Category Archive

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!

I have a morning unexpectedly free. A meeting has been cancelled. But the free hours  collapse into three minutes. No sooner have I started blogging, than the taxi arrives. Liliane, Malu and I go to the Oktakhe Museum. It is candy striped, like a stick of rock in black and pink, with a helipad like a giant blue lip on the top. It was built to house the collection of Brazil’s most famous woman artist, by her son who also designed the Unique Hotel. The museum is still a family affair – her other son runs the organisation. As we are eating lunch, he stops and talks to Malu.

Then back to the British Council for a meeting, into a taxi and then off to another industrial sponsor of creativity and culture. In Brazil, culture is supported by industry and not the government. Industry gets tax incentives, and cultural centres are built to monumentalise industries support of the arts and social engagement, and action plans for the workers are drawn up, which include creative courses. One worker I met had just gone on the prestigious film course in Cuba.  Workers  have a programme of personal development which engages with culture which many in the UK would envy – though of course, we are only talking about a very tiny proportion of the workers in Brazil, and the elite at that.

I feel in Brazil as if I have stepped through a cultural looking glass world: . Spoken word in Brazil is seen as too populist and reactionary, and  industry funds the arts and culture, not politicians. In the UK, Spoken word is progressive and outreaching, industrial sponsorship has barely begun.

 The people at this latest industrial group I am visiting are as intense and as playful as everyone I have met so far. That’s what I love about South`America. This abundqnt mixture of fun, combined with intellect and passion. 

Again, I have the feeling that I will see the people around the table soon. Brazil will be coming to Arvon – and the other way round too. I make a mental note to make sure that on our booking forms, we ask where people come from next year, and list all the countries.

Then on the plane to Rio. Malu is not coming to Parathi.  Nor is Liliane. My sales team and business manager as I nicknamed them. We say goodbye. Liliane’s eyes go red, she blinks rapidly, saying don’t cry. Then turns away with a flick of her hair and her heel – ever the ex professional model.

Two hours. Three hours pass. The plane is delayed. This is normal at Brazillian airports. They are chaos, whilst preserving outwardly a smart veneer of modernity, ‘I wish they would tell us why. No one ever tells us says a disgruntled fellow Portuguese passenger sitting beside me in the airport lounge of eternity. ‘Best not to know I say. Somehow I suspect the truth is more disturbing than the lack of it. Four months ago a TAM plane crashed at Rio airport.

We touch down at 11pm. I am tired. But even between shuttered eyes, I manage to see the statue of Christ – his arms open to the world as he embraces the city. See Sugar Loaf mountain. The great crescent moon  sweep of the Copacabana beach. Sense the beat of the city even from the British council car, Then sleep. Deep sleep. And dreams of Arvon in Brazil

But just before,  I go into the bathroom to  brush my teeth. Only in  Rio, in the complimentary casket of  shampoo and  hotel toiletries, could you also find  – a condom.

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.

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 .

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.

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.  

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

Read Hugo Williams’s Freelance column in the TLS

Read Jerry Hall’s article in the Independent

Today the Arvon Blog visits the British Library via YouTube - we bring you a video recording of a special event held at the UK’s great national library in 2005. Click on the play button to watch the “human gramophones” revel in language…

Eight actors aged 12 to 70 were transformed into ‘human gramophones’ who performed pieces inspired by recordings of ‘nonsense’ in the English language from the Drama and Literature collection of the Sound Archive. The source material ranged from historical recordings of experimental literature read by their authors (James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Edith Sitwell, etc) or interpreted by acclaimed voice actors (Peter Pears, David Davis, etc) to recordings of ’sound poetry’ from the 70s and recordings by British comedians (Spike Milligan, etc).

The ‘human gramophones’ hissed, skipped, slowed down or got caught in a groove. It was up to the audience to keep winding up the ‘human gramophones’ and to place their fingers on the records to play them. A sonic ‘garden’ was thus created in the centre of the British Library, with different voices coming from all directions intoning, muttering, singing, proclaiming…