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The Arvon Friends Office has been collecting some delicious words on friendship. Here’s some turns of phrase for all friends out there. (Thanks to Sara for compiling these.)
Jane Austen -
Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love.
Italian Proverb -
He who finds a friend, finds a treasure
Jane Austen -
Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
C S Lewis -
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.”
Sir Francis Bacon -
We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
Oscar Wilde -
True friends stab you in the front.
W H Auden -
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
William Blake -
The bird a nest
the spider a web
the human friendship.
Virginia Woolf
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Mark Twain -
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
William Shakespeare (from Much Ado about Nothing) -
Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love . . .
Arvon recently hosted the lovely Chroma Journal. Our pre-Domesday thatched manor house, Totleigh Barton, was completely enchanted and entranced by magical minds, words and thinking. Thank you to Chroma - who are running their exciting new competition this year. Get your poetry and short stories in by 1 September 2008 - there are Transfabulous and Flash Velvet Fiction Prizes to boot!
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Everyone I had met had glazed eyes and sighed when I said I was going to Parathy. Ahhh…Parathy they all said knowingly. You are so lucky.
4 hours later, driving from Rio, the road to Parathi is still riven with rain. Rain, rain everywhere. But even through the rains bars, I can see the beauty of the mountains, the curvature of the islands and the crescent sweeps of beaches. In sunlight it would be breathtaking. In stair rod rain, it is elusive and tantalising. We arrive in Parathi midday and it is waterlogged. Great rivers whoosh down the colonial streets. We have nothing with us, except for one umbrella and our sandals. That’s it. And the rain, as in everywhere else in Brazil, is extreme. And here in Parathy no one walks the rain the Rio way. There are too many floods to cross..
The meetings which are meant to happen here, don’t happen. The rain seems to have swept everything away with it. So we have impromptu ones instead.
I get back to the hotel that night at 10pm. On the road since 7am, I am dead to the world, dreaming of Parathy during festival time in July, when the trees in the square drip with books hanging on ribbons from the branches.
Scott Pack, from The Friday Project publishing company, reviews our Arvon Friends’ writing. His latest review is now out. Anyone can join Arvon Friends, for as little as £2 a month.
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Dear Philip,
Will you please pass on my heartfelt thanks to the team at Arvon — everyone who was instrumental in donating the first prize in the Arthritis Care creative writing contest. What a wonderful prize it has been, from the choosing of a suitable course, through the tension of selection, to the course itself. This prize has made my summer and autumn quite memorable.
I have just returned from a week at The Hurst in Shropshire. The two tutors on this course, (selected, advanced fiction 8-13 October), were Jacob Ross and Maggie Gee. Both eminent and prolific writers, they proved to be outstanding tutors too.
Their generosity with time and commitment was staggering — they were on call from breakfast to bedtime, fitting in many extra sessions as personal tutorials and ensuring they used social occasions to continue with instruction and advice.
I feel very privileged to have spent these days in such a beautiful setting and among such inspiring people. Thank you for all of this.
As you know, at The Hurst, one is pretty well incommunicado unless one’s very determined, so it was not until I arrived home that I heard I had also been named runner-up in the Guildford Book Festival’s short story contest, judged by Adele Parks. With that and Arvon coming in the same week, I feel I am a real writer!
Visit editorialgirl’s experience at the Hurst - thanks to Editorialgirl for the picture above, taken at the Hurst in September.
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Arvon has been spotting a lot of things vanishing over the weekend. Soon we shall have ink that vanishes after 24 hours (which will be good for saving paper, but will creative writers remember?) and the new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has dispensed with hyphens. This will save on ink, we suppose, which is vanishing anyway. Sometimes a hyphen is needed. “Twenty-odd people” means something different from “twenty odd people”.
There could be no more fitting visitors to The Hurst than members of the Mary Webb Society. It was founded in 1972 to foster an appreciation of her writings and of the Shropshire countryside which she loved. The 30 acre grounds of The Hurst were included in the Society’s annual exploration on foot of the landscape which inspired her writings.
Their walk began at St George’s churchyard, Clun, where John and Helen Osborne, the last owners of The Hurst are buried. “Everyone is intrigued to know how John Osborne made the life journey from Look Back in Anger to one of Housman’s quietest places under the sun.” explained Keith Pybus. “Although at first glance you couldn’t imagine two more different writers, Mary Webb would have understood Osborne’s love of walking these hills with the labradors and his passionate claim that he had ‘the best view in England’ down the Clun Valley from his upper lawn. The house was built in 1812, so I suppose we can also say that it is part of Mary Webb’s Shropshire. You can’t imagine a place which better combines a writer’s retreat with such an inspiring setting. John Osborne said to his wife Helen that buying The Hurst was the “Best thing we’ve ever done Marvellous!” He wrote to a friend “I still can’t get over the triumphant inspiration of coming here. Not for the ‘final years’ but as a new outburst of energy.”
“Everyone who walks these lovely grounds realises what a remarkable spot this is. I felt if the Mary Webb members didn’t tear themselves away they wouldn’t complete their walk. They seemed to have loved the place as much as we do, as we are now talking to them about hosting their Summer School at The Hurst.”
The text of Gone to Earth can be found on the Project Gutenberg site. The complete text of her other works, including Precious Bane, are also available online .
