Today’s the day – publication day for the Ulverscroft edition of A Maid and a Man. It’s large print and principally intended for outlets such as libraries but anyone can buy it. If you don’t have an account with Ulvescroft you might try The Reading House.
So why is that a prompt? Nothing like a bit of visible success to spur one on.
A question authors, storytellers, writers, journalists are often asked is – “Where do you find your ideas?”
I don’t think that’s the knowledge that the question is seeking. We all find ourselves involved in stuff. Last weekend, for example, I was a delegate at the Scottish Association of Writers conference in the Westerwood Hotel. At around Midnight on Saturday, there was a small fire: in a laundry, we think. At any rate our taxi driver told us on Sunday that the Spa was closed because there were no towels!
The non-writer may log this information and carry on with their day. The writer’s brain, on the other hand, is in action. How useful to have collaboration like the information there were no towels.
Who benefits from that circumstance? Who loses out because of that circumstance? A fledgling Homewares’ Store might benefit. A wedding planner who has organised a Hen Party in the spa might lose out.
In addition, of course, there was the reaction of all of us guests turned out of our cozy beds for over two hours to stand around in the car park and then sit about in the public areas. And the performance of the local Fire Brigade and the hotel’s staff. It’s not the people watching I would have chosen but it was interesting and informative.
So, it’s not the having been there when it happened but the follow-up questions that give a storyteller their ideas. How did the person on the receiving end of the telephone call I partly heard react to being woken at 1.45 am to learn their caller was ‘fine’? Does that mark the end of a beautiful friendship – or the beginning of one?
(No one was injured and the fire was quickly brought under control.)
News recently in includes the sale of a summer story and a non-seasonal one – both to People’s Friend. Yay!
Also, work is underway on a projected Pocket Novel. It’s an Edinburgh set regency.
You may be interested, too, in the activities of my Capital Friends and can find out more about Kate, Jane, Jennifer and Sheila at capitalwriterscouk.wordpress.com
David, photograph above, is by no means the beginner in question – that would be me.
The regency novel often contains a ball scene and many of the people featured in Georgian and Regency novels spend a fair amount of their, admittedly plentiful, time learning to dance.
What Pride and Prejudice fan could fail to sympathise with Lizzie’s anguish when asked to dance by Mr Collins. If she accepts, she will face the mortification of having a partner who gets it all wrong. If she refuses, she can’t dance with anyone else that evening.
“Mr Collins…could not prevail with her to dance with him again, put it out of her power to dance with others.”
It was a big deal!
So, I took myself along to the French Institute on George IV Bridge where I spent six delightful evenings learning Mr Gow’s 2nd New Set of Quadrilles under the expert tuition of Talitha MacKenzie and in the company of some long-term devotees of historic dance.
Years and years of dancing Scottish Country Dances mean I struggled with the footwork but there are several great u-tube videos to help. I appreciated the ones from the Hampshire Regency Dancers.
What Olga, seen ablove on David’s arm, and I agreed on, was that we couldn’t work out how anyone had the breath for all those conversations we see in TV adaptations.
Julia in a fabulous sacque dress, 18th century style.
I hadn’t attended any of the Baroque classes but in a small company when the instructions were called, I think I managed. I did leave the party evening feeling that I could see the connections between the historic dances and the patterns of Scottish Country Dancing.
That understanding – what the patterns were and how they were danced – is going to help me understand how the characters in my novels achieved their romantic aims through dance. Maybe the carefully scripted lines beloved of historic drama ween’t a reality but the flirting through meaningful looks, squeezed hands, regretful backward glances… a term well spent.
There’s an upcoming evening at the French Institute on Parliament Square/George IV Bridge.
And it’s February when many publications will be running Valentine’s Day stories. This elaborate pigeon-hole set was part of the furniture in a small guest house I stayed in on Coorsica. It occurred to me then that it offered multiple opportunities for anyone with a story-telling inclination. It still does.
Where is the expected Valentne card? Can it be seen through the wrong grille? Was it always inteneded for the daughter/son of that household?
