Tag Archives: Ghosts

Suspending disbelief

18 Sunday Nov 2018

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process

Dear reader – I know, poor, neglected blog. My writing process being the point of this thing (& I am writing, I promise) you’d think…

Book 4 is emerging & now being written in third person present which is interesting. Those of you who’ve followed me from the olden days will remember me referencing a story I called my RiverBook. It’s been set aside several times & almost drowned to be honest. I’m firmly of the belief that some stories aren’t meant to be written & ought to be allowed to pass peacefully. (TreeBook anyone? I think not…) RiverBook refuses to let go however – largely because the central protagonist is old[ish] & curmudgeonly. She keeps nagging. I’m acquiescing then & embracing Grace…

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The other thing – & why I really came here this morning – concerns a conversation I had last week with my writing group sister, Janey. We were discussing the nature of magic & how, in authentic magical realism, the author asks only that her reader suspend disbelief. I wondered if it was sometimes a lot to ask & perhaps, I write for a fairly niche audience.

Alongside my sisters, mothers & daughters, I write so-called ‘witchy’ characters: wise women with one foot in the ‘normal’ world, the other on the threshold between the veil. Ordinary women who happen to have that wee something that sets them apart. An affinity with the natural world & a heritage connecting them to the Old Ways.

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Janey made an astute & very smart observation. We live in a land steeped in magic, in myths & legends. Unlike almost anywhere else in the world, as a nation we Brits (Welsh, Irish, Scottish & English) have magic embedded in our history, our bloodlines & our collective psyche. We find it easy to believe in ghosts & spirits & the supernatural. We love a haunted house, a ghost story, a dragon & a faerie; we relish fantasy & myths brought to life in ways we can relate to. The huge success of the BBC drama series Merlin (2008-2012) is a terrific example.

Other, older ones, Janey pointed out, are numerous: from Mystery and Imagination (1966-1970) & Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers (1980s) to The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012) to the recent re-imagining of The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. Documentaries & dramas – we love them equally. And if we don’t, it’s more often than not because we’re too scared to watch them!

Yes – skeptics abound – but I’m less concerned than I was a week ago. I shall continue writing my ‘wise women’ characters, place them in their odd cottages, twisty houses & magical gardens. Set them baking good spells into bread, stitching protective ones into curtains; healing with herbs & kindness. I shall write them wrapped in mystery & concealing clothes, allow them to conjure what enchantments they will.

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The characters I conjure come from my own ancestral memory bank. Lili in Ghostbird & Mared, the grandmother in Snow Sisters. My own ‘disbelief’ is non-existent, frankly – I’ve been wandering between the veil since forever. Nothing to frighten the horses, but I know stuff & every now & then, it’s as real as breathing. And my characters know it too.

Odd earrings

03 Sunday Jun 2018

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process

One of my writing rituals involves earrings. I have a designated pair. They’re not in fact a pair at all. They’re odd. One is a beautiful moonstone, the other, two chunks of amber. Both are set in silver & both lost their mates at some point in the past, the way earrings are inclined. Not least the ones we like best.  I loved both pairs very much so decided I may as well wear the not lost ones together. They’ve become talismans & when I’m particularly challenged (editing) they give me confidence.

Who knows if they have any power? Writers love ritual & I’ve spent a goodly part of my life indulging it, one way or another.

Numbers have power! The number of the moon is nine!! Merry meet for a lunar lark!!!

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And so forth.

You get the gist: I’m not keen on even numbers. There’s something about their uniformity that grates. Too precise. I prefer the risky, more magical nature of a nine or a seven. And I like what the ghost in my new story has to say about them:

‘She preferred odd ones, she said they were feminine.’

This morning I finished the third pass. After some serious slashing, it comes in at 89,977 words & sixty-three chapters. The title is three words long.