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Emma Johnson, Arvon’s Development Manager (pictured on the left), woke up one Sunday and ran for Arvon. Emma hopes others will do the same - spreading the word about Arvon’s work with words, whilst having a lot of fun on the way.
I’m the first to admit that I’m not naturally athletic and it takes quite a lot to get me out of bed on a Sunday before 11. But yesterday I fought every urge to stay under the duvet and ran the Hydro Active Women’s Challenge 5k in Hyde Park. It’s the third time I’ve participated and I love the day itself - the sun always shines, Hyde Park always looks lovely, and its a massive buzz to take part in something that generates so much good will towards so many deserving charities. I ran for Arvon, getting sponsorship from friends and family, and I hope to raise about £400 before gift aid is added.
If you would like to raise money for Arvon this way, then please do let us know. Raising money through sponsorable activities is easy, fun, and, most importantly, it spreads the word about Arvon to a wider audience. So if you feel inspired, then do please get in touch at e.johnson@arvonfoundation.org
If I can - you can!!
Arvon Friends Manager, Philip Cowell, asked all the Arvon Friends on email what book they were currently reading. All in the spirit of sharing what we like to read, and why, some of the responses so far are posted here. Don’t forget, 2008 is the National Year of Reading. Be inspired. (Join Arvon Friends to have your say!). The above, beautiful photo was taken by Marco Casse.
Clarissa Henry
Richard Powers: Plowing the Dark. Last year, I ‘discovered’ his The Time of Our Singing since when I have read everything of his that I can find. If I may be allowed to add: I think he is one of the most remarkable writers writing today. I have also now read his Operation Wandering Soul, The Echo Maker, Galatea 2.2 so I feel entitled to my opinion! Hope the weather in the UK is better than here in Vienna where it is quice frankly dreadful!
Jenny Evans
I’m currently reading The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett and am thoroughly enjoying it - she is a very fine writer. I chose to read it because of an article in The Week where Erica Wagner (literary editor of The Times) selected her 6 best ever books and this was one of them - you couldn’t get a higher recommendation than that!
Paul Francis
I am currently reading Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis, a patient, thoroughly documented indictment of UK foreign policy - and the failure of the media to report it fully. Yes, it confirms some prejudices, but there’s surprises there too, and it’s all backed up. Devastating.
Frank Egerton
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut — I’m not a science fiction fan but was intrigued by Vonnegut’s Times obituary – in which this book was praised — and his humanist beliefs. The book is terrific: KV has a light touch and is writing about 1950s America quite as much as ‘chrono-synclastic infundibula’ etc.
Kate Steer
The Scottish Enlightenment: the Scots’ Invention of the Modern World. Normally I don’t read much History but am enjoying this immensely. Its author (Arthur Herman, American) writes most engagingly. Irvine Welsh declared in the Guardian, “Every Scot should read it.” I agree. p.s. In July I read, twice, a first novel, Salvage, by Gee Williams. It’s a literary thriller and “fell guid”!
Rachel Hazell
Ice Bird, by David Lewis. I’m genning up on Antarctic adventures in anticipation for my stint working at Port Lockroy this season.
Jacqueline Gazzard
My reading comes via recommendation, the sudden realisation ‘its a classic and I only saw the movie’ or good old cover design….and cover design will frequently win out as I’m a packaging junkie. This was the case with Miss Webster and Cherif written by Patricia Duncker. It is not great literature but I really enjoyed it as an unusual slice of escapism and easy read! Its a little cliched I guess but quite life affirming too - life isn’t a dress rehearsal so get on and enjoy it!
Emily Johnson
I am reading The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. It’s the second book in the night watch trilogy and I like it. It’s about people called ‘Others’ who have magical powers and divide into the dark and the light. Claims to be ‘JK Rowling, Russian style’ on the cover.
Kadija George
Mimi Khalvati, The Meanest Flower, Read it this morning for breakfast. Ignore the sentimental slush on the back and go straight for the poems, ‘Motherhood’, ‘Sundays’, and the first poem, ‘The Meanest Flower’.
David Lloyd
George Eliot - Middlemarch. I am re-reading this great novel after a gap of twenty years. It is a book which maps the personal journey of its heroine Dorothea but it also paints on a large canvas capturing a period of social and political change from the coming of the railway to the Reform Acts and the changing role of women.
Jane Reed
Just finished The Rossetti Stone by Kristin Phillips. Fascinating first novel with a wealth of historic detail intertwined with a love story. Why am I reading it? I love reading first novels and comparing them with the one to which I am forever giving birth.
Gillian Hush
Since you ask, I’m reading Half of a Yellow Sun and very good it is too!
Sarah Treco
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert. Confessional, exuberant, and wacky, a travel memoir of a surprizingly wise journey to self-discovery.
James Furber
John Le Carre’s The Mission Song. There are few bookshops on the Isles of Scilly, but I have always enjoyed Le Carre as a holiday read; the Honourable Schoolboy now appears with a reassuring freqency in his writing which is fine by me…
Fathieh Saudi
I am reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron…it seems its an international best seller..i think i need it now.. as i feel i have been a shadow artist for long time and i would like to overcome my censorship… Julia wrote: creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent….it’s a great useful book like a course you can do by yourself…
Gill Hancock
I am reading The view from Castle Rock by Alice Munro. The book starts with accounts related by members of her family who emigrated to Canada from the Scottish Borders and slips from memoirs into fiction. In very good words Munro conveys the particular atmosphere of relationships.