How much provocation is enough provocation to burst the lock of a neighbour’s box?
Likewise with other annual events. Some could be more pedestrian – the milk bill. Some could be financially disasterous – the time critical tax demand.
Has it turned a cog or two for you?
Moving On, Staying Put, my 1880s serial for The People’s Friend has now reached Instalment 6 and the resolutions are in sight for Mamie, Lydia and Ellen.
Fancy something longer Courting the Countess is a snip for your kindle at £2.99. Melissa Pateley finds herself in an Edinburgh household where her heart may be under threat.
Did you know that that annoying.99p habit started life as a means of ensuring the shop assistant’s honesty. As a penny change was needed, the till had to be opened. It rang a bell and the shop owner – maybe working elsewhere on the premises – could hear and know the payment was going into the till and not the assistant’s pocket. Hearsay? Fact? Undoubtedly interesting.
Enjoy February. The garden is beginning to show aconites and snowdrops. The tubs – little irises.
Cold seeped through the soles of Aline’s slippers and crawled up her legs. It circled her knees, and she knew they’d be bright pink. No-one could see that, though, as the onesie she wore covered everything. Covered everything and protected nothing.
Her body was so cold, she thought it wouldn’t be long before it went into shock.
“Hey, Missus,” the elderly shopkeeper said as she staggered a little under the weight of her basket. “Let me help with that.”
Gratefully, Aline released the basket to the man.
“I missed the chance to book a supermarket delivery,” she said without making eye contact. Who on earth would believe that?
“That’s to my advantage then,” the man said. “Husband outside in the car?”
“No, no. I’ve only two hundred yards or so to walk.”
“In this weather! Want me to phone him?”
“Goodness, no,” Aline said and even to her own ears panic laced her voice. She did look up then and saw the woman standing in the storeroom doorway. She wasn’t fooled. Aline knew that disconcerting calm marked a professional.
The man checked out her Christmas shop and if he wondered why a household living two hundred yards down this middle-class suburban street was going to dine on tinned soups and packet ham, he was too polite to say anything.
She hauled the notes Brian had give her out of her pocket and was relieved to see they were enough. The man rang them up and handed her twenty-two pence change.
“What do you want for Christmas, then,” he asked as he carried the bulging shoppers across the shop to the outer door.
“Shoes,” she said without thinking, “Size six, lacing.”
The woman was beside her holding a thick cardigan. Breathing in her clean soapy smell made Aline’s eyes fill. Her mum would smell like that after her shower. The wave of longing meant Aline’s attention wasn’t on the woman and she allowed her arms to be eased into the cardigan.
“We really are open twenty-four hours,” the woman said quietly, “For those in need.”
“I can’t take this,” Aline screamed the words, clawing ineffectually at the sleeves of the cardigan. The woolly pile clung like Velcro to the pile of her velour onesie. “My husband provides for us.”
“Does he?” the woman said. “Well, that’s good, but remember, Liz and Mike are open 24/7.”
Aline grabbed her bags from Mike and slopped home through the driving rain. Brian would be waiting, stopwatch in his hand.
“Hmff!” he said as he clicked her in. “What’s that?”
Aline didn’t pretend ignorance.
“The cardigan?” she said trying to keep mounting hysteria at bay. If that Liz was a professional, she should have known giving her the cardigan would only ramp up Brian’s grievances. “I was shivering, and the shopkeeper’s wife insisted. I’m to take it back soon as.”
“Right on, you are. They think I don’t look after you? What were you telling them, Aline?” Brian drew out the vowels of her name in a parody of the way her dad had talked to her. Her dad meant it as a sign of affection. Brian as a sign of mockery.
“Nothing, Brian. I did the shopping from your list and handed over the money.” She searched in her pocket for the change and set it down on the corner of the hall table. “I’ll put the stuff away so the milk doesn’t go off.”
There was little difference between the temperature of the house and the temperature of the fridge, but she pretended.
Ivy and Luke slid into the hall and gazed longingly at the shopping but there was nothing in there to cheer them up. Nothing at all.
