret Agendas

2012-01-27T14:03:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-18T14:24:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-16T14:44:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

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.

To Ride a Cock Horse

2011-10-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

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

Creative Integrity - Last Stand or Last Breath?

2011-07-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

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.

A Gift of Hope From Norway

2010-12-05T11:34:00.000-08:00

Today, like many Londoners, I gravitated to Trafalgar Square. I wanted to see the beautiful spruce sent to the people of London from the people of Oslo. They do it every year, have done since 1947. It's a gift of hope, a gift of love, a loyalty that persists through the good years and the bad. It keeps coming even when we're out of fashion and the world hates us, when we're no longer swinging, when we cannot cope with two inches of snow. It's that kind of persistence that a writer needs, and I breathe in its green-ness, its sharpness, its mystery. I determine to go home and reapply myself to the novel. We love you, Norway.

Craft One Ceremony

2009-12-20T03:36:00.000-08:00

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.

The Lost Art Graveyard

2009-12-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

'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

2009-11-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-05T12:38:00.001-08:00

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...

2008-11-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-02T09:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Critical Critiques

2008-02-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

This week I got a scything comment on Chapter 10 from one of my critique partners. I took my poor battered manuscript into Trafalgar Square and sat by the fountain with a capuccino. Laboriously, I rewrote Chapter 10 while I sipped. I added lengthy descriptions, spelled out words any fan of historical fiction understands, and described scenes we covered in Chapter 9. Then, I drained my cappucino and did it all again, in my voice and with my sense of humour. Yes, I kept some of the changes, of course I did. Yet, when you write a novel you have, at some stage to trust that your reader enjoyed the earlier chapters, understood their content and like your characters. You have to act as if you believe it.

Troubleshooter

2007-11-25T13:32:00.000-08:00

I've been attending a great writers' workshop called 'Troubleshooter'. It's run by Spread the Word www.spreadtheword.org.uk and although it's billed as 'intermediate' level, it's more stretching than an 'advanced' course I attended at a college of Further Education last year. It's good to be with other writers and to share, especially when the standard is high but the critique is fair and honest rather than out for the slaughter,

Tension Build-Up

2007-10-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

Today I worked some more on Chapter 10, in which my hero Thomas at last leaves London and begins his new career with a travelling fair. Such a difficult chapter, because I've been busily building the tension towards this moment and now I'm so scared that it won't match up! So, I wrote a sentence today and tomorrow, if I feel ok after auntie's funeral, I'll write another. It's the only to way to build up to a novel, as far as I know.

Death in the Family

2007-10-14T02:53:00.000-07:00

A beloved auntie died this weekend, nine years to the day when we lost my uncle. Woke up feeling ragged and with a thick head, and wondered whether I'd be able to write at all. In cases of very devastating bereavement, people do say they can't write. I found that the day needed care, and to some extent I was 'going through the motions.' I took a trip to the Museum of London, a place that has inspired a lot of my writing in the past. The inspiration wasn't there today, at first, but I wandered around the galleries, just allowing myself to 'be,' and not require myself to 'do.' They were playing a 17th century folksong in the museum, which mentioned Charing Cross. This was quite serendipitous, because Charing Cross features heavily in my current chapter. Last week I researched and discovered that the current cross is a replacement for the original Queen Eleanor Cross, erected in the mid-19th century. I'd been all through my manuscript changing every incidence of 'Charing Cross' to 'Queen Eleanor Cross,' and when I got home I changed them all back.

Finchley Common

2007-10-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

Well, today my reseach took me on the hunt for Finchley Common, former haunt of Dick Turpin. I need it for the next chapter in my book - Chapter 10. I've been writing like a maniac these last few weeks, and now my hero has left his home in Bethnal Green for a dubious life with a travelling fair. The paragraph I wrote describes the moment when Thomas's family meet Cinnamon Rose, an Indian elephant and the darling of Zackariah Scarrott's Travelling Fair.

Coram Fields

2007-09-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

This week I went to The Foundling Museum in Coram Fields, London. http://www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk/ I went with my friend Rosemary Morris, who writes novels set in the reign of Queen Anne http://www.rosemarymorris.co.uk/ . It's great to go to a museum with another writer, because you don't bore each other when you size up every exhibit for potential use in the plot, or exclaim that you had no idea of this or you always suspected that. Writers understand why a half an hour in the bookshop features as a mandatory part of the trip, and why one might want to buy 18 postcards every time - for prompts in future writing 'afternoons' or inspiration for the new hero or the next orphan. I returned with a poster-sized version of Hogarth's 'March of the Guards to Finchley' which hangs in the museum and was presented to it by one of the patrons, the painter William Hogarth. The picture fascinated me because Finchley features in my next chapter, and I had no idea it looked like that in former times. Very salutary. By the way, The Foundling Museum runs the occasional writing course, as well as special days for children and musical evenings. I loved it.

Research, Research, Research

2007-08-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a brilliant research trip in Bath. I've been travelling quite cheaply, staying in the smallest room in a convenient hotel and getting the feeling of 'being on the road'. In order to connect to my characters' lives as best I could, I visited several museums, imagining what it would have been like to use all the implements, wear the clothes and be at the mercy of the medicines and the food. Also I had a lot of help from the glassblowers' studio by the river, who told me all about the dangers and joys of handblown glass. I did several pathworkings, made sketches and produced some awful watercolours. Some days I sat by the River Avon and gave myself a rest. One thing I did experience was the loneliness of the road, and also the effects of the weather - when I got drenched in the rain it took a real effort to keep my spirits up. How much worse must it be if your livelihood depends on the sunshine. It's really easy to write in a grotty hotel room - in fact, working on my novel was the main thing that kept me sane when the nights drew in and I missed home the most.

