Unbound

Stories come in all shapes and sizes. Ernest Hemingway famously penned a tale comprised of just six words:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

What has always struck (and moved) me about Hemingway’s six-worder is that it is potent precisely because of what is not said and what the reader is left to infer – in short, the old ‘show don’t tell’ chestnut. Going by this principle, I decided to pen my own six-word effort for a twitter competition. This was the result:

Zookeeper missing. Distraught lion loses appetite.

Hemingway it ain’t, but unbeknownst to me at the time, the above six words were to draw me into a far bigger story in which I – or more specifically, my name – was to play a rather large role. 

The twitter competition in question was organised by Scottish Book Trust (SBT) as part of  their ‘It Will Be All Write On The Night’ project. Described as ‘a storytelling experience with a difference,’ SBT had challenged three of their New Writers Award winners to pen a story in weekly instalments for the final night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF). In addition to this, each chapter was to be influenced by prompts from twitter and Facebook, such as book spine poetry or a favourite piece of artwork.

I admit to only vaguely following what was going on when I entered the competition (and if I haven’t explained it very well, there’s more info on it all here) but I was nevertheless thrilled when Cargo Publishing declared my story the winner, and thus the next prompt of the project. Well marvellous, I thought, eagerly anticipating how that week’s author, Kirstin Innes, would be slotting lions into the tale. Only, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. For when the next chapter appeared on SBT’s website, I discovered it wasn’t just my six words that were woven into the story, but my name too.  

I can’t really go into it too much without spoiling the story (which I really recommend reading, starting from the bottom of this page) suffice to say that what was emerging by the time we got to Kirstin’s Part Five was the tale of a rebel movement’s struggle against an oppressive regime – a rebel movement now named ‘the Amanda Block.’ 

He was as surprised as I was.

I have to confess: I panicked. Seeing my name like that was so strange, so unexpected, I didn’t know what to think. Fortunately, after a soothing conversation with SBT’s Writer Development Manager, Caitrin Armstrong, and a thorough reread of the work so far, I began to gain a bit of perspective. What was going on, I realised, was something rather special: a big, bold story was being created, not just by one author, but three; not just from one idea, but from multiple prompts and multiple medias. It was, in fact, exactly the kind of experimental and collaborative approach to storytelling that I’m keen on. And when I looked at it like that, I was keen to be a part of it too. 

“We have a few ideas for the night itself,” Caitrin explained to me. “We wanted to have posters with ‘the Amanda Block’ on them and – I’m not sure you’ll go for this – but we were thinking of putting it on badges too.”

Posters? Badges? I should point out at this juncture that Caitrin assured me my name would not be used against my will and it was my decision as to whether it be included at all. Going away to think about it, however, I found myself reflecting that this was the last night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival we were talking about, where an exciting narrative featuring my name was nearing completion. How could I not agree? I gave her the go-ahead, badges and all.

So to the night itself, which miraculously coincided with my summer visit to Edinburgh. ‘It Will Be All Write On The Night’ was to be EIBF’s last ‘Unbound’ event (if EIBF is, by day, a bespectacled, buttoned-up nerd, then Unbound is the moment it ruffles up its hair, throws its specs aside and orders a vodka or three to wash down all that literature). I had been told that, aside from getting up on stage and reading all of six words, I could sit back and enjoy the show. But that didn’t stop me from being a little apprehensive, especially as the section of the Spiegeltent in which I was sitting was dubbed 'the representatives of ‘the Amanda Block’'.

I needn’t have worried. Because despite the posters and the badges bearing my name - yep, there really were posters and badges - the evening was, of course, not about me. It was about the writers and it was about the story, which once more I really urge you to investigate (I have come to the conclusion it’s Margaret Atwood meets Cloud Atlas with a bit of The Hunger Games thrown in - and if that hasn’t made you want to read it, I don’t know what will). And it was about expanding that story too for, as a final challenge, Kirstin and her fellow New Writers, George Anderson and R. A. Martens, were asked to complete it that very night using prompt words from the audience (deliberately difficult words, it emerged: scunnered? Unicorn?) But they rose to the occasion magnificently and their fitting final chapter can be read here.