Carole Satyamurti
I’m currently reading The Iliad in Robert Fagles’ translation. It is a verse translation and wonderfully vivid and linguistically rich. He seems to manage to find an inexhaustible supply of words for sticking a spear into one’s enemy!
Kryss Brady
I have just finished reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. It is about a boy and his stutter, “Hangman”, and everything else that life throws a fifteen year-old in 1982 (the Falklands War, his parents splitting up, his sister going off to university and his own coming of age) and it is brilliant, hillarious and poignant in equal measure. If I had another sentence I’d tell you that: I chose it for our book club because, having read Cloud Atlas and enjoyed Mitchell’s ability to switch genres, period and prose style in one book, I wanted to see how he tackled this lighter subject.
Louise Tondeur
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It’s a beautiful book. Dangerous, topsy-turvy, energetic, magical. What a great opening line. And he breaks every rule. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is masterful too.
Geraldine Terry
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. I’m reading this because I read an excerpt in a Costa coffee bar when it was nominated for Costa book of the year and I’m totally gripped by it – just fabulous.
Jane Stemp
This is going to sound dreadful. The book I am reading at the moment is my own title, Double Bind. Mind you it is only in Word format so far: and it does need revising - but I am finding bits of it better than I thought, so I suppose you could say I’m enjoying it ….
Simon Barraclough
As You Like It, William Shakespeare. I’m hoovering up all the Shakespeare plays I haven’t read yet and finding them uplifting, inspiring and deliciously complex. (Simon has his debut poetry collection Los Alamos Mon Amour out from Salt Publishing in March 2008.)
Andrew Lucas
I am two thirds of the way through The end of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas. I have to confess that I bought this book not through recommendation but because it has a great cover….so far the proverb is incorrect.
Linda Ewles
Julian Barnes, Arthur and George. It’s my reading group book so I will plod on with it but that’s what it feels like: a plod.
One Friend wrote to say:
I am currently reading books by C.J. Sansom. I have read Dissolution, Sovereign and am about to start Dark Fire. Although I don’t usually read crime novels, I am captivated by the main character, Shardlake, a lawyer in the time of Henry VIII. But the main attraction is the way the sounds and smells of Tudor England are brought to life, so that you feel as though you are really there with the character.
Prue Skene
I’m currently reading Pat Barker’s Life Class - firstly because I’m an admirer of Pat’s and am actually studying The Ghost Road for an Open University course, and secondly because it was the choice for my book club - we’re discussing it next Monday (Sept 17). Certainly worth a read if less multi-textured than the Regeneration trilogy.
Kaz Fairs
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. Alledgedly its going to help me keep the faith, so far so good…
Gina Walker
I’m reading The Snow Geese by William Fiennes. I’ve just returned from an Arvon Starting to Write course on which Will Fiennes was a tutor – he is a compassionate writer, who’s first book beautifully articulates his love of language as ‘a way of being in love with the world’.
Alan Buckley
I’m currently re-reading Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes - he sometimes lapses into self-pastiche, but the (many) poems that work here are utterly breathtaking. Also reading Fernado Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, a birthday present from a friend who makes Bernardo Soares look like a feelgood motivational guru…
Judith Allnatt
I’m reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This is an unusual book in almost every way, not least because it’s narrated by Death. Fascinating.
Caroline Pitcher
Abela, the girl who saw lions by Berlie Doherty. I am a children’s writer, and Berlie’s moving, beautifully-written story is the one I have loved best this year. (Caroline Pitcher wrote The Shaman Boy.)
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Pauline Smith has been relief centre-directing at our pre-Domesday house, Totleigh Barton. She was eager to promote a friend of hers - Joanna Guthrie - who has recently had published a new collection of poetry. More than happy to do so, we present below Pauline, Joanna and Billack’s Bones.
I had some great news today. My very good friend, Joanna Guthrie, e-mailed me to say her first collection of poetry has been published by The Rialto. Jo and I met as postgrad students at Exeter University. We both graduated on the same day with an MA in English Studies (Creative Writing) but were sad that our paths would no longer cross on a regular basis. As writers, we had become used to sharing our work (her poems, my short stories) and giving loving but honest criticism to each other. Fortunately, this didn’t stop when Jo moved up to Norwich and we continued to give each other encouragement via e-mail. To hear that Billack’s Bones had finally been published was brilliant - even more so when Jo generously told me I had been part of that process. Jo has close connections to Arvon and has attended a couple of poetry courses - the latest just last year with Catherine Smith and Neil Rollinson here at Totleigh. Catherine offers a fine review of Billack’s Bones along with another to be proud of from George Szirtzes. Have a read yourself! Jo’s voice stood way out as early as our first MA poetry seminar with Andy Brown, now a lifetime ago in 2004. I know it won’t go away now. You can purchase Billack’s Bones through Inpress Books.
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This is the inspirational story of one mother and daughter - Rachel and Clemmy - who attended an Arvon writing course at the Hurst together, sharing a bedroom, contributing to the creative writing classes together, being inspired by and learning from each other. Rachel, the mother, writes…
Signing up for an Arvon course as mother and daughter felt both rather brave and pleasurably cosy. At least we would each know one other person, we said on the long and beautiful drive to The Hurst, and would be familiar with our room-mate’s bad habits before we arrived - and it would be a treat for us to spend a few days together without the other children. (Clemmy, 16, is the oldest of five.) In fact I think we had both given more thought to that perspective than to the one which struck our fellow participants, but as the week went on I felt increasingly conscious of how lucky I was that Clemmy had been prepared to come with me, to spend five days sharing not only a bedroom but her creative space as well.