So far, so far. (So far…)

The art of not writing

19 Sunday Nov 2017

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Island Life, Word Birds & Process

Two weeks ago I was felled (I love it when word usage genuinely fits) by an upper case Damned Bloody Virus upon which I now wish every level of Hell. It’s a fortnight of my life lost to misery, moping & mucus. For several days I couldn’t read never mind write – drifting in a pastiche of every tragic ‘heroine scenario’ you can imagine & in which the chaise longue took centre stage.

I know…

In my head however real story scenes floated, not all of them useless. It’s writing but not writing as we know it… And it’s a trick most writers manage in spite of the obvious obstacles. Like forgetting stuff because the DBV has Taken Over Your Brain.

The problem with not being able to write anything down means my notoriously unreliable memory has put to the test. After the first week I was able to begin scribbling notes again & miraculously much of what I conjured in extremis appears to have survived. Mostly ghostly, slightly surreal, but given my state of mind, hardly surprising.

And the DBV may have done me a sideways favour. I knew before it hit I’d been consciously searching for a different internal pattern to the voice of this new story. It’s a tale concerning identity, on a deeply fundamental level. The echoes of motifs I recognise from my reading of books steeped in Gothic Romance are refusing to be silenced. I’m digging deeper & my characters will surely follow suit, into the shadows & cobwebbed corners of my imagination.

My word birds have been kind & patient but they’re getting restless & I love them for it. Taking it easy is still A Good Thing but cobwebs notwithstanding – & a new moon on the rise – I’m determined to return to my story very soon. Because, damn – I can sense it & it’s whispering – like my ghost, like the birds…

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Island Life, Words Birds & Process #2

24 Sunday Apr 2016

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This week’s highlight is a particularly nice one involving a guest appearance on Isabel Costello’s illustrious Literary Sofa. Like Virginia Woolf, I don’t believe in ageing per se and favour her inclination to ‘change my aspect to the sun.’ Writing a piece about being published ‘in later life’ was an exercise in acceptance. I am grateful to Isabel for the opportunity.

For the rest, I’ve been picking away at my SisterBook, managing at best a thousand words a day. I put it down to reclaiming routine after the excitement of being published and launched but sense this is about to change. I have it all – all but the filler and the nuances.  At least I think I do. One of my characters – whose nature it is to assert herself – is leading me into the dark wood, so to speak. I have a pocketful of breadcrumbs, just in case.

What concerns me most though is the quality of this new story and my fear that I may be repeating myself.

With Ghostbird, I never set out to write a ghost story and it took me a while to realise I was. Now I’ve embraced the ‘genre’ I love it. In terms of formula, a ghost story must naturally have a ghost. Readers need to be a bit (or a lot) scared. And teenagers (yes, I’m writing two teenage main protagonists this time), not least those living in remote houses in the middle of nowhere with eccentric mothers, are likely to run wild and be a bit ‘odd.’

So, what do I have? Another ghost story for sure. (“If you liked that you’ll love this?” Readers are renowned for wanting more of the same.) But when does familiarity become tedious or clichéd? I remind myself that the crime writer also follows a formula: Body! Murder! Investigation (maybe a maverick cop), red herrings and so forth. A love story insists that girl meets boy (or variations on this theme), obstacles to true love abound; misunderstanding and duplicity bedevil the lovers until the truth outs and they fall into one another arms.

Although I confess to liking some love interest in my own stories – love is all around us and so forth – the conventional ones hold little appeal for me. I’m drawn to flawed women and the men they often attract: it’s the survivors of ill-advised love stories that intrigue me. I write about the aftermath of these relationships and the women who, for whatever reason, proved too much for men lacking the emotional stamina for the dance. I write about the daughters of these unions and although it was never my intention, somehow now find myself making them the centre of my stories.

And then there are the ghosts…

In no way am I saying the way to make sense of your life – in the event your mother is slightly mad and you’ve grown up without a father – is to encounter a haunting. Far from it – in the real world it’s probably the last thing you need. But fortunately, fiction isn’t the real world. It’s the world of the imagination and making it up and I can create whatever situations and scenarios I choose!

Time will tell if I’m repeating myself or not…