So, in the end, it was more than all right on the night. After a few gin and tonics, it seemed perfectly normal to me that tables and people were festooned with ‘the Amanda Block’ badges. Besides, by that point I was far more interested in the brilliant – if rather madcap – tale that somehow belonged, at least in part, to everyone there that night. The authors had triumphed, the challenge had paid off, and it was all so much fun – just as storytelling should be. 

Plus it’s not every day a rebel movement is named after you…

I got to keep one.

Stranger Magic

This August, I was fortunate enough to find cheap(ish) plane tickets to Edinburgh – no mean feat during festival time – so last weekend I went to visit friends, family and, of course, The Edinburgh International Book Festival. As both a past employee and a paying punter, I have always found plenty of inspiration amongst the tents of Charlotte Square, and this year was to prove no exception.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the events for which I had booked tickets had a distinctly fairy tale flavour. First up was Marina Warner who, as her website describes, is a ‘writer of fiction, criticism and history: her works include novels and short stories, as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairy tales.’ I’m most familiar with Warner's literary criticism, especially her book From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers, and I owe her a debt of gratitude, for her writings have been invaluable essay-writing resources during various university fairy tale/children’s literature courses.

Marina Warner was at the festival to talk about her new book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. I’m afraid I can’t say much about the rather weighty tome itself, as I was forced to leave it in Edinburgh to read another day, rather than argue with easyjet as to whether or not it counted as a separate piece of hand luggage. But I do know that, as well as dissecting The Arabian Nights, the books sees Warner retell some of the more significant tales, as well as discussing the nature of magic itself. As the blurb explains: Magic is not simply a matter of the occult arts, but a whole way of thinking, of dreaming the impossible. As such it has tremendous force in opening the mind to new realms of achievement: imagination precedes the fact. 

At a time when I think many are far too cynical about the imagination, I find this both intriguing and inspiring. And as Warner pointed out, even the NHS/children’s literature section of the Olympics Opening Ceremony proved how much we still identify ourselves by stories and magic (and oh, wasn’t it just so wonderful? JK Rowling reading from Peter Pan should have been preceded by some sort of warning - I was in pieces by the time the Mary Poppinses flew down. Click  here to revisit.)

In person, Warner did not disappoint. Sporting magnificent pink tights, she gave us a condensed twenty-minute lecture at breakneck speed on the subject of Stranger Magic which, apart from anything else, made me envy the students who have her full-time. She then led a fascinating discussion focusing on The Arabian Nights more generally, in which I was particularly interested to hear that the female protagonists of the tales are apparently a little more cunning and resourceful than their Western counterparts, Cinderella et al. Warner is obviously staggeringly knowledgeable about her subject - I think of myself as an amateur fairy tale enthusiast, but I had to concentrate to keep up with all the vast and varied sources which she referenced – and it sounds clichéd, but I really could have listened to her all evening. Instead, I shall have to make do with the book – and perhaps revisiting The Arabian Nights for myself.

Sticking with fairy tales and magic, the following day, my friend Laura (Anderson, of Miss Read ) and I went to see Susannah Clapp at the Book Festival, where she talked about her role as the Literary Executor of the late Angela Carter and her new book, A Card from Angela Carter.

Angela Carter was novelist, short story writer, journalist, essayist, and – unbeknownst to me until this event – a burgeoning poet. She is perhaps most famous for her use of magical realism and her retellings of fairy tales, particularly in The Bloody Chamber, which for many (including me) makes her something of a literary deity. To expand any more on my love of her work would descend into much embarrassing gushing, which is also the reason that I approached this event with some trepidation: when you admire someone’s work so much, it’s almost unnerving hearing about them as a real person, lest they disappoint you. 

