Book reviews

I usually do book reviews on my other blog but I want to talk about this one here.  I recently read The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore.  A sort of gothic creepy book for Hammer this is about a newly married couple set in the 1950's.  They move into a house where the landlady lives upstairs....a strange creature who seems to the young wife to be very nosey. The girl feels lonely as her new hubby is settling into the doctors practice and is hardly ever home.  The girl never feels warm and finds a greatcoat in a cupboard which warms her as she lays asleep on the bed but it also takes her into another world of a Second World War Pilot stuck between raids....sort of groundhog day.  The girl begins to fall between two worlds.  I want tell you anymore in case you read it. Suffice it to say it is a jolly good read. 

The main reason for posting this here is that at the end of the book Helen talks about how she came to write the book using experiences from her past....growing up in the early 50's when rationing was still around, womens position in society, what was expected of  them and how her own experiences could be used to make the story sound authentic.  I found reading this really interesting.  I love it when authors talk about their books with tips for writers etc. 

I have to say that Helen's books are really good.  I've read a few of hers now and have a couple more in cupboard waiting!

The other book I've just finished is Fear the Worst by Linwood Barlcay.  I've never come across him before and I picked the book up on holiday as I was desparate for some reading material.  Well, talk about fast-paced.  There were so many twists and turns to this thriller....right to the end.  He must have had so many notes for I would have got so tangled up with it if I'd written it.  Oh! that I could write something tlike that!  I'll be looking out others of his.  I really could have been in burning house and not noticed, it was so gripping!

Now I must go and make the dish I meant to make last night but left it too late because I was too busy on the internet!  Writing will be the death of me......um....good title for a book maybe!

Holiday writing

Just got back from a week in Cromer on the North Norfolk coast.  I was very good and took an exercise book to write in and a book about writing poetry.  I intended to do some of the exercises but I needed some poetry to look at.  The cottage had lots of paperback novels but no poetry books (um....wonder why?).  I tried writing one poem but it never 'clicked'.  I did however do a proper first draft of a poem I tried to write last year after my holiday in Hull, the notes from which happened to be in the exercise book!  I feel I have a handle on it now so progress might be made.

Another piece of writing I started was a short story.  The idea was from my 'morning pages' and I began to piece together the bones of it.  Trouble is I haven't quite worked out the plot.  I have several ideas but none of them really feels right.  Still at least I have got a few handwritten pages to type up but I don't feel I can go on until I have more of an idea where this is going.

I've also had a letter from a lady who belongs to OU Poets, like me, and she has asked if she can have my permission to translate 6-8 of my poems into Romanian for a literary magazine there.  We are in contact at present about that.  I'm flattered!  Had a look at the website.  Of course it's all in Romanian so I can't read it but it looks good.  The magazine is published online and also as a hard copy.

Novel in real time

Here's a novel idea (excuse the pun....or not!).  Want to see a novel written live online?  Well, you can at www.novel-by-sjs.blogspot.co.uk

Just had a read myself.......lots of unanswered questions in the first post so you want to go back for more.  Like the style. You can leave comments for the author.  Brave lady to do this but what a good idea. So all you fiction writers hop over there now and take a look.

Short Story

There has been stirring....or is it indigestion?!  Going to the exhibition at the British Library got me thinking and I've been looking at my notebooks from when I was writing 'morning pages' .  In between all the moaning and lists of what I had to do that day are a few tentative poems and a few scribbled stories.  One of these I have typed up and edited slightly and am being brave enough to share it with you.  It has no title.  Do suggest one!  Please do comment as it takes more guts for me to share stories than poems (at least I have had poems published!).  My feelings about my stories is that I want to write what I want to write.  I'm not aiming to submit them anywhere.  For the moment I just want to enjoy the process of writing stories again for my own pleasure and hope that those I share will make you smile.

By the way, I have my new laptop and I love it....so fast and smooth and I'm finally free of Vista as a running programme!

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I was thirteen when my brother got friendly with Barry from lower sixth.  They’d spend loads of time up in Stuart’s bedroom playing records at full volume and mum or dad would forever be shouting up to them to turn it down.

Stuart and Barry were like twins.  They grew their hair long and began wearing flared trousers. Barry had an Afghan coat that ponged of shaggy dog when it rained.  It was shortly after they became friends that I was no longer allowed in Stuart’s room.  He put a notice on the door saying Keep Out, man and fitted a padlock to which only he had the key.  I felt right put out.

