Wine ... and toilet rolls?

 Last weekend was the Romantic Novelists Association Conference and I am still in recovery, which is why this post is a bit late. Even after three night's sleep I am still exhausted with a saturated brain. It was a mixed bag, but I really enjoyed myself, and got a lot out of it. 

The conference proper only takes place every other year now, and the cost is quite a chunk of money to invest in your career, but it is also an opportunity to catch up with friends I rarely see and make a few new ones. 

It was held for the second time at the Royal Holloway in Egham, which is part of the University of London.  I had a couple of nights in London prior to the conference, but more of that in future posts. 

I was a bit later than I wanted to be getting there on Friday so missed the opening sessions. I wasn't in my best mood either as when I got there there were no taxis at the station and I had to find my way to the local bus. I have to say that the local bus drivers are lovely as that is the second time this has happened. I'm going to have to learn how to Uber! 

Friday was fraught, as I was lucky enough to have four appointments with agents and editors two of which were early that afternoon, and the queue for lunch was very long, so I ended up with just a small bowl of salad to keep me from taking bites out of the furniture. The 1-2-1 appointments were very useful indeed. I took the WIP which is very much 'in progress' but which I wanted to test out with experienced professionals. It was worth it. I now have comments and suggestions to think about as I develop the idea. Now I just have to keep writing!  

My first session was writing great sex - yes, well how could you resist that? Very interesting on the current trends and expectations, with a few things to definitely avoid. I recall a memorable session with Julie Cohen many years ago, that involved among other things, chocolate, a strawberry and a feather, which was looking at how to write sensual scenes. That hour shaped how I write my love scenes ever since.  It was good to get another, very different perspective. 

The last session was given by a friend - Luisa Jones, who is a trainer and coach IRL and brought some of those techniques to the creation of characters. I apparently worried her by staring into space when she gave us time to consider how we might apply Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to a protagonist. I was working out how it would apply to heroine Nel - and very useful it was too.  After that it was dinner when I made up for the lack of lunch and the hopeless Romantics Quiz. Films, books, music, mating habits - all with a romantic theme. Our team achieved a respectable place in the middle of the field. 

I was ready for bed by then. As a university it was student accommodation and I have to say that playing students gets a bit less attractive as you get older. The dark walk through the wood to reach the residence block was a bit more atmospheric than I would have liked too, but my shower worked and the bed must have been okay as I slept fine, if not for long enough. 

That was the first day.  More about the rest of the weekend next week - and an explanation of the title of the post.

To be continued ...

Evolving language

 Probably the most famous creator of new words, word combinations and phrases was Shakespeare. He's credited with nearly 2,000 new words. 

Changes in language still go on. One has happened to my knowledge in the last few years. And it is one that drives me mad. 

When I was in school - yes, dinosaurs prowled the playground - spelling and grammar was still formally taught. I was always hopeless at spelling, and still am - I've often wondered if there was a bit of dyslexia going on - thank heaven for the spell checker. I always say that my terrible handwriting is to disguise my spelling, but actually it is probably the product of years of note taking, in work and academia, so it has degenerated into a system of hieroglyphics. I was okay with grammar though, which is why the new use of the phrase about boredom - to be bored of something makes me grumpy. It's bored with, people. The new way is like nails on a blackboard - and I doubt if that is something heard much in the classroom these days either.

Sadly, for my blood pressure, bored of seems to have become common usage and it doesn't look as if the old usage is going to be coming back.

I'm not above breaking the rules. One of my favourites is never starting a sentence with And, But or Because. I shatter that one frequently. But I do try not to end a sentence with a preposition, although that is another one that gets bent in common usage, and not doing it can sound a bit weird, especially in dialogue, which is a whole different ball game. 

The world moves on. It appears that what I spent time learning in school can now be done  for you by Artificial Intelligence, but I must say that I do value the time that an excellent English teacher took to teach me the rules. Tools of my trade.

 

Inheritance and buried treasure.

 Yesterday I bought a pair of slow release plant food bottles for my two aspidistras. You cut the tops off, upend them in the pot and gravity does the rest. I am quite protective of those plants. I'm the third owner of one, and the fourth of the other. They have come to me, from my grandmother and my great aunt, by way of my Mum. I don't really know how old they are, but I guess at least 80 years old and possibly/probably older. It made me think about other things in the house that I have inherited - my grandmother's writing slope, made for her by my grandfather when my aunt went the America as a GI bride and weekly letters became a thing. I have a pseudo Clarice Cliff tea set - not the real thing, but a Woolworths knock off that my grandfather won in a raffle. Looks good in the glass fronted cabinet in the kitchen though. I have a dressing table set again pseudo chintz -that was probably Woolies too. A few bits of jewelry from grandmothers and aunts, a jewelry box made for my great grandmother by her father. Vases from my other grandmother, tools that belonged to my Dad, books, an old fashioned weighing scales with real weights and my mother's dressmaking scissors ... 

None of these things are in any way valuable, not even the jewelry, but it gives me pleasure to use them. 

Inherited items are often a catalyst for a book plot. I've read several lately where an item of furniture had a clue to a treasure - one of those was a writing slope. No treasure in anything of mine - we were not that kind of family! Time slips often have a item that is the connection between eras. Treasure, buried or unburied, is by definition likely to be old. I've written often about old letters and papers as clues to an old mystery - that's the nerd in me that loves archives. The WIP has those and it's also going to have a treasure and yes, I am going to bury it. Can't beat a bit of tradition. 

What is an author?

 A creative, a craftsperson, an artisan?

Possibly. Probably. But, for me, what they certainly are is a human being. 

But now there are more and more instances coming to light where human authors are being replaced by something generated by a computer. 

