Category Archive

In 2000, having written two novels for children and having had one accepted by a small Scottish publisher, I registered for an Arvon course on Writing for Children in Moniak. I was terrified, as up to that point I had been writing in isolation and had no contact whatsoever with writers of any description. Indeed  the last time I read anything out that I had written was as a schoolgirl. To cut a long story short, the Arvon week proved formative. Not only did I get the opportunity to talk to professional writers for the first time and pick their brains (the brilliant Cathy McPhail and Theresa Breslin) but I had an opportunity to read an extract of my embryonic novel for Young Adults to a critical audience and to receive impartial feedback and constructive criticism. Those days at Arvon utterly galvanised me and now, eight years on and twelve novels later I am a professional, full-time writer.

I would recommend an Arvon course for ANYONE who wants to write. In a nurturing and supportive environment, new writers can try their wings. Michael Morpurgo is right: there should be a thousand Arvons. Visit my website.

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!

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.
 

‘If a dark avenging angel swept away all the books of France, France would not exist. If the same angel swept away music, Brazil would not exist.’

So says writer Suzannae Vargas.  She looks like Susan Sontag and carries herself like her too. She wants to change Brazillian culture and increase respect and participation in literature. 11 years ago, she founded the nearest organisation to Arvon I have yet encountered. She is fiercely proud and passionate about what she has achieved: the Estacao das Letras – which teaches creative writing in many genres – form a tiny apple green space in a shopping centre in Rio. It had started in her own house. Now she barely has time to write her own work – she is so busy helping others and raising funds for writing. She is entrepreneurial, smart and passionate – with an administrator who looks like Gisele the Brazillian super model.

When we say goodbye, I feel as we have both spoken the same language. It’s not only that my Portuguese is getting better – I can understand most things now on day 4- - but the heart of what she is doing and the struggles and problems she faces on some level are similar.

Then lunch on a rooftop with the new young literary lion of Brazil. 29 year only Joao Paulo Cuenca, is very, very smart and very funny too. He is also very self possessed and wears the knowledge that he is doing what he was born to do with self confidence and pride. He trained as an Economist, and started working professionally as one. Then got a book published. Now two novels later, and with a weekly column in the popular newspaper O Globo, he is writing full time. He is just finishing his third novel – a love story. He presents me with his books  Corpo Presente and O Dia Mastroianni. Like everything in Brazil, they are wonderfully designed. The graphic design and the cover are impeccable – playful and distinctive, as well as beautiful.  I know that I am going to love what I read between the pages too. I must buy a Portuguese dictionary.

Joao is introducing and interviewing me tonight at the bookshop.  Again, I sense it is going to be the beginning of many conversations which have started on this trip.

Snapshots of Rio life – Rio is full of them. Glances out of cars. Peeks from the walk ways. Stares on the streets.

A girl cycles past with an orange surfboard in one hand her handlebars held in the other…golden cocker spaniels  pull on sparkling jewelled leads….a man with a barbeque in his hand walks along Copacabana beach….sushi on the beach…beer on the beach…buying anything and everything on the beach… and I suddenly realise I am staying right on Ipanema beach…HIS beach…and I remember how  it was one of his Desert Island Discs…how he came to South America on assignment and danced samba, writing to me about sneaking into a private party on a hotel roof and dancing til 5 in the morning…and how now, here I am, on his beach, present in past time, once more hearing his words on the answer machine when he  flew to  Afghanistan…I kept them for a month, spooling them  backwards and forwards like an incantation until he came back safely from the warzone…. the phonecall from Somalia when I heard birds in the background….our amazement that our lives glanced and criss-crossed each other for years but we never met…how  we had both touched down at Tirana airbase during the Kosovo crisis the same day on the same runway…only not to connect…and then this year, I am running down an escalator, late for dinner with two Italian friends, running, running along a day full of portents…finishing  reading my  now then, then now boyfriend’s novel, with its heart-freezing scene of the girl self-encased in cement… ‘Don’t lose your nerve,’ shouts a tramp as I cycle by…then a silver-slick lorry glances past me,  the words Eternity: Cement Set for All Time’ emblazoned on its side… These days…Oh these days and more…. And  then here I am, running, running…down past a girl with blonde hair, a woman with blonde hair and glasses, and then I fall into his eyes and it’s him….him…right here in the wrong country…right now on these moving stairs for  the Piccadilly line…him still and standing…and his wife and his child who both happened after we never happened… and now here I am in this  happening…me running and running and running down down down…moving past him still and there… stilly beside her and her…the they I never met until this moment…right here ….and me  running with time, and along time and  out of time for dinner, for getting where I am going and all this on this moving toothed ladder of time  whilst he stands still, stilly there. There.