Mum and dad often argued with Stuart about coming home late, his untidiness and what not but Stuart just shook his head and said ‘Chill out, man’ and walked off.  Stuart was supposed to be studying for his A levels but was always threatening to drop out.  His speech got weirder. Every sentence ended with man and his clothes were bright and garish.  Dad once called him a nancy boy.

Life at home was a continuous round of arguments and slammed doors but it was the music that saved me.  I’d lie back on my bed and listen through the wall to Stuart’s records.  My favourite was Let’s Go To San Francisco.

As summer wore on the rows increased and finally Barry was banned from the house as being a bad influence.  I guess Stu got my sympathy a bit on that one because not having your friends round is pretty rotten but Stu just shrugged his shoulders, pounded up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door.

I’d hoped that my support would have got me into Stuart’s good books and his room and we’d be buddies again, but no.  Instead he told mum and dad that he was going to redecorate his bedroom to a more ambient colour.  What?! 

The smell of paint intrigued me and drove mum and dad mad wondering what the heck he was doing in there.  Dad threatened to break the bloody door down if he didn’t pack it in.  I think mum was just relieved that he was off his backside for once.

About two weeks later I came out of my room and found Stu’s door ajar.  I could hear him in the bathroom lumbering around slamming cupboard doors.  He did crash about in those days.  I saw my chance and was in his room like lightning.  It was dark as the curtains were closed and my eyes took a time to adjust.  Once they did I saw the brown walls with huge turquoise flower swirls that looked to have been done freehand, not too well at that.  Mingling with the left over paint smell was sweat and a sweetness I didn’t recognise.  I saw the overflowing ashtray but there was also a cigarette still burning.

 I’d always wanted to try a cigarette.  Dad smoked but he’d probably know if I took one of his.  He probably counted them or something.  This one was conveniently alight.  I picked it up, liking the feel of it between my fingers.  I went over to the mirror and posed before it, moving this way and that then put it to my lips.  I drew on like I’d seen dad do.  The smoke seemed to fill every part of me and I started to cough.  I tried again more slowly.  It actually began to taste quite nice.  I sat on Stuart’s bed.  Woa, my head felt woozy but not unpleasant.  My head filled with sounds of Scott McKenzie and I started to sing, getting louder.  When Stuart walked in I was laughing.  Well, I think it was me laughing.  It all seemed very funny anyway.  Stu just stood there, his hair a mess of tangles, John Lennon glasses stuck on his nose.  I tried to say something but all I could do was giggle.  I took another lung full of smoke and lay back on the bed.  I felt wonderful.  Through the haze I suddenly heard Stuart’s voice ‘What have you done, man?’  I just laughed all the louder.

Seeing how the real writers do it!

Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands at the British Library has been an exhibition I've been meaning to go to all summer.  Finally I went yesterday. The exhibitions explores literature and place over a period of 1,000 years of English literature drawn from a unique collection of works from Chaucer to Rowling.  Not only are there hand written manuscripts but also readings accessed via headphones as well as film where modern authors talk about how 'place' draws them into a story.

It was wonderful to see the scribblings of authors and poets - all those neatly written words and some not so neatly written pages with crossings out, additions and side comments.  Included here are the writings of William Blake, Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier as well as JRR Tolkein artwork for The Hobbit and some lines to the Beatles song In My Life by John Lennon.  Then of course there is the hand written manuscript by JK Rowling of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  The exhibitions was split into 'zones' - Rural Dreams, Dark Satanic Mills, Wild Places, Cockney Visions and Waterlands.  A whole range of books were on show from the mythical to horror and everything in between.

This took me back to the days when I wrote stories in exercise books.  I guess I was in my teens and I had so much time then!  I still have the exercise books, a few completed stories and some which never got past the first chapter.  Those were also the days when I didn't know much about how to construct a story.....um...possibly still don't!.  I just wrote what I liked.  Funnily enough most were sci-fi.  I guess I watched a lot of Doctor Who and Star Trek!  I grew up with original series.  But my stories didn't have monsters in them.  Anyway, the exhibition re-kindled a flame......okay a spark.....but maybe more nostalgia!

If you can get to London this is an exhibition well worth viewing.  It finishes on 25th September so time is short.  The British Library shop is great to walk around...so many books but I kept my purchases to a minimum and came home with Selected Poems by Sylvia Plath and a few postcards.