More than Writers

During the Covid-19 pandemic one of the most popular books worldwide has been La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus. Two members of ACW have written books for young people where a plague has been the background for the story. Eleanor Watkins books, The Village and A Wind of Change are historical novels set at the time of the Black Death. Philip Davies’ second book in his young adult fantasy trilogy, Destiny’s Revenge , also features a plague. They have kindly agreed to answer some questions. SS: Why did you choose to write about sickness and death in books for young people? EW: After reading several books on the Black Death, I'd often wondered how people would cope during and following a time of plague - never dreaming that a pandemic would be experienced in my own lifetime. What would happen to the survivors, maybe some the only ones left in their families, how would their lives go on?  I aimed to bring a message of hope for the future. PSD:   The story...

  Being in the Netherlands made me think of expressions used in different languages. Personally, I do like clichés, one of the reasons being that some new expressions are clearly made up to make the writing more funny. It makes me smile when watching Little Princess (the annoying cartoon girl, who’s rude, bossy and a bit whingy, not the literature one), and the old guy gets his sayings mixed up (I feel it’s a ploy to keep the parents smiling, allowing their kids to keep on watching.). A lot of expressions seem to be based around money. “ Spending a penny ”, well, on the Continent you will need more than a penny now. Clearly the extra cleaning measures need to be paid for, so sending hubby and child off with the usual coins didn’t work. “ In for a penny, in for a pound ”, one that I don’t get. I mean, the difference between a penny and a pound is quite a lot! Part of writing fiction, especially when making up worlds as well as stories, is the fun of coming up with new expression...

Character creation is my favourite aspect of fiction writing. I love inventing new people and working out what makes them tick. I then  dump them right in it,   create interesting situations for them to tackle. What a writer needs to know about their characters before writing their stories varies but I’ve found the following questions useful.  How will your characters react to the challenges you set them? Pixabay image. What is their major trait?   What they think their major trait is as it often doesn’t match what other characters think! That in itself can lead to interesting conflicts. (How many characters would acknowledge they’re boastful and proud? We can tell they are from the way they act but they’ll inevitably paint themselves in a positive light! Self deception can be useful for creating funny characters too).   What do they need to achieve and why?   What stops them achieving their objective and why? It's a good sign if your characters feel like ...

  'Butterfly nebula’ - imagined by the author,   knitting together the glories of the night sky  and of countryside wonders.   A ‘Blogsperiment’ for sharing – and advice perhaps   During the next month, I am experimenting on my blog and although the subject matter of my blog may not feel particularly relevant to some reading it, the outcomes of the experiment may be helpful to other author/bloggers – so do read on even if the next paragraph seems rather disparate to anything you write.   Having been running my blog for just over 9 years, I have accumulated enough material to post a regular daily sequence for a limited period. The somewhat ‘niche’ main theme of my blog is celebrating the complementarity of faith and science in revealing the glory of God in the universe. In pursuing that theme, links to various sciences with relevance to climate change and species loss have emerged.   So I now have a collection of poems, meditations and songs that r...

It's amazing how life can change so quickly!  Only a week ago I was squashed onto a shelf packed tight in layers of cardboard and plastic packaging.  I couldn't see anything other than the underside of the boxes immediately above me.  All I could hear was the thud of footsteps, the jolting roar of machinery the rustle and rasp of cardboard moving against cardboard. It was dark, it was stultifying; it was never ending.   Is this all there was to life? Why had I been created if it was just to lie here day by day, night by night hoping for a miracle? But one day that miracle did happen and I am still clacking in amazement at it.  God is real.  He truly does work in us and through us.   This day began like any other, the nothingness of extreme boredom and hopeless waiting.  I wasn't even sure what I was waiting for exactly, I just somehow knew that life had to be more than this!   And all of a sudden that 'something more' began to ...