The next day I email him.

Was that you on the escalator at Green Park? What are you doing here? On the other side of the world?

Yes. It was me on that  escalator. Why did you not stop? Next time stop. Stop right where you are.

STOP.

It seems right somehow I think of him here and right now. The city where he sambaed. The city whose song he loved. The beat of his heart. The skip of his words. For that moment. Just now.
This. His. Is.

The lecture that evening starts late. ‘We Caracoa always start late’ explains Anna Paulo the British Council’s Rio Project officer now in charge of my itinerary and language confusion with her colleague the bubbly Raquel. ‘We caracoa are always  elegantly late. Never on time. There are too many things to do. Like walk along the beach, drink, stay in the sunshine, or get stuck in the traffic.’

That explains it. I am Caracoa to the soles of my boots – a born Rio girl - even at home. Joao’s introduction is beautiful. He quotes the beginning of a book about how a trapeze artist breaks rules. We discuss about the imagination and personal freedom. At one point, I am so tired, that I pause to listen to the translation of my English into Portuguese every time it is spoken. I obviously think I am in the language labs of a previous meeting that day. This whirling has finally got to me. I explain – and the audience laughs. Ice is always broken when the human being breaks through.

That night a tropical rainstorm strikes and cracks open the sky.. I am eating tuna coated in sesame seeds on the hotel terrace. The rain roars like canon fire on the pavements. Men walk by in bathing trunks nonchantly as if they are going for a stroll in the park. A couple step out, the man carrying a yellow rose in one hand, clasping his girlfriend’s hand in another.  Everyone wears the rain as if it were a second skin.   No pace is quickened. No umbrellas flare up into the liquid night.  No sheltering is snatched.  This just is. This is  Rio. This moment. Here. Now. No other moment exists. It - just  - is. Learn from this. Walk in the rain…Be. Here.

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.

He speaks in gunfire English and  has an accent from Utah. Professor Reynaldo is head of Literature and Linguistics at the Roman Catholic University in Sao Paulo. His teaching staff are committed and loyal. They beam with a missionary zeal to teach.

“We have no money” he says. “There’s pressure on us to have as many students as possible to get money for our university. But we have managed to keep the numbers of students in our language classes down. You can’t teach a language with 100 pupils which we have in our other classes.”

They love the message of Arvon: that by freeing the imagination you can find your way in words and new literature and voices will grow. They want to jump on the first plane and visit our houses, but they can’t afford to  visit us as a group. But Brazil has a culture where everything is paid for in instalments – including air travel. The national airlines allow you to pay off their airfares monthly spread over a year.  There might be individuals who can afford to come because of this, Reynaldo explains, so we will spread the word, but why doesn’t Arvon come here?’

It is a question which comes up time and time again here in Brazil over my 8 days. Arvon is going to open a franchise here in Brazil says Malu firmly. She’s swiftly  become the business brains, and Liliane the saleswoman. Liliane is starting to know my descriptions of Arvon so well, that she can recite it without me ever opening my mouth. We are a  team with a mission: we want to make literature happen even more here and find a way of crossing the gulf of money, geography and tradition. We know we can do it. We see everyone ablaze with the idea.

The car spins us into the courtyard of one of the hundreds of buildings which belong to a private university founded by an American donor. It has 30,000 students and a campus which is like a town in itself. It also has 6 other branches throughout Brazil.

“We have a house in the mountains. That could be a place to work with you.” Arvon in Brazil suddenly becomes an unexpected  possibility.  They love the idea of cooking and eating together too, which is also a surprise I hadn’t reckoned with. In Brazil, even the very poorest household will have a maid who prepares the food. At Munira’s maids had flitted like shadows in the house bearing steaming dishes of chicken curry and pasta. The past is very much present.

