More than Writers

  Last weekend I went to the Netherlands by myself, for a large reunion with my cousins as well as my parents. We met up in Zeist, a lovely old town in the centre of the Netherlands. My father grew up in Zeist, so it was extra special to meet in what used to be their family church. My father was one of eight children, the youngest. He was three years old when his father died, leaving my gran to run the dairy shop by herself. My dad’s side of the family is all rather exuberant, and they’re into story telling. The Dutch way of holding a conversation means when talking to four cousins, there will literally be four people talking at the same time, probably four different topics as well... As there were about thirty-eight of us, the noise in the room was, well, wonderful, I would say! For the last few weeks, my sisters had been running a family quiz in Whatsapp, and I realised how much fun memoirs could be. I’m not too keen on life stories, but looking at old photographs made me t...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.     Most of my reading is done via the good old paperback. I have non-fiction works on my Kindle or in hardback. I also love audio books and stories on the radio. My favourite there is The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.  Other family members do not read much but take in their stories via film. To give credit where due, they have watched the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy twice! Does anyone know if there is a medal given out if you manage that three times? I do not worry about the format of the story. Indeed, I welcome other formats because I see them as ways of getting people into reading. This is more important now given there are far more options for people to spend their leisure time rather than “just” reading.  More people, when they read, opt for ebooks and screen reading. I am sure this has helped fuel the growth in flash fiction and short stories. Short works are i...

  During the half term break, last month, I had the pleasure of hosting my cousin, Angela, in our home at Thamesmead. Being teachers, we needed to enjoy a well-deserved break.   I told her we were going to have a blast of a time and that is what happened. Can you guess how? Well, let’s take it bit by bit…   The very morning she came, we went to my favourite cafe and she said it was the best cafe she had ever been to!   While digestion was busy in our bellies, we caught up on heart to heart chats had hearty laughs and took lovely pictures. My home is a walking distance to the popular historical Lesnes Abbey Ruins and a very lively beautiful lakeside. During the days that followed, we enjoyed long walks around the area, watched movies and played indoor games. She was treated to a sumptuous meal at our favourite African restaurant - The Whitehart at Erith. For her, it was   a very memorable experience! On Sunday, she worshipped with me at Emmanuel Baptist Church,...

  Recently, I posted in the group about my yearning to write a novel.   As a writer of devotional and Christian teaching books I’ve hardly ever written fiction although I did try my hand at writing some short nature ‘parables’ in my latest book, Unashamed.   I’ve felt inspired by the many other writers in the group who have ventured into other genres and I felt a prompting from the Lord to stop procrastinating and step out into my dream.   But how on earth to go about writing a story? Where do you even start?   Some of you came back to my post with lovely encouragement and great ideas – write out of what you know; ask the Lord to give you a character that you fall in love with and tell their story; think of the things that you feel passionate about and let your story centre around that. Well, after much thought: What I know are my own experiences including many deeply wounding ones; A character born in my heart who I already love is little Jilly and her s...

Picture: Brendan on the road in Plymouth November, for many writers, is perhaps the busiest month of the year. Many of you will be slogging your way through Nanowrimo and hopefully will have written some remarkable stories. Once again, I decided not to do this challenge this year but nevertheless, I still feel that I have achieved and will briefly share some of my wins – do tell me yours. Book Blest – The month kicked off with a gathering of Christian authors and speakers in Stroud. It was fabulous to see this event take place again after months of planning and organising and the feedback that we have received is mainly positive. However, like many others, I was disappointed by the low number of visitors to the festival. It really does make you feel like giving up, especially when you are exhausted from the challenge – but we don’t do we? College – As if I wasn’t already doing enough, God led me to enrol on a level 4 diploma in proofreading and copy editing. This was a serious ...

                                ‘My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.’ Psalm 45:1 NKJV  READY? What is a ready writer? I was struck by that question as I read Psalm 45 a few days ago. In some Bible translations the word ’ready’ is translated as ‘skilled’, or ‘skillful’. It can also mean ‘quick’ or ‘prompt’, apparently. I know the Psalmist here is talking about composing songs, but I love that picture of a writer poised with pen in hand, just waiting for the words to flow. I might not sit with a ink-filled pen, poised over a clean sheet of paper, but when it comes time to write there are certain things I do to get ready. Certain things that have to be in place. I am sure we all have our own little idiosyncrasies. I get myself as ready as I can be. Hoping for the words to flow, from head and heart to fingertips and keyboard. These are some of the things I do to get ready to write...