Fortunately, we were in safe hands with Susannah Clapp who is, it should be noted, hugely successful in her own right: as an editor, co-founder of The London Review of Books (through which she met Carter) and now a theatre critic. As Carter’s Literary Executor, she was very forthcoming with anecdotes about the woman herself (including a very funny account of her indomitable habit of pausing during speech) and throughout the hour she built up a very vivid picture of the woman behind the words. Of course, it is not necessary to know what an author is like to enjoy her work, but it certainly is interesting, especially when it is someone you hold in such high regard.  

Laura and I were at the front of Susannah Clapp’s signing queue after the talk, and I managed to snatch a few moments’ conversation with her, which was lovely. She seemed genuinely delighted that I had studied Carter and I even managed to tell her of my recent experiments with ‘voice’, using Wise Children as a point of reference. I now cannot wait to get stuck into A Card from Angela Carter, a unique biographical work presenting Carter’s electric personality through the postcards she sent to Clapp over the years.

My all-too brief chat with Susannah Clapp, as captured by Laura

Since these two wonderful literary events, my mind has been awhirl with thoughts on fairy tales and storytelling, and particularly storytelling women. I think there is a strange kind of magic to stories and, without getting too tenuous about it, it’s stranger magic too. For these are storytellers - from Shahrazad to Carter, from the anonymous scribes of The Arabian Nights to many of the authors who have moved and enthused me – that I won't ever meet. But then, that doesn’t make these strangers’ stories any less powerful. And if that’s not a kind of magic, I don’t know what is.

Magic: Marina Warner reads from The Bloody Chamber

A New City of Literature

In 2004, Edinburgh was declared UNESCO’s first ‘City of Literature.’ According to their website, ‘[t]his permanent, non competitive title bestows international recognition on Edinburgh and Scotland as a world centre of literature and literary activity.”

When I arrived in 2007, I was unaware of its UNESCO status, although my reasons for moving there were entirely literary, as I was heading to the University of Edinburgh to undertake an MSc in Creative Writing. Not that a huge amount of thought had gone into my university city of choice: I was conserving wildlife in the Tanzanian savannah when I made the fateful decision (but that’s another story…) and in the end my choosing Edinburgh came down to some familial ties and the still-fresh memories of the previous madcap summer spent in Scotland’s capital training to be an EFL teacher. Yet despite my rather flippant method of picking its university, and my ignorance of its UNESCO status, it was not too long before I worked out that Edinburgh - and its literary scene – was something rather special.

The aforementioned website will explain far better than I the many organisations and activities which put Edinburgh on any booklover’s map, not to mention all of its literary alumni (including two of my biggest inspirations, JK Rowling and JM Barrie). All I can add is that I have always thought that the city’s literary achievements owe a debt to the place itself, for there is something about the atmosphere of Edinburgh that is so very stirring: from the gothic Old Town closes to the genteel grid of New Town streets, from the looming giant of Arthur’s Seat to the refreshing vistas of the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh feels like a place steeped in stories.    

For exactly four years, Edinburgh became my city of literature too. As well as the MSc, I worked at Waterstone’s, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and, most recently, I volunteered with Scottish Book Trust. I also set up a writers’ group, read my work in public for the first time, was shortlisted in competitions, started a novel, launched a freelance career… In fact, barely a day went by when I wasn’t engaging with literature in some way and, while that perhaps says more about me than it does the city, the point is that Edinburgh made it easy. Quite simply, it inspired me.

But all good things must come to an end - at least for a little while - and since September 2011, I have been based in Geneva, after accepting my Literary Consultant position on a permanent basis. This time around, I’ve been a little more active about ascertaining how much of a ‘city of literature’ my new home is and, despite Edinburgh being a hard act to follow, Geneva is so far proving a worthy successor.

