What I’m Up To Wednesday: How do you defeat your dragons?

Posted on by amystoryteller

On Saturday I took a break from my intense writing schedule and visited Norton and then Caldecote with some new stories.

In Caldecote, the theme was  ‘How do you defeat your dragons?’ and the storytelling tent was set out with some fantastic talking points, story excerpts and even a seven-headed dragon chalkboard for people to add their real-life dragons and how they can be beaten.

Louisa Freya is becoming an old favourite now, but I was also able to tell Thakane for the first time. This tale of the Bosotho people features in the book of folktales I’ve been writing, and is great fun to tell with lots of repetition and a rhythmic song. Between Louisa Freya’s seven-headed dragon, Thakane’s glow-in-the-dark dragon and the monster Zoblak, we came up with all sorts of ways to defeat our toothy adversaries.

I also had the chance to read a couple of stories from the new book, and to sign some copies of The First King Of England.

Now it’s back to the desk to finish the first draft of Very Important Project number two in my year of three books, preferably before the children finish school for the summer. Will I make it? Keep following me here to find out!

What I’m Up To Wednesdays: Scargill House

Posted on by amystoryteller

I’m cutting it fine, but it’s still just about Wednesday, so time for a quick update! I spent the weekend on writers’ retreat at Scargill House in Yorkshire.

Retreat: (re-treat) to treat one’s self again. This was, I think, my fifth time at the ACW writers’ weekend – I’m losing count.

I tell a bedtime story to the group on both evenings of the weekend, but usually I get to relax for the rest of the programme. This time, however, Adrian Plass interviewed me about folktales as part of the Saturday morning sessions. It went by in a bit of a blur and I hope I said a few things that made sense: I do remember talking about the history of folktales, Cinderella in particular; whether or not there are only seven plots; and how I’ve chosen and retold the fifteen stories that are going into my new book.

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Storytelling at Scargill. Thanks for the photo, Lucy Mills!

The rest of the far-too-quick time was spent making new friends, talking to old ones, photographing owls, writing some bits and pieces for my book of Advent devotionals, making a small clay pot and enjoying the sunshine.

Now that I’m home, fighting Scargill withdrawal symptoms, it’s on with the Advent book – and fuelled by the weekend’s inspiration, I’m spending this week writing about God as creator and artist.

 

What I’m Up To Wednesday: Fascinating facts

Posted on by amystoryteller

Welcome to another WIUTW! Yes, that’s two consecutive Wednesdays. Things are looking up.

This week I have mainly been editing my book of folktales about  adventuring girls, which I’m pleased to report has now been sent to the publisher. Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s finished – there will still be further edits, and reviewing illustrations, and proofreading to do – but the bulk of the writing itself is done.

It’s been a fascinating journey, researching not just the folktales themselves, but enough background culture and colour to retell each in an authentic and entertaining way. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve learned what Lent is like in Greece, why the Basotho people wear blankets, and how to joust if you’re smaller than your opponent. I’ve dipped into the volcanology of Java, the history of the Algonquin people and the Confucian ideal of filial piety.

The trouble with doing all that research is that barely any of the interesting facts and figures I discover actually make it into the text of the book. If you were looking for the results of my studies, you could spot them in the backdrop of the stories, but they’re not supposed to stand out. That’s why, at the end of writing this book, I’m a fount of completely useless knowledge, and the only place to deposit it all is in this blog.

For example, did you know that Ahasuerus and Xerxes are exactly the same name, transliterated from Persian into Latin and Greek? You didn’t, did you? And you didn’t particularly want to know that either, did you?

It’s far too easy to get distracted when you need to research and you have the internet, especially with the way that Wikipedia gives you helpful links to other articles. For example, writing a story set by the Nile, I wanted to have a kingfisher flitting into the water. ‘Are there kingfishers by the Nile?’ I wondered. I don’t know what a writer would have done about that before Google, but within a few moments I knew that there are kingfishers by the Nile, but unlike our kingfishers here, they are black and white. They’re called pied kingfishers. Pied_kingfisher_(Ceryle_rudis_leucomelanurus)_femaleIn fact there are 114 different species of kingfisher across the world, and did you know that the laughing kookaburra is a kind of kingfisher?