Chigwell Row Wood

2007-08-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Today I had the curious experience of seeing myself on TV. The programme was filmed in Chigwell Row Wood, which is a part of Epping Forest. In the film I talked about my ancestor, Tom Tarling, and life in 19th century England when a working man's only real asset was his fists, for his trade barely furnished enough to put bacon on the table. It was a salutary experience, to talk it through for the camera. After, I came away with renewed respect for that man, rough and ready no doubt, who bought himself a wagon and a horse, or two, from the sweat of his own brow. No credit cards in those days. Writing Chapter 7 was a deeper, more meaningful experience for having explored Tom's dilemma for the purposes of fiction and I have had a good weekend at the writing, even if I have been over the same three paragraphs 83 times!

A Word in the Right Place

2007-07-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those writing days when I deleted five hundred words from my novel and typed in five. Whilst I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I came pretty close to writing it off as a 'bad' day. Yet, really, five words can be better than five hundred. It just depends which ones. How about 'No drugs for me, thanks', 'I'll give you another chance,' or even 'I'm so sorry, love.' Yea! Five words rock.

Rejection & Re-Application

2007-07-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

A writer's life, like an actor's, is full of disappointments. You have to believe you can win the competition that 7000 others didn't, or get your piece read out on BBC television against all the others who'd like to do the same. When it doesn't work out, you have to get up, dust yourself down and return to the humble and (hopefully) likeable person you were before your head swelled enough to cause you to send off your work in the first place. Today was just such a week for me, with three rejections and a storming head cold just to season the mix. The rain outside in this beautiful part of Hertfordshire resembles an Asian monsoon; and I am returning to my novel. This week, my hero's life changes for ever - and that's what I have to try and portray.

Fight It Out

2007-07-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today I wrote a fight scene, between my protagonist Thomas Tarling and his brother-in-law, Zackariah Scarrott. It's something I've been working up to for a while. I've been at pains to show Thomas in particular as a 'real' man with hopes, disappointments and feelings as well as a manly 'hard' side. I was becoming concerned that he might seem too fearful for the hero of a Georgian novel, so I set this fight on the edge of Bethnal Green (which in those days was a wilder place than now). A long writing day, but a satisfying one.

On Radio London

2007-06-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

I had another little piece read out today, by Robert Elms on Radio London. It was a tiny smidgeon of an article about the historical significance of the name 'Whetstone' which is a part of North London, so far out it's almost in Hertfordshire. Whetstone is, supposedly, named after the stone which the soldiers used to sharpen their swords during the Battle of Barnet, in the Wars of the Roses - it was fought on nearby Barnet Common. The stone is still there, outside the Griffin Pub. Is it true? Who knows. Is it great that we treasure that kind of tale in this great City. Yea!

At London - Fleeting Appearance

2007-06-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

Today I had a little piece read out at 6.30 pm on BBC's 'At London' programme. My piece was on the subject of 'Sub-Conscious Profiling' - the proposal that prospective employees might be tested to see whether they harbour racial prejudice in the sub-conscious mind. Wrote Chapter 6 of 'Face The Champion' and got my hero out of jail (temporarily).

Friends Across the Sea

2007-06-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did such a fun thing - met up with friends who belong to HistficCritque, an internet critique group for historical novelists. It was such fun to 'press the flesh' of friends I've laughed with, cried with, shared with and critiqued over the internet. Some of us in the group live in Canada, some the USA, some Australia and three here in the UK. We met in Govinda, a vegetarian restaurant in London's Soho, and talked writing for five hours solid!

Peterborough

2007-05-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Travelled across the Fens - what a beautiful, wild place. I went to Peterborough on a day-trip, and it was a lovely town all built in yellow stone, with a parish church so big I thought at first it was the cathedral. When I came home all I wanted to do was work on my novel, and I've been at it so long my brains' gone thick.

Premises and Prisons

2007-05-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Still trying to come to grips with 'Premise'. 'How to Write Damn Good Fiction' sets the task of looking at a story every day for a few weeks, and trying to work out the premise. I never realised it was so important. You never think about the premise of a novel unless you're studying it for English literature, and yet it informs almost every paragraph. Tomorrow I'm taking a day trip across the Fens to get some research for the next part of the book, where Thomas escapes from prison and leaves London.

P is for Premise

2007-05-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Starting reading 'How to Write Damn Good Fiction,' and I'm working on the premise for my novel. The book says that many beginning writers struggle with this, and get muddled up, making a statement about their story which isn't a premise. I wished I had the author there to help me tease the premise out of all the 'stuff' I have in my head for the novel. Spent quite a long time this evening working on the narrative, trying to make my hero into someone the reader will be able to empathise with.

Empathise or Sympathise

2007-05-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

Well, today I put my hero in prison and now I'm still agonising about how to get him out of there. In 1826, it wasn't so easy. I discovered that the defendant didn't even get a lawyer; only the prosecution had that privilege. Also, I'm struggling with the art of making one's hero attractive to everyone else. Showed a bit of my work to a published author and she said that she knew she ought to care about my hero's plight, but she didn't. I didn't make her care. She suggested 'going deep into his point of view.' She recommended a book called 'How to Write Damn Good Fiction' by James Frey.

Decided to Write a Novel

2007-04-29T03:05:00.000-07:00

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.'