More than Writers

“The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labour. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency.” Maya Angelou  The late Maya Angelou’s wise words offer a rich starting point for reflection. My focus today is on the theme of encouragement — something we all need, in our work, our family life, and, of course, in our creative efforts. I am convinced that encouragement engenders far better results than criticism, perhaps especially in writing. None of us enjoys being told that we are not very good at something. Most of us are already our own harshest critics, and we would do well to be far more bullish when it comes to self-worth — again, particularly in creative work.  The word encouragement itself is revealing. It comes from Old French, dating back to the mid-fourteenth century, and can be traced to the verb encoragi...

  In this blog I am going to explore some more about my quest to write a children’s book. New readers are advised to look back at earlier blogs for context. My first draft of the story was very raw and had little editing. However, I am learning from writing these MTW blogs that one has to prepared to ditch the ‘darlings’ – one’s favourite words and lines. The problem is, there are often many darlings and knowing which to keep and which to ditch is hard! People who read the work and comment however, can be wonderfully objective about them, not having the same degree of attachment.  Having ruthlessly weeded the darlings, I was directed to focus on clarity and continuity which was sometimes lacking. As a writer I have a tendency to make all kinds of subconscious connections in my mind, both within the story and in terms of wider context. But my readers often cannot always follow my internalised narrative.  In my story this meant that my readers could not understand who t...

  Each New Year I plan to write every day. Each January, I fail. I struggle to write much at all that month or in February. Is it just me? Or does it affect other writers as well? Research on the internet, suggests I’m not alone and the reasons given make sense to me. Here’s what’s usually going on: Our brains are tired after Christmas. Adrenaline keeps us going in December, but the Christmas holiday breaks that routine. Our brains are tired and we feel stodged up and lazy. January 1 st is the wrong time to make resolutions as we’re still in recovery mode and creativity hates being rushed out of convalescence. There’s also the problem with short days and low light levels. I always feel much more motivated to write on a summer evening than I do on a cold dark winter evening. I don’t have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but I still lack motivation. Apparently, many writers have a natural creative cycle and output peaks in certain seasons, while other seasons are for re...

‘You couldn’t make it up.’ That’s the trouble, the worry, and my concern. Try as I might, avoiding the news these days is well-nigh impossible. However, I can’t help thinking if I, or any other author for that matter, wrote a story about a man who preyed on weak and vulnerable girls, but who had so many rich and powerful (and male) friends who not only protected him but, when he finally got into trouble, were neither prosecuted nor investigated themselves. And if I also wrote that this man, on his release from prison, had female friends who would find girls for him – or ask him to visit when their own daughters were home – the manuscript would have been rejected out of hand as beyond the realms of credibility. And yet it looks like this has happened ‘in real life.’ Lower down the social scale, amongst those of us with less access to money and position, we wonder why women don’t feel safe. I have had a phone conversation with my son terminated – because he needed to make sure the line w...

 https://www.michaeloglesby.com Have any of you seen the Inside Out sequel? One of the parts that made me laugh the most was when the character Nostalgia kept appearing. Riley, as a 12–13-year-old, is far too young to have that character, but for me, as a 52-year-old, she can certainly appear — and she has, in an unexpected way. As I’ve often mentioned here, I’m a member of an online writers’ group called Alpha Writers , and our latest challenge was to write a villanelle — a poem with a repeating refrain. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas was the example we were given. So where does nostalgia come in? Well, that was the theme of the challenge. I struggled with this for a bit, but then I was asked a question recently: if I could go back in time, would I want to return to a place, an object, or a person? I initially decided on a place — my old boarding school. I went to boarding school from the age of eight, and I loved it. It was the perfect escape from my...

 Learning to sing my story - Christine Cleave I need a stroll around the garden to wake me up in the morning and a few days ago there was a treat in store - a small robin singing its heart out on the summit of a neighbouring tree. The musical twirls and flourishes stopped me dead in my tracks, as I wondered what the bird was saying - “This is my territory”?  Or was he broadcasting his search for a mate: “Come to my tree, lovely lady robins, and see what a very fine fellow I am!” Apparently, early humans sang before they learned to speak. I imagine a skin-clad man loudly carolling (but not verbalizing) the message, ‘I’m off to the forest to hunt deer.’ This might be accompanied by chest-pummelling and gestures in the correct direction. Maybe Stone Age man and the robin have something in common?   There are still tribes living in the Amazon basin that communicate in song. . . However, I must not let myself get diverted from the main purpose, which is to share my writing jou...