I was very touched by the way the tutors, staff and other course members responded to Clemmy. Everyone treated her exactly like another writer, listening with respect to her contributions to discussion and including her in mealtime conversations and activities. I was also immensely proud of her for throwing herself into the course - she read a story she had written during the week on the last night, along with everyone else, and won joint first prize in the story slam we organised with her piece on the Seven Deadly Sins. I loved watching her blossom in the unique Arvon atmosphere of encouragement and stimulation, and seeing her through other people’s eyes - and it was great to have her there to try my own drafts and ideas out on, too.
We both got a huge amount out of the course, not least acquiring a network of new friends and fellow writers to share ideas, resources and frustrations with. One of our wonderful tutors told us the week was about fermenting our ideas, skills and talents, and Clemmy and I certainly came away bubbling over with excitement about our writing. On the drive home we plotted out a series of four children’s books which we plan to write together - though so far, while Clemmy has been hard at work on a project of her own (10,000 words and counting) I have been rather more subsumed by domestic life, as the younger children have reclaimed their share of me!
Having Clemmy there certainly enhanced my own pleasure and satisfaction in the course, and I, for one, will cherish the memory of a very special shared experience with my daughter.
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The Arvon Blog has been visiting some interesting web pages of late. We sat in on A N Wilson fuming about smoking and books. Then there’s the latest YouGov research that reveals we all want to become writers. Well, Arvon knew that forty years ago. There’s a couple of articles of interest on this topic: Visit Michelle Pauli at the Guardian for the facts (it turns out under-35s want to become sports personalities) and read John Crace for slightly more cynicism and regret. What are the 100 top books of all time? It’s old news, but in 2002 a list was compiled that told us just now. Do you know your Knut Hamsun from your Alfred Doblin? Check out how many you have read! Faces & Places is British Council’s new literature programme to introduce Polish readers to a range of British authors and artists - not only those well-known and established, but also emerging talents like Tash Aw or Gautam Malkani. Sounds good to us. The good people at The Book Depository have linked to us (well, we did ask them to) so it’s a big thank you from us to them. The Book Depository are interesting, and tantalising, the online book world - with their meaningful slogan, All Books Available To All, and new technologies to help find our books in the most speedy and cost-effective way. But let’s not always buy books, let’s use our libraries! How to use a library. Though it’s worrying where our libraries are going. Rachel Cooke sums up the latest political machinations. Tim Coates helped set up Waterstones, back in the day, and now writes a very impassioned blog about libraries. Please note: some people are reclaiming the bookshelves.
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This very excellent photo of a book held against sunlight was taken by Netherlands photographer Marc van Agteren. See more of his photos at www.shotsbyme.com. The photo sums up summer reading, so we asked Arvon staff what books they were reading this summer. Here’s what some of them said:
Cynthia Rogerson (Moniack Mhor) is reading Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Ariane Koek (Arvon London) is reading Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates
Emma Johnson (Arvon London) is reading Alis by Naomi Rich
Rachel Humphries (Moniack Mhor) is reading Under the Skin by Michel Faber
Kerry Watson (the Hurst) is reading London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
Philip Cowell (Arvon London) is reading Land’s End by Michael Cunningham
Pauline Smith (Totleigh Barton) is reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Julia Wheadon (Totleigh Barton) is reading Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna
Stephen May (Lumb Bank) is reading Marilyn and Me by Shanta Everington
Nick Murza (Arvon London) is reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
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Baroque in Hackney (a blog written by a poet and siren) recently posted in her usual glamorous style about Elizabeth Bowen on writing. Writers on writing. Marianne Moore opened one poem, “Writing is exciting” (she was being momentarily very clear). Every week at Arvon we feed and house and listen to and work with and learn from writers, who write and read and talk and cook and eat and walk in our houses and gardens and landscapes. Every week - writers on writing.
Writing about writing. Here’s Elizabeth Bowen on plot:
“PLOT: (Essential. The Pre-essential.) Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot for the particular novel is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way. He is forced towards his plot. By what? By ‘what is to be said’. What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated - impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else - X. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move until its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.”
“Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.”
“Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense - lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.”
“Plot, story, is itself un-poetic. At best it can only be not anti-poetic. It cannot claim a single poetic licence. It must be reasoned - only from the moment when its non-otherness, its only-possibleness has become apparent. Novelist must always have one foot, sheer circumstantiality, to stand on, whatever the other foot may be doing.”
“Plot must not cease to move forward. The actual speed of movement must be even. Apparent variations in speed are good, necessary, but there must be no actual variations in speed.”
We share Baroque in Hackney’s delight in thinking about writing about writing, or writing about thinking about writing. Here’s some signposts if you’re plotting to plot.
How I Write: The Secret Lives of Writers
Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
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In an earlier post called Your Starter for Ten we set (er..) twenty questions for all writers. Here, author and Arvon tutor Louise Tondeur (The Water’s Edge and The Haven Home for Delinquent Girls - both Headline Review) tells us how she edits in her pyjamas…
1. Do you outline?
I tried to this time (book 3) but I’ve deviated from it wildly.
