More than Writers

  I was driving my youngest to Forest School, enjoying his chattering in the back. He was dressed up in his waterproof camos (he’d been longing for rain, just so he could wear his waterproof outfit!), and he was telling me about his buildings, and the creatures living in them. “They’re actually fuman,” he said, and I smiled. With three older siblings, most mispronounced words don’t survive very long, but fuman is still around. I love hearing him say it, for at nearly 8, he feels hugging and kissing me goodbye at Forest School is embarrassing, only to be endured with eye-rolling and a longsuffering sigh. I think 8 is still little. Not many of my children’s stories contain fumans. They all love telling or imagining stories. My littlest one sits next to me when doing his morning Kindle time, and I can hear him whispering stories whilst wandering around his Minecraft village. My older boy has a very long-running, complex story called Angry Parrots, based on his teddies. Only one of t...

I was amused when a writer (whose name I can’t recall), when asked where they got their ideas, retorted with “from a store called Ideas R Us ”! I wonder if the questioner tried to Google Map that... Putting a story together has similarities with solving a jigsaw. Have you got all of the pieces in place? Have you got them in the right order? Pixabay   Different writers have various ways of finding ideas and routes in to starting that next story, blog post etc.    Finding Ideas is one thing. Working out which are the most promising is another matter! Pixabay image.   For fiction, I outline characters and ideas emerge from there. I work out what I must know about a character I want to write up and use a template. I need to know major traits and from those I get an inkling of the situation where those traits would be an asset or a nightmare. Both work well.  A pompous character can be sent up or brought down after all. They, of course, don’t think they’re pompous a...

  Image credit Pixabay free images   In my secondary school days, I was blessed to have an English master who, I now realise, inspired a love of our language which, combined with my desire to read widely, gave me a broad-based, maybe even extensive vocabulary.   This was supplemented by my being a choirboy from the age of seven. So, Sunday after Sunday, twice a day and at two choir practices every week, I was immersed in the language of the psalms, the canticles, hymns, and two Bible readings at every service. Inevitably the vocabulary of the Anglican church became familiar, even if I was not always wholly attentive to the content of what I heard!   These two substantial influences merged to make me an enthusiast for formal debating; first as a member of my secondary school debating society and school team, then later as a team member of a Junior Chamber of Commerce debating team which made its way to the national finals, where we lost to an extremely fluent team fro...

 As someone who was told repeatedly when I was young that I was mental, stupid. lazy, unlovable and a mistake, I grew up with the feeling that it was best to hide myself away and speak as little as possible.  Over time those ugly words became immensely powerful in that I didn't just hear them being shouted over me, but I believed they were true.   Such words became my identity, I thought about them, I mulled them over in my mind and heart.  I allowed my self view to be shaped by them.  I made life choices under their influence and I nearly took my life as a result of their message of hate. But in the midst of this devastating power of destructive words, I discovered the whisper of love and beauty. of hope and wonder, of adventure and mystery of reconciliation and restoration and of trust and faith.  I discovered the power and influence of the written word which I began to immerse myself in, to grab hold of and virtually eat.  And from inside out I...

Words and grammar have always fascinated me. I remember when I was doing my A levels, we studied a new module called ‘Varieties of English’, which looked at different types and genres of writing, how accents and cultures were represented, and so on. I think I was the only one in the class who looked forward to these lessons! So perhaps it was inevitable that I’d end up working with words and grammar. Being a writer, editor and proofreader allows me to see language from all angles – whether to convey my own message or to help others put across their message in the clearest possible way. So it’s my copy editor’s hat that I wear today (the one who works on the nitty gritty of the text). In my work, I come across the same issues on a regular basis. So I thought it might be helpful to explore some of these. I hope it will be both interesting (there must be someone else out there…?) and helpful. I or me? We all grew up being taught, ‘It’s not John and me; it’s John and I.’ Well, often ...

 I came away from my first Scargill ACW residential with a bad case of imposter syndrome, although I didn't have a name for it then. So many published authors and folks who seemed to know everyone and everybody. Was I a writer or not? I had been anxious to decide. Not, I concluded. But some perverse streak made me fire a sample of writing at the ACW Lent book competition. Result! I was invited to contribute. Joining the ACW led to finding you all. What a supportive bunch! So much help and encouragement. Now, it's not so much whether I can write after a fashion, more about 'how', 'why' and 'what'. In February I blogged about how mojo had deserted me in lockdown. Three of you have helped recently, for which many thanks. The first was Livi (Karen Rosario Ingerslev) on the ACW selfpublishing zoom with a quote that impacted her at a crucial point: 'You are not a writer because those who have the power to publish you choose to publish your words. You are a...

Can anything good come out of the Vatican? (To paraphrase Nathanael.) If you were brought up, or have been taught, to have that point of view, think again. Pope Francis, assisted by Austen Ivereigh, has brought us a wonderfully inspiring message for the present crisis, Let Us Dream . The basic rule of a crisis is that you don’t come out of it the same. If you get through it, you come out better or worse, but never the same. We are living in a time of trial. The Bible talks of passing through fire to describe such trials. This is a taster from the Prologue. Again, he writes: God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging, and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded, and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions th...