Christmas morning in Brian’s house, as Aline had come to think of it, was possibly the worst morning of the year. When they gathered in the living-room for video calls with his mum and dad, the floor was strewn with Christmas wrap and bits of string. The tree lights were on. Everyone was dressed – properly dressed – with underwear and tee-shirts and trousers and jumpers with silly reindeer on them. Silly but warm.
The children’s presents from Santa sat in a neat pile on the edge of the broad arm of the settee. None of them had the cellophane torn, though. Aline had wondered once why her mother-in-law didn’t ask about that, but now she thought she knew. Brian had to be born in a mould of some sort.
She let her gaze stray to Luke where he sat at his dad’s feet. At ten he was small for his age and there were still one or two accidents in the night. Accidents that allowed Brian his favourite type of moment. The moment when he could accuse her of mollycoddling and lack of discipline. The moment when he could…
“Aline,” Brian’s pretend jocularity speared her straying thoughts, “Aline, Dad wants to know what you got from Santa.”
She peered into the phone. The older man was studying her as closely as the instrument allowed.
“Santa?” she said. “We’re going shopping day after tomorrow. Brian saw a lovely dress he thought would suit and it’s just above budget, but it’ll come down in the sales.”
No phone call to her family. Presents packed into the carriers ready to be returned for a refund. Ham sandwiches made. Brian heated two tins of tomato soup but took her by the arm and pushed her out into the back garden. She heard the lock click. She heard Ivy and Luke crying in protest.
Cold seeped through her slippers. She’d had no shoes for nearly two years now. Brian knew she couldn’t go far in her slippers.
At around three o’clock, Aline heard the window of the bathroom on their half-landing creak open. She looked up and watched as Ivy tumbled through onto the flat roof clutching her one and only dolly. Luke’s head appeared behind her and then he thrust a bag out. It dropped to the ground beside Aline’s feet.
She helped the children slither off the roof and brush themselves down.
“The bag, Mummy,” Luke whispered. “He’d just fallen asleep when I saw a lady in the front garden.”
Aline shook out the shoes. Size six, lacing.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I know a stable refuge that’s open.”
No part of the above story, A Stable Refuge, may be reproduced without written permission from the author.
Below are some of the Robins I share the monthly Round Robin blog with throughout the year. Their stories are available to read from Saturday 16th December.
Anne – Jane – Kate and Cecilia will be staffing a stall. There will be writerly chat; sweeties, stocking-filler books, sweeties and piles of People’s Friend mags to leaf through.
Regular readers will know that I’m approaching the final pages of the serial I’ve been writing. I found myself pondering over the ways in which we do that.
When I’ve taught creative writing to beginners, I’ve noticed there is a tendency to rush the end. They may have written a lovely, well-paced story but now they know the ending (how many of us write stories to find out what happened?) and they want to move on to the next.
To them, I say – “Don’t”. The ending is what the reader reads last and therefore is one of the parts of your story that most easily stays with them. Allow them the chance to savour the goody’s triumph and the baddy’s downfall.
There is another approach which could be described as the opposite and it’s where I’m lingering at the moment. I don’t want to let my characters go. You know the sort of thing. In a comma, out a comma. If the heroine said this would it be the best resolution? Maybe the hero should say it…
What’s the answer?
Part of the answer got me out of bed this morning to check a deadline I was allowing to hover below my radar.
So it’s full-steam ahead because I need the brain space. However, I will miss them and I am looking forward to seeing them again in the People’s Friend towards the end of December.
I was on holiday recently and read another former PF serial, Kate Blackadder’s Saturday Scribblers in kindle book form. Engaging characters with individual problems and resolutions.
Third Baby Vest completed for the Knit Every Day in August CHAS fundraiser. I’ve very much enjoyed the challenge and even sewed up the results. (Previous posts may refer to any drawer in my house being likely to contain an unfinished MS and an unfinished bit of knitting.)
Along the way, I wrote. Curious how having to find the time helps you do that. So that’s what makes this picture a prompt. Challenge yourself.
