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Making it up as I go along

Making it up as I go along

Tag Archives: Mythology

Notions of story, hiraeth & heart’s home

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Blodeuwedd, Dylan Thomas, Extract, Ghostbird, Mythology, Snow Sisters

Island Life, Word Birds & Process

My definition of my nationality, if anyone asks, is ‘Irish blood, Welsh heart.’ Like most British people I’m a hybrid, made from two kinds of Celt & a bit of Warwickshire. My mother was from Northern Ireland, a nurse, singer & classically trained pianist; my father was half-Southern Irish with a streak of English & an ability to play the blues piano by ear. I grew up with love, boundaries, music & stories. Many of the latter were read to me by my mum, some of them I imagined. (I made up stories for my sister & to this day, she still hasn’t forgiven me for failing to finish the saga of The Veiled Lady.)

Lots of the stories my daddy told me were from mythology. I loved them all & still do. Legends & folklore inform more contemporary fiction than we realise. I borrowed Blodeuwedd’s story from the Mabinogion for Ghostbird. I’m conjuring my version of the selkie legend for my third book & for my fourth, writing one based on my favourite folktale, The Red Shoes.

Snow Sisters, my second novel, due out in September, is the only one of my books without an obvious myth running through it. What it does have is a strong link to a different kind of Welsh mythos. (This isn’t even the right word; it’s the best I can come up with.) I’ve lived in Wales long enough to understand the notion of hiraeth: the ineffable longing for home, almost impossible to translate or put into words. It’s a feeling more than a descriptor, an occasional sense of grief; a disconnect surrounding your heart like a whispered poem evoking the emotion of separation, or perhaps the absence of presence. At its most emotive & fundamental, hiraeth is a longing for the unattainable, possibly existing only in one’s imagination.

In Snow Sisters, in lieu of a myth, I invoke my interpretation of hiraeth as experienced by Verity & Meredith Price, two young girls uprooted by their mother & transported to London, but whose sense of themselves is irrevocably connected to their hearts’ home in Wales.

Curled into her sister’s warmth, Meredith dreamed of the blue garden, the moths and the world beyond the veil, and that she was finally taken by the Fae. In her place they left a well-behaved changeling child for her mother to take to London.
When she woke, she pinched her arm and knew her wish hadn’t worked.

The Welsh own hiraeth as part of their identity – like a blood tie or an inherited name. Like dragons, Tom Jones’ green grass of home or a Dylan Thomas poem. And laced with pathos though it is, hiraeth can be droll & joyful too.

‘If there’s a word for it,’ wrote the poet, Jo Bell, ‘it sounds like laughter.’

I like that. The idea that come what may & however far from heart’s home we travel; we sense a link like a note of laughter, even if we have a tear in our eye & a lump in our throat.

I’ll leave the last words to Dylan Thomas…

‘Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea
.

~ Fern Hill

Dylan-Thomas-2-426x279

You have to write something, don’t you?

24 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

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Tags

Ghostbird, Mythology, River Selkie, RiverBook, Snow Sisters, Writing

Island Life, Word Birds & Process # 14

One upon a time I wrote a story with the working title RiverBook. I began writing it before I got the deal for Ghostbird intending it to be my next book. Once it was done (by which time, Ghostbird had been accepted) I put it away and concentrated on the process of being published. But still, in between the edits, copy edits and general excitement, you have to write something, don’t you? Out of somewhere, I got the idea for SisterBook. It kept me occupied and would be my third book (assuming I even got a look in for a second.)

By the time Ghostbird was published, I realised Sisters was likely to be a better bet as a follow-up so River was virtually banished. Sisters is now finished and submitted and I’m back to square one. While I await my fate, what do I write? Got to write something etc… Out came River and with the benefit of distance I immediately realised it was wrong. It had something but it wasn’t right. Too complex – my default setting – for one thing.

One of the best aspects about writing Ghostbird was having a myth to hang my story on. A mise an abîme I could return to that kept me connected. (Sisters doesn’t have a myth – it’s a different kind of haunting.) River – to say the least – as it stood was a muddle of mythology. And therein lay my problem. Out of an over-indulgence in research I’d created a mini-monster. I wanted another legend but I wanted a simple one.

Lying in my bath about a fortnight ago, I worked it out. In the absence of a known myth, why not create my own?

Myths and legends evolve out of unconscious processes in the oral tradition. There is rarely any historical evidence for their veracity but the repeated telling of them renders them charismatic and ‘true’ and for our ancestors they became part of the collective psyche. And like religion or any spiritual path, myths have their roots in our human desire for a rationale: a cornerstone patterned with symbolism to hook our frailties and fears on. We create them out of imagination and random moments of connection to the natural world.

In other words, they’re all made up. There is no rule to gainsay this. We can all be the author of our own mythology.

Before I get too cosmic for my own good, here’s the point. I’ve made up a myth of my own and in doing so, now know exactly what RiverBook is about. Well, you have to write something, don’t you?

undine3_beautiful_girl (1)

Island Life, Words Birds & Process #3

01 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Book Fair, Fairytales, Ghost Story, Ghostbird, Llandeilo, Magic, Mist, Mythology, Public speaking, Sky, Word Birds

It is a suitably mist-laden day. The sky looks as if it is made of a million feathers. I’m thinking about magic and why we believe in it; if indeed we do.

Yesterday, at Llandeilo Book Fair, I read the chapter in Ghostbird when Cadi – my young main protagonist – first encounters the ghost of her little sister. This baby ghost attaches itself to Cadi and thus begins the search for the truth.

Is such a thing possible? Do ghosts exist and if we resist the notion, is it possible to then go on to enjoy a contemporary story that insists they do? My story relies on a myth, and the suspension of disbelief in fairy tales. I am asking people to accept that the ghost of a little girl could become a catalyst for healing and redemption. That the fairy tale about a woman made from flowers could imprint on the lives of people living in the 21st century.

It is up to my reader of course whether she takes the kind of magic I write about at face value or explains it away as a fancy conjured from my over-active imagination.

I believe there is an intrinsic and emotional truth in fairy tales; nothing in fiction for me comes close. They are the basis for most love stories and the more fearful kind too; the kind that keeps us awake long after the final page has been turned. (Even crime thrillers rely on things that go bump in the night and dreams that turn to nightmare.)

And fairy tales are often allegorical; when unpacked and explored, they can teach us valuable lessons. (Anyone who has read Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés will know this.)

The possibility that reality and the world we glimpse on the other side of the veil can coalesce has always been appealing to me. Not everything odd or mysterious that happens in life can be explained away by logic. And many of us are drawn to the dream places we still long for after we have put away childhood notions of wonder. (Or fear.)

Across the hill, the mist lies still as a caught breath. In the distance a lone red kite hovers; searching for her lunch no doubt. Or is she? Has she caught a glimpse of something beneath the feathered mist? A place where birds speak and ghosts find peace…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other, more grounded news, the Book Fair was brilliant!

me Llandeilo

I sold and signed lots of books and managed to do my reading with only a few stumbles. And answer questions…

I’m getting better at this ‘author’ lark…

My novels

Wild Spinning Girls
Wild Spinning Girls
Snow Sisters
Snow Sisters
Ghostbird
Ghostbird
Only May
Only May
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