2. Do you write straight through a book, or do you sometimes tackle the scenes out of order?
Always out of order. Then I patch it together. I usually write by character. Nothing much about me is straight. Though I have just learnt about some planning techniques from Leone Ross and they have helped me with structure.
3. Do you prefer writing with a pen or using a computer?
Computer. But I like taking a notebook on long train journeys or to the beach. There’s something different about pen and paper - more tactile.
4. Do you prefer writing in first person or third?
Depends what’s nec. 1st person feels closer sometimes but 3rd has more tricks. 2nd is good too.
5. Do you listen to music while you write?
Yes. My second book has its own sound track! Unfortunately the tape never made it past my publisher’s desk.
6. How do you come up with the perfect names for your characters?
I get to know them a bit first and then the right name occurs to me. In my new book, I met someone by chance and am using his name. Sometimes I use a pattern for it. There’s a pattern to the surnames in The Water’s Edge, for instance.
7. When you’re writing, do you ever imagine your book as a television show or movie?
When I’m writing, I see it in front of me: so yes, a bit like it’s a film in my head. When I’m not writing of course I have fantasies about my books as films - doesn’t everyone!? Or BBC mini dramas at least!
8. Have you ever had a character insist on doing something you really didn’t want him/her to do?
No. Characters do things but they don’t insist because I don’t argue. They’re really another part of me aren’t they? And I tend to give in to it.
9. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it?
No no no no. Sometimes I wish. But no.
10. Where do you write?
In the spare room. On trains. Sometimes in open spaces. The beach. A park. Kew Gardens. The British Library.
11. What do you do when you get writer’s block?
I don’t think there is such a thing. It normally happens when LIFE is getting in the way and causing stress. So you need to destress and remove the blocks from your life, then it’ll happen. Also, it’s important to warm up. Try just writing, no editing, keep going for an hour. Meditate.
12. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of wordcount, or as a percentage of the book as a whole)?
As little as 1000 words a time, sometimes. On an Arvon retreat (!) I can manage 6000 a day. I don’t edit as I go which helps. When I’m editing, I can work on just a few pages for hours and hours and I don’t notice the time go.
13. How many different drafts did you write for your last project?
I’ve lost count! The Haven Home for Delinquent Girls probably had five final drafts - that was after three years work on it - so I don’t know 100 maybe!? Depends what you mean by a draft.
14. Have you ever changed a character’s name midway through a draft?
Yep.
15. Do you let anyone read your book while you’re working on it, or do you wait until you’ve completed a draft before letting someone else see it?
I’m working on this one. With book three: my partner is the only person I trust to read bits of it before I’ve completed a 2nd or 3rd draft
16. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?
It’s usually an anticlimax. I don’t finish a draft. I go back and work on it again. And again. I try to celebrate ordinary things anyway and take my wife out for a meal.
17. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?
Only one writing project at a time, but life means I’m constantly juggling other stuff just because I need the money!
18. Do your books grow or shrink in revision?
I usually write twice as much as ends up in the final book.
19. Do you have any writing or critique partners?
No.
20. Do you prefer drafting or revising?
Once I’ve got some words down in the first instance, I don’t really feel the difference. I think editing IS writing so I’m not sure what revising is. Yes, I prefer editing something to writing it for the first time - it’s fun to play with words. I could do it in my PJs for hours and forget to eat.
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Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, A Spot of Bother) has written a very lovely piece about Arvon on his blog. Mark has been an Arvon student and tutor and even says that a great deal of the structure of Curious Incident is indebted to Kathryn Heyman, with whom he tutored an Arvon course:
“She was talking to the students about story structure, the way narrative tension is built up and released by turning points that speed you towards your destination then whisk you off in another direction altogether. As she was speaking I saw the clouds open, a shaft of heavenly light fell into the room, angels sang and I had to slip out to the kitchen to scribble down some very important notes about the placing of Christopher’s mother’s letter.”
Thanks to Mark Haddon for your support - you’re an Angel!
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Is it possible to be a vegetarian and a food writer? I felt I should raise the question before signing up for the course. I live in the real world and I know that there are people ‘big in food’ who would think I was wasting my time. How can you write about food when you refuse to eat so many things?
But I was never interested in food at all until I turned vegetarian. It was then that I started to cook, to explore fresh new tastes, and to realise that vegetarianism is not just an ethical standpoint. True, there are some who seem to adopt a restricted diet as some kind of masochistic gesture. But I’m a foodie, and proud of it. And whilst I know a vegetarian diet can be chosen for health reasons, in my book, if it tastes better with lashings of cream, then let’s lash.
I did need to defend myself a bit on our first inebriated evening in the communal barn at Totleigh. But once everyone had realised that I wasn’t there to pass judgement on them, we all relaxed into a week dedicated to writing and cooking. Surely Totleigh’s ancient kitchen had never seen anything like this. Eschewing the standard veggie lasagne recipes and jars of pasta sauce we were offered, twelve enthusiastic female cooks took over the kitchen, chopping, marinating, roasting and toasting. Never a harsh word, and I’m proud to say I did it all in heels. Fellow participant Jenny did a lot of it in original fifties cocktail dresses, a wooden spoon in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Fabulous.
Alastair and Sophie were immediately friendly and genuinely interested in each of their students. We all brought very different experiences to the table: a top-level nutritionist, a textile artist in love with Borough Market, a local delicatessen owner, an advertising copy writer, a Cordon Bleu trained chef… all of us with our own ideas and enthusiasms. Listening to other people’s writing was fascinating and I was very surprised when my rather downbeat account of a visit to a local market was received with laughter and applause.