August in Edinburgh, if you’re at all interested in the ARTS, is very busy.
Festival highlights included Dimanche, Food, the circus with my daughter, The Magic Flute and Alvin Ailey Ballet co. There were also visitors, meals in and out, street theatre and the re-surfacing of one of our local arterial roads.
And I wrote. The serial you’ve heard so much about is all-but finished. I have enjoyed writing it more than I can say for reasons I can’t share until it goes up – someting to come back for.
Next up? I thinkI might try a contemporary pocket novel. A kind writer friend said she enjoyed my novels and would like to read another one. A little encouragement goes a long way.
So, as we used to start our Facebook posts, how’s August shaping up? Have I managed to knit every day?
Yes! I now have two completed vests for the Woman’s Weekly charity knit and 13 completed days for the CHAS Challenge, together with the back of the largest size vest.
Have I progressed the serial?
Yes! A knotty problem that has been acting as a mental block has been shattered. Phew!
Have I been festivalling?
Oh yes! Highlights? I’ve much enjoyed the new shorter formats.
Drama – Thrown at the Traverse. Thought provoking piece about identity.
Music – The Magic Flute was superb.
Clowning with point – Food. Clever, clever, clever – and thought provoking.
Socialising – Yes, although sadly our first lot of guests had to cancel because of illness.
Moving around this crowded city? One of the local arterial roads is being re-surfaced. Much needed, of course. Actually, we have such a good bus network in Edinburgh we’ve been little inconvenienced since we worked out a plan.
Scottish weather? Got wetter going to the corner shop one day last week than I have out and about.
Writing it isn’t. I have long tried to have a story published in Woman’s Weekly magazine and have only ever made it onto the letters’ page. Fillers, as that kind of short is known, were a favourite market of mine. I enjoyed rather a lot of success over the years.
But, I have used their knitting patterns from time to time. This one was published a few weeks ago and I’ve already made one vest and am started on a second.
Enter the Knit Every Day in August fundraiser for Children’s Hospice Association Scotland.
I haven’t done a fundraiser as I am not much of a feature on running 10ks or cycling anywhere. But my granny taught me to knit when I was three – yes, it was probably a diversionary tactic, but it has been a much loved hobby ever since.
It’s never very quiet around here in August but there’s no minimum number of rows required so I’ve signed up. Some lovely folk have offered me sponsorship and if you would like to do that, thank you. There’s a link from a pinned post on my Anne Stenhouse Graham facebook page.
I’m not pressing though. I know people have their own charitable projects and also that life is squeezing some people’s incomes rather hard.
Writing news – the serial is one instalment further on and one pending. A friend who lives in Canada sent me some useful information earlier in the week. It’s about the area we both grew up in. I also found writing the most recent round robin post about character arcs of some value.
I was paid for two stories this month. The outline of my August above should provide a prompt for another. Maybe something to do with time management.
We have Festival tickets!
There is a fantastic production of A Streetcar Named Desire currently running at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Pitch perfect – go!
Having just had a lovely trip to Turkey under the auspices of the Friends of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, I have a huge number of photographs to sort and edit. This chap caught my attention while I was looking for a photo to head the post with.
Several of the museums in Istanbul had similar figures and they are startlingly lifelike. Books in times past were substantial items and the one above certainly wouldn’t be for reading in bed or tucking in a pocket for that odd moment. On the other hand, it does remind one how long the written word has been of importance to culture. Whether it’s for your information, your entertainment or your mental health, books have had a place in our lives for generations.
I think he’s a prompt. Someone had to create his tome and when he’s finished reading it, chances are he’ll want to go onto the next. Will that be written by the same author – or by you or me?
Of course, having been away, I haven’t written much in May. However, I did come back with some inspirational moments, some wonderful photos and the memory of many delightful conversations with other group members. Instalment Two is through and Instalment Three under consideration.
The Scottish Association of Writers is running its annual Short story and Poetry competitions with a closing date of 5th August 2023. Rules are here Nothing like a little bit of focus and a deadline, I think. Good luck!
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