Pre-lock down, I was busily engaged in writing various blogs and articles for a variety of clients. At some point, nearly all of them would request that beloved staple, the Top Ten List. Because of this, I am now an expert on top ten hidden gems, top ten green spaces, top ten best family attractions and top ten best museums, all in London. Such a list is not as easy to compose as it might first appear. You have to engage your reader, draw them in and tell them things they didn’t know. Along the way, I’ve found out lots and added to the filing cabinet of knowledge in my head. It’s been several months since I wrote a Top Ten piece. I rather miss them. “Dash it all, Ruth,” I said to myself, as I pondered what I might write this month. “How about mixing up comedy and fact in your trademark humourmation [1] style? I wonder how that would go down.” I’m about to find out. Here, without further ado, is my non-exhaustive and strictly personal list of Top Ten Writers’ Ailments. Feel f...

In a recent ACW zoom, Fran suggested we consider 'rejection' as a topic. I reflected on an article refused by Woman Alive 11 years ago. They had published my two previous submissions, and the next, so why not this? I came up with: *  Over confidence *  Lack of editing *  Padding *  'Spiky' observer stance with attitude Regarding the latter, it was probably a blind spot then. In the article, I observed a four-generation family reunion. The reader might have puzzled over my detachment, which maybe was because my many siblings, nieces and nephews have progeny and I don't. I love children (well behaved ones) but have escaped being blessed with them myself. Whoops, that's the spiky bit! Of course, I've missed out desperately – or have I? So here is the article, reduced from some 1000 words to the 300 requested by Fran.  I've removed some of the barbs (hopefully) but it's a tad disjointed. Can I blame word poverty for that? --------------...

  In the autumn of 2017, I posted a blog on the More Than Writers blog site on the subject ‘My Favourite Book of the Bible’. That book was the ‘right strawy’ Letter of James . My post barely satisfied ACW’s mandate of blogging only about writing. I mentioned the way in which the Letter’s teaching seemed to contain little narratives (almost the converse of Jesus’s stories containing teaching). Something then inspired me to turn these embedded narratives into actual stories, and I presumed on the hospitality of More Than Writers to present all five of them here, though as this was writing about faith matters, rather than about writing, it probably broke the rules. And, as a timely cherry on top of this naughty cake, there came a challenge from ACW to write a short piece beginning ‘There was complete silence as she entered the room’. What I wrote in response made an ideal epilogue told from the point of view of my main female character. I didn’t submit it to the competition — in any...

  Faith, Hope and Charity: Faith by Rebecca Seaton ‘Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.’ James 2:17 Our faith permeates who we are and is expressed in different ways in our daily lives. If our faith is important to us, then this will be evident in our writing. This is more explicit in Christian writing but it is still worth thinking about which aspects of faith you might be trying to convey. In secular writing, this is less obvious but faith in someone or something will inevitably guide your main character. The following points are worth considering: Who or what do your characters have faith in? This could be God as we know Him, or gods or spiritual beings devised for the story. Either way, what does it mean to have faith in them? What are the actions by which your characters’ faith is evident? This could be big events or simply a whispered prayer at a key moment. How do the names or attributes of their god crop up in conversation? They might hav...

 Let me tell you about the cloakroom. As an opening line, I’m not sure the above is up there with ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’ ( Pride and Prejudice ) or ‘There was no possibility of taking a walk that day’ ( Jane Eyre ) or even ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (um, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt ), but this blog does indeed begin in a cloakroom. When I was a child, Bibles were kept on a shelf in the cloakroom. Being by the front door, it was easy to grab a Bible during the few-minutes-late dash out of the house on a Sunday morning. One day, however, it was decided for us that the Bibles should find a new home. My dad, reaching for his Bible, realised it wasn’t on the shelf. Nor was it on the floor. Nor was it hiding among the coats. The Bible had managed to take a high dive from the shelf, straight into the toilet (clean water = unmitigated gratitude). I can still remember Dad holding up a Bible, the lower half of which was wet. I can remember the concern and sympat...

"...Destruction and violence are before me, strife and conflict abounds.  Therefore the law is paralysed and justice never prevails.  The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted."   The Lord's answer, "Look at the nations and watch - be utterly amazed for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. "                                                                              Habakkuk 1:3-:5    The above verse seems so appropriate for these days. I think we can safely say, we could never have anticipated all that has happened in these last months.  As I write this, I can barely believe it’s nearly twenty-two weeks since lockdown and twenty years since the Lord...