A girl with great sweeps of black hair floats on the ceiling. Arms spread wide,  she is a suspended angel, her white gown spread around her like clouds. Look closely and you realise that what seems above is below you, what seems to be visible is invisible. You are looking in a mirror.

Patricia Osses is one of Brazil’s leading young artists. She works mostly with photography but trained as an architect. Not surprisingly, her obsession is space – the way we occupy it and our relationship to it, even when we have left a particular place.

The work I am looking at was made in her grandmother’s house in Santiago in Chile, where she comes from.

I wanted to make the house where I would live for the rest of my life,’ she explains. Then my cousins said – here is your grandmother’s house. Do what you want with it.’  It’s been untouched for 15 years since she died – waiting for this moment for her grandchild to set foot in it again.

The photographs are a collision between past and present. One shows a curtained room, with azure wallpaper and a mound of belongings: a television set, numerous unrelated chairs, books all piled high  – the debris of a life abandoned by the frailty of the flesh. Peer closely into this dark room, and in the curtains by the window you may glimpse a form. It is Patricia  - a ghost in her own presence.

Patricia turns over her portfolio and shows another photograph.

‘This is the last supper’ she explains. It’s the last supper my grandmother ever had.’ Patricia’s family sit, with her father at the head of the table. But what makes this so extraordinary is that it is in the middle of a shop – a general store with wire mesh shelves which reach to the ceilings – replete  with cleaning products and cans of beans and tomatoes – everything a household could need.

The last supper is an intervention in this space – it used to be the dining room in her grandmother’s house but since she died, it was bought and turned into a shop.  Patricia is reclaiming the space for this one last supper. Like everything she does, it is touching and extraordinary – emotionally thought through. No wonder I am so keen to welcome her to an Arvon house next year as part of Artists Links – an innovative ongoing project in which Brazillian and British artists travel to each others countries and engage in each other’s work. Imagination is moving.

The project Patricia wants to do in Britain is  wonderful too: she thinks every house is like a book: It tells many stories and has many pages which you must turn. She became aware of Britain through reading books, like Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. She has mapped in her imagination a country she has never seen, thanks to the pages of the books she has turned. Now she wants to encounter it for real.  She wants to stay in writers’ houses and make work based on these encounters. She shows me a photograph which started this whole idea. It is of the side of a building torn away,. I  can see the traces of where the staircase was, the delineation of walls like tears on the building, the ghosts of where pictures hung and a doorway once was. This is the map of this buildings’ past : its walls are worn inside out.

Patricia has stencilled huge words onto its walls in Portuguese. This is a house which is a book with many thick pages. Turning, turning, turning…I hope she comes to the Hurst and turn the pages of one angry young man into a house of artful destinies. A Brazillian in John Osborne’s house for whom the ceiling knows no bounds.

The underground station disgorges the cities travellers into an open space, which resembles an aircraft hanger. The noise is deafening here. The clatter of activity  is intense.  People are dancing, rehearsing,  writing, clapping, reading,  shouting, workshopping and running here. But what makes it so different from anywhere I have ever been, is that you not only hear it all happening, you can see it all too. Every space – whether it is the theatre, the library, the centre’s administration, the garden, the rehearsal spaces – is open for everyone to see.  The walls are made of glass.  Even a whisper is amplified. It feels astonishing that  you can’t also hear people think. This is the Cultural Centre of Sao Paulo. A glass heart  which beats with imagination in the  depths of the city.

Last month, they held a partnership with the city’s planetarium. Audiences came and were handed telescopes to gaze at the night sky, whilst poetry was read and music played. This  is a place from whom many could learn. It shows how public space can engage  and stimulate cultural activity, and be alive with it. With a new visionary as its director, Martin Grossman, it embraces the urban chaos with an imaginative zeal. It has been called a city in itself – travelling like a ship on a journey.

Have you read Roland Barthe’s ‘How to Live Together’ asks Gui, a visual artist who only started work in the education programme here three weeks ago. ‘It reminds me of the Arvon Foundation. How you have to live together in a retreat like a monk to be truly individual and listen to your soul.’

Everyone here is struck by the Arvon message of imagination freeing you. But how will it translate into this intensely noiseful space? We start a conversation which is still just beginning – and somehow I know it will lead somewhere unexpected, unusual and special.