I went to Totleigh looking for a peaceful space where I could think about nothing but writing for a precious week. It was far from peaceful – it was raucous. It was great fun. I put on pounds. I also wrote, and came away with new dreams and aspirations. Special thanks to John, Huib, and to Sophie’s little dog, Bobby, who settled himself on my lap during supper on that first evening and made me feel safe and at home.
Thanks to Jane for writing this (so well). If you’ve been inspired by Jane’s writing, join us on an Arvon food writing course in the future. Sign up for a brochure on our website at www.arvonfoundation.org
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The Tart of Fiction (aka writer Elizabeth Baines) has set writers some questions to answer. Since Arvon is the home of good writing in the UK, we thought we’d present them here and invite you to answer. Either in your head or here on the Arvon Blog (hit “Your starter for ten…” and then scroll down to enter your answers in the blank box). Or on your own blog. Do link to us if you post your answers online. Although these are mainly with fiction writers in mind, all writers can have a go.
1. Do you outline?
2. Do you write straight through a book, or do you sometimes tackle the scenes out of order?
3. Do you prefer writing with a pen or using a computer?
4. Do you prefer writing in first person or third?
5. Do you listen to music while you write?
6. How do you come up with the perfect names for your characters?
7. When you’re writing, do you ever imagine your book as a television show or movie?
8. Have you ever had a character insist on doing something you really didn’t want him/her to do?
9. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it?
10. Where do you write?
11. What do you do when you get writer’s block?
12. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of wordcount, or as a percentage of the book as a whole)?
13. How many different drafts did you write for your last project?
14. Have you ever changed a character’s name midway through a draft?
15. Do you let anyone read your book while you’re working on it, or do you wait until you’ve completed a draft before letting someone else see it?
16. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?
17. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?
18. Do your books grow or shrink in revision?
19. Do you have any writing or critique partners?
20. Do you prefer drafting or revising?
Bathed, creamed and combed,
I choose my evening self
from the folded personae available.
A supporting role, perhaps.
Empathy in pink,
and understudied, comfortable shoes.
A mixed message may be conveyed
by separates.
The dress overstates things,
suggesting joined-up thinking,
all-of-a-piece
from head to hem.
I have emerged from muddy neutrals
and wish to discard
the comfort blanket.
But perhaps I’ll save the evening dress and diamonds
till Friday.
This new poem was written by Diana Harris at the Hurst - John Osborne’s former home which is now Arvon’s latest writing house where over a thousand writers every year spend a week of their lives devoted to their writerly craft.
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‘I have the best view in England’
John Osborne, playwright, on the view down the Clun Valley from his garden at the Hurst in Shropshire
On Saturday June 23rd and Sunday 24th from 2pm to 6pm visitors to Clun Gardens Open will be able, for the first time, to see for themselves John Osborne’s ‘best view in England.’
For the last eight years of his life, the author of Look Back in Anger, enjoyed the elevated view down the Clun Valley and other delights of his 30 acre estate. Peter Salmon, centre director of The John Osborne Arvon Centre said “We are very happy and privileged to be joining with 14 other gardens in and around Clun. Naturally, I think The Hurst has something special to offer. The woodland here is very fine. We have a splendid tulip tree which should be in bloom and a very fine stand of Wellingtonias which must have cost a fortune in the 19th century.”
Each year nearly 1,000 established and would-be writers attend the many courses at The Hurst. “We have devised two trails that take the visitor past the house, around the gardens, through the woods, to Osborne’s view” said Peter. “Outside the house one of us will be telling racy anecdotes from John Osborne’s life here. In addition we have selected twenty or so quotations from garden and countryside poems, which add a touch of I-Spy to the walk.”
“They can take a cup of tea and a cake by the pool before having a look at the picturesque Dingle. Week after week we get the chance to see how people are inspired by the surroundings here, I’m sure our garden visitors will feel the same.
It’s fitting that Clun Gardens Open is in aid of St George’s Church, as both John and Helen Osborne are buried there.”
The Hurst (Clunton, Craven Arms, Shropshire, SY7 0JA) is approached up a private drive off B4368 Craven Arms to Clun road, one mile before Clun. Tickets from The Hurst and other gardens on the day. A ticket for all gardens is £4, one garden only 50p. Call Dan on 01588 640658 for more details about the Hurst and our writing courses at John Osborne’s former home.
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The web is a writer’s friend. Let’s take a spin. Start with separated by a common language - an entire blog devoted to the sharp linguistic eye of “Lynneguist”, who specialises in spotting differences between American and British English. And so while we’re thinking of American English, here’s one of its poets - Frank O’Hara - but put to music and made into a short poem-film on You Tube. It seems appropriate to the style he pioneered - personism - which was all about writing that was addressed to somebody. Have you got a case of the fantods? Do you know how to honeyfuggle? Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words is a never-ending delight of word play and history. You can fill your novel or poems with amazing words thanks to him (and get email updates when Mr Quinion has new material). But he doesn’t help you pronounce words however - best leave that to this interesting Wikipedia page. For all your disputed pronounciation needs. Now, moving on, and literally moving on, let’s go for a walk. A modern kind of walk. Download the audio file onto your mp3 player and start at the special location in London for your marvellous literary iTour of Subversive Scribes. (Talking about scribes, you can join Arvon Friends as one. Joining Arvon Friends supports Arvon’s social mission to extend amazing and fulfilling creative writing experiences to young people and adult groups who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to participate.) John Sewell donated a new poem of his to Arvon Friends Online and the first ever online bookshop-in-residence, The Little Apple based in York, continue their Gilbert White-style musings on life without 3-for-2s.