Ten minutes and a video of a laughing kookaburra later, I decided not to put a kingfisher in the story after all.

Now imagine doing that across fourteen different stories from all over the world, and you’ll have a grasp of the amazing array of fascinating factoids that are currently taking up all the space in my brain. Now would be the moment to claim me for a pub quiz team. On the other hand, if you have any allergies to trivia, you might want to stay away from me for the next few weeks until it all settles down…and I start researching the next book.

 

What I’m Up To Wednesday: the BIPs

Posted on by amystoryteller

Oh, dear. Six months since I last blogged. What on earth have I been up to?

Well, since January, I have been writing full time for the first time ever. I haven’t booked any new appearances or visits since the beginning of 2018. I’ve even turned down my favourite, regular gigs (I miss you guys! Please ask me again next year!)  

So if I’ve been writing full time – why haven’t I been writing this blog?

What happened was that, after quite a bit of playing with ideas and sending things off and chatting to publishers at events like CRT,  three Big Important Projects (BIPs) came along at once, like buses. Most of the details of these are still cloaked in secrecy right now, (though if you follow this blog, I do intend to do a gradual reveal as each one gets closer to publication) but I can tell you that they consist of three books, two for children and one for adults, that none of them are due to appear until next year, and that one of them is nearly complete and has reached the headaches, coffee and editing stage.

At the same time as what I’ve started referring to as my ‘year of three books’, I’ve been doing smaller bits of writing too: I’ve penned a sonnet series to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice, which you’ll hear more about in the Autumn, I’ve done a few small bits and pieces for Area 52, and I’ve been busy editing the new ACW Christmas anthology, which will be appearing this summer. Oh, and I’ve entered two poetry competitions – fingers crossed!

I’ve told a few  people about my three BIPs (hey, that could also stand for Books In Process). The ones who were writers laughed at me (fair enough) and the others said, “I don’t know where you find the time!”

And I said, “If you saw my house, you’d understand”.  

Seriously, I’m not doing anything else. Not performance work, not housework, not reading if it doesn’t count as research, not having a social life (that’s nothing new) and not blogging. But I intend to rectify at least that last one.

So I’m sorry I’ve been a silent recluse, but stick with me, because things are about to get wild around here, and you don’t want to miss it.

What I’m Up to Wednesday: Creatively Retreating

Posted on by amystoryteller

There’s something about the summer time that makes me want to study.  Apparently the sunshine makes most people want to lie by the sea and do nothing, but I have a sort of Pavlov’s dog reaction after so many years of summer meaning revision and exam time.

It’s always good to set aside a little time for what in teaching used to be called ‘continuing professional development’, so I’ve been along to a few workshops recently.  The first was a poetry workshop led by Gregory Warren Wilson.  I couldn’t believe it when I saw the poster: I had to run to my bookshelf to make sure that I’d recognised the name, because this was a poet who read my poems nearly twenty years ago when they were mostly teenage drivel, annotated them, and met up with me and my cello teacher in a little cafe in Sevenoaks to go through them one by one.  IMG_1597

His workshop, on poetry and music, was wonderful.  In time-limited tasks, we played with rhythm and its effect of language.  My favourite exercise was to ‘translate’ a poem from a language nobody in the group knew, going only by the rhythm, line breaks and sound of the words to discern meaning.

Of course, I had to catch him afterwards to thank him profusely for taking me seriously in 1999.  He didn’t remember doing it, but was glad he had, because, he said, “Someone did the same for me before my voice had formed, when my poetry didn’t deserve to be seen.”  It struck a chord, reminding me of that part of the communion service, ‘When we were still far off, you met us in your son…’ A sort of poet-to-poet version of grace.

Next, I returned to Otley Hall, where I try not to miss anything Malcolm Guite ever does, and listened to him talk about Tennyson.  The retreat day took place, as he pointed out, in the garden of a ‘moated grange’ and surrounded by the mournful cries of peacocks.  It’s a wonderful place if you ever get the chance to go.  I learned that I didn’t know nearly enough Tennyson.

Finally, this weekend, I shall be at Scargill House on my favourite retreat of all, the ACW* writers’ weekend.  I’ll have to write about that one once it’s actually happened.  I wonder whether I will have got my summer learning urge out of my system by then?