For starters, I am in good writerly company. Within a few days of being here, I realised that Mary Shelley famously conceived Frankenstein in the ghost story session with Percy, Lord Byron et al just across Lac Leman. But then there’s also the fact that George Eliot stayed a few streets away from my apartment, and Jorge Luis Borges lived just two doors down (and might well be the ghostie I’m convinced is haunting me at night).

Like Edinburgh, Geneva is a city of great importance but modest size, which is nice and unintimidating for this West Country girl. It is surrounded by glorious countryside, specifically the lake and mountains (and – sorry Edinburgh – features far better weather in which to enjoy them). Generally I find the natural world not only exhilarating but hugely comforting too. Perhaps it is my overactive imagination, but I like to know where my exits are, so I can make a quick getaway should the apocalypse come (unlikely, in a country not exactly famed for its war-mongering).

So I can scribble outside, but Geneva also caters for my predilection for writing in cafés, despite the fact that almost every coffee establishment in the city offers table service, and not necessarily very welcoming table service at that. Thank goodness, then, for Boreal Coffee Shop, which boasts excellent beverages, a particularly fine New York cheesecake, and friendly staff who leave you alone. Although I was initially intimidated by the sheer number of Macs its customers owned (all the apple logos glowing at me upon entry made me wonder if I had stumbled into a kind of futuristic electronic orchard), I quickly came to realise that Boréal was the natural home of writers and students, and definitely a place I could be productive – just as long as no one gives me the Wi-Fi password.­­*

Finally, and most importantly, amongst all the corporate and banking bods, I have been lucky enough to find some wonderfully creative people in Geneva. I am fortunate that, through my work, I get to chat to writers all day, but outside of the job too, I have met many interesting, funny and admittedly rather bonkers individuals. They have encouraged me to write, read, enter competitions, raise my online profile, and as a result I am even on the brink of setting up another writers' group.    

So far so good, Geneva. So far so good. 

Inspirational: view of Geneva from Mont Saleve (I took the cable car).

  

*(The original and best writing café, as far as I’m concerned, is Boston Tea Party, in Exeter. I spent a lot of my formative years nursing marshmallow steamers in there – just try it – as I scribbled away, pretending to be JK Rowling.)

Epic Fail

It’s July. It’s hot – even in Scotland. According to the Metro, that well-respected source of information, Britain could soon be facing a drought. A hosepipe-banning, bath-sharing drought. While I’m pretty sure that everyone’s favourite public transport rag is wildly exaggerating the matter, I can’t help but think that - in relation to my writing - some pathetic fallacy is going on here.

About a month and a half ago, I promised myself I would complete the first draft of my novel by 1st July. Considering that the thing is still mouldering away, neglected and unloved, on my hard drive, I would say that was a fail.

I could make excuses. I could cite all the hours I have worked recently (at the Edinburgh Book Festival Box Office, for just one more afternoon now). I could offer my crazed to-do lists for my forthcoming teaching stint in New York as proof of my industry (although however I dress that one up, going to New York always just sounds jammy). I could wring my hands about all the social, familial, televisual commitments I have had of late. But really, enough. There are no excuses.

Let us review the recent pledges I have made and their glorious outcomes:

I will finish the first draft of my novel by July – fail.

I will enter the Bridport Prize, as previously mentioned on this blog, this year – fail.

I will enter other short story competitions – fail.
 
In short - one epic fail.

How to pull myself from this rut? I enjoy writing. I enjoy telling stories. I sometimes think that I don’t even hate my novel that much, although those unsettling feelings usually pass. Perhaps New York will help. Maybe time away, when I’m not supposed to write will, perversely, make me want to start scribbling again. Or maybe I should take time off after the summer, lock myself in the flat, and not come out until I’ve finished the damn thing, even if it means being so poor and wretched that I’ll eat nothing but Riveta and talk to nobody but the woodlouse that has taken up in the bathroom.

There is also always the rain dance option. I could choreograph some sort of inspiration-seeking jig. However, considering the quality of my bog-standard boozy party dancing, this idea should be filed under ‘Last Resort.’