‘Then on to give another lecture. This time it is a double act about New Writing in the UK,  with Julie Ellen at SESI which is running the Nucleo project. Julie is awe inspiring, the work she has done for the Playwrighting Studio of Scotland in just 3 years is astoundingly  impressive.

The questions we field are  from committed and engaged young drama students . They ask intensely about how theatre can engage with politics and perhaps even replace journalism.
Students come up afterwards, asking more questions.  And then an injection of reality. All the time during this 7 day visit, I am intensely aware that I am seeing a slice of Brazillian life which is so privileged it bears little resemblance at all to what the majority of people in this country experience.  A young student comes up to me. ‘I don’t have a question for you. I just have this.’ He thrusts a sheaf of papers in my hand. ‘This is what life is really like in Brazil. This is how my son really lives. It’s written in Portuguese which is our language. Read it and see.’

There is one other moment in my 7 day trip when the same reality cuts through the verneer. In the converging lanes of traffic at the entrance to Sao Paulo airport, a young girl stands, hand on hip. She has long black  hair lank with neglect, a lost face, and is dressed like a school girl in a black skirt and top, with shoes.  There is no light in her eyes: they  are deep black caves. All that is left of this 16 year old girl is a body stranded yet still standing in the tides of traffic -  a girl who has nothing to live for, except for the  car door which will be opened to let her in.

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”.

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.  

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.

Don’t Ask Me What I Mean

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

The Notebooks of Henry James

A Novelist’s Guide To Being A Novelist

The Paris Review Interviews

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 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?

‘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.

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.

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

Costa del Lumb Bank eh?  Here at Moniack Mhor, we too are enjoying el scorchio weather with the added package holiday ambience of droning diggers and radios blaring out music of the dance, trance, or prance ilk.

This, I hasten to add, is actually good news and, as we have no courses at present, not a problem.  Our next course is a month away – Poetry with Ann and Peter Sansom – by which time all will be Highland tranquil again with the trill of skylark and plaintive kee of buzzard the only distracting sounds.

Our tutors will be delighted to hear that from now on they have the luxury of en-suite bathrooms in the cottage.  We have also increased parking space (previously we only had room for two cars and a sheep) and now have vehicle access to the front door of the main house which should help those with walking difficulties. 

Now, it’s away from the musings on the benefits of change and back to dealing with the needs of the best builders in the world – ever!

Looking forward to a long, warm, happy summer – best wishes from a tired and dusty Andrea.

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

Totleigh Barton prepares for a long hot summer.

After the last three weeks of August weather we are strangely relieved to find ourselves in the traditional April showers this week. It is not that we don’t appreciate the slice of mid summer we’ve been given. It’s just that we want to make sure this part of the world is at it’s greenest this year as we will be piloting the food writing course with Sophie Grigson and Alastair Hendy this summer and some rain now will make sure we have the best and finest Devon produce come 2 July. So bring on the rain, but not too much please…

Last week we had a group of mad writers who had come to do the screenwriting course tutored by Paul Fraser and Lucy Scher. The Friday night was used to show some short films as they were shot that afternoon. It was amazing to see how they had managed to capture Totleigh Barton, putting the spotlight on the remoteness in a hilarious short about a woman trying to find a mobile phone signal which, and this should surprise nobody who’s ever been here, she hopelessly failed to find. Truly a great week with a fantastic party afterwards, can’t wait for the next one.

And we have just welcomed the next group who have come to do the fiction course with Jane Harris and Richard Beard. We’ve just served our Monday night dinner and The Arvon magic has already turned all the individuals into a group that is excited about their stay at Totleigh Barton, eager to talk to Richard and Jane (and us) and looking forward to the rest of the week. They seem terrified about the cooking though but I’m sure we will still end up with a good meal every night this week. I’m sure. Well, fingers crossed anyway…

In short, it is good to be at Totleigh. Very good.

Huib Boekelman, Centre Director
Totleigh Barton, Devon

Is the Hurst (The John Osborne Arvon Centre for creative writing) some sort of TARDIS? No, there’s surely been a mistake - we’re smaller on the inside!

The Hurst seems to have been at the centre of some sort of time warp for the last couple of weeks.