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Sometimes life becomes so surreal, pinching yourself just won’t bring you back to earth. I had to go to a takeaway to remind myself of normality, amongst the debris of cardboard plates, plastic cups and discarded smiles.
It all started at breakfast - with a beaming smile attached to twinkling eyes and a white beard encircling the round jolly face of the man opposite.
“ G-day’ he said with that unmistakable down under twang “I have been belly dancing on the fringe all night.” Quite an opener when I am staring at a raft of English breakfast on the plate in front of me, trying to decide which saturated fat felon to cast away. I love first conversations - they always lead to new places and people and lives.
“You belly danced?” I ask.
His roar shakes the room, and his twinkling glances off the silver cutlery. He’s all llight and merriment and sharp observation and joy - this breakfast companion from the other side of the world. There is something other-worldy about him too. He looks as if he could have stepped out of Lord of the Rings.
“No, no. I merely observed. It was the welsh women. They belly danced. And can they belly dance. My…” He is all appreciate chuckles as he spoons his muesli.
I ought to explain that I am in Wales for the Guardian Hay Festival 2007. As Director of The Arvon Foundation, I am chairing four writers’ events: Esther Freud and Rupert Thomson talking about their novels Love Falls and Death of a Murderer; Charles Leadbeater about his wiki work We Think; a discussion about the Myth and History of the Second World War with Owen Sheers, Justin Cartwright and Ben McIntyre; and then a conversation between the quirky american film maker and performance artist Miranda July and Marina ‘Tractors’ Lewycka. It’s pure joy to read their books.
There. So perhaps you get an idea of why I am here, in this beautiful Georgian house, with this wise gnome-like man eating breakfast and laughing.
But you only have part of the picture.
Another man comes in. Long and langurous with his beautiful wife. They sit down too.
“Ariane and I would like your royalties Sandy!’ roars the Lord of the Rings down under. ‘All of them. Make no mistake.”
The new breakfast companions have the same love of laughter too. And two new people join us with the same belly aching senses of humour. By now the breakfast table is rocking. The room is aglow with words and ideas.
Breakfast at 7am will never be the same again. In your wildest dreams, breakfast with Thomas Keneally and Alexander McCall Smith and James Naughtie never happens. But this is Hay, and as Thomas K gnomically says later in the day, “at Hay dreams come true.”
The Festival is now bigger than ever. There’s a new site, which is sophisticated with wide white marquees, duckboard walkways which have canopies over them to protect you from the inevtiable Hay storms of wind and rain. But wellies and walking boots are still needed. This is Hay at 20 years old - sassy, smart, committed, sparkling, intense and bigger. Writers are the superstars and the venues are packed with people eager to meet the writers, ask questions, jostle with ideas and just be together to appreciate literature. It’s the herd instinct gone wild - and it’s literature which has rounded about100,000 people together over 10 days from all parts of the country and the world. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who is one of Arvon’s patrons gives a key lecture called Writing on the Wall of Silence - about freedom of expression. The American writer Dave Eggers talks with Valentino Achak Deng about the book they have written together inspired by Valentino’s experiences in Sudan and Ethiopia to a packed audience of 1200 plus people. Superstar art historian Simon Schama bounces and cavorts his way through his presentation on why television and art are natural partners.
It’s showtime with substance - and people buying, holding and reading books.
Who said the book is dead when there can be so much life in them-there hills? Hay rocks. 20 years old and Hay rocks on and on.
Ariane is reading
Justin Cartwright - The Sing Before it is Sung
Esther Freud - Love Falls
Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You
Charles Leadbeater - We Think
Marina Lewkcya - Two Caravans
Ben McIntyre - The Zig Zag Agent
Owen Sheers - Resistance
Rupert Thomson - Death of a Murderer
Ariane is listening to
Seth Lakeman - Freedom Fields - again and again and again!
need to get the new Rufus Wainwright soon too…
Ariane is watching
Jan Svankmeyer - Lunacy
Ariane is looking at
Anthony Gormley at the Hayward Gallery
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Ariane Koek, Director of Arvon, asked me to write up some of my experiences from a recent trip to San Francisco.
“Imagine an Arvon writing house in San Francisco,” I thought as I walked around North Beach with Arvon writer and tutor, Julia Bell. San Francisco has had its fair share of big names in the world of words - John Steinbeck, Allen Ginsberg, Alice B. Toklas, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Frost, Jack Kerouac. Now it has Julia Bell and look, there’s Danielle Steele’s house! We walked for what felt like days. The hills in San Francisco are quite something to behold. You have to walk down them by stepping sideways, Julia said. Signs advise drivers how not to runaway with themselves. Hummingbirds fly around the parks, all hectic and uppity and beautiful. The fog is like an anti-duvet that the city pulls over its back, not keeping us warm.
