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

The Beginning...

… Is the title of a recently released anthology from Chapter One Promotions. It features the winners and runners up of the International Short Story Competition 2009, including my piece, The Sea-Maid Speaks. The link is here. (I am not sure about the cover. I have already likened it to a still from a 1970s sex education video).

Obviously, this is completely thrilling; to be published not only in a proper book, but under my own name too. The Sea-Maid Speaks is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s heart-wrenching and frankly pretty disturbing The Little Sea-Maid (if you’re only familiar with the Disney version, you’re lucky). As can be ascertained by the year of the competition, this anthology is rather late, and thus the story feels a little stale to me now. However, despite any reservations I may have about its quality in 2012, I have to admit that it was something of a breakthrough when I penned it during my MSc. I remember very clearly feeling that, for the first time, I was digging deep, taking a risk, and writing in the way I had always wanted to. In short, it helped me find my voice (ironic, as the tale centres around the eponymous sea-maid’s inability to speak).

For that reason, the title of the anthology feels rather apt - for both the story and for where I was when I wrote it. That definite article makes all the difference, you see: not just a beginning, but the beginning.

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.)

Three Steps Forward

At the risk of sounding like one of those ‘Review of the Year’ programmes (you know the sort: they splice together footage of mildly interesting events from the past twelve months and invite d-listers with nothing better to do to tell us how very fascinating/funny/tragic/unacceptable it all was) I’m going to try and summarise my year in writing. For I’ve neglected this blog for six months and, certainly writing-wise, rather a lot has happened.

I’ll start with my writer’s group, WOW (Writers on Wine). For the first half of the year, it was an enormously encouraging way to get stuck into the first big edit of my novel – and an opportunity to read some fabulous work by my contemporaries. Sadly, the WOW members are now somewhat scattered, with Lizzie and I having both moved away from Edinburgh, and I miss those evenings very much – both creatively and socially. However, I hope that one day we can share stories and drinkies once more, and until then I cannot thank my girls enough for giving my novel a good kick up the arse

Yes, I’ve moved from Edinburgh, which was a wrench - a huge wrench, in fact. I lived in Edinburgh for exactly four years, during which I made wonderful friends, had wonderful experiences and, for the first time, felt like a real writer. Yet when I was offered the Literary Consultant job in Geneva (a freelance version of which I have been doing for a year or so beforehand) it came at the perfect time. The UK seems to be full of doom and gloom at the moment, especially in employment terms, so it wasn’t too hard, deciding to escape to the land of Toblerones and cuckoo clocks to be paid to write.

As though I didn’t have enough on my proverbial plate with a new job, the move to a new country and trying to master a new(ish) language (how I can be so criminally bad at French after five years of it at school, I have no idea) I decided to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again in November. As strange as it might sound, I don’t particularly like the writing part of constructing a story. I love the ideas stage, I enjoy tinkering around with a text once it’s on the screen, I adore scrolling through a lengthy document and marvelling over how many words I’ve written, but actually bashing out the first draft… meh. I can take it or leave it. The advantage of Nano, in which you have to do a ‘barf draft’ of 50,000 words in a month, is that the initial writing part is over nice and quickly. In a year of scribbling that has felt quite serious at times, with editing my novel and doing a Proper Grown Up Writing Job, Nano gave me the opportunity to pen a silly story about dancing, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

So there they are: three steps forward, no steps back. Never one to be completely satisfied, I would have liked to have done something a bit more substantial with my novel… But hey, there’s always next year.

A Roaming Writer

For the past few months, I have been volunteering with Scottish Book Trust. It’s rather difficult to summarise all the marvellous things SBT do, so perhaps I should leave it to them, as they describe themselves as ‘the leading agency for the promotion of literature, reading and writing in Scotland.’

Since moving to Edinburgh, I have found surfing SBT’s site for competitions, advice and general literature chatter incredibly useful, and when I realised there was a possible volunteer role up for grabs, I jumped at the chance to get involved.

‘Family Legends’ was a project that SBT ran across Scotland, whereby people were encouraged to pen a short story about a particularly ‘legendary’ family member. This resulted in thousands of entries, a brilliant book, and more than a few new writers.

My job in all of this was as one of the project’s Community Ambassadors. Although originally I was intended to be the Edinburgh spokesperson, my then job with the Science Festival was taking me up and down Scotland dressed as a Space Cadet (but that’s another story…) so I ended up as more of a ‘Roaming’ Ambassador.

It was a wonderful experience, encouraging people to tell their stories, and for me the most interesting part of the whole project was attending the North Edinburgh Writing Workshop, I wrote about the experience for the website here but I’m not sure I quite managed to convey exactly what went down. I suppose, with my MSc and lately my writers' group, I have become used to scribblers with a fair bit of experience and, more importantly, self-belief. Whereas many of the attendees of this workshop had barely done any creative writing before and had, for whatever reason, barely any confidence in their writing abilities. Which is crazy, because of course everyone has the ability to write - everyone. I truly believe that, and evidently so did the workshop leaders, who calmly guided the group through a couple of exercises, despite protestations. It might have been a struggle, but it was more than worth it for the end result: hearing people proudly read their work aloud.

Since then, I have been thinking quite seriously about – I don’t even know what you would call it - community creative writing work? Perhaps not yet, but one day, if I can ever get my own act together, it’s definitely something I would want to do more of. Watch this space, I guess.  

New Projects

Autumn is a funny time. Yes, the leaves are pretty colours, we don’t have to worry about ugly men walking around topless anymore (in public!), and we have Halloween and fireworks soon – which are always jolly good fun. But none of this totally makes up for the fact that we’re simply too soon after the delights of summer and too far from the joys of Christmas for anything else to be truly delightful or joyous. These cold, darkening days render me decidedly fragile - and to think, I used to laugh at people who claimed they got Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) every winter. That was before I lived in Scotland.

I am trying to combat the autumnal blues, as well as my own wretchedness concerning my status as a useless unemployed person, with some writing projects. These are threefold:

1) Despite glaring continuity errors, erratic changes in plot/characterisation/time/logic, and whole sections missing where I have simply written ‘???’, I have decided that I have finished the first draft of my novel. Sort of. In lying to myself like this, I can move on and edit it, which I think is more productive than just hating its presence on my computer - and indeed, in my life.

2) I have set up a writers’ group. It is called WOW, which stands for Writers on Wine. I am proud of that acronym. The group is in its fledgling stages at the moment, but I am confident there will be much good writing and much good wine.

3) I have become a Literary Consultant.  

So the unemployment thing is not strictly true, although my bank balance would suggest otherwise. No, I have recently been appointed a Literary Consultant for a publishing company in Geneva.

This is not as grand as it sounds. It is actually a ghostwriting job. Back in May, I applied for a different role in a Geneva-based publishing company and - to cut a long story short - they offered me the Literary Consultant role instead. Getting the job was a rather long and ridiculous process, however the highlight of it all was being whisked off to Geneva for the day – the single most high-flying (no pun intended) moment in my laughably non-professional career.

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.’