I've never knowingly read a book produced in this way, and I never intend to produce one - I enjoy writing, with all the blood, sweat and tears it involves, far too much to ever give that up. 

The Society of Authors is launching a scheme with a logo for a book that indicates that it was authored by a human. It is proving popular and many authors are joining. When I next have some work out I hope to use it.

A book written by a human may have taken months, even years of work to produce. It may have required trips to archives and record offices and copious notes. Or trips to visit locations - an element that writers do tend to find less arduous than siting with the computer and bashing away. It will have required thought. A reader is getting a connection with the author, and experiencing all the emotions the writer is working to convey. Human emotions. A piece of work in which a person has dedicated time and effort to produce an end product to the very best of their ability.

Something worth thinking about?  

Lost and Found

 The mystery of disappearing stuff. Pens. There are dozens of them in the house, but not when I am looking for one. Also teaspoons - where do they go? The elusive habits of socks and Tupperware are legendary. Last week I could not find my step ladder. Yes, really, a step ladder. I toured the house, eventually concluding that a visiting workman must have borrowed it and taken it away, forgetting it wasn't theirs. I'd reached the inevitable conclusion - that the best way of finding something lost is to buy a new one, when I made one last foray into the spare bedroom that I had already looked in twice. And there, leaning against the wall, tucked neatly behind the ironing board, was the step ladder. It must have been there all along, mustn't it? 

It made me think about lost and found. After secrets, it might be one of the most popular motifs and motivations for novels. The journey or the treasure hunt is usually in search of something. It could be a physical item, it could be a lost family, it could be something more emotional, like a sense of self, or the chance of turning over a new leaf. I've been reading a few time slips recently , and they often focus on an item, something that has passed down through the years. I have something like that in the WIP- a Macguffin  - around which the story revolves although it is not really part of it. Actually there  are quite a number of lost things - missing papers, a sort of treasure hunt, heroine Nel's memory of the hours before a horrific car crash. I've just written that scene, and it was quite emotional and also exacting to choreograph. Until you come to write it you do not realise that the image you have in your head requires some proper working out, on a practical level.

The WIP is coming along. I have just finished the first section, so a sense of achievement. Now I have to sail off into the unknown, which is going to be a lot more tricky.  I know what has to happen, but not yet how - and then there is Nel and Logan's love story. As usual, they are going to have to tell me how that develops. It's fun, but also hard work. But no one said writing a book was easy. 

Theme

 When I was starting out as a writer I went to a lot of classes - as you do - attempting to learn the proper way of doing this thing that I so desperately wanted to do.  (Lots of doing in that sentence!) I heard a lot about technique and essential skills and the correct approach, and I have to say that quite a lot of it was no use to me at all, however good and well respected the tutor was - and I was taught by some of the best. So much just didn't suit me. Eventually I understood that and I got on a lot better. And was much happier and more comfortable in my writer's skin. 

One of the things that was presented as an essential was the need to have a theme. I was reminded of this recently by an excellent article in a professional newsletter that was extolling the same idea. 

But - it simply isn't me. I don't like reading books that have an overt theme and I don't want to write one. Writing it feels like a straight jacket. Reading it, in the worst cases - and I have read a few of those - it seems like an iron bar that the author is beating you over the head with and possibly a little patronising - as if you were too dim to understand what the book is about without it being spelled out at every turn. But that's me, being a bit arrogant. Or not just a bit? 

One of the things I did learn from all those classes was that writing is a pick and mix. Not everything will suit YOU and you don't have to do it all. There is no set template - although when I started out a number of those classes did present things that way. It took me a long time to understand that I could still be a writer if I didn't follow the programme slavishly. 

So now, if you like to read and write books with themes, why not? We are all different. And I do find that my books to sometimes get themselves a theme, without me being aware of it when I was writing them. Never Coming Home had an underlying thread of discarded children. It's there, but I didn't engineer it. 

So I am ploughing on with the WIP. It doesn't have a chosen theme - whether it will have one when it is finished - well we will all find out. At the moment I'm just enjoying the journey. 

Eclectic Research

 I've said it before, and will no doubt say it again - writers have a lot in common with magpies. Snappers up of unconsidered trifles. (Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale) At the moment I am collecting a lot of random and not so random bits and bobs that is WIM not WIP (work in mind rather than work in progress. But thinking and collecting time is part of the process. )

As the current work is going to lean heavily into Dark Academia - a least. I hope it will - it's a new area for me, so it is going to be an adventure. Can I do it? I can but try. Anyway, an essential ingredient of DA is a library - and I am certainly going to have one of those. So now I am collecting bookish things. Ideas of the people who will study there, and the topics they might study are gently piling up, but what about the books themselves? I'm already wondering if I can find a place for a book with arsenic in the cover. I found out about those courtesy of a reel, I think it was a reel, I'm not well up on those things, from the Wellcome Trust library. That one is in the magpie bank. One thing I am planning to included is a chained library - or at least a chained book case, where the books are fastened in place so that they can be studied but cannot be removed. 

In the interests of research last week I visited the chained library that is attached to Hereford Cathedral. It's the oldest intact one in the world, still with original chains, rods and locks, established in 1611, but with books and manuscripts that are much older, the earliest dating from 780. The cathedral also houses a copy of the Mappa Mundi and the whole site is well worth a visit. The cathedral building is lovely, there is a popular cafe and a garden. I was intent on the books - most particularly the chain system itself which required special chains to be made by a blacksmith. I had the chance to have a good look, and talk to the guides about how the whole arrangement worked. My brain is now working happily. The system, as with all archives, was for the preservation and protection of the books. But writers all have questions. Mine is - Are the chains to protect the books from us, or us from the books? Think about that one. 

You can read more about the library and the map HERE. Admittance to the cathedral is free, but there is a charge for visiting the library and the map.