Those kindly souls who read my posts will know by now that I am a Tolkien fanatic. So I caution you, dear reader, if you are not a Tolkien fan, stop reading now! If you are still with me, I’d like to tell you about a wonderful book that we are reading at home: we’re not quite finished yet, and we know that we’ll be really sad when we reach the end. The book is Tolkien’s Faith , by Holly Ordway, published in September: quite expensive, but absolutely worth every penny. It’s a new biography of the great man, centring on his Christian faith. A major blemish of serious Tolkien studies, right from the start, has been that his Christian faith, of which he made no secret, has been treated as an incidental, even slightly awkward, item: a bit of an elephant in the room. Of course his writings appeal to a vast readership, the majority of whom are not Christian believers, and this includes many of the academic Tolkien specialists who write about him. His first biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, was ...

  Why Write Fantasy? by Rebecca Seaton   The quest element of fantasy is key, this leads to powerful conflict and makes it easy for the reader to care about your characters. It’s a good fit for the writer’s journey, a twelve step plan which many writers use. The writer’s journey includes twelve important elements of the story and has been applied to early drafts of stories like the Lion King to improve them. It also includes certain character types (friend, mentor, antagonist etc) that although they can apply in any genre, fit the natural journey/quest structure of fantasy particularly well. The joy of world-building is another factor. It’s always essential to be a convincing world, however fantastical. It can seem harder as you’re building from scratch but is also a great freedom. One thing leads to another and economics/politics/religions/customs all link so that the more your characters do, the easier the world building gets and the more deeply you build, the easier i...

  I recently went into a school to take a lesson. I went to talk to the children about my forthcoming book, out next year, and to ask them to read it and feedback, so I could get some quotes. They all said yes, they would, which was nice - though I have to say they’d already been ‘said yes for’ by their teacher! At the start of the lesson, before we did some reading/writing/discussion, I explained that I’m deaf, and that, in sign language, people don’t always spell every letter of every person’s name. People are assigned a ‘sign name’, based on their characteristics. I have a few sign names, depending who I’m with, but the main one for me is – oh so originally – the sign for ‘tall’. I asked the children what their own sign names would be. (Do feel free to adopt the sign name technique, it really does make it easier to remember who is who, and is especially helpful when choosing someone to answer a question. I find it certainly beats ‘you over there, in the blue top’ (espe...

You may remember the musician, entertainer and all-round legend Roy Castle, fondly remembered for presenting the children's programme 'Record Breakers' for the BBC. Roy died in 1994. Yes, it really was that long ago.  If you haven't heard of him, or you would appreciate a nostalgic reminder and don't mind an earworm for the rest of the day, do check out this clip of the theme song he used to perform at the end of each show. ' Dedication ' combines a catchy tune, simple words which tie together his Christian faith and drive and, in this particular case, over 400 young jazz musicians:  Dedication, dedication, dedication, that's what you need. If you wanna be the best, And if you wanna beat the rest (ooo-ooh), Dedication's what you need...  ... if you wanna be a record-breaker! Writers don't get far without dedication. Producing any kind of article, poem or book involves: 1. Acquiring and honing skills (a life-long journey), and 2. A good deal of s...

Do you pray over your writing? Or pray before you write? Perhaps you don’t feel like writing is a spiritual exercise for you, because you write into the secular market or your writing is just for fun, or to wind down. Perhaps you suffer from imposter syndrome – my writing is so unimportant, why would God care about my writing? Janet Wilson at Write for a Reason first encouraged me to pray before writing about two years ago. My work has always been a bit like a spiritual conversation with God, but I’m not sure I was ever very intentional about building prayer into my prewriting routine before that. Yet, I always felt like it would be nice if my words were not just for this moment, this culture, this time, but were something eternal. I expect we all long for that! This week, I downloaded a super little book by the same people that ran the Kingdom Writers prayer conference in July that I shared on the ACW page. I hope some of you got to attend online. One of the prayers in the book contai...