Julia Bell wrote Dirty Work (Macmillan, 2007) to much praise. It’s not an easy topic, teenage sex trafficking, and I chatted with Julia about the quality of sex education in the UK, about writing for young adults and the need for greater conversations and openness to tough subjects. (Julia is tutoring our Writing for Young Adults course in October with Tony Bradman and Kevin Brooks.) We were sitting outside an internet café, It’s a Grind, on Polk – an eclectic, buzzing, typically San Franciscan street which, with long outstretched arms, manages to scoop around a hundred different types of shop and person. We’d just been into Polkadot Variety to buy an original Roosevelt-head pencil sharpener from the sixties. We’d seen it in the window. The woman behind the counter seemed sad, somehow, to be selling it.
Later in the week we stared up, in a large, close-knitted crowd, at a slightly anxious Miranda July (pictured above), as she climbed her way up a bookshelf in Modern Times bookstore. The place was heaving, the windows were all fogged up with book breath, faces peered through from the street. Sat in her chair on top of the bookshelf, Miranda July read two stories from her new collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. She admitted that she herself didn’t like being read to.
A few blocks down this street is Valencia 826, a writing centre for young people in San Francisco. (“Imagine an Arvon writing house in San Francisco!”) At the front is a pirate supply shop selling eye patches, pirate dice, flags, treasure and message-in-a-bottles. There’s even a mini-cinema with a fish-tank and cinema seats. You can just watch the fish with the big eyes for days. And if you were uninformed, or uncurious, perhaps you’d think that was it – another quaint boutique in San Francisco with random fish-cinema.
But Valencia 826 is Arvon in San Francisco. Because if you peer round the back, behind the till, through the hanging beads, you spot something like home, something very recognisable to anyone who’s been to an Arvon writing house. (Anyone can go on an Arvon writing course: we run a grants scheme to ensure that.) And what is that? A long wooden table, of course. Just like the long wooden tables at Arvon where the writing takes place, where the food is shared and eaten, where two people might bump into each other and have a life-changing conversation, where plots are twisted and new metaphors discovered. And look further still and you’d see the schedule of writing classes, the education outreach programme, the tutors, the 8-18 year olds writing, writing, writing! Valencia 826, set up by a contemporary of Miranda July’s - Dave Eggers, is one of six writing centres in the USA, working tirelessly and glamorously with imaginative flair and big respect for young writing.
I had to have another quick look at the fish.
Philip Cowell
Arvon Friends Co-ordinator
p.s. Miranda July is appearing at the Guardian Hay Festival on Sunday 3rd June 2007, in conversation with Marina Lewycka and Director of Arvon, Ariane Koek
Ange Drinnan wrote a poem about the Hurst, Arvon’s writing house in Shropshire.
Hurst May
A passover week: from the beginning, endings
hover, a flock of birds beating
their wings against Saturday.
Fears about death
of languages. Stories
of exile and surviving attack.
Memories imported across borders,
some smuggled, some stowed away.
Internal tyrants censor words.
I cross a border,
to Wales, with a wrong turn to Clun,
and wonder about being in between.
In between but part of a circle,
the face of a clock.
The spaces between the numerals still count.
Spanning the years, a family
tree of surprises, including Daddy long legs.
We sup wine and Shropshire bluebelled.
I picture us as a glowing
necklace of poems, each taking
a bright bead for the journey home.
You can read this poem and lots more writing at the Arvon Friends website
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Hugo Williams, poet, travel writer and Freelance column writer in the TLS, wrote about the Arvon writing course he led with Greta Stoddart last week at Totleigh Barton in Devon. One of the course students was Jerry Hall, who wrote a piece in the Independent just before coming on the course.
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Arvon Friends has been bounding with optimism and enthusiasm for Arvon ever since it was set up spontaneously thirty years ago. Arvon Friends care about writers and literature. They support Arvon’s work to provide creative writing experiences to as many people as possible. If you have a passion for words, want to help support the provision of unique creative writing experiences, are a writer, join Arvon Friends to ensure others enjoy the magic of the written word as well.
And just because Arvon Friends is over thirty years old doesn’t mean it can’t be forward thinking and adept at new media! Arvon Friends Online is the special creative writing and reading space for Arvon Friends to keep in touch with Arvon wherever they are. When you become an Arvon Friend, you receive a username and password - your unique key into your online blue notebook. From there you can read more writing, specially picked for you, and you may even be able to upload writing (if you are a Laureate or Angel). There’s competitions too, and the website will also act as an archive for Arvon Friends’ rich literary past. Currently on the site we have Judith Barrington on the art of writing memoir as well as Hugo Williams, Robert Macfarlane and Jacob Polley.
Even though it seems we might be revelling in our postmodern condition in this age of new media (somewhere between the fax and robotics), Arvon Friends can’t help themselves from still using, and enjoying to use, pens and paper. Our Arvon writing houses don’t have wifi, but they do have writing huts. You open the door, mind a few cobwebs, sit inside and look out through the window, let yourself be swallowed up by the hollow sound of calm. And you write. For all the blogs, for all the pdf files whirling about, for all the things we can do online these days, we’re going to be with books (and for books) for a long, long time. We’ve even started to sniff them.
Philip Cowell
Arvon Friends Coordinator
p.s. Arvon Friends can currently get a discount on Theatre with David Eldridge (Market Boy) and Robert Holman (Holes in the Skin), as well as access to a special Arvon Friends Writing Retreat this year at Lumb Bank, Yorkshire, November 5 - 10 (for a reduced fee of £350, call Ilona on 01422 843714).