  It’s All About the Con by Rebecca Seaton Having - and keeping - a clear picture of your world is vital.     Consistency, I mean. Something that helps make your story and its world believable is consistency. Think about television series you’ve watched or book series you’ve followed. Doesn’t it annoy you when a character changes without reason? On the other hand, a character who you know well is often the reason to keep reading or viewing.     The Bible tells us, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8) One of the reasons we can trust God is because He is eternal and unchanging. We know He will forgive us today because He has already forgiven us.     This also has a powerful effect in fiction. A good example is the TV series ‘Hudson and Rex’, which I’ve recently started watching. It’s a crime show where the lead detective is paired with an Alsatian, not at all the sort of thing I’d normally watch. ...

  ‘You could write about us next!’ said my nephew. He was, along with his brother and sister, forming a ‘rocket’ to launch 30 Days with Ruth. (If you’d like to come along to the online celebration of the book, it’s tonight (22 nd April) at 7.30pm UK time – you’ll be very welcome:  get your ticket here ) The children are Abigail, Josiah, and Micah, so they do all have biblical names, hence the ‘you could write about us next’ suggestion. 9-year-old Abigail said, ‘Well, Micah would work, there’s quite a lot about him in the Bible. And Josiah might work, he was a king. But Abigail might be tricky, because there’s not much about her.’ If I ever need a ghost writer, I know where to turn. If I ever need a ghost signer, though, I know where not to turn. Watching me sign books, Abigail said pointedly, ‘If I wrote books, I would sign them neatly.’ I fear asking her to emulate my handwriting would be going a step too far; I couldn’t put the child through such trauma. I...

For our light, momentary affliction is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease ] .    2 Cor.4:17 (AMPC)  For many t he above verse has not felt lockdown a momentary affliction, but time now to believe of its passing.   The is a picture of a broken vase, repaired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi.  The process embraces the flaws and imperfections by restoring them with gold. This creates a stronger far more beautiful piece causing it to be worth more than its original value. And, of course that is what God does, He offers to take our physical, mental and physical weakness, and yoked to Him, His love binds, strengthens and restores us to find our value is in Him.    In this last year we have seen the depth of goodness within people, who have play...

I am using this month's #morethanwriters post to coincide with today's April AtoZ Challenge . April AtoZ is an annual blogging challenge following the letters of the alphabet. My post today is about 'Questions' and how I use them in my writing. They help me when I feel the plot is stalling, I also use them if I'm struggling with writer's block. The question I use most is, what if? Sometimes it is as simple as, what if there is a knock at the door? or, what if the phone rings? It interrupts the action and potentially brings a new character into the story. I used it in my novel, Gorse Lodge . It didn't bring a new character in that instance, but it connected two previous characters which gave me a great new subplot to pursue. The questions often take me off on a tangent and I need to be careful not to go awandering, and literally lose the plot. It's worth it though. Asking the questions widens my view of the scene. Especially the question, 'what else c...

  Amy Boucher-Pye stood up on stage and placed her Bible on top of the podium. She looked out at us, the attendees of the Woman Alive one day gathering in Woking. As you can imagine, this was pre-pandemic and the church sanctuary was packed.  Amy introduced something new-to-me, a practice I have followed ever since; Lectio Davina. We took a Scripture and placed ourselves among the words, and after several times of slowly saying the passage aloud or in our prayer; the heart felt word of God went from our packed little heads to our over burdened hearts.  To my mind, this is a key purpose for taking time away from the world. I want to focus on what God has to say in this season.  Things are a little different now. We’ve all been away from the world quite a bit, whatever our focus. So in this “emerging season” as I call this time of crawling out of hibernation, I’ve been looking at ways of enjoying a retreat that connects with others who want to sharpen their focus on w...

I have the joy / terror / privilege / delight (delete as applicable, according to the week, day or hour) of working with teenagers.  On an average day at work, upwards of one hundred of these creatures pass through my classroom. Every week there are many, many moments that make me smile and many others that leave me wondering what on earth has just happened. This week, I was reflecting on my own almost-teenage son.  He is at the stage of life where he is a bit like an oversized puppy – I’m sure you’ve all met or owned teenagers of this sort. He has not yet grown into his size 12 “paws,” frequently tripping up the stairs.  For him, all of life is an opportunity for humour and comedy and wise cracks, in our house, come thick and fast. One of his tales of the “banter” he has with his teachers at school made my husband ask me whether I thought he was being too lively, too silly in the classroom.  I replied that I would rather have a whole class like him and “tame” them...

  As members of ACW we are in a unique position in that we are able to hear about a whole host of different writing that we may not otherwise. I know many of us already do this, but I just wanted to encourage you to take the time to look at the output of those within our organisation regularly, and to invest in the books that you feel drawn to. It is SUCH a blessing to each of the writers, but also of great benefit to you as the reader.   I felt prompted to write this because of a couple of personal examples of how much I’ve been blessed by books written by members. Just this week I have had the pleasure of dipping into two new titles:  The Healing  by Joy Margetts and  30 Days with Ruth  by Emily Owen.    The first title I had featured on my blog and was excited to read more for relaxation during the Easter holidays. These last few weeks have not turned out as I was expecting (much more busy and less relaxing), but I’ve still managed to dip into ...