Kerry and Peter (our new Centre Directors) dashed off to London last Monday (as usual with just enough time to catch their train) for the initial programming meeting of 2008 whilst I spent a few days in the company of Paul Warwick and Ed Collier. “Not THE Paul and Ed?” I hear you cry. Yes the very same - Ex-Centre Directors and lifetime Hurstmen. They’ve hired the centre lock stock and barrel for the Dark Room, a development project for devising theatre companies (now in its third year) and settled into the office as if they had both put on a comfortable old pair of slippers. They commandeered the phone, complained about the heating, and unplugged all the network cables. Once logged into their fancy IMacPod Lap Arts Council funded thingies they adopted that familiar hunched stance emerging from their collective trance only to answer (in bullet point form) my inane questions about the state of their careers/relationships etc.

It’s a pleasure to have Ed and Paul back and the first two weeks of their visit seem to have gone off swimmingly. Once they have impro’d their way back to the big smoke, we will welcome Kings School for a week of prose and performance poetry from Lynne Bryan and Marcus Moore. Our old friend, teacher, committee member and general good egg, Katie Adam has engineered this course with her usual precision. Even though it looks unlikely that she’ll be here in person, I have no doubt her considerable organisational skills and passion for all things creative will shine through. Katie knows the centre so well, we sometimes ring her for advice on repairing the boiler and unblocking the dishwasher…

And then to the open programme, kicking off this year in mid April with a Playwriting course in the capable hands of Tim Fountain and Natasha Betteridge. Following hot on their heels - with Freedom in Form - will be Patience Agbabi and Patricia Debney. We will then be in the midst of a run that will last until December, with the centre resembling anything but a Dark Room..

Editor’s note - We can confirm that the Hurst is not a TARDIS (a Time And Relative Dimension In Space) - the blue police box made famous in Dr Who, and invented by BBC screen writer Anthony Coburn, after he edited C. E. Webber’s script of the very first Dr Who show. The TARDIS was conceived out of budget restrictions - the Doctor needed to travel in something but finances required the vehicle to be simple and cheap to make. The word TARDIS is now commonly used to refer to something that is bigger on the inside than the outside.

And in this respect perhaps, after all, Arvon is very TARDIS-like.

Best wishes
Dan Pavitt
Administrator
The Hurst

Once upon a time, way back in September 2005, we ran a Writers Retreat at Totleigh Barton.  The participants got so much from the experience and also made such good friends that they asked whether they could hire Totleigh Barton for a week to get together again and carry on writing.    So they came back the next January, then again in June and recently in January this year.  The group is ever-changing: when some writers can’t make the dates, other writers – people met on other Arvon courses and contacts made through writing networks – are invited to make up a full house. 

The DIY Group has gone from strength to strength and Totleigh Barton is a place where they all love to meet up and work, play and cook up fantastic food in the Totleigh kitchen!  This is so much what Arvon is about: likeminded people getting together and having an audience for their work and benefiting from peer feedback during the week. 

Time to write, talk, read and walk. 

DIY folk are an eclectic bunch and their writing encompasses Poetry, Prose, Writing for Children, Theatre, Radio and Screen.  One of the members of the group, Anne Greer, was pleased to announce that a short story she had written had been accepted and was to be broadcast on Woman’s Hour the very week that DIY were with us, and so we were all privileged to tune in to Radio 4 with our friend, the author!  Can’t get much better than that!

With best wishes from Arvon’s pre-Domesday thatched cottage in Devon, Totleigh Barton
Huib and Esther (Centre Directors) and Julia (senior administrator)

As ever it’s been a busy time at the Hurst Shop – we had open courses right up to the middle of December, and then leapt straight back into things on January 22, with a terrific partnership week with Princess Royal Trust for Carers. They spent the week in the esteemed company of tutors Ian Marchant and Jemma Kennedy, with Jo Shapcott featuring as our guest reader. While any number of aesthetic goals were reached, for us the highlight was to find that one of the participants had not been to the pub in sixteen years – a duck she broke on the Tuesday. And the Wednesday. And the Thursday…As a reward for rejoining the fray, she was awarded our first Champagne Moment of 2007.

Meanwhile we’ve been girding our loins for the start of the Open Programme (all our courses advertised in this year’s Arvon brochure). The bookings have been thundering in, and everyone who has booked seems really, really nice, so I’d encourage you to join their number. Space prohibits a list of highlights, but I’m sure you carry your Arvon Course guide with you wherever you go, and have the Arvon Foundation as your home page (Google is so 2005), so I’m sure you’re up to speed.

Before the Open Programme begins we have a number of School Weeks, which are always a highlight. If you’re a teacher and you haven’t brought a group to the Hurst, then you’re obviously insane. Check out the young people pages at www.arvonfoundation.org for more details.

Aside from things writerly, scrumping fans – and who isn’t a scrumping fan? – will be excited to hear that our local committee member Keith Pybus recently selected a number of apples from our orchard for dating and identification. It seems most of the trees were planted in the late 19th Century, and that one of the varieties – called a Curl Tail – is a rare apple, first recorded in Woking in 1872 and not before recorded in the Marches. So if you visit us during October/November next year, and are partial to rare and strange apples, you’re in for a treat.

Finally, congratulations to all at Pentabus Theatre, who were nominated for a South Bank show Decibel Award, which recognises work which contributes to the development and promotion of ethnic diversity in the arts. The nomination was for White Open Spaces, a theatre piece developed at the Hurst in November 2005.We look forward to seeing you here soon

Peter & Kerry, Centre Directors, and Dan, the Administrator

A fresh new year at Lumb Bank - this photo was taken on a mobile phone by Ilona, Lumb Bank’s administrator. 

The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank has been undergoing revamping and renewal which was put to the sternest possible test when Castlegreen School from Sunderland became the first visitors of 2007. Both public bathrooms have been replaced and all communal areas have been completed re-decorated. We have replaced the carpets in the library, on the stairs and along the landing and the place is looking very smart indeed. Certainly the students from Castlegreen appreciated our new fixtures and fittings. They were there working on performance based poetry with Luke Wright and Lemn Sissay with Clare Shaw as the mid-week guest. The work was, as ever on an Arvon course, extraordinary with all the students making a huge leap forward in their writing.  This was especially pleasing as many of the group had had significant behavioural and emotional difficulties prior to coming to the course. Meanwhile Luke Wright’s campaign to become the next poet laureate continues apace…

Bookings continue to stream in with a quarter of the places for 2007 now gone and two courses completely full. If you want to come to Lumb Bank this year you’ll need to get your skates on…

Best wishes

Stephen, Caron and Ilona

Well, it has been sometime since we have shared our news of which there is plenty. In fact, so much, that time and space will not allow the full telling. We had a wee period of the doldrums when it became clear that we were not going to achieve our goal of raising £500,000 to build a new accommodation block. However, the Moniack Mhor team is never long defeated by such minor inconveniences and so we continue to plough onwards and upwards.

There may come a time in the future when a new accommodation block is built but for now we are strengthening our already considerable strengths. We’ve made the house cosier inside with new squadgy sofas, candelabra and muted shades of paint; we’ve spruced up the outside, changed all the menus, and now have haggis, neeps and tatties on the Friday night!

We’ve got new computers which are sleek and black and flat-screened and, amazingly, their acquisition means we have more room in the cottage, which in turn is allowing us to put in a little kitchen area and two en-suite shower-rooms! It’s actually all quite miraculous!

The students who come here in the summer months continue to be over-awed by our spectacular scenery, stunning sunsets and shaggy sheep. Lyndy and I continue to battle the elements to get to our place of work and spiritual home whilst Cynthia, languishes at home writing a novel courtesy of a Scottish Arts Council bursary. She will return in the spring, hopefully thrice-published.

From Andrea Muir – adieu!

We’re looking for Arvon Friends to share their experiences of the Arvon courses they have been on. Have you ever been on an Arvon writing course? Which writing house did you visit? How was your journey there and back? How did you feel on the Monday night as you met your fellow writers for the week? What was unexpected? Did you experience any writing epiphanies? What did you cook and did people like your meal? Who were your tutors and your mid-week guest reader? What kind of weather did you have, what colour were the skies? What inspired you most when you were there (and what didn’t?) With Arvon’s fortieth birthday coming up next year (our first course, with Ted Hughes as guest reader, was in 196 we’re going to collect as many stories about Arvon experiences as possible. Add your